2 referrals made!!!

After almost three months of no referrals, 2 families were matched with their children. One family a 4 month old boy and the other a 22 month old boy! YEY for movement!!! I am still waiting on Christian Adoption Services to approve our homestudy update, then for the Alberta government to approve it, then we will officially be waiting for a boy or girl 48 months old. We are coming up fast on the list....unfortunately we will have to wait for these updates to be approved.

LOVE

Some think love is a feeling, I believe true love begins when the feelings are gone and a choice has to be made. True love is when you are mad at your spouse, would like to call them all kinds of evil things, but instead choose to listen, to accept when you are wrong and apologize when you are right. Too many people hunt for a feeling, I am sure you can always find a feeling, but it is rare to find commitment. They wonder what went wrong when the feelings fade, but they missed the point…to love through the good AND the bad. Today I am grateful for a husband who loves me all the time. He loves me when I’m a sweetheart and he loves me when I’m not. He never rejects me, no matter how ugly I can get. His heart, eyes and mind are only for me, he doesn’t share them with anyone else. And although I am embarrassed to say this, he often apologizes even when he is right. He longs for peace between us, choosing to love me when I am unlovable. Although neither of us are perfect, we take each other for who we are, not longing to add or take away. Don’t get me wrong, we have many feelings for each other…some would say we still act like we are newlyweds, but it is not these times that define our love…it’s the times in between.  

The craziest week ever!

Nursing Graduation! On wednesday night we had our Practical Nurse Graduation. My Aunt Lois flew down for the week to celebrate my graduation with me. She had talked me into it about three summers ago, so she had no choice but to fly out and see me graduate! We had a great and very busy week, it was wonderful to have her around!

Welcome baby Oliver. He was born Thursday, October 14 @ 9:40 pm, weighing 8lbs 15 oz. He is a chunky little monkey. He is wearing the hat I got him in the summer while I was in Stratford. It is made from fair-trade organic cotton! He is such a sweetheart, he is the quiet brother who loves to snuggle!

Happy Birthday to my sweetheart!! Today, October 18th, Arnie turned 29!! I had to work from 12-8 so I threw him a little surprise party at the Mosaic Centre. He is with his friend Jacque in the picture. We had a good morning hanging out with everyone, then we went to work for the day!

Little update

I joined a yahoo group a few weeks ago for families with Imagine Adoption. It has been really amazing to meet people in the same place as me, it was beginning to feel like I was alone in all this! It has been awesome to read all the messages and get everyones updates. Although I have not heard of any october referrals yet, there have been lots of court dates and visas issued. Quite a few people are going to Ethiopia this month to pick up their children! Praying for some october referrals and our homestudy update to be completed. We are still waiting for our social worker to type up the update, then the head lady at Christian Adoption Services will ok it, then it will get sent to Anne Scully (head of Alberta adoptions) to ok our age change and then it will be sent to our agency to officially change our file. Hopefully this all happens soon as I would hate to wait any longer because of this update! The good news is, on the yahoo group database, there are only 3 people ahead of us asking for the same age...not to get too excited though cause it could still be a year. We are trying to stay patient because the more excited you get, the harder the wait becomes! So bring on the October referrals!!

Our new adopted dog, Louie!!

Welcome to the family Louie!
About three weeks ago Arnie was working out near Lemont, which is where our dog breeder, who we got Lily from, lives. He decided he would stop by to say hi and check out the puppies, little did he know he was about to run into Louie! Louie and another dog were abandoned two days prior to this. Our dog breeder was at her vet when a lady came in with two dogs stating she just found them. Our dog breeder said they looked like they had come from her batch of dogs so she took them home. They got in touch with the owner, who lives in Fort Mac, he said he gave a friend money to buy them, so they gave him a week or so to come and get them. He didn't show up so instead of going to the pound, we came and rescued Louie! He is very malnourished and extremely anxious. He has big sad eyes that break your heart. Arnie said he was going golfing yesterday and instead went to pick up Louie, I had no idea that he was doing this as I wasn't even sure we could have him. He came home with him and completely surprised me!

Louie on the right, Lily on the left

Louie with his lip stuck on his tooth and cute Lily

Two days ago, Arnie and I were praying for our future child. We prayed that God would make us into the parents our child would need. It is no accident that Louie has now come to be our dog. We think he was abused and obviously neglected. When we tried to go to bed last night, he howled at the top of his lungs for 1.5 hours. I felt so sad for him and could not take it anymore, so I brought him into the bed. He walked around the bed for another half hour, then he finally calmed down and fell asleep. He is so unsure of himself, he is scared of Lily (we were told the other dog would beat him up, we also found bites on his ears), he hides behind us when she tries to play. He also has the worst anxiety I have seen in a dog. Whenever anyone leaves the house, he whines and cries and when Arnie and I leave the house together, he bawls!!! This is no ordinary cry, but a cry that sounds like we are killing him! We left the house a while ago and had to go back in and close the windows so the neighbours wouldn't think we were killing him. Other than that, he is a big sweetheart. He loves to cuddle and follows me all over the house. He will take a lot of work and patience to bring him to the confident level that Lily is at. We have already seen a change in him in just a day of love, food, cuddles and a sister to play with. Although he tests my patience with his "marking territory" pees, he is too sweet to be mad at. I'm so happy to have him!!

By Faith

Lily's favorite spot, thrown over the couch, suntanning and dog-watching with  her favorite toy close at hand.

My faith is being tested. Sometimes it feels easier if I were to just throw in the towel, give up, walk away and forget we ever wanted to adopt. I would never actually do this, my hope for a child is too strong to walk away from, but sometimes I feel like this would be easier. When I am weak and sick of waiting, when my faith has grown weary, the thought of walking away crosses my mind. I don’t know what I would do after that, like I said I would never actually go through with it. I was reading today in Hebrews about Abraham and Isaac. I can’t imagine Abraham’s thoughts when God asked for his only son. Although, it seems, Abraham had a sense of peace about what he was asked to do. It says, “Abraham figured that if God wanted to, he could raise the dead.” Imagine that kind of faith. I pray to have this faith, the kind that doesn’t question, waits patiently, trusts that everything will work out for His glory. Today Abraham is my hero, I’ve never known anyone to have this kind of faith, I can learn a lot from him!

-Bekah

I have learned many difficult lessons thru this ordeal… none more profound than a much needed lesson on patience. I thought I knew what patience was until we wanted to be parents. Everything else in our world is fast paced. If you have money, you go out and buy it. Even in ecclesiastes Solomon speaks of how he denied himself nothing, he refused his heart no pleasure. That resonates with how spoiled I’ve become. When nothing is out of grasp, I’ve lost the necessity of utter dependence on God. But when money and stuff gets old, mundane and repetitive, then I find myself desperate…. and if there is one thing that God loves its desperation. Especially since He knows that the only thing to fill the void is his presence in me, nothing more. Not far off is the longing within us to love and be loved. Hmmm sounds familiar... love God and love others in THAT order. In acts 8 Peter is confronted with Simon, a man who figures he can purchase the Holy Spirit along with power to heal. Peter’s response is sharp and to the point, you can’t buy God’s love, his Spirit, his power… any of him. In fact, my lesson in patience goes hand in hand with this passage. God has laid something profound on my heart lately; anything worthwhile is going to involve some element of sacrifice, some patience, and some faith (in fact, more often than not, it involves a ton of all these!). And so our character development continues, as God refines us in His purifying fire.  Needless to say, I thought we could just pay the money, hop on a plane and become parents in a couple months. Guess God’s timing is slightly different than mine. Thankfully he’s got this whole mess under control, in fact, to Him it’s not a mess at all. . . It’s a plan!

-Arnie

Month 17

Today makes the start of our 17th month of waiting since our dossier made it to Ethiopia. This is our 27th month since we started the whole process. Today is also the day of our 2 year homestudy update. It is amazing how these numbers slowly climb, (and the numbers in our bank slowly dwindle). Arnie and I talk about if we had known all this before we started, we would have never gone through with it. If only we could have a date, life would be so much easier...I guess it wouldn't require much faith either. It is hard to make plans though, not knowing when we will have to leave. One more number for today: 1 referral given in September. Slightly depressing, but the agency has just signed on with a new orphanage and we are the only agency signed with them. So we are all hoping that it starts to pick up. Pray for quick paper work for our update and the orphanage preparing papers so they can start referrals.