Adoption Update!

We received the results from the kids' additional medical screenings this week; all tests came back negative.  While we had no reason to believe otherwise, as I'm sure you can imagine it was still great news to hear. Both children are physically and mentally healthy with no impairments; Macy even has some of her adult teeth already!  The doctor did say he believes the children are older than what was originally thought due to their height and weight (I'm sure Macy's teeth were an indicator as well).  Like we said in earlier posts, birthdays aren't an exact science like they are here in America.  After looking at our options, we decided to adjust their birthdays slightly to align with the doctor's estimates.  So, rather than picking up two 3 year olds it looks like we will be picking up a 4 year old (Macy) and a 3 year old (Malachi) with birthdays in October and November (respectively).  Believe it or not we put a lot of thought into their birthdays, you wouldn't believe how complex it can be! :)

The positive report from the doctor triggered the next phase of this journey; signing the official referral document/contract and wiring our first (huge) financial installment to Uganda; we did that on Friday.  You all may or may not know this about us, but we are huge fans of Dave Ramsey; Dave Ramsey is NOT a huge fan of debt (he hates it, actually).  Julie and I committed early in this process to staying debt-free.  We knew that God was calling us to adopt and we knew that we would not be able to do it alone, so this was one of the biggest areas in which we simply had to trust God and step out in faith.  Being able to wire that sum of money and have a peace about it has been such a testimony to God's faithfulness.  He truly will supply all our needs according to His riches and glory and we've been so humbled to see that verse come to life right before our eyes; all glory and honor to our heavenly Father!

As if the adoption hasn't been keeping us busy enough these last two weeks, we have also been hosting an exchange student from South Africa at our home.  Her name is Precious and she's 13.  She's here with a group of students and teachers to learn about the American education system.  They have been visiting schools around Lakeland to learn TTPs and bring them back to S. Africa.  You're probably thinking, "what the heck is a TTP?".  Thought I would throw that one in there for you non-military folk :).   It's a military acronym that stands for "Tactics, Techniques and Procedures" and is a pretty good explanation of what they were doing.  When they're not visiting schools, we've had the pleasure of showing Precious our little slice of America.  To say that our diet has suffered would be putting it mildly.  We've been to pizza places, McDonald's, Checker's, BBQ, Burger 21 and let's not forget Chick-Fil-A!  On Monday, we were even able to show her the Magic Kingdom!  We had to call in a lot of favors, but it was so worth it; they had a blast with Space Mountain being the unanimous favorite among the students that were able to join us.  We thought we'd include some pictures of our family as it has looked for the past two weeks in this update.  She leaves on Monday; we will miss her but are grateful for the opportunity to get to know her and look forward to keeping in touch with her.  Isn't technology great!?

As always, we appreciate you for following our journey, continue to covet your prayers as we navigate this process and are so grateful for your generosity!

In Christ,

Nate and Julie

John 14:18 "I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you."

Welcome at the airport!

Disney World!

Church!

Mini Golf!

First Friday downtown Lakeland!

Kids on the move!

We got an update on Saturday about how the kids did on their trip from the orphanage to the foster home.  Aside from the few pictures we have seen this was our first glimpse into their personalities.  It was so cool to see how different they seem to be.  You'll see what we mean below.  It was also great to hear that the care takers at the orphanage went out of their way to send the kids off in style.  I hope you enjoy reading this as much as we did.  For context, the drive from the orphanage to the foster home is over 3 hours:

"we travelled to [the] babies home on thursday and picked up [Malachi and Macy]. [The care taker] sent them off beautifully by calling all the children their age group and making them sing them a farewell song. It was so sweet. After the song each little child handed them flowers and so emotional.... drove me to tears."

"Any way the trip back was good and Macy was so calm most of the way. I must say Malachi was very excited and could not keep quiet. He just kept talking about every thing he saw on the way and it was so hard to keep up with him because he was speaking in his mother tongue." 

"We arrived at the [foster] home at about 8:00pm and that was the earliest we have ever arrived in one day.  [The foster home attendant] was ready to receive the children and after a warm bath they had their dinner and went straight to bed.

[The attendant] says that they slept soundly the entire night they must have been really tired."

Just wanted to pass on the latest; we should hear more later in the week.  Thanks again for the support!

In Christ,

Nate and Julie

Hang onto your hats, people!

It’s been 61 days since we last updated this blog.  Have no fear; you didn’t miss much, at least not on the adoption front.  I’m sure you all were as busy as we were (if not more so) with Thanksgiving and Christmas and what not.  We were fortunate enough to spend Thanksgiving (and Christmas evening) with some dear friends that also weren’t traveling out of town and didn’t have family in the area.  It was so nice fellowshipping with our brothers and sisters in Christ.  We hope your holiday was equally enjoyable.

This is Nate by the way, not Julie, if you couldn’t tell already.  She’s making me write this one.  Anyway, we have some pretty big news to share this time!

The first tidbit is the opportunity to be a featured family on the give1save1 blog.   Here’s the deal, Steph, the author of the blog, features 1 family for an entire week.  The family creates an adoption video with the goal of securing $1 donations from people that want to help them save one orphan.  One family raised $15,000!!  Check out the blog and go ahead and donate $1 to the featured family this week.  It’ll be good practice if/when we get featured and they could use the help. ;)  Anyway, we decided to give it a go and asked our very talented cousins, Adam and Squeeze Willis to help us with the video (click here for a link to Squeeze’s photography business or here to see some of the video work Adam does).  They drove all the way up here a week or so ago and we got tons of cool footage for our video.  To say we are STOKED about the finished product would be a minor major understatement!!!

Would you all believe me if I told you that wasn’t even the best part of this update?!  NOT. EVEN. CLOSE.

If you’ve been following our journey so far, you know that on 2 November we received a call about two children, a boy (3) and a girl (almost 4).  On 21 December we received the packet with all the details about the children; where they came from, why they’re at the orphanage, the whole nine yards.  On Christmas Eve, our attorney in Uganda made one last attempt at identifying family willing to take these children in.  At that point it was another 30 days before we had to give an answer.  If you have your calendar out, you’ve already figured out that today is the 30^th day! SOOOOO after much prayer and seeking wise counsel and more prayer and more wise counsel we decided to say YES!!!!  This feels so weird to say, but as of today, our children, Malachi and Macy (like their names?), have been removed from their orphanage and placed in a foster home where they will receive additional medical screenings and more personalized care (due to a significantly lower child to caregiver ratio).  The caregivers will be speaking to them in English and will have pictures of us very shortly to begin helping them associate our faces with “mommy” and “daddy”.  I’ve been telling people that I have a feeling our lives are going to go from “pause” to “fast forward” very soon.  I was right; after saying yes this morning we’ve been inundated with things we need to do to prepare for our trip (we’ll probably be traveling in March sometime), overwhelming to say the least.

You may have noticed my comment about their names; Malachi and Macy are not their birth names.  We discussed keeping their birth names but in the end we decided to change them, partly because we liked Malachi and Macy better but more importantly we were reminded of the many occasions in which God chose to change a person’s name in the Bible to signify life changing events (Jacob to Israel, Abram to Abraham, Saul to Paul, you get the point).  I think it’s safe to assume their adoption will be a life-changing event.  Come to think of it, maybe Julie and I should change our names too! J

I know what you’re thinking, “this is awesome news; how can I help?”  I’m glad you asked. J 

First and foremost, we desperately covet your prayers.  Please pray for a peaceful process, that it will go smoothly and quickly (maybe a nice balance of both, actually).  Pray that Malachi and Macy will attach to us once we are united, that they will accept us as their primary caregivers and transition quickly to becoming a part of our family.  Pray that Abigail and Madelyn will accept these children into our home and love them like they do each other (they are pumped by the way, but it’s hard to explain to them that it won’t always be fun).  Pray that Julie and I will adapt well to doubling the children in our home overnight (woah!) and make the transition from man-to-man to zone defense well. J  Pray for travel mercies, a hedge of protection around Malachi and Macy, that the time between now and being united with them will go fast.  Pray for PEACE through this whole situation.

Second, we have been overwhelmingly blessed by the generosity of our friends and family.  You all have freely donated your time, talents and treasure to help us get to this point.  Whether that’s volunteering to sew giraffes, helping with the garage sale, offering your photo (and video) skills or opening your wallets to support us financially, we are so humbled by your generosity.   We are SO CLOSE to our fund raising goal!  If (and only if) you feel led to contribute financially here are a few opportunities to do so right now;

1. We still have plenty of giraffe taggie blankets to sell (if you don’t know what these are, ask your wife, if she doesn’t know, google it, cuz I’m still not sure I know what they are). $10 buys one for you and sends one with us to give to an orphan in Uganda.  Our goal is to take 250 of them with us (which means selling 250).

2. We still have (some) puzzle pieces to sell.  $5 gets your name on the back of a puzzle piece.  Once all the pieces are sold we will assemble the puzzle and hang it in the kids’ room so they can turn it over to see all the people that helped bring them home. (pretty cool, huh?)

And  two opportunities for later (hopefully):

1. We have plans for a fund-raising dinner of some sort.  Depending on interest level, we would serve dinner and tell everyone a little about our adoption story, what we know about Malachi and Macy and answer any questions you may have.  If you’d like to attend or help out, let us know cuz we’re going to need it.

2. Finally, assuming we are featured on the give1save1 blog (you can pray for that too, btw), we need you all to help make the video “go viral”.  The more views we can get the more likely people will be to donate $1 to our cause.  I’ll be asking for commitments from you to share the video EVERY DAY of the week we are featured.  Too easy, right?

Ok, that’s it!  We hope you all are as excited as we are (not likely).  Hang on tight and try to keep up, we’ll do our best to keep you all in the loop.  We love you and can NOT thank you enough for your support.

Your adopted brother and sister in Christ,

Nate and Julie

Slight Update :-)

Hello everybody! Welcome to our world of waiting! :-) Although, believe it or not - it's peaceful here! Nate and I have been presented with an opportunity and we're just waiting patiently to hear from the Lord in which direction we should proceed.
There hasn't been any new information, but we do know that in the middle of December there will be a final investigation where these two children are concerned. We are so thankful that our agency works with professionals in Uganda who want to be ethical and above reproach! Therefore, they will be making sure all paperwork is in place, all the right people have been interviewed and these children are true orphans in need of a family. Once the investigation is complete, we will need to make a decision.
Please be praying for us in this. We desire to do exactly what God has called us to do, and we are aware that sometimes His calling is not what we thought it would be, but we just need clear direction.
A friend of ours recently described a time in her life when she was asking God to speak to her. She desperately wanted to hear from the Lord and to know that He was speaking, so she asked Him to be very loud in His response, no whispers or little hints. This is exactly what we're praying for now (I like to call it the "neon sign"!) :-) Please pray with us in the next few weeks that we will hear God clearly. That we will know exactly what to say when the next call comes.
Thank you so much! It is such a blessing to know that we don't walk this alone. We know there are people all over that are walking us through in prayer. I believe that is where the peace comes from, only God's peace, asked for from God's people! Thank you Thank you Thank you!!

Now for some Totally Random...fun pictures! :-)

Happy November!

Hello Everyone! I have been absent for awhile now... but that's mainly because I feel that "waiting" is not that interesting a topic to write about! :-) We've still been pretty busy, the adoption fundraising has slowed a bit, but that's ok - the Lord is letting us catch our breath!

So.. what's been happening....?

Well, the girls and I are in full force with school, like everyone else, but we won't be taking much of a break this year. We'll do school through the holidays, because school will probably slack some when we have 2 more little bodies in the house!

We've been learning a lot about serving others, giving of ourselves and what it means to "go and make disciples." Nate and I are especially excited about doing more with the latter...

At the end of October Nate and I (along with my parents and some of our friends) traveled to D.C. so the husbands could participate in the Marine Corps Marathon - yep, that's right... my man ran 26.2 miles....AT. ONE. TIME! Barf, if you ask me... I tackled the Marine Corps 10K (that's 6.2 for those of you counting!) with my sweet friend Jenn... which is much more my speed! It was a beautiful day for a run though.. even though there was a hurricane about to come through!

We got home on October 31, just in time for Nate to have drill weekend, and leave for a week long training in Jacksonville.

Many of you might know that at the beginning of October, Madelyn felt like this adoption process was taking too long and she wanted to ask God for "The Call" to come by the end of October. (Mind you, we began this process 6 short months ago) :-) Oh and "The Call" is the Referral Call, when we hear from our agency that there are specific children in Uganda waiting for parents.

Well, October came and went with no call - I really hadn't thought much of it (because the girls had already changed their prayers to "and I pray that we would receive "The Call" before the end of November!) lol persistence :-)

Well, wouldn't you know it - out of the blue on November 2 - my phone rang with such a call! We were told about two children in Uganda that might be available for adoption soon! As of right now, the courts are closing over there - so there is nothing more for us to do but learn more about these kids, pray for God's direction and peace.... and wait. Courts should open again in late January and we will make a decision and know more around that time.

If you will, please remember us in prayer these next few months - that we will be open to God's leading, that we will hear Him clearly and that whatever the direction, we will move with boldness and peace.
Also keep in mind the families that are currently in country trying to bring their children home - it can be a crazy and very stressful situation all around. Please pray that God's Will will be done!

Thank you for reading and praying us through this journey! I have said it before, and will say it again - there is no way we could do this without you and your support, we are so humbled and grateful! 

Now... what's a blog post without some pics...?

 Doing a little science at home...

 Learning about rain clouds

 looking for tadpoles and other wildlife at Circle B

 these magnifiers are awesome!! (look at Maddie's face!)

 Both girls are teaching themselves how to draw!

 A Fun Break with Friends!

 Ab got her license early! :-)

 Cars and boating...apparently! :-)

Learning all about different kinds of shells

 Putting the treasure in the bottle

Garage Sale Pics

A few t-shirts and giraffes sold

There was never a dull moment!

Help from friends, selling drinks and snacks (and their moms organized and haggled with customers!)

We could not have worked this huge sale by ourselves! We are so thankful for those that came to help!

Ab got a math lesson after all - counting and sorting!!

We're still here.. :-)

I haven't forgotten about you - there hasn't been much to report these days.
We are in full swing in the "waiting game." All of our paperwork is in Uganda and we have received word that our immigration paperwork was approved (so now we are ready to travel.) But, now we wait. We are waiting for our "referral call" - the one that says there are two little boys who need a family and the voice on the other end asks if we would like to be that family! The call could come today or in 6 months.... of this, we have no control.
However... we have been studying The Circle Maker at church and Nate and I have been encouraged to pray boldly for things only God could do, (and by "things" I don't mean "stuff" - just clarifying!) :-) Although, we have enjoyed the study - we had not told the girls about it, yet we continue to pray with them every night as they ask the Lord to protect their brothers and keep them safe until they can be home with us. Well, at the beginning of October, Maddie (our 5 yr old) began expressing her frustration over having to wait so long for her brothers (which is cute in kid terms - but it really hasn't been that long!) :-) So, that night during her prayer time she decided that she was going to ask God to "give us the 'call' by the end of the month" so we would know who the boys were and the next process would begin.
Nate and I knew that this was something that we could join in with her and pray boldly for - it's definitely the "thing" that only God can do! So, that's what we have been doing - we plead for the boys everyday, for their safety, their health, that someone will love them and care for them until we can, and now we are praying, boldly, that we will be made known of who they are by the end of October! It's kind of an awkward prayer, because we know full well that God has this under control and that He alone knows what is best for the boys and for our family - so, we of course want His best for us. We also continue to pray that His Will, will be done in our lives - so if He chooses not to honor this request, we will not falter in trusting, serving or loving Him as Lord of our lives.
How wonderful would it be though, if it all began with the prayers of a 5 year old!?!?! :-) I'm just sayin... :-)
If you feel so led, we would love for you to join in praying boldly with us and I will be sure to update the blog when "The Call" has been received! :-)
I'm off to enjoy this beautiful weather that is finally here - if even for the short morning hours! :-)

Oh! I will post garage sale pics, etc... soon :-)