Keepin' On

Well, it has been a week since we found we were not to keep this baby. It has been an up and down week. I tend to compare everything to previous experiences and this didn't follow last time so it left me wondering if this was normal or if something else was OK. I called the doctor's office a couple of times just to make sure it was on the right track. I am not passing everything as quickly as I did before. Just when I feel better it will turn around and I'll be hot and cold and cramping. I did go in for a hormone count on Friday and it was low but not zero yet which is what they are looking for. I made an ultrasound appointment for tomorrow but do not plan to go now that I know it can take two or more weeks to pass everything. I am sometimes so tired it takes me by surprise. I just lay down or sit. Thankfully my girls are old enough to help with meals and the many other things to do. I have a hard time sitting when there are things to do. I canned some pints of sauerkraut yesterday. It had been sitting on the counter for 4 weeks now and it smelled bad to most people in the family. My mom cut up all my tomatoes that I had ready and now I'll make tomato soup this week. The hard part is done. I just got a call for apples. I am going to let the girls do that job. I'll just guide them. They'll probably have to take a couple days off of school.

I spent one night searching the net for other agencies that handle adoptions from Ethiopia and found three. I also have a friend getting me info on a place through Liberia, the first country we looked at. I got the application for Children's Hope International. This week I am going to contact Immigration Services and work out the poverty line problem we have. I am not going to apply anywhere until we know that we won't get stopped somewhere along the line with Immigration Services. This will certainly let us know if we can continue on with an international adoption.

Thank you for the many prayers and calls and cards. I sure feel so good and loved. God has been good to me and all of us in all of this. This week went pretty well. Wednesday the kids had their first night of AWANA and that was the hardest part of the week. Whenever anyone asked about how I was I felt like crying so I tried "nicely" to ignore everyone:) and let them know I couldn't talk about it yet, not when I was trying to get six kids registered and in the right places. I am also not feeling well today so I stayed home with Caleb. We had a nice time making raspberry muffins and playing Life, Caleb's favorite game. Last time I miscarried the weeks after the physical stuff passed were the hardest. That is when I started thinking about things too much. I am trying to find something to occupy my mind when I fall into that. So continued prayers for this time will be appreciated. Thank you.

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now. Philippians 1:3-5

Unfortunate Chain of Events

Well, it seems my week has been full enough of disappointments. I am sad to say I have miscarried our baby. I wonder of God's plans in all this but will trust Him to guide us through this difficult time and lead us toward healing in body and spirit and to give us a closer walk with Him. I feel so much stronger emotionally than the last time we miscarried two years ago. Jana came with lunch and companionship today and the many calls have truly been an encouragement that I'm not alone.

We heard we couldn't adopt from where we wanted to because we were pregnant. Well, the agency sent the money back, which they usually don't do. Now that we can adopt I have learned Ethiopia will longer accept families with more than four children so we have been saved some parts of the process and expense. I am going to give myself time to heal and think about our options. Zambia is another country that currently doesn't have a family size requirement. It requires you to be over there possibly three weeks. We will see and I know I will be more reflective and seeking God's will more intently. I am not sure what he wants for us now for an adoption. It might not be what he wills for our family.

Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. Lamentations 3:21-23

Passports

Haven't you all heard how it take months to get a passport. I even heard a story about a woman who was all set for a trip and her passport didn't come so she couldn't go. Well, two weeks ago we sent away for ours and they came yesterday!!! I was surprised. Especially since yesterday I felt like I might not need them.

I want to say thank you to our supportive friends, the calls, emails and posts to this blog. Thank you Roberts family and Justine. I have tried to leave comments on your blogs but my computer is so slow it tells me that page is unavailable. Justine, I went to yours for the first time last night. How wonderful your family looks. I can relate to the bulk shopping. I like 50 pound bags of things. It makes less garbage and I don't have to think about it for awhile. I also don't know how to add all that neat stuff you have on your site linking people here and there. I can do just the basics or I'd have a link to your blog. How nice Canada doesn't have an income guideline. Last night I was searching the immigration services website and I think I found our way to showing enough income without having a sponsor. See, if you don't make above poverty guidelines you can get a sponsor to promise to support you if you need help financially. We did find a sponsor but didn't really want to do that. The equity in our house should be enough to get around that problem. We still plan to pursue other options for adoption. We don't know if other agencies will have a policy about pregnancy. I am so happy to be pregnant though, I just didn't think it could be an issue.

We have to do our fingerprints over and Kevin has some questions left to answer and our home study will be near done. I need to check on how long it is good for. I think it might be only a year. Yesterday, I was feeling defeated. Maybe I'm not a good enough mom or good enough person, maybe I can't organize homeschooling all these children. Many doubts entered my mind while I was down. I'm working past them and trying not to let Satan have a foothold on me and trying to listen to what the Lord wants for us to do now.

Thanks for the support! We are praying for our other prospective adoptive friends.

I will sing of the Mercies of the Lord forever.

The Review Committee

I am writing with a heavy heart. I received an email yesterday morning and the review committee recommended we not adopt from CWA until our baby is six months old. I was surprised at how hard it hit me. I feel like I am grieving. We didn't anticipate any problems. We are so normal I thought. How could we not be allowed to continue? I said before the email that it is in God's hands. He is in control of this and we need to follow Him in His timing and what He has planned. I have trouble with control issues. I did think it was OK to appeal to them one more time to ask them to re-consider. I laid out why clearly and concisely and asked they contact our home study social worker. They emailed back saying no, we made a unanimous decision and stand by it. The hard thing about this is Ethiopia is in the middle of changing their requirements for how many children can be in the home already. It sounds like they will change it to four. By the time our baby is six months old we won't be able to go through Ethiopia. It has been hard for Kevin and I because we recently settled on a family with three girls and now it can't happen. We have to accept this and will continue to call on the Lord for guidance in to what should we do now? We will complete our home study and see where to go from there. Please pray for us through this "grieving" process. It is a learning experience.

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Matthew 6:33-34

Rummage Sale Fundraiser

My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. James 1:2-3

We had a beautiful, warm day the day that we set up for the rummage sale and the day after the sale dawned bright and beautiful with the sun shining all day but the day of the sale was gloomy and rainy and so very cold. My arthritis is still paining me from being outside the whole day. We had planned on having the furniture down the driveway but because of the rain we had to have it inside stuffed amongst the tables of stuff. Of course if you have ever had a sale, most people come right away and it was very difficult to walk around. Some large things sold right away but the people didn't come get them for hours! I mean hours. We have boxes and boxes of stuff yet to find a place for. These are all the things that would be easy to dwell on and be down and feel like it was a failure but I haven't told you the other side of the story.

The Kramer's let us use their very clean, newly painted garage for the sale. Karma with her two little girls helped me set up most of Friday into the late evening and helped all the day of the sale as did Janel. My family of course helped clean out our house, load the bus and unload it and helped set up. My children very graciously gave up many toys they kind of wanted to keep. We had donations brought in all day Friday and even Saturday. Jana spent Friday morning getting some skirts made to show at the rummage sale for our other fundraiser and gave many items for the sale. The Roise's drove a trailer full of stuff in late Friday night. The Falk's, Priscilla, my mom, Aunt Evalene, my in-law's, Jan, Sharon, The Prout family, The Diede's, Christine, Janel, Karma, The Foertsch's, The Scott's, Harley Jo's mom, someone who came to the sale and saw what we were doing and gave a bag of stuff and probably more people but I can't think of them right now. All these people took time to look through their stuff and gave their time and belongings to help us raise the money for the adoption. Friday as I was getting ready to leave I had a moment where I was humbled to my knees for the way friends and family came together to help us. I felt very loved by the Lord and by many people. These people and what the Lord can do for good is the other side of the story. We raised $335.00 to use toward various expenses for the adoption. We found out Thursday we have to redo our fingerprints and send in a check for $104.00 plus the cost of getting the fingerprinting done again. So, God is so good to provide in many ways, big or small. I think of this as a big way. When people come together to show their support, that is big to me. Thank you for all who helped us. We are blessed by your friendship.

A friend loves at all times. Proverbs 17:17a

Prayer request

Dear blog readers,
We need your prayers because there might be a complication because I am pregnant. Carol from CWA is going to speak for us at a review board meeting because they usually recommend that you wait to adopt until a new baby is six months old. We just want to go ahead with the adoption and I feel with my older kids being able to help me we could handle this. She asked me some questions and said she would represent me and they might rule that we can go ahead. Please pray they rule this way. We are also getting the rummage sale set up tomorrow. Praise the Lord for the donations we have gotten and the help that's been offered. I believe it will be a nice sale with lots to offer. Please pray because I am still trying to catch up on the sleep I didn't get while camping and I am dragging. Thank you for thinking of us.
Stephanie

Doctor Visits

Today, we spent the day in Fargo. All seven children had their well check for our home study and I had an appointment with my doctor. They took all 9 of us into an exam room. I had my nephew along. We did height, weight, blood pressure, eye exams, hearing test for Rebekah. Plus lots more. Jordan was the only one with a negative report, she has 20/50 vision. Her left eye doesn't work well for her. I was planning an eye doctor appointment this month anyway. It doesn't give her too much trouble since her right eye makes up for it and she doesn't often walk around with her right eye covered up:) I was really hoping they all had my vision and not Kevin's. He has been nearly blind since he was in fourth grade. I am just now noticing a change in my vision. Having all of them in that room for an hour and a half was getting a bit busy. They did pretty good and it is finished. They are all as healthy as can be. Next we did lab. What a zoo that was. I was helping children pee in a cup while someone else started taking blood and boy oh boy Caleb was not a happy boy. After Gideon saw this he screamed down the place too. Moriah was wonderful as were the rest. We quick ate and came back for my appointment. I got to share the news of our pregnancy with the doctor I've had since we got pregnant with Emily. He was pretty happy about all of our news. He and his wife have adopted two girls from Korea. Now we wait as our fingerprints get done and they have already misplaced our consent form so it will be interesting to see how long this takes. We got our passports ordered Friday and I sent off our application to CWA today. Praise the Lord we have had what we need for each of these steps. He has been so good to us. Please pray this week for the fundraiser rummage sale to go well and please pray for our dear friend LuVern Jones who lost her husband yesterday. She is doing well but will need prayers to get through this. She was very close to him and will miss him terribly. We spent some time with her today and it was a blessing to us as always.

"Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?"" John 11:25-26