November is National Adoption Month and Orphan Awareness Month.  Jed and I have been hard at work preparing a presentation for our church.  I am so stinkin’ excited to share with our body what we are most passionate about.  For our presentation we’ve been filming people from our church who have either been adopted, adopted a child themselves, fostered children, or somehow are actively doing orphan care.  It has been awesome.

I think sometimes when we passionate-about-orphans people get to really thinking about all the fatherless out there, all the babies without mamas, all the boys without daddies, it can get extremely overwhelming.  God, why aren’t people doing more?  Don’t they even care?  I sometimes feel alone in my passion.  I think about the fatherless every single day.  I pray for the orphaned ones every single day.  I look into the face of my baby and wonder what his life would have been like had he been born in a different country.  Would he have been abandoned?  Would he be languishing in an orphanage with no one to hold him when he cries?  Most likely.  It’s too much.

Then I lift my head up and I look around.  I start thinking of ones I know who I can get on film from our church.  I think of name after name of those who have answered the cry.  

Phil and Kathy- fostered over 30 teenage girls and adopted their daughter through foster care.
Tim and Rosa- running an orphanage in Asia for disabled children.
Debbi- adopted as a child and so thankful to share how she was rescued by her parents.
Sam and Angie- some of our very best friends who are in Bulgaria RIGHT NOW! visiting with their children they are adopting.

Yes, the need is great.
Yes, many ignore the need.
Yes, the church needs to rise up.

But,
Many are answering the cries.
Many are not ignoring the need.
Many are rising up.

I know God is on the move and He WILL NOT forget His children.
And I am encouraged.

LOOK WHAT CAME IN THE MAIL TODAY!!!!!!  I know, I know, it may not seem like a big deal, but to me this is huge!  Ever since I was 13 years old I’ve been traveling the world.  All through high school I spent my summers going overseas on mission trips.  I chose the college I attended based on their summer missions program.  I married into a family of missionaries.  Jed traveled to Europe serving with his dad.  Jed and I have led several teen and adult teams on missions.  We have a huge world map on our wall and people we love all over the world.  We fancy ourselves the vagabond hippy type (with a mortgage and 4 kids in tow)….hmmm…..

Four years ago we visited my in-laws in Kosova and shortly after that, our passports expired.  That was devastating to me.  Not just that it costs an arm and a leg to renew them (ugh), but that we didn’t have a great urgency or need to renew them right away.  We knew God wanted us here where we are and we weren’t going anywhere soon.  He called us to the foster babes of our city and our heart was here with them.  He called us to a local church where we have grown, loved, and been loved.  It was a fabulous time of loving babies and raising up our own, but it felt like a part of us- or a part of who we dreamed God had created us to be was put on hold- maybe forever.  I know I sound a bit melodramatic, but that’s how I get about my dreams.  It’s the high school drama nerd in me.  🙂  We were willing to go and God had us here.  What’s up with that???

Fast-forward to January when God starts to stir up a season of change in us, then we commit to the sweetie overseas, and then that falls through- but God does not.  He is leading us and guiding us in the manner He knows we will follow.  He’s smart like that.  We don’t know what the end result is, but we know we must obey or miss the adventure of a lifetime.  So we’re going.  We’re going overseas in April.  Yep, that’s right!  We’re headed to Eastern Europe to scope things out and see what the Father would have us do.  We’re lining up contacts right now, people who are doing awesome orphan care, and seeing if we can meet and chat.  We don’t want to reinvent the wheel, we simply want to see what God is doing and what part He may want us to play.  We’ve got some pretty big ideas and dreams and no idea if they could be reality, but God knows.  Perhaps He’s leading us there to meet our next child?  Perhaps He’s leading us there so we can come back and put fire under the feet of the believers here in our town?  Perhaps He’s leading us there to help for good?  We don’t know, but we’re excited to find out!

If you would pray for us we’d sure appreciate it.  Specifically, we need to know who God wants us to meet with so we can set those things in motion.  We’ve put lots of feelers out there, but want God’s ultimate plan to come to pass.

More to come!

I need to get better about this blogging thing…I know there aren’t many (or any!) people reading it at this point, but somehewere down the line I’ll want to go back and remember this journey.

The winds are changing!  We had thought we would start to pursue another child, but things might be heading in another direction.  I just wrote about it in an email to someone who really has inspired us along this journey, so rather than writing it all over again, I’ll just paste in part of my email.

Today I had my physical for our foster care adoption of Baby S.  That was the last bit that we had to do and now his file can go to Central Office for processing!  Woohoo!

My baby is growing and changing every day.  He was born addicted to drugs, but today he is a smiling, crawling, pointing, babbling, one year old who lights up our lives.  I don’t know if we will foster again, but I do know that he was our greatest reward for fostering.  We have had a lot of hard times in our last four years involved in foster care.  It has been one of the hardest and best things we have ever done.  Baby S is our prize 🙂  We are blessed beyond words.

On an “international note”, we had some doubts this past month, but have decided to continue with our international adoption homestudy.  We took some time to pray, wait on God, grieve, and listen.  God has not told us to stop, so we will continue to move.  The country we feel He is calling us to is closing adoptions for the next three months, so in the meantime we’ll do whatever we can do on our end to get ready for their re-open.  Bring on the paperwork!  It has been such a huge blessing to see the little one we originally committed to meeting his mommy and daddy for the first time.  I won’t lie, at first it made me cry.  I had so hoped to be his mommy and to have that meeting.  I dreamed of it.  But, helloooooo????  This is so not about me!!! Ha!  God is amazing.  He knew this precious one needed out of his country before the adoption closure.  As always, His ways are so much higher than our ways.  I’m thankful for that.

Beginning…beginning of what?  That’s a good question.  The beginning of this blog, yes, but I had hoped today I would be starting this blog out with talking about the beginning of our adoption journey to kiddo #5.  Although things won’t look how I thought they would, I guess technically this is still about the beginning of our adoption journey.  Nice rambling start eh?  🙂

I’ll back up.  Who are we?
I’m Kim:  wife, Mommy, foster mom, home-school teacher, friend, pediatric nurse, coffee snob, lover of all things missions/orphans/helpless/least of these.  I’m passionate about the plight of the orphan, both here, and abroad.  My husband tells me my passion is “to mother the world”.  He may not be that far off!
Then there’s Jed: husband, Daddy, foster dad, friend, social worker, guitar-playin worshippin’ Jesus Freak.  He is my best friend and an amazing person.  He is selfless and totally committed to pursuing God’s plans and purposes.
Adelina: our oldest daughter, our amazing firstborn.  She loves to read and read and read.  She is mildly obsessed with Ancient Egypt.  Ha!  Addie is kind, loves and lives life to the fullest with a perpetual smile on her face.
Ezra: our first son, our “helper”.  Ezra loves to color, cuddle mommy, and jump on the trampoline.  He adores his older sister (though he would never admit that to anyone).  He is loving and tender, always the one to rush to kiss the babies.
Havalah:  our joy.  The name Havalah means “life”, and she is perfectly suited for her name.  Havalah is a bubbly ball of sweetness that you just can’t help but squeeze.  She knows what she wants and will let you know it!  She is our Polly Pocket and Strawberry Shortcake girl.
Baby “S”:  our unexpected miracle.  S is our foster baby boy that we have had since his birth.  We didn’t expect to keep him when we took him in, but now we can’t imagine our lives without him.  He will be one year old on Saturday and what a celebration that will be!  I’ll share another time the miracle that is our baby.  We are in the process of adopting him through our state.  He is happy, beautiful, and absolutely adored.

We created this blog because we recently committed to a little boy through Reeces Rainbow.  They suggest you start a blog for your adoption journey.  I actually found out about Reeces Rainbow through another blog.  I read on that blog about the plight of special needs orphans and was compelled to act.  After much prayer we knew God was calling us to pursue a certain boy.  I dreamed about him, prayed for him, God spoke, words were given, Scriptures were given, money was given!  It was very very clear to us that God was saying “Move!”  So we moved.  We sent in our committment papers and then today we found out that another family who was in country already had decided to adopt our boy.  It was a rare occurence and everyone involved was surprised at the turn of events.  We were shocked!  What do you do when you know beyond a shadow of doubt what God told you to do, but then things change so radically?  What do we make of it?  It’s confusing and heartbreaking.  When we committed to that boy I felt the feelings you feel when you find out your pregnant, and now I’m not sure what to feel since my “baby” is no longer mine.  I know legally he never was mine, but in my heart he was.  🙂

So, now we wait on the Lord.  He told us to move, so we will continue to move forward.  We will continue our home study paperwork and see where He leads.  I decided to start the blog anyhow, because even though the course of our journey has changed, I know it has not ended.  It is still the story of our adoptions of #4 and #5.  Your guess is as good as mine on how things will turn out!  God knows though, may His kingdom come and His will be done.  So be it!