Picture Yourself...Helping Toby Home!

So...this past weekend I had amazing fun with my all-time BFF!!

They are SO cute, aren't they?

She and her precious family came and visited us for 2 wonderful days...we laughed and talked and just had a great time together.

One thing we did was take a few family pictures for them. This took about 10 minutes...and then we were back to hanging out and laughing.

It was way cool.

I just emailed her the files to print.

And it started my wheels turning...

What if we offered to do little "mini sessions" like this for others in exchange for donations to help bring Toby home?

We tossed around some ideas...

...so if YOU are looking to have 

some high quality family portraits done 

mid to late August...

...then we invite you to contact us about taking a slot. (Comment here or on Facebook and we'll get details out as soon as possible.)

As a caveat, this will not be a "full session" like we used to do with our photography clients. The time allotment will be 10-15 minutes per family. It will not be for large groups. It will be light retouching only. You will do the printing. (One of the main reasons we stopped our photography was the enormous time commitment on our part. The goal of this project will be to provide you with a high quality image of your precious ones with minimal time on our end.)

Obviously, this will be limited to people who live nearby. Sorry friends in Singapore! How much we'd love to come and shoot on location!

If you would like to donate toward our efforts to bring Toby home you can always click on his picture in the side bar and give directly to our Adopt Together account. All gifts are tax deductible.

We hope that this will be a delightful way to raise funds to help meet our next agency payment to bring home our little man!

Just picture yourself...helping bring Toby home!

Want an iPad2? (Help some orphans go HOME!)

I'm so excited because a wonderful godly woman has been given a referral of TWO precious children from Zareb's orphanage!!! One of these precious children has special needs and they really need to get her home ASAP.

As you might imagine, the cost of adopting two children from Uganda with an uncertain timeframe is going to be steep. They are doing something super cool though....

Go HERE to read about how to get one of these:

The iPad2--it doesn't have to be just a dream anymore!

...and by doing so you will become part of the story of God bringing TWO orphans home forever!!!

And THAT'S something worth getting EXCITED OVER!!! :)

Crazy happy in LOVE!

We've had custody of our sweet son now for almost one week...

...and it's been a true JOY!

Common Objections to Adoption

Take a listen to this short snippet from The Zoe Foundation (website here) on common objections to adoption. I pray for you as you listen...and I pray that one more orphan will gain a home. Bless you.

The Blessing of Fundraising

So, we've now been at this fundraising for about 6 weeks. I've learned a few things and I wanted to share them with you.

Fundraising, although a bit intimidating, is a blessing. Why? Because it gives me the opportunity to teach others about adoption. If we could just pull $40K out of our back pockets and pay for it, we might not be as verbal as we are about our process. As it is though, we need help. We need the people of God to come alongside us and partake in the story. We need your prayers and your encouragement. Our adoption becomes a gift to not just our family and our future kids, but also to those who choose to involve themselves in it. They have great joy as they see our thermometer rise. Can you imagine the joy they will share when they see us in the same photograph with our newly ransomed children? Oh! It makes my heart race with excitement!

Adoption is expensive. Okay, we ALL knew that before I ever wrote it. To many, it might be viewed as a road block...but to others, it's simply a sign that God is in it. If YOU are considering adoption but are intimidated by the cost...don't be. Not because the cost isn't great, but because it's God's heart to place the lonely in families. (Psalm 68:5&6) His heart is FOR the orphans. They are His beloved children. He will see to it that the money is provided. Many times, He wants you to take the step of faith first. Will you trust Him?

The money that is needed to pay for the agency, fingerprints, documents, home study, training, visas and passports, flights over and back,  court and lawyer fees is WORTH IT. You know it's true: if your child was kidnapped, you'd pay anything to get them back. This is ransom. In adoption, we are ransoming our children from poverty and disease and a life as an orphan. We imitate God Himself in this act because Jesus gave His life as a ransom--bringing us back not from the arms of a kidnapper or from the grip of poverty but from sin itself!

A few people have asked me if our adoption agency was encouraging us to fundraise. The answer is yes. They made some recommendations of other groups to partner with (one being Just Love Coffee--click the coffee beans in the side bar to check it out.) Our agency is one of the lower priced agencies...trying to make adoption the most affordable possible. They are incredibly helpful and insightful to us in this process. They understand the state that families are in when they apply to adopt.

Maybe the coolest thing about all of this is that as I obey, I end up encouraging other people. Others watch us do this and realize that if we can do it, so can they. Wow! What a joy it has been to receive letters from people who say, "You may not realize it, but you are influencing us. Because you have taken this step of faith, we have seen your obedience and realized that we can too." Amazing. Fundraising forces us to be in the open with this...and who knows how many other orphans will be given homes because of it!

So at this writing, we have raised less than $4,000 of our needed $40,000. I have no doubt that God will show up in big ways and provide it. I know that I will need to sacrifice, cut back and do my part...but that in that process He will continue to draw me to Himself and help me learn to rely on Him for EVERYTHING. That's really what it's about anyway.

"Stay joined to Me, and I will stay joined to you. Just as a branch cannot produce fruit unless it stays joined to the vine, you cannot produce fruit unless you stay joined to Me."                      
                                                                                                                                  John 15:4

A Day of Love!...but why love on ORPHANS?

This clip says it better than I ever could.

I will not live a safe life

That's right. I don't want a safe life. Where did people get this idea that doing God's will puts them in the safest possible place? I think the quip is something like, "Being in the center of God's will is the safest place to be." I don't get it. I see little evidence of that in Scripture. Ask Stephen, the first martyr. Was he safe? I think not. He died at the hands of those who hated and mocked him. (Reminiscent of Someone!) Yet he had joy and peace in the moment of his death. Hmmm, interesting.

I want to live a life that follows Jesus. And He never said following Him would be safe. He never said it would be easy. People will oppose you, call you crazy and turn their backs on you. He never assured you of comfort, ease or popularity. In fact, He said quite the opposite, "Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, whoever loses his life will find it."

So who in their right mind wants to live like this? To follow Jesus means sure death? Death to self, yes. Death to the American dream, yes. Death to what is "normal," yes. I want to live like this because He said, "If you love me you will obey me." I love Him, therefore I obey. This flows out of my genuine gratitude for His love for me. There is a very real joy in joining the work of God. Deep abiding joy that one cannot know if one remains in the realm of safe. Safe is not where it's at.

So we move forward in our pursuit of adoption. Are we going to blow apart the status quo? Absolutely. Will our family look the same? No way. Will we be rejected by our community? Maybe. Will we be doing the right thing? Well, according to Scripture yes, "Religion that God accepts as pure and faultless is this, to look after orphans and widows in their distress..." And Psalm 68:5-6, "Father to the fatherless, defender of widows--this is God, whose dwelling is holy. God places the lonely in families..." Those families have to be willing to do a radical thing by inviting in the lonely.

I am astonished at how different the Bible looks after reading the book The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns (President of World Vision). Verses that I practically never really even saw now stand out on the page to me. My heart beats faster when I read passages like Isaiah 58, "Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter--when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?" [This passage is in response to the people who were doing all the "right" religious things and were wondering why God wasn't hearing them. It's because they were not carrying out justice among those God cared about.]

Which leads me to another passage that has sprung to life for me in recent months: the well loved Micah 6:8. "He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God." That doing justice part seems awfully important if it's at the front of the list!

I am not trying to expound on any one Scripture or wax eloquently about any one topic, but merely to declare outloud that I WILL NOT CHOOSE A SAFE LIFE. I will take risks as deemed necessary in order to follow what course God has asked me to take. I will live on the edge of rational and I do honestly hope that if you are not a Christ follower, that my life will look awfully odd to you. I do not seek to make "sense" to the average person. I want to live a life completely sold out to the Lord...and that will not look normal, common or average. 

Why do you want to adopt?!?!