My heart is breaking

I guess I should preface this by saying that a few weeks ago in my Bible study group, I asked people to pray that I would begin to develop a bond for our baby.
Okay, so when Adam and I started talking, praying, and wondering if we should start the adoption process, our pastor began a sermon series in the book of James. We believed that this was not a coincidence, but that this was very timely. We have finished studying James, but we still find that many of the sermons feel relevant to us, in our adoption process.
Well, todays sermon was no exception. The passage was Matthew 9:36-38. He talked about the good news of the Bible, and how we often do not act like we really believe it IS good news. We shy away from telling our friends about Christ, we do not go seek the lost. We are content to live in our comfortable house, with our comfortable family and have a comfortable life. But, Jesus never said that we were sent to this earth to live comfortably.
In the sermon, the speaker described horrific conditions for people living in various parts of the world. People using their toilet water to cook, wash clothes and dishes and bathe, and children being sold into sexual slavery. And here we are living our comfortable life. I of course began to cry. I thought of our child, our baby, not being properly taken care of. Not being cared for as well as we care for our dog! (Which trust me, isn't even all that much anymore). I began to think about when we were wondering whether or not God was calling us to adopt. And then I laughed at myself for having even questioned that. Because of course He is! He doesn't care that I don't have it all together. He doesn't care that we are upside down in our finances. He is asking us to trust Him, that He will take care of us and provide for our EVERY need!
After todays sermon, I feel like I have taken a huge step in building a bond with our child. I can't explain it except to say that my heart is breaking that our baby is living on the other side of the world and not being well taken care of. God has answered my prayers though. I can't even talk about our baby without crying anymore but I couldn't be happier :)

Thanksgiving week!

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Every year as the smell of turkey fills the kitchen on Thanksgiving we try to remind ourselves to be thankful for the blessing that we have. Sometimes, even on the day designated for giving thanks we forget.

As Christians, we are called to give thanks continually in all things. It is hard to give thanks to our Lord in hard times. My question is this. Is it even harder to remember to give thanks when all things are going "well?" I know that for myself it is harder to give thanks when things are good due to my own selfish pride. Thinking that it is of my own doing that things are well.

I come from a wonderful Christian family with a great heritage. I am truly blessed. Each year we have a wonderful Thanksgiving meal celebrating together. We have great food, lots of people, so much talking that you better be on your game if you want to get a word in. This year I hope to be different. I want this year to have purpose. I want us to come together as a family in a deeper way as we grow closer to the One who loves us.

So this was my challenge...

I have asked my family to join us in another rice and bean fast for the next week until Thanksgiving day. We start in the morning. I pray that God will use this next week to really draw our family closer to Him. Most of my family is going to join us in this fast. Some will be doing different variations of it. However, we are going to take the money that we all save on food for the week and donate it to Amazima Ministries.

To the family... let's remember to keep each other covered in prayer for the week.

1 John 3:16,17
By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the worlds goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?

2 months DTE!

Well, as of today we have been DTE (dossier to Ethiopia) for 2 months! We are moving along in this waiting period quickly! I can't believe that we have been done with our paperwork for 2 months. We still have a few more months of waiting to go before we hear anything from Ethiopia but we are moving along. I really don't expect to hear anything at all until after the new year.
God has been good in the waiting. Our sunday school class at church has been going through Francis Chan's book Crazy Love. This has been a great thing for our class and I am excited to see what God is going to do through it. I think that reading this book a year ago was one of the catalyst that led us down the road we are on right now (to Ethiopia!)
Also, God has continued to provide money for us though we have not really been actively doing fundraisers. One of the ways that we have come up with more money is that we decided to "fast" from grocery shopping for a month. We have 2 days to go. We only bought staple items, sugar, flour, milk, cheese, etc. We have been living out of our freezer and pantry for a month now cleaning it out. Heather has been baking bread and snacks like crazy! (which I love) We have spent about $35 on groceries for the month allowing us to save what we normally would spend. In cleaning out our freezer I have pulled a ham from our pig that we slaughtered a few months back. I can't wait to eat it in a few days.

That is all the news from us right now.

I was able to see both the sunrise and sunset today. Praise God for His beauty! God is Good.