It's True

by Evie

You know when you're driving down the road and a church has a goofy quote on their sign? Sometimes they're true, most often they're out of context or completely wrong theologically.
Anyhow, yesterday we were driving past one that was true and made me praise the Lord again in all He is doing! The sign said; "Where God Guides, He Provides"
Now, the reason why that sign led me to worship was because last week we were contemplating about how to pay the first installment to the new agency we are working with. We pulled all the money together that we could and we were still a bit short. As long as we don't get this payment in soon, the longer Mama J will go without the care that she needs.
Well, Just the day before, God supplied this need!! I am in Awe!
May we bless the Lord in good and hard days of our lives.
To God be the Glory!

Plans -Call to Prayer

Proverbs 16:9  The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.

When we were led to pursue adoption we were immediately confronted with  many questions that needed to be answered. We needed to make some choices before we could take another step. We chose more from a necessity to make a choice than from deep conviction.

Open or Closed adoption? Closed! ...open adoption sounds a little scary.
Domestic or International adoption? International.
What country? Ethiopia is the most straight forward for the price at this time.
Baby? boy ages 0-2. Seemed more practical with already having two boys and living in a two bedroom home.

But we have been given an opportunity that is quite different than the plans we made. We have been made aware of a local young lady who wants to give up her baby when he is born late this year. After much prayer, we have decided to put Ethiopia on hold and pursue this local adoption.

We will give more details in future posts, but we really want to call on all of you to pray for this young lady and child. We do want to bring this child into a loving home and change his life forever! But we also want to be a light to the birth mother. She desperately needs the hope of the gospel. We will be meeting her at the end of this month. Please pray for all of us in these exciting, life changing circumstance that the Lord has placed each of us in. Pray that the Lord will provide the finances for the adoption. The cost is less than an international adoption, but the time to come up with the money is much less.
Thank you!

Steve & Evie

Home Study Orientation and Family Time

by Evie

A week ago today, we went to Indy for the Day! We left our home bright and early, armed with veggies and granola bars. I drove on the way there and Steve did homework. The boys came along! They did really well the whole time! But we were all very happy when we got home that night!

Our first stop was our Home Study Agency. The people there were so kind and friendly. The Social Worker who did orientation with us seemed very genuine and very passionate about what she does. It was a helpful meeting. She also interacted with the boys. She gave us a list of papers to chase down and went through the list with us so that we understand what needs to be done. The papers are very similar (or exactly the same) as the dossier papers. But overall, the Homestudy papers are not as strict in that they can often be photocopies and do not have to be notarized. Once we get all these documents, we will send them to our social worker. Then the next step after we get that done will be the home visits.

When we were done with our meeting, we headed to the Children's museum. I was hoping for relaxing family time. Talk about Exhausting! But it was so much fun! And we didn't even see or do all there was to experience! That place is way to big for only 4 or 5 hours. We feel like we should go back or at least make it to the Museum of Science and Industry someday. The boys' favorite exhibit was the Lego Exhibit (current/non-permanent exhibit). They also enjoyed the simulated airplane ride and the Dinosaurs. It was funny, the next day the boys were playing "museum."

Thur night, Steve finished his homework for the semester! What a relief! We are so grateful for his opportunity to go back to school, but we sure are glad for a break! Then we enjoyed the weekend with our company and Monday evening I took the boys out while Steve took his first Final. Then last night, he took his last Final! *sigh* (a happy one:-)

We're still taking donations for the yard sale. Anyone have any big items, like furniture that you'd like to contribute? If you're local, we would be willing to pick it up. 

What's on His Mind

Seth's art during church....

(top left hand side: c3po and r2d2

bottom middle: Ethiopia, Africa)

We Finished Kindergarten...

by Evie

Ok, that wasn't loud enough.

On Friday, WE FINISHED KINDERGARTEN!!! 
WOO WHOOOO!!!!

The boys and I are taking 3 weeks off, then we will begin Summer School (ie. working on math, reading, and handwriting. We don't want to lose what we learned or Scott's fabulous handwriting). And Mama will be PAPER-CHASING with a vengeance! I'm not a tech-savvy kind of gal, but I even learned how to scan in documents, so that I can email them to our Family Coordinator, so that she can approve them, so we can in turn get them notarized.



Now, the boys can spend more time doing things like this (house for Eeyore),

spending time finding toads and playing w/ solar powered frogs...

and this (pirate ship)...

taking nature walks and riding bikes...

making Lego creations...

and this...

Using Mom's Kindle Fire? Um, probably not! Mom will finally have more time to listen to audio books and podcasts:-)

On Wednesday, we will be headed down to Indy for our first Home Study!
The next two weeks are crunch time for Steve as he finishes his semester at Ivy Tech (on top of working overtime at work).
We really do appreciate your prayers, your questions, and generous donations for the up-coming yard sale.

YAY!!! First official year of Home-schooling, COMPLETED!!!