5 for Hope

Saturday, March 14, 2009

The weeks sure do fly by... It is amazing how quickly the weekends come and go. Today we enjoyed one of the more relaxing Saturdays our family has had in a very long time. We spent the morning just being lazy and getting caught up on family "chores". We then did our typical Saturday trip downtown, packed a picnic lunch, grabbed a coffee at JP's, and did some shopping for birthday gifts. When we got home, the kids spent an absolutely beautiful day outside playing. This evening we all gathered around the computer downstairs to watch what turned out to be Hope's last basketball game of the season. They were playing in Kentucky, and made it to the Elite Eight this year. Unfortunately, they came about 10 points short of playing at the final four here at Hope next weekend. What a great season the girls had, though. They are a special team and have great potential for another phenomenal year next season.
Joel, Grace, and Ana are all doing well. Ana has started saying "yes" consistently (instead of "no"), and her new favorite word is "o-tay". She consistently uses the toilet for her "p-u" (as she calls it), and loves the fact that she can now watch birds out the window as we observe more and more signs of spring.
We do have a couple of prayer requests that we would appreciate prayers for...
1. Jen's brother, Jon, left on Thursday for Kenya. He is doing some mission work there with the Mully Children's Family Foundation. Please pray for safety and for his experience in general, as well as for his wife Melissa, and their son, Caden, as they spend the next 10 days alone.
(To watch an amazing video about the orphanage where Jon is working, click on the Mully Children's Family Foundation link on the right of the blog under "Favorite Sites".)
2. We have some friends who left for Ethiopia today to pick up their son. Please pray for the Vreeman family as they travel both through Kenya and Ethiopia over the next week.
3. Jen's mom had knee surgery on Tuesday to repair damage caused by an injury. Please pray for healing as she recovers from the surgery.
4. Orphan care programs in Guatemala: April is the month that news is expected to be announced of adoptions opening back up in Guatemala. Please pray for the thousands of orphans that have been waiting for the opportunity to come home to families, and for the many, many abandoned children who have been forced to care for themselves on the streets of Guatemala.

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Favorite Family Verses

The grace of God will not take you where the will of God can not sustain you.

I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul..."
~Psalm 131: 1-2~

"I can do all things through Him who strengthens me."
~ Phillippians 4:13 ~
(Brian chose this verse to be engraved in Jen's wedding ring.)

"No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and His love is perfected in us."
~ 1 John 4:12 ~
(Jen chose this verse to be engraved in Brian's wedding ring.)

Our Thanks to You...

For those of you who have gone through the adoption process, you understand what a blessing it is to have a "cloud of witnesses" that surround you, uphold you in prayer, and agree to give up their time to assist in the incredible amount of paperwork that accompanies this decision. We have been incredibly blessed by the love shown to us by our friends. Many of you have spent hours filling out letters of recommedation, have made countless trips to the bank to have documents notarized only to find out that they need to be renotarized (and renotarized, and renotarized). Many of you have prayed for us, not only over the past few months, but the past few years, as well. Words can not adequately express our gratitude to you for the wonderful gift of your friendship. Thank you, from our entire family, for helping us to bring Ana Hope home to our family. And now that we venture forward, as a family of five, we continue to be blessed by your friendship, your prayers, and your constant support in caring for our family.

About All God's Children International

The following is "Heather's Story" as described in her mother's book The Strength of Mercy" (Jan Beazely). "Many years ago, when I was just eighteen, God called me to walk into the fields of the fatherless in Romania. There I was honored to find my sister Hannah. I had no way of knowing that Hannah’s adoption was just the beginning of what God had planned for my life. My call became my family’s mission as well. We were probably very much like your family, very ordinary, and one day God just asked us to answer His extraordinary call. Many people have asked me, “How did All God's Children International begin?” My answer is simply this... The first time I walked into a Romanian orphanage in 1990, I was overwhelmed by what I saw and I wanted to do something. Hopeless little orphan faces stared up at me and hardly responded when I reached out to touch them. I remember praying with tears running down my face, “Lord, there are so many…and their needs are so great… How can I even begin to help them all? God spoke back to me clearly. “Heather, you see the multitudes, but I know each one by name, all I’m asking you to do is to try, just help them one at a time.” So that is what I did. A month after completing Hannah’s adoption for my parents, AGCI officially became a Christian adoption and relief agency. I returned to Romania to help give the children I left behind the second chance they deserved. One child became two. Two turned into three and now over the last 16 years we have been privileged to give thousands of second chances to orphaned children not just in Romania, but Bulgaria, Russia, Guatemala, Nepal, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Macedonia, India, China and now Ethiopia. Through our foreign adoption services, our orphan relief and child sponsorship programs, as well as our Hannah’s Hope children’s homes, AGCI continues to make a difference in little lives. We have indeed grown over the years, but my passion to rescue and care for children has never changed. I continue to help them one at a time. I understand now that the compassion I felt was there for a reason. God’s voice is never silent concerning the orphan. If you listen you can hear Him whispering in the darkness at night. He continues to shout from the rooftops at daybreak. He fervently lays before the world His concern for the orphan. So never overlook small beginnings, never dismiss the vision God plants in your heart concerning a needy child. I believe that you are not reading my words by accident, but rather by divine appointment. Thank you so much for listening to my heart. I am praying that I have encouraged you to ask, “What can I do?” For somewhere in the world today an orphan needs your help… they wait in the fields of the fatherless hoping for a second chance. There is nothing in life more overwhelming then to walk through orphanage doors around the world and hear the heartbreaking echo of the orphan's cry. Nothing more unforgettable than to watch countless children run toward outstretched arms longing for just one embrace. Nothing more painful then to gaze into silent orphan eyes pleading for someone to come and care. And there is nothing more humbling than to witness such desperate need and then not be able to give every orphan child the second chance they deserve. Together we can soothe their cries, provide the embrace they long for, and send someone to care."