5 for Hope: Merry Christmas!

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Merry Christmas!

As I sit as our kitchen table, Ana is napping, Brian is running, and Joel and Grace are making a giant mound of snowballs in preparation for a huge snowball fight. I am certain that this is the first time since summer that I’ve sat down with a cup of coffee and the only noise to be heard is the gentle sound of holiday music. It is definitely Christmas. This year, more than ever before, we feel an overwhelming sense of thankfulness.

For the past several months, I have struggled with an infection in my toe, which resulted in four surgeries and several hospitalizations. After many weeks of IV antibiotics, I am so thankful that I am feeling terrific and am able to do everything that I did before. We were so blessed by friends and family during this whole ordeal, and feel overwhelmed by the prayers and care we received.

Additionally, the kids and our families are all doing well. Joel and Grace are still home-schooled, but attend Holland Christian Home-school Connection (HC)2 every Wednesday for the entire day. They absolutely love it, and we are very pleased with the teachers and the curriculum. In January we will attend our first parent-teacher conferences, which will be a fun and new experience!

Joel still loves soccer and playing his violin. Over the summer he played his violin as a street performer in downtown Holland and raised quite a bit of money for the orphanage where Ana was at in Guatemala. It was a great experience for him. He is also really enjoying being part of the Holland Chorale Kids.

Grace is 110% into figure skating. We are at the rink three times a week, and she is SO enjoying being a member of the figure skating club. Her coach is amazing and an awesome role model for her, so it has been a very positive experience. She also takes violin lessons and is hoping that someday she can perform downtown with Joel.

Ana is definitely two… She is such a funny and spunky little girl with LOTS of her own opinions! She is very independent and wants to do everything that Joel and Grace do. She just loves them. She is talking non-stop, and loves to sing to herself. She also loves to read books and play with her baby. She is just such a perfect addition to our family. We continue to have occasional contact with her birth-mother, and from what we have heard, she and her other two children seem to be doing well.

Brian and I are doing our best to keep one step ahead of our kids and all of their activities, despite the new responsibility of caring for his 87 year-old Uncle Frank (who has fairly severe dementia). We moved him from his home in Detroit to Holland right before my foot issues. He has adjusted very well to life at an assisted living facility, for which we are very grateful. Each week brings lots of new and interesting situations and stories, but for the most part, things have gone quite well.

We praise our Mighty God for bringing our family through a challenging year, and blessing us with restored energy and health. We continue to be blessed by the people he has put in our lives who have been such a reflection of His love to our family. It is our prayer that we can adequately show our appreciation to all of you – for the many ways you bless our family.

We wish you a very joyful holiday season, and a Christmas filled with many special memories.

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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."