God of Russia too ;0)

For Christmas this year Pete and Karen got us (and them) four tickets to see Israel Houghton and Chris Tomlin, did I mention 4th row tickets? It was awesome. We were so close! I forgot my glasses when we left the house, since we were in a hurry! (Concert started at 7:00 in Greenville, I didn't get home from work until 5:30, Britt and Todd came over at 5:45, we had to stop and get some $ and dinner on the way....) Ohh..... but my glasses (I almost forgot again) I DIDN'T NEED THEM! I could actually see the people on the stage! Here is Isreal.... he has the best voice, you should check him out for something new!Then Chris Tomlin took the stage. The best part, and I wish I would have know to have the video rolling on my phone was when Chris Tomlin started singing "How Great is Our God". He shared what a privilege it was for him to travel to hundreds of different countries to worship with people from all walks of life. He said he tried to learn that song in every language of the countries he visited because he said how awe-inspiring it was to stand on stage, from his vantage point, and to listen to God speak in every language imaginable through His people. First he sang a little in Spanish, then he started singing in Russian! It was so moving.....and it was a real reminder that God isn't just God of Greenville, South Carolina, but God of Russia too. (Edited: I found it! Listen by clicking here....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urmUrA33k-8In all of our frustration these last four weeks, that's very easy to forget. We like to come up with a timeline in our heads of how we think the events of our lives should play out. We like to try to put God's timing in our "box" that we create. What we forget is that God can never be placed inside of a neat man made timeline and when we try to do that, we miss out on the blessings he has planned for us.

I almost forgot, Chris also talked about his mission organization- One Million Can. You'll have to check out his story about the orphans his charity is helping all over the world..... here is the link,
http://www.onemillioncan.com/

Picture is worth a thousand words

I thought for tonight's blog you may enjoy some visual aids instead of my rantings. If a picture is worth a thousand words, here is the biography our life right now. When you feel like this......

Try this.......

You should try it, it really does work wonders. If that doesn't work, here is an alternative.....

See that was fun, huh? But if you find the frustration creeping back in, you can always try this proven remedy and my personal favorite......

Congratulations you are the 1000th blog-ey

I wish I was a super computer genius, I would have put one of those blinking "Congratulations! You are the 1,000th visitor to this site" thingies on the page! But, you are lucky I even figured out how to put the counter on the page, that was a major accomplishment for me. But please know that if I could have I would have, but at least this way in your mind, you are all the 1,000th blog-ey to "From Russia With Love". You are all winners in my book!
Brittany e-mailed me this morning around 11:00 to let me know the blog got it's 1,000th hit today, she also thought it was ironic that the Russian word of the day was "bitter" since I am trying to keep anger from turning into bitterness with the wheels on the adoption wagon turning so slowly. It's like when you are stuck in traffic and you think to yourself "If I got out and walked I would make it there faster!" Well at this point we are still waiting in the car, idling. But in a task where timing is everything, we are trusting God's perfect timing in our lives. Maybe this is just a lesson in endurance and patients for the big wait that lies ahead of us......
Keep praying for speed and perseverance for us as we are parked in neutral, watching the world go by!

Waiting.... But not the BIG wait....

This weekend we kept very busy, ate a lot of good food, hung out with good friends, and tried not to dwell on things that are out of our control.
Here we are with Mark and Dale at Maggiano's in Charlotte. Boy it was good food. And ALOT of it. We ate family style and it was really tasty!

Our case manager, Anya, comes back from her month long trip to Russia tomorrow. I spoke with Portia on Friday and she said that she was going to have a few days to work on our home study this week. We'll see if maybe by THIS weekend we'll be a little more productive getting things ready to be sent to Columbia. I guess the bottom line is that I'm just disappointed. I thought the waiting would come in only when we were waiting for a baby. But this Saturday will mark one month of waiting for nothing but our home study to be finalized. It seems like such a waste to me, but maybe this normal.
Hopefully early next week I'll have some good news for you instead of all this moping around! I just HATE all this "hurry up and wait" buisness!

Homes for Life

Last night we were invited by Jana's brother, "Uncle Kyle", to a fundraiser at Pizza Inn for his organization- Homes for Life. I really wanted to tell you about what a great time we had last night and all the cool things that Homes for Life does, but I wanted to talk with Kyle first before sharing what a great thing is happening right in our own backyard that a lot of people probably don't even know about!

Homes for Life is a shelter for homeless young adults that provides support services in a home environment while modeling Christian values that encourage the development of a personal relationship with Christ in these young men that are otherwise society's forgot children. The boys are between the ages of 16 and 21, all of them have no where else to go, some have been abused or neglected, or many of them have simply "aged-out" of foster care or other state run programs. The program is designed to not only meet basic needs of food and shelter, but to teach them life skills that will ultimately lead to employment and self-fulfillment. Kyle is the Residential Director (which means he lives there 24/7 caring for the boys) He has given of himself 100% towards this program and I can't tell you enough great things about Kyle and his passion for this ministry.

Last night we ate pizza until we were sick and the guys from the home did all the work (drink refills, bus boy duty) for a portion of the proceeds. It was a great night and it was such a blessing to see the joy on the boys faces that people in our community care for them and support them.

I thought this topic fits perfectly into the adoption blog because as you know God calls each of us to "care for the widows and orphans" whether that orphan is baby living thousands of miles away or an abused and forgotten 20 year old with no family of their own. Some of us are called to foster children, adopt children, mentor children, be a Sunday school teacher, read books to children in hospitals, and some of us are called to eat pizza and give a donation to a worthy cause. Some of us, like Kyle, are called to give 100% to something greater than ourselves on a daily basis. No matter how we are called, we are all called to do what is right because we are so blessed.

If you would like to find out more about how you can help Homes for Life succeed, you can reach Kyle at homes04life@cs.com they are always in need of donations, volunteers, mentors, and people that will spread the word about their ministry!

10 things I've learned this week......

1. Waiting makes your face break out in pimples and gives you your first gray hair (Yes, both have happened to me this week)
2. Waiting makes you eat everything in site to fill the time and because you are stressed and emotional.
3. On that note, both Little Debbie snack cakes and Reece's individually wrapped peanut butter cups cost more, but have gotten smaller, I would say roughly by 30%. I'm no mathematician, but they are definitely smaller.
4. No matter what your adoption circumstance, someone else is in a more frustrating position than you are- (see Ashley and Amy's Blog on this site- "To Russia With Love") Please pray for them too ;0)
5. When you are missing a part from Ikea on something you purchased (ie: the support bar holding up the back legs of a highchair) you have to talk to 12 people before they send you the part in the mail. They were very nice though and I think one person in customer service was actually Swedish which was cool.
6. Barbecue smell from a neighbor's brush fire in their yard takes approximately 2 days to dissipate from your house.
7. My dreams always have babies in them now.
8. Penn State should have made it into the NCAA tournament, but it's ok because they JUST won the NIT tournament. 66th place is best place! (that is what Chad learned this week).
9. Don't waste your time being angry about things you can't control. (Ok, I just listed that one because I thought it was the right thing to say..... I'm still really mad.)
10. Pet stores sell only one sex of any given animals. (ie: The Petsmart in Spartanburg only carries MALE hamsters, the Petsmart in Greenville only carries FEMALE hamsters) That's why you don't ever see baby hamsters/gerbils/ferrets at pet stores. I'm not adopting anymore animals into our house, I just overheard a phone conversation with a sales associate while buying dog food this week and thought I would pass this fascinating fact onto you.

Won't you be glad when I have some real news to report on? Aren't you looking forward to the BIG wait when we are waiting on a referral? Imagine all the knowledge you'll gain then..... I might open my own school of thought. I'll call it "Sarah's Academy of Useless Trivia"

Weighing In....

Breaking news! Chad and I are moving to Russia. We've heard that you can finalize adoptions in less than three months if you actually live there! Since we are planning on being over there for 1 month anyway, we thought what's two more? Can someone pick up our mail while we are gone?


April Fools!!!! Anyway......

Since unfortunately I have no new news to report tonight about waiting for our home study to be finalized..... argggg....... don't get me started........ I came across this article last night. I am not usually "news savvy" but this story has been splashed all around, celebrity adoption. For the thousands of families waiting for a child and the families I've been in contact with whose home study agencies have been "black listed" and they are having to redo their home studies, costing them precious time, energy, and money I'm sure that this topic strikes a nerve. On one hand, you know that any child waiting to be adopted by any person is sitting in an orphanage and no matter who adopts them, celebrity or not, at least they will have a forever family to love them. AND these children will live in the lap of luxury, beyond anyone's wildest imagination, it still begs the question- what about the rest of us? What about families that are unable to have children and desire a child more than anything else in the world but financially cannot foot the bill? What about the families that are being delayed months or even years because of a technicality or a misprint in a document? When it boils right down to it, I think what infuriates me more than "celebrity fast-track adoption" is the flawed system in general. If America had more of a working relationship with these countries, the rules for adoption were consistent across the international board, if money was not the key to providing children homes.....then Madonna and Angelina would not be the exception, they would be the rule. Every safe and loving home could give an orphan a home after a reasonable amount of research and time and adoptive families would be able to do so within 9 months time. Period. Regardless of the country or age of a child. Here's the story..... what do you think?

Are Adoptions Fast-Tracked for Angie and Madonna?
Today 2:00 PM PDT by Leslie Gornstein
Is it easier for celebrities to get approved for adoption?—Queen of Shoes, via Twitter
If you're assuming the answer is yes, you're not alone. (In fact, you just may be cynical enough to be a tiny me. Hi, tiny me!)
Human-rights groups in Malawi—Madonna's adoption country of choice—are also saying that Madonna is getting fast-tracked in her efforts to adopt a 4-year-old girl to keep little David Banda company.
Madge is denying any star treatment, of course. And Angelina Jolie, who has adopted three foreign-born moppets, also has said she got no special handling in those cases. But some facts seem to contradict that...
• Child advocacy groups have lined up against Madonna's proposed adoption of a girl named Mercy. "We feel Madonna is behaving like a bully," Undule Mwakusungula, chairman of the Human Rights Consultative Committee, told the Associated Press. "She has the money and the status to use her profile to manipulate, to fast-track the process."
• Malawian law on foreign adoptions is vague and largely untested. Regulations state only that would-be parents undergo an 18- to 24-month assessment period—but that rule was essentially thrown out the window when Madonna was allowed to almost immediately spirit her first Malawian child, David, to London.
• Yes, that's unusual. "It's not the way it's ordinarily done," says Dr. Howard Altstein, an international adoption expert at the University of Maryland. "An ordinary person would not have that kind of experience. It would take them much longer."
• Regarding La Jolie: Vietnam requires potential adopters to be either a married couple or a single parent—no shacker-uppers, like Brangelina. But when Jolie—arguably one half of the most famous unmarried couple on the planet—applied to adopt son Pax as a single mother, no one blinked.
• Again, that is just not normal. Says Altstein: "I don't think, if a noncelebrity would say 'I'm single' and actually be living with someone—I don't think they would get a child in Vietnam."