To You on Your First Christmas

I've thought about you a lot over the past two days. It's your first Christmas and you are so far away. You deserve to be in a home with a family that loves you...with parents who will hold you close and tell you that you are loved. You deserve to listen as the story of Jesus' birth is read and be prayed over before you fall asleep. Instead you are where you are and we are praying that God will hold you in His hands until we can get to you. I've been on the verge of tears since yesterday thinking of this, and now I can't seem to find the words to explain all that I want to tell you.

Your father is so confident that you are ok. He knows that you will be here soon enough and that your life will be changed forever. He chooses to think about the good that will come instead of the worry that is here. We are so different that way. He's always the eternal optimist and I am the one that is looking at every detail of what is happening right now. We do look at one thing exactly the same though...we both know that God is looking over you. I may not be able to hold you this Christmas, but I can pray over you as you are sleeping halfway across the world....

"May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace. (Num. 6:24-26). For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Them you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. (Jer 29: 11-13).....Amen

                                                                                                Merry Christmas and Sweet Dreams Angel,
                                                                                                                                                   Mama

So Much News

I'll try to keep this short....I know it's been a while since our last post, but we really were at a stand still. We had done everything we could do and were just waiting on..you guessed it...the government. We were waiting on our fingerprints from the FBI. We are still waiting on clearance from DHR before the social worker can come visit, but we do have some other things we can be working on in the meantime.

I went over the dossier (Russian paperwork) list that has to be completed tonight with our consultant. It is a lot we have to compile, but she gave me some AMAZING news. She said things were moving very quickly with boys in Russia and we could have a referral even before we finish our dossier!! That is so exciting. That means that we could be matched with a baby some time soon. What a great Christmas present!! It just occurred to me tonight that this will be our baby's first Christmas. I wish we could spend it with him, but until then....

Merry Christmas baby boy. We love you and are praying for you every day!

The Ultimate Gift (Daniel's first blog)

This is my, Daniel Cook, first attempt to blog.  My grammar is probably bad, but you will get the point.

Today Abby would not let me nap; she said I have done that too much the past few days.  So instead we watched the movie The Ultimate Gift.  Here is my brief overview of the movie.  A rich, billionaire grandfather dies and leaves his inheritance to his family.  His grandson must do different task before he is given the ultimate gift.  So he goes through a few tasks learning about work, money, friendship, laughter, and a few other things in life.  He meets a kid who has leukemia and she ends up benefiting from a few of his task. 

Through some of the task this guy helps out this girl and her mother.  It gave me perspective of how a child in a worst-case scenario views life and how I sometimes view life.  I know this was a movie but through this movie I saw some things that related to the adoption.  The family had medical bills that were going unpaid, but was willing to let everything go for the treatment of the child.  The girl made a Christmas wish and only wished to be around people who loved her and 90 percent of the wish was for her mom to be happy.  A pictured was painted throughout the movie on the way we value money.   The family was so worried with monetary values they missed the blessings of a family and true happiness.

Today God opened my heart and mind to see that a price tag cannot be put on the opportunity to impact a life in this magnitude.  Will I have to sacrifice “stuff” for this to happen?  Yes!  Will I have to wonder where some money will come from?  Yes!  Are the money, sacrifice, and time worth giving a child a life with a family that loves him, who will be there with him through the ups and downs of life, and a family that will introduce him to a life of surrendering to Christ?  Absolutely. 

When God placed the call to children’s ministry on my life a remember a phrase that has been in the back of my mind since then.  The phrase was, “I was going to be a father to the fatherless.”  I also had a dream of opening and running an orphanage.   As we started with this process this phrase came to mind and I believe that this is God leading me to complete something he began in me 10 years ago, to be a father to the fatherless.  Our child is worth me not eating out lunches with the staff, cutting back on non-essential bills, and making sacrifices throughout the process.  Why you may ask, because this life is more important than my stuff and me.  The ultimate gift I can give is not measured with money, but by providing a life of meaning, hope, and love.  Through this process a child will gain a family, know what it means to love and be loved, but most importantly will be raised in a Christian home and learn what it means to give his life to Christ.  He will know a Christ who has shown us what it means to make personal scarifies to give someone a new life.  God is not asking me to sacrifice my life, but I will have to let go some of my stuff for this to happen.  What a small task to make such a huge impact. 

Can't wait!!

So I have learned one thing about myself already...I AM NOT a good waiter. I have zero patience when it comes to waiting for things and the waiting has officially begun. We are waiting for fingerprints to come back from the FBI. We have to wait 6-8 weeks for them to come back and say "Ok, you're good." And we are waiting on Passports...and we are waiting on a form to be returned to us that wasn't done correctly the first time. Basically, we are just waiting.

I started this whole process praying, "Lord let this move quickly." "Let us have him home by May." and don't get me wrong, those are still the desires of my heart, but God has led me to understand that this thing is in His timing..on His plan. And I trust Him. I know he will take care of our baby until we can get to him, and He will bring him home at exactly the right time for all of us. Can't wait to see him though.

On My Mind

This week has been....consuming for me. My heart has really just been preoccupied with the fact that our baby is way over the ocean somewhere. Based on the age of child we want and the timeline we have been given for the adoption, chances are he has already been born and is in an orphanage in Russia. I haven't been able to shake the feeling of worry for him. It reminds me a lot of the way I have worried about my biological children when I left them after they were first born. Worrying about if they were crying or what they were doing at some random moment of the day. That's where my heart is now....wondering at random moments what he's doing or who's holding him or if he's warm or if he's being talked to. I just keep praying for him constantly that God has placed a caregiver in his life that has a heart for him. Someone that will love him and hold him and talk to him. I have been reminding myself though that God is the defender of the weak that "they are week, but He is strong". I have just been resting in that this week. Knowing that God has his hand on his life and that He will watch over him and be his comforter until we can get him home.

Hallelujah!!!

Hallelujah!!! Our homestudy paperwork is now officially done. You have NO idea, well some of you do, what it feels like to have that "chunk" of paperwork out of the way. We finished the packet last night and Daniel is mailing it today. It is such an awesome feeling. Now we will be waiting on the social worker to come do visits and interviews. We are 1 step closer to meeting our baby. We can't wait. We are moving on to the agency paperwork and passports. That whole sense of urgency thing is really kicking in. I'm probably driving Daniel nuts, but I just want to get all of this done so we can get him home.

We started talking about names tonight. That's always so exciting. It just makes it that much more real. Of course we didn't come up with anything really, but we got started at least. We would love to not change his name unless it's just really crazy, but we will keep his name at least as his middle name.

We also started working on fundraiser ideas. I have been asking everyone I know for ideas, and a few people (you know who you are) have been really helpful. Thank you guys so much. I have a couple of good ideas, but if anyone else has something creative, please let me know. We'll be getting more information out about those asap, I promise :)) Keep us in your prayers and pray for love, health, and safety for our baby.

As it turns out...

It's been a few days since my last post but things have been a "bit" hectic in our world with the Harvest Festival and Halloween and all of the chaos that comes with both of those. We also hit our first bump along the road in the adoption process. I won't go into a lot of detail, but for a day or two we thought we weren't going to be able to adopt after all. To be completely honest, I was scared to death. You wouldn't think it would be that big of a deal I guess, not being able to bring home a child you've never met or even seen yet. But in reality, for me it was like when your doctor tells you there might be a problem with your pregnancy. All of the uncertainty and fear that comes with not knowing if your baby is going to be ok. I realized during this moment of limbo that I was already completely attached to this little boy a million miles away that I've never even laid eyes on. I feel like we have a son out there just waiting on us to get all of this red tape stuff out of the way and bring him home.

As it turns out...everything will probably be ok. We have it pretty much straightened out. A request...pray for favor with both governments, continue to pray for God's provisions financially, and pray for our son who desparately needs people around him to love him and care for him until we can bring him home.

A Brand New Place

Ok. So today it actually hit me that somehow we have to raise at least $50,000 to bring our baby home. Yes. I knew this going in, but we've been so busy with getting all of the paperwork together and the excitement of the initial process that I somehow "overlooked" what that actually means. Of course we've been praying for God to provide and we are believing that He will. He has been so faithful in so many other things in our lives and we know He is leading us every step of the way.

I was praying, though, this morning and suddenly I realized that this is truly the first time in my life that I have been totally and completely dependent on God for something. He just kind of spoke to me and I realized that so many times in my life I have said, "Lord I need your help on this" or "Please help me with this situation" or "God, I need you here or there", but in all of those times there were things I could do in my own strength to work in at least some small way to "help" with the problem or the decision. But this is TOTALLY different. I realize that there is nothing Daniel and I can do to work this out on our own. We are COMPLETELY dependent on God to provide for us. We know we cannot do this on our own. This has given me a completely new perspective on serving others in need. So many times in America, we don't know what it means to be totally dependent on God for something. But we are in that place right now.

As uncertain as it may seem, it is actually a pretty amazing feeling because I know I will get to see God work first hand. So many times in my life I have looked back and seen where God has moved or the doors He has opened or closed, but it's usually after I am already on the other side of the storm. In this case though, we get to see God move right in front of our eyes. How awesome is that going to be!!! I can't wait to see how he does it!!!

Keep us and our baby in your prayers, and if you have any good fundraising ideas, please feel free to share them. We are so excited not just about our new baby, but about the opportunity to see the Creator of the Universe reach into our lives and work in a mighty way!!

Here we go!!

It's Official!! We are "for real" clients of our adoption agency. We mailed in the contract and made our first of MANY payments this morning. We are SO excited!!! It's such a long road ahead, but we know God is leading us and will eventually get us to our son.

It's been a wild ride already and we are only a couple of weeks into this thing. We've been spending every spare moment we have trying to get all of this homestudy paperwork together. Who knew there was actually this much information out there about us? Anyhow, we've been busting our tails to get this stuff done and just when we were seeing light at the end of this paperwork tunnel, our agency emails us with some other stuff to do. It's a good problem thought because it means we are actually making progress. Knowing that our baby is across the ocean somewhere and all we have to do is get through this "red tape" to bring him home makes it all worth it and puts a huge sense of urgency in it for us. So...what's next?

Well, now we begin the part of the journey that is requiring the most faith. We are faithfully and prayerfully believing God will provide the financial means to actually get this done. We have no idea how that is going to work because I mean who has 40 or 50K sitting in savings? But we do know God is faithful and He holds all provisions in His hands. We also know that when He calls us to something, He will make a way. So, here we go.....