Eric Ludy - Depraved Indifference

AMEN!

Read this!

This is an awesome, humbling article. Please click on the link below and read it with me (past page 1) and when you're done reading it please pray with me for all of the children of the world to have a home, a safe place to be. Pray that these children would be adopted into God's family. Pray that the silent would be silent no more and be able to cry out loud Abba Father!


Abba Changes Everything Christianity Today A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

New Look, Same great taste..errr...I mean blog

You are in the right spot. I needed some more space to work with and had to change the format of the blog. Things were getting a bit crowded. I thought I would share really quick my new favorite thing. This necklace was my birthday present from Bryan. Don't you just love it! He got it from JunkPosse who makes adoption jewelry. You can check out her store link on my sidebar. I also have been busy making shirts while J was here setting up the nursery. She is my crafty mastermind so I had to wait for her to visit to make these. I do love my new favorite things.

-amory

January Excitement

So far January is turning out to be a fun month! We have received our January updated numbers. We are now #7 on the boy list and #13 on the girl list. In December the U.S. Embassy announced that they are conducting orphan investigations on every adoption from Ethiopia. This could mean some slowdowns in the process. For the families that were supposed to travel in December for the embassy appointment it meant cancelling their flights 2 days before they were supposed to leave just to find out a week later that they had to book flights for the next day. The good news is that they were able to travel to bring home their children and a couple more families are traveling this weekend so there will be open space at Hannah's Hope (our agencies transition home). We're hoping that this will bring more referrals of children in January.

This weekend we were visited by my cousin J and her 3 kiddos (nearly 4 yr old, 19 mo old, and 3 mo old). Our house has been bustling to say the least. Now the fun part is that J and her AMAZING friend MJ made the decorations for our nursery. It has all been a big secret to me up to this point. I knew the theme they were doing but artistic liberty was completely given over to them (and for those of you that know me that was a BIG deal as I am WAY type A). Saturday morning J and MJ set up the nursery and did a big reveal of their design. It is GEORGEOUS! I told them my theme was "elegant jungle" which they renamed "safari chic`". They did a beautiful job of turning theme idea into reality. There are still a few finishing touches to be done, but it would be great just as it is. Enjoy the pictures below.

Isn't the hippo cute! MJ made him from scratch!! (well she made everything from scratch)

December #s

Well we've done it. We are FINALLY in the single digits!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are officially #9 on the boy list and #18 on the girl list. HOWEVER , I know that 2 families got referrals yesterday for infants which makes us unofficially 8 on the boy list and 17 on the girl list. While overall that only puts us one place closer to getting our child; the fact that it puts us into the single digits makes it a lot easier to handle. We have now been on the wait list for 7 months and are only 8 families away from having a family ourselves. That is pretty exciting stuff. Since it is my birthday, I'm not going to make this a long post, but I wanted to make sure to update everyone on us being in the single digits.

-amory

What we've been busy doing.

To say the least, it has been a crazy couple weeks. In the last 2 weeks we have had 2 back to back garage sales in 2 different cities 2 hours away from each other. It has been an exhausting, yet fruitful time. Luckily I have taken off the rest of the month for vacation so I will get a chance to rest.

I have a wonderful church family at the church I grew up in. Everyone knew that Bryan and I were going to have a garage this fall at home and instead of making us transport all of the donated items 2 hours away, they just decided to have their own garage sale for us. I first have to say a huge thank you to my grandmother who graciously let us have the garage sale at her house. This is a pretty big deal because she is a neat freak and the sale meant her garage was a mess for weeks. Thanks for being such a good sport Nanny!

I mentioned in my last post that I love the adoption stories we get to hear at these garage sales. I was not disappointed! There was one couple that said they had been considering adoption and that hearing our story encouraged them even more to adopt. How cool is that?!

The next weekend we had the garage sale at our house. We have an equally amazing church family here. Our lifegroup has been with us every step of the way of this adoption and this garage sale was no exception. I will say there is one couple, you know who you are, that went above and beyond. T went with Bryan with only a moments notice to help him pick up a couple couches and a 50 inch projection tv (umm...yeah these weigh like a couple hundred pounds). After T got home at 11pm his wife S came over and stayed until nearly 2am helping sort and price and then came the next morning to help with the actual sale. (There was also my faithful cousin S there for it all). The other amazing women of our lifegroup helped us set up and even baked goodies to sale.

By the end of it all we ended up making just over $1,500 from the 2 sales ($1,200 at one)!!!!! If you have been following us you know that last year we had our first garage sale to raise money for our adoption and were blown away by how God blessed the sale. We made $800 last year. We are in awe of God's goodness and provision. The money was enough to push us $300 over our goal. We now have enough to bring our child home. A BIG THANK YOU to EVERYONE who has sacrificed and given to make this happen. Every single one of you is a part of this adoption and helping there to be ONE LESS orphan in the world. You are all participating in pure religion by helping to defend the orphans (ja 1:27)

I know this is long, but wait, we're not done. On top of meeting our financial goal last week we also last Friday received our November #s update. I am THRILLED to tell you that we are now 22 on the girl wait list and 10 on the boy wait list. Just when I thought it couldn't get any better I came home Friday to my crib arriving!! We also had an encouraging Orphan Sunday. It is amazing how God has timed everything to happen at once. God is always showing us how He has ordained all of our days. His blessings are overwhelming at times.

The thing is, I am learning that very often when you are following God's will for your life and seeking after Him in a way that can cause other to be affected for good, the devil does NOT like it. Please pray that we would be protected from attacks by the enemy both spiritually and emotionally. Pray that we would be able to fully partake in the JOY of becoming parents and that joy would radiate from us in this time so that others will see. Pray that we will be prepared to boldly respond with a reason for our joy that is in us.

Boy #

Girl #

-amory

October #s...very late

We have had a busy October getting ready for 2 garage sales to raise money for our adoption. Many, many things have been missed and delayed during this time. I'm so sorry that our updated waitlist numbers are one of those things. So here it goes! We got an email on October 5th (heehee, like I said, this is late) that our official #s are 32 on the girl list and 21 on the boy list. We were excited about this because any movement is good and it has been SOOOO SLOW the past few months, but then a couple minutes later I get a second email. A family just accepted a referral and our new official #s are 31 on the girl list and 20 on the boy list!! How awesome is that! This is the most movement we've had in 4 months. We've been asking everyone to pray that the process in Ethiopia will speed up again so more children can have a safe place to be and a family to call their own. It is awesome to see God answer those prayers.
At least by me waiting, you won't have to wait long before I post our November updated #s. But until then, we have another garage sale coming up this Saturday. Our last 2 have been great successes and not only financially. My hope is always that we are able to enlighten people to the need for more families to open up their homes through adoption and to focus on pointing towards God working in our lives. With each sale it has been encouraging to hear the stories of other adopting families. It seems like everyperson we talk to at these sales has been touched in some way by adoption. I'm looking forward to hearing a whole new set of adoption stories! Oh...we also hope to sale a LOT of stuff to raise the last bit of $ needed.

-amory