Counting the Cost

What would you do if you knew a young girl was in grave danger of being taken by traffickers and sold into a life of prostitution?  How would you react if you saw a 12 year old girl in your neighborhood being grabbed by a stranger on the street or watch a man slip something into a young girls drink and took her with him?  What if it was a friend's child who was sexually assaulted?  What if you found a homeless child hiding out in your backyard?  What if it was your child?  Who would protect them if you could not?  Where would they go without you?  Most children age out of European orphanages around 16.  They are literally sent out into the world with nothing and no one. Statistics show that 90% of children who age out end up involved in crime, prostitution, addiction or give into suicide.  It breaks my heart to think about it.  I think about my children who just were blessed to be born to parents who wanted them, to parents who were not in poverty, to parents who were not in a country where we were forced to give them up, that their mother was not a drug addict, to a father who did not abuse or exploit them.   Does that make them more worthy for life then anyone else?  Do they deserve love and protection more then the child sitting in an institution waiting for someone, anyone to notice them?  Adoption has been difficult at times adjusting to new normals, dealing with broken hearts and paying every last official who needs to be paid to process the adoption.  But how much more did my Savior pay for my adoption?  How much pain or tears were spent on my behalf as Jesus hung on the cross for me. Redemption on my behalf.....adoption into His family.  Redemption is expensive, it cost Him his life, Redemption is messy, the thorns in His crown, Redemption is painful, every strike on his back.  Redemption is beautiful a new name, Redemption is everlasting eternal home, Redemption is loving and never looking back.  Adoption to me is a small scale example of redemption, but not just for our children, but for me.  It has changed me, shaped me and molded me.  It has stretched me in ways I didn't imagine and it has formed in me a passion.  Today we finished our homestudy visit, one step closer to bringing our Rosie home.  One more step in the messy, expensive, sometimes trying process to bring a little girl into the safety of her daddy's arms, to protect her from traffickers to keep her from poverty and to make sure she knows she is loved and wanted. 

Chasing papers!

I remember my first thoughts of adoption.  You choose a child and that same child a few weeks later was placed in your arms, happily ever after.... HA!  Was I snookered!!  Adoptions take a lot longer then a few weeks, there are homestudies, paperwork, fingerprints, paperwork, fundraising, paperwork.... months of waiting.....get the picture LOTS of paperwork.  Everyone needs a paper or a form!  I applied for a passport today even if I don't end up traveling the dossier requires a copy of it.  I made appointments for physicals for Randy and I both the homestudy provider needs a form from that and the country requires a letter of health.  Then I found all 7 kids need a physical for the homestudy, not a big deal as they get them yearly, however they have to have been seen within the last 2 months....insurance pays for 1 a year....they had them in Oct and Aug so not quite a year but more then 2 months.  So I have to figure that one out.  Wasn't such a big deal when scheduling 2 kids, but scheduling 7 is always interesting!  I am terrible about gathering things, not because I am slow but because it stresses me out knowing Rosie is waiting on me!  I can say oh I need to get to that, but I imagine if it was Alex or Hannah sitting in a far away place without a home today, how hard would I work to bring them safely into our home!  Please pray for all our paperwork to go smoothly and quickly so we can bring Rosie home as soon as possible!

We have a match....and a leak....

Lets start with the good news....we have a match!!  Number 8 is on her way in the form of a 12 year old girl.  She will squeeze in between Alex and AJ's ages.  She is currently in the 6th grade in Bulgaria and living at an orphanage.  She is a beautiful girl and has an adorable laugh in a video we saw.  So we got the good news that we are officially matched, so we have 6 months to gather all the homestudy and dossier and INS stuff (hopefully done WAY before that) and then soon we will be invited to visit her in Bulgaria, after that visit they will proceed with the court to finalize the adoption and then we go again to bring her home.  So exciting!!  Just as we were getting all the paperwork together and remembering what a cumbersome process adoptions are, we saw a mysterious what I though shadow in the living room.  Randy came in the house a few minutes later and I showed him and he headed up to the bathroom above said spot and found its source, underneath a sink into a cabinet....into a bathroom floor, into a hallway, into my bedroom in which we had a sticky door lately and had assumed it was from the humid weather.....down the floorboards into the ceiling and by the time he had water shut off the ceiling started to cave in every so much and the dripping became faster.......  So needless to say by the next day we had people in our house tearing up floors and ceilings, giant dehumidifiers and fans running extremely loudly.  I was sleeping on the couch and Randy in his office on an air mattress and so the chaos continued.  We had them drying out the floors for 3 days continuously....that is until last night while sleeping on the couch in the whirlwind of noise at 3:30 it went silent, which woke me up.  A random power outage, no storm no wind..... Then I started to think about a power surge when it came up with all this equipment in the house and then I started to think about all the what ifs in a fire.  Then the lights came on machines rumbled and all was good except now I was wired and unable to sleep.  Thankfully God is good and the machines left today, so we have a few days of peace until they come to replace floors, ceilings and paint walls....thank you for home insurance!!  So now back to paperwork, passport application, home visits and the one thing I am freaking out about....how to get a notarized doctors letter!!  Everyone says there is always a notary on staff and there never is and then its all awkwardy and what not......  It will be worth it when our newest girl leaves behind a life alone and the dangers that come with a pretty girl aging out without a family and joins a forever family with first Christmas's and birthdays and hugs and graduations!  God is good all the time!