Easter no longer just eggs!

When we went to church on Good Friday I couldn’t help but think about how much adoption reflects the heart of God. It has been said “Adoption is the Visible Gospel”. So what do you see when you look at adoption? Adoption starts out with two people’s hearts being drawn to love and raise a child that does not come from their own bodies. A child who is not automatically part of their family by birth yet the love for this child to become part of their family is so strong it drives them to pursue adoption.

So far in this adoption process we have gone through much excitement and disappointment, days of chasing and filling out paperwork, meetings where we reveal the inmost details of our lives to a total stranger and countless hours of praying and waiting for that day when our baby finally comes home. This has been the hardest thing we have ever gone through thus far in our lives but it all comes with the joy of knowing our baby is coming home after the long days and month of working and waiting. When we do finally meet them we can only imagine the joy and love we will feel to know that the child we did all this paperwork and adoption process for is finally part of our family. They will have gone from an orphan with no hope for the future to a child of ours with all of our love ready and available to them all the time. They will be our son or daughter!

When we celebrate Easter tomorrow it is the story of our adoption into God’s family. God created us in his image and with the desire to have a personal relationship with us. Yet because of Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience to God sin entered the world and our intimacy with God was cut off. We were all suddenly separated from God. God gave us the 10 commandments however we have all broken them and therefore have all sinned against God and we needed a payment for our sin. Our sin caused us to no longer be children of God, we had become enemies of God. Our holy and perfect God could not be intimate with a sinful people. So there needed to be a solution for our sin. Before Jesus came there was blood sacrifice of an animal that God deemed acceptable to be the payment of sin. The living blood of that animal was spilled out to represent what should be our death. God says “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” Hebrews 9:22. God also tells us “The wages of sin is death” Romans 6:23.

But don’t despair there is hope the second part of that verse says “but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” God knew we couldn’t keep the law (the 10 commandments) and there needed to be a final payment for our sin. So God came to the earth in the form of a man Jesus and he was the life that died for us once and for all. His blood spilled out and body nailed to the cross was what we deserved, yet he paid the sin debt for us so we don’t have to. And on Easter we get to celebrate that after being dead for three days Jesus rose from the grave and conquered sin and death. He now sits at the right hand of God and will come again to judge the living and the dead.

The good news: through Jesus God adopted us into His family! We no longer are orphans condemned to Hell but now have a choice to chose Jesus as our savior and enter into God ‘s eternal family. When we accept Jesus as the payment for our sin and ask God to forgive our sins we are automatically accepted into God’s family and become his son or daughter. We gain access to heaven not by our works but by his grace, the grace of God suffering and dying for sinners so we can have life. God takes us, people who once were without a name, hope or future and makes us his children! He gives us a hope here on earth that we can finally have a personal relationship with God and future of eternal life in Heaven with Him! If adoption doesn’t display this Gospel of God’s love for us I don’t know what does!

As I searched for a video to explain this better God couldn't have been more faithful in bringing this! Check it out, and put your thinking cap on.

"I will no leave you as orphans; I will come to you." John 14:18 Happy Easter!

The Big Move

Hi Everyone,
Sorry we haven't posted in so long, things have been really busy here. Every time we think we can't do anything more something else comes up with the adoption or our lives. We are just so thankful to have God holding us up, without Jesus we would be floundering! He truly is our strength in the midst of all this whole journey.

Yesterday we moved from our tiny one bedroom apartment to a wonderful 2 bedroom apartment in the next town over. We are loving all the new space!!!!!!!!! But getting organized will be a real challenge. But as you can tell our computer is one of the first things hooked up so we can be in touch with the rest of the world.



The apartment was completely God's doing. One day day I had just prayed asking God to forgive me for not believing he would provide us an apartment in the time we needed. You see we had given our old landlords a date of when we would be moving out and 2 weeks before we needed to move we still couldn't find an apartment. But then that same day I was praying for forgiveness for my lack of faith I prayed in faith that God would give us an apartment that same night. Well wouldn't you know how God works, that night he brought us to this apartment and when we walked in and met our new landlord we all realized that we go to the same church. Then the old tenants started to tell us about this beautiful Ethiopian adoption that there friends had just gone through! So amazing and so God!

So here we are in the midst of our many boxes and total disorganization trying to get organized for our last visit with our social worker this evening. We feel so excited to know this is the place God has provided for us to start our family! Soon we will be unpacking for three!

Please pray for us as we continue to try to get organized and finish out our adoption paperwork!




"My Soul, wait in silence for God only,
For my Hope is from Him.
He only is my rock and my salvation,
My stronghold; I shall not be shaken."
Psalm 62:5-6

In His Grip,
Jon and Jolene

Who is Called to Adopt?

As we continue to go through our adoption process we are currently working on finishing our home study. This is a series of meetings with a social worker where information about us is given to her so she can write up a formal document. When we say "information" we mean everything from physical exam forms, financial statements, criminal background checks, and also autobiographies about us! It is definitely a lot to take in and we just can't wait to have it finished!Soon we will have our fourth meeting with our social worker and then she will start to write up our home study. Once complete we will fax it to our adoption agency in Virginia for a final approval before we send it in with our other documents. Things are finally starting to come together and we hope our dossier will go to Ethiopia sometime in May.

During all of this paperwork we tend to find ourselves asking why more Christians aren't adopting? Finances can't be excuses because $25,000 is spent everyday by average people on cars and that isn't even given a second thought. So what is it? Why isn't the church's heart drawn more toward the orphan? Do they think adoption is only for the "childless couple"? Like adoption is second best or plan B?

May we share with you the fact that adoption is plan A, it is God's choice for all of us. We have been adopted to be children of God through Jesus' death and resurrection for us. If it wasn't for Jesus we would all be destined for Hell, for an eternity apart from God. However, because Jesus was willing to die for us and give us the opportunity to receive life in Him we now have a huge choice to make. Do we want to remain orphans with an eternity apart from God or do we want to enter into a relationship with our Heavenly Father and spend eternity in Heaven with Him?

One of our favorite verses in the Bible is Romans 8:15, it tells how God places us in His family once we believe in Jesus as our Lord and Savior. That he conquered our sin on the cross and therefore when we receive Him as God's payment for our Sin we can be free to enter into God's family. We can be Sons and Daughters of the God of the Universe! He has chosen to adopt us!

"For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!"

Since we have been adopted it is only natural for God to call the Church, those who have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, to care for the orphan. Adoption is something God is calling all Christians to whether it may be giving financially to help sponsor an adoption or actually adopting an orphan into your own family. We just feel so passionate that the Church can not remain asleep any longer to God's calling. And we are praying God would open more people's hearts to adoption. Adoption is not the answer to infertility, adoption is God's calling to us as believers! We would love you to watch this video of a family who so demonstrates what adoption is all about. We know you will be so moved and blessed by it!



Right now it is estimated that there are 148 million orphans worldwide. Do you think it is time for the Church to wake up?

How God Provides . . . .

It has been so amazing to us to see the Lord's hand in our adoption so far. He has been so faithful to us already and we praise Him for it. One of the ways we have seen God's faithfulness to us is through his financial provision. Back in January when we began this process we knew we didn't even have close to the amount of money we needed for our adoption but we just moved forward in faith knowing that God will provide. He promises us that in His word.

So when our first payment came up for 1,500 dollars we thought "Wow God, this little money we have saved is going to go so fast but we know you will give us what we need." As I opened the mail that day I noticed a card from our good friends in Virginia. I thought to myself they better not have sent us any money because we know they don't have any extra to spare as they have two small children and are so dedicated to Lauren being a stay at home mom.

However, what we found inside was much more than a check. It was a letter from God whispering, "Have faith, I will provide." Even as I write this tears fill my eyes as I remember God sending us a check from them for almost all of the $1,500 we needed for our first payment. They didn't have this money but in faith prayed they could given and God provided. We want to share the note with you that was inside the card they wrote to us. The current economy has no effect on what God can do! (if you click on the note you can read it)

Each time we start to lack faith we remember how God worked through them and know He will do it again. And He already is!

Another friend of our recently took some baby bottles to her work. As she went throughout her shift as an ICU nurse she showed other nurses the bottles and told them how it was our fundraiser and one lady said she didn't have any change. Tanaya told her "that's ok you can bring some next time", and then a little while later she came back saying she had found something. She then proceeded to drop in a tiny folded up 2o dollar bill. You see we only are trying to get some change for each bottle and God is giving us way more than we could ask for. So thank you to all the nurses who are contributing and to Tanaya for her great support!

We have been so blessed to have such great friends support us in these ways. God has truly blessed us. As I read through my Bible today God lead me to this verse.

"Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass." 1 Thessalonians 5:24

God has called us to adopt and when we don't have the faith it will come true we are reminded that God is so faithful to what he asks us to do and he will bring it to completion!!!

Hi Everyone,

  

Hope you enjoyed reading about why we have chosen to adopt bur now we wanted to let you know how the process is going and what it looks like. The whole process takes any where from 1-2 years, we are leaning and hoping more on the 1 year side. Right now we are working on our dossier, which is a compilation of paperwork that is sent to Ethiopia by our adoption agency. Our agency gave us a list called the "paper chase or paper pregnancy" and they said it would take 4-6 months to collect and organize all the paperwork. We never believed them until we started and now we wonder how we will even have it done in 4 months!!! But each time we chase after another piece of paper or call the state and talk to 3 different people all about the same thing we try to remember it is for our child!

After our dossier is sent to Ethiopia the waiting game begins. Right now it can take 9-11 months for  a referral of a child. Once we receive our referral and tell them yes we want this baby, we will then wait another one to two months to travel to Ethiopia to pick them up! 

So here we are this weekend in paperwork and fundraising land! We were told by our familycoordinator about the baby bottle fundraiser and felt like that is just an idea from God! It has been a hit with everyone we have told . Finding the bottles was the hardest part. We  ended up going to the dollar store and buying almost all the bottles they had. We currently have 82 bottles and friends have already been taking them to fill with their change. We hope to hand them out one Sunday at our church. God is so good in how he is providing for our adoption and we can't wait to share more with you. Enjoy the pictures. 

This verse has been such an encouragement to us lately.

"Do not fear, for I am with you; Do not anxiously look about you,

For I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will

uphold you with my righteous right hand." Isaiah 41:10

To our Friends and Family,

The idea to start a blog was given to us by Jolene’s mom. Actually she didn’t really give us a choice but told us we had to start one! So here we are ready to share our adoption journey with you. This is definitely not an easy journey and just like pregnancy it involves its share of “mourning sickness” and “labor pain”. However, we know every piece of paper work we chase and money we spend is for our little baby. We read on another couples blog who are about to go pick up their baby girl from Ethiopia that she was conceived in their hearts. Boy, that could not describe any better how we feel about our baby. This may not be a baby conceived from our own body but this baby has been conceived in our hearts! We are already in love with our child from Ethiopia and pray for him or her even now. Just as God created our inmost beings and knit us together in our mother’s wombs we know he has created this child for us to be so blessed to parent and raise!

Before we get into the details of where we are at in the adoption process we thought we would take this first post to tell you how it came to be. Here is something written by Jon several weeks ago explaining how we have been lead to do this. Hope you enjoy and take the time to read it so this will all make sense to you! Will post again soon!



Our Adoption Story

I wanted to take some time and tell you about how God has been working in our lives in the past few years. As we have probably told you by now, we have begun the process to adopt a child from Ethiopia through America World adoption agency. Now to preface this story I must say that when Jolene and I were married in June of 2006, adoption was, in my mind, something only a few select people were equipped to handle and Jolene and I were defiantly not part of that minority. Isn't it funny how God always tends to use our doubts and disbelief to bring Himself glory?

Soon after being married Jolene started working a grueling night shift in the maternity department of Portsmouth Regional Hospital. It was on this night shift that she met Becky, a fellow nurse and mother of six who had adopted her seventh child from Kazakhstan. One night while talking about her children, Becky said she believed that every Christian should adopt an orphan. Jolene responded saying, "I don't think I could love a child that wasn't 'my own'." Becky went on to tell Jolene about how much she loved her adopted daughter as well as all the other orphans around the world. With such a staunch advocate of adoption working with her every week, it only took a month or so for God to burden Jolene's heart for these orphans.

As time went on Jolene would occasionally bring up this topic in our conversations at home but I never paid too much attention. Now for the few who may not understand, my wife has always had compassion for the less fortunate. Before we were married she had sponsored a child from Honduras through World Vision and I think she was and is the best spokesperson on child sponsorship I have ever seen. Jolene helped teach me the importance of giving which led me to begin sponsoring a child from India around this same time. So at the time I thought this adoption obsession was just another instance of her wonderful compassion shining through. But surely God would not want us to adopt!

Beginning in May of 2007, Jolene started to spend some time researching adoption online. During one of her Google searches she found America World, an adoption agency endorsed by Steven Curtis Chapman. One night she printed out some basic information about what it meant to adopt a child and what the process involved. I, however, was still confident God would never call us to this. I had my own idea of what God had in store for our lives.

One night Jolene and I were discussing her favorite topic yet again and she explained to me her desire to adopt before we had children by birth, going completely against what I thought we would do. At this point I need to draw attention to the number of children we have had thus far. God has quite a sense of humor, does He not? She started to regularly pray for God to unite our hearts as one as we sought His perfect will for our lives. The burden on her heart grew more every day and I began to suspect God might be speaking to me through Jolene. During this period of time her desire started to focus on Africa, then more focused still towards Ethiopia. God started confirming this to Jolene and slowly to me again and again. Do you know how many times Ethiopia is mentioned in the bible? If you had asked me a year ago I would say zero but it is in fact mentioned more than 45 times by name! God was using all kinds of thing to speak to us. We started noticing other couples in our church who had adopted internationally. The bible study Jolene and I were doing together was having some very timely lessons about God's work around us. God was speaking to both of us though our prayer and quiet times with God. A friend of Jolene's who had also just completed an adoption showed us a copy of the new issue of Cooking Light. Ethiopian cuisine was their ethnic food story that month and the kicker was that the author was adopted! Jolene informed me that from the very beginning she prayed that God would unite our hearts in this desire for adoption. If He were to do this she would know that the burden was truly from God.

One particular night Jolene was telling me about James 1:27 which states: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." That was it for me. God's message to me finally rang true. In my mind it was no longer a matter of desire or burden but of obedience. God was commanding me to lead us in adopting a child from Ethiopia. At that point Jolene was a short time from her 25th birthday when we would both meet the age requirements to be adoptive parents. Only a few weeks later, on January 7th, we mailed our application to start this wonderful new chapter in our lives.

It is amazing to me how our Lord works in such subtle ways to mold us into new creations and bring His will to pass. God took Jolene and I, will all our sins and our own plans and aspirations and showed us that He always knows what is best and that He can use us if we simply let Him. He is always working in our lives. He wants to do "…immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us" Ephesians. 3:20 We ask that you pray for us in this time as we begin the foot-work now. The adoption process with take about 12 months or more and the amount of paperwork required would make an environmentalist cry. There is much to be done but we have faith that God will continue to provide all that is needed.

Thank you so much for your prayers, your love and your support. We are forever grateful for you. In the words of Paul: "I thank my God every time I remember you." Phil 1:3