#10 And We Wait

I last hugged Our Girl on May 30, 2012.  The team from my university and I were in Ethiopia until June 2, arriving back in Oklahoma on June 3.  Inwardly I ache over not seeing her for over 7 months. 

I kept in touch with the director at the Orphanage over the summer.  When I left he was going to attempt to contact her sister to ask permission for us to adopt Our Girl.  The last I heard from him was August.  He wanted us to be in prayer over the matter.  He also told us how difficult it would be to contact the sister and that he wanted some time to pass before he contacted her.  There were many obstacles to overcome before we would know anything.

So. We. Waited.

A lot of the adoption process is about hurrying up… then waiting.  You wait a lot.  You wait for everything.  It is not like having a baby.  I know I’ve done both.  Even if each were to only take 9 months, it’s not the same.  Not at all.  You see, when you are adopting, your child is out there, being raised by someone else – or no one at all.  You are acutely aware that every moment spent waiting is a moment of your child’s life that you will never get back, a moment they will never get to have with you.

And. We. Waited.

The hardest part was not hearing anything.  And I mean ANYTHING.  I would email every 2-3 weeks to make sure the director knew we still wanted her.  To make sure he didn’t think we had given up on him or given up on her.  We heard nothing for over 4 months. 

And. We. Waited.

The morning of December 9, we were in church.  It was a very typical Sunday, and we were planning to go to lunch with the pastor’s family after the service.  I found myself during the service composing in my mind my next email to the Director that I would send out that afternoon. 

We headed to Pei Wei for lunch (one of my favorites, can anyone say lettuce wraps?).  Typically when we go there, especially on a Sunday afternoon we have 4-6 people, which can be sat down fairly easily.  This day, however, we had our four, the pastor’s four, and two others from our church.  If you added that correctly, you got 10.  This is a really large group for Pei Wei.  So we waited and waited for a table, maybe 25 minutes or so (which is really long when you normally don’t wait at all). 

Toward the end of the waiting I got out my phone to waste some time.  I saw I had a few emails.  I noticed the name of the Director of the Orphanage.  My heart was pounding, pounding in my throat.  What was in the email?  We hadn’t heard from him in over 4 months… was this the email we had been waiting for?  I opened the email…

This was it!  It was what we had been waiting to hear.  Her sister was granting us her permission, provided that we would commit to remaining in contact via mail, phone, and visits back to Ethiopia.  I think I read it through three or four times before I could breathe again.  I thanked God and showed Jeff. 

The rest of the meal was a blur.  I felt completely distracted from any further conversation.  The afternoon and evening were much the same, complete and utter distraction - and all this in the middle of trying to make final exams for my five classes to be given the following four days.  I think I sent about 10 text messages during lunch, and then I posted a facebook message.  It was the day we had been waiting for! 

So, then what?  I knew the next step:  Find an agency.  But how?

We Interrupt ...

True, I still have more to tell you about Our Girl and the process we are going through now, but we interrupt to present you with our FIRST FUNDRAISER!  I love this fundraiser because it combines one of my passions (couponing!) which SAVES you money with an even bigger passion (bringing OUR GIRL home!).

I am selling Homeland Care booklets.  These booklets cost $5 each + $1 shipping = $6 each and contribute $4 toward bringing our girl home.  Interested?  Please email me at kristahands@gmail.com and I will send you my address.  If you are local and want to meet me somewhere to pick them up to avoid we can do that too. 

If you are local, you know that Homeland is a grocery store in OK and there is a $5 off any $50 purchase coupon on these books (hence they pay for themselves after that coupon).  If you don't have a Homeland near you, that's ok, the coupons inside are manufacturer's coupons (meaning they can be used at any store that accepts coupons).  I bought 6 of these books last year and used tons of coupons inside them.  They are AWESOME coupons!


The coupons inside are:

$1 off any Superior Selections Product
$1 off one 8 pack, 20 oz bottles of Best Choice Physx
$1 off one Best Choice Laundry Detergent
$1 off two Best Choice Cheese (16 oz)
$1 off one Best Choice Coffee (34.5 oz)
$1 off one jar of Napa Valley Bistro Pasta Sauce
$1 off any 12 count box of K-cup packs
$1 off one Huggies Baby Wipes (320-400 count)
$1 off one packages of Entergizer MAX Batteries
$1 off three Egglands Best Eggs (Any size/variety)
$1 off two I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! Products
$1 off two Lipton Tea Products (18 count or higher)
$1 off two Magnum Products
$1 off three cans of Red Gold Diced Tomatoes (10 oz)
$1 off two Red Gold Sloppy Joe Mix
$1 off one Crisco Olive Oil
$1 off two Dove Chocolate
$1 off one Arm & Hammer Laundry Detergent Power Packs
$1 off two Jars of Libby's Fruit (23.5-24.5 oz)
$1 off four Libby's Single Fruit Cups
$1 off one Breakfast Pack Cereal
$1 off two Chex Mix or Bugles Corn Snacks (6.0-8.75 oz)
$1 off one Fiber One Cereal
$1 off two Pillsbury Refrigerated Coolie Dough
$1 off one Progresso Kitchen Favorites Dinner Kit
$1 off one Totinos Ross Snacks (90 count)
$1 off two Gerber Graduates Items
$1 off two Land O Lakes Butter Spread Products
$1 off two Florida's Natural Brand Premium Juice (59 oz or larger)
$1 off two Nestle Coffee-Mate Liquid or Powder Coffee Creamer
$1 off three Weight Watchers Smart Ones Frozen Products
$1 off one Purina Tidy Cats Kitty Litter (20 lb or larger)
$1 off four Hunt's Pasta Sauces
$1 off three Kid Cuisine
$1 off three Borden Cheese Packages
$1 off one Dunkin Donuts Coffee (11 oz or larger)
$1 off two Lucky Leaf Pie Fillings
$1 off two Sargento Natural Cheese (5 oz or larger)
$1 off two Smucker's Jams, Jellies, Preserves, or Fruit Spreads

#9 Stepping Out In Faith

Looking back on the past 7 months there are three specific different events that have caused me and/or us to have to take a step out in faith. 

#1 – The first event occurred in August.  Jeff was out of town, a guys weekend with a friend from back in Ohio.  The kids and I attended church, as always.  And God took me by surprise.  You see up until this time I was praying for God’s will, very loosely not wanting to “step on anyone’s toe.”   That day in church I was convicted. 

The sermon, well at least the part of it that I remember and spoke to me loud and clear, centered around the fact that oftentimes as Christians we pray lacking conviction.  We pray in such a way that if what we ask for doesn’t happen we don’t act surprised.  We pray lacking real belief that our prayer does any good.  Pastor Dustin didn’t discredit the fact that God’s will is, of course, “at play.”  But this sermon was more about our lack of sincere prayer.  Prayer that says “God, I know you can and will do what is best, but I want ___________.  I need to you to ______________. Etc.”  Prayer that says I may not get what I want but I am going to pray BOLDLY for what I want anyway. 

Now I know in earlier entries I have talked about how God doesn’t always give us what we want or what we pray for but, I must confess even in those prayers my belief that my prayers really were going to make any difference was pretty weak. 

I was convicted, and I changed the way I was praying.  I started praying boldly that God would move mountains to find Our Girl’s sister (her legal guardian), and that He would bring her home to us.  I prayed in the knowledge that He might see fit for other things to happen, but I was not going to be lazy and weak in my prayers.  I was going to PRAY for HER like I had never prayed before. 

Now, I don’t claim that my prayers are the reason things unfolded as they did, but I do believe my prayers changed me and changed how I was approaching everything.  They changed my attitude from a “maybe, someday God will move (think Eyeore from Winnie the Pooh)” to a “GOD MOVE! (think of a demanding, begging child in the checkout line at Walmart).”  My attitude and my demeanor were altered.

#2 – The second event goes back to something that I did over a year ago.  You may remember that one thing I did when I came home from my first mission trip to Ethiopia was that I signed up to be on a waiting child photolisting through RainbowKids.org.  In this site you can select certain criteria (like age, race, gender, country, etc.) and when a child meeting your criteria is put on the photolisting you get an email with his/her information. 

So, I had been on RainbowKids for about a year.  Pictures and bios of kids would come my way and my heart would break a little.  On more than one occasion I would show the bio and picture to Jeff, praying his heart would be swayed and we could adopt one of them.  Well, until September of this past year I continued to get these emails with these waiting kids. 

In September, God convicted me.  Probably one of the nearly audible times I have heard from God.  That is to say, I didn’t hear a voice but the voice in my spirit was SO strong I knew without a doubt God was talking to me.  The conversation went something like this…

God: If you are so sure ______ is meant to be yours, why are you still looking at other kids?
Me: Well, when I get their bios I pray for them.

While not a complete lie, this was not “why” I was looking.  Obviously, God was not fooled.  He knew my heart, and He knew that I kept looking “just in case” the situation with Our Girl didn’t work out.  He knew I was scared.  But He wanted me to trust Him.  He wanted me to turn off the photolisting emails. 

I argued with him about it for about 2 weeks.  Trusting is scary.  To me, turning that photolisting service off was bolding saying “She’s mine, and I don’t need to keep looking.” 

And that was what I had to decide.  I had to decide that Our Girl was in fact the missing piece to my family, and I didn’t need to keep looking.  So, I turned the photolistings off. 

#3 – The third event happened in October.  We had been discussing redoing Abi’s room for a while.  Initially the issue was we wanted to get her a new comforter.  But the reality was that the bedroom furniture she had was built by my father-in-law and my husband when we lived in Ohio.  While it was beautiful, it was white, which matched the woodwork in our Ohio house wonderfully, but now in our Oklahoma house, with our dark brown stained woodwork, it looked out of place.  The other issue was that it was a Queen sized bed, which took up a lot of space in Abi’s room. 

So, while we started with the idea of a new comforter, I didn’t want to buy a new comforter if we were just going to get a different sized bed down the road.  So, we started discussing the possibility of getting Abi a twin-sized bed.  But this then brought up the fact that if we bought a twin bed now, what if Our Girl really did get to come?  We knew that it was most reasonable for the girls to share a room, but if that happened it would affect how we might make this purchase. 

So, we had two choices, (A) we could buy one twin bed (or the top bunk of a loft bed) now and then wait to see what would happen with Our Girl or (B) we could buy two twin beds (or both beds of a loft bed) now and step out in faith believing that she was coming.  Can you guess what we did?  Take a look for yourself below…

We jointly made this decision.  We talked it through and decided that God was in charge of making it happen but we were going to prepare for it.  First, we purchased two twin sleigh beds, and the structure of the room was just not working, so we returned those beds and ended up with the loft bed and associated furniture you see above.  Half the drawers are not filled.  They are waiting.  Waiting for the things that will belong to Our Girl when she comes.
So, in August God told me to start praying with conviction.  In September He told me to stop looking for another child – I had already found the One he had for us.  And in October He asked us to step out in faith with our money and prepare a bedroom for two girls.  And then on December 9, He delivered us the news we had been waiting for, praying for, preparing for.  Our Girl’s sister agreed to our request to adopt her. 

GOD  IS  SO  GOOD!