It's Official

Wow!  We are so excited to announce that we are officially licensed foster parents.  What an amazing adventure, not always easy, not all difficult.  The most amusing thing about all of this process is all the worrying we did about our homestudy.  The social worker who did the homestudy was wonderful.  She was kind and loved our family.  What we were told prior to her coming to our home was that she would likely not accept our homeschool lifestyle.  On the contrary!  She said she completely agreed with home education and said she wished more families like us would apply!  Wow!  God is so good and so amazing.  Now we are just waiting for a phone call that they are placing a child with us.  Thank you all so much for the prayers. 

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.1

Life As We Know It

Wow, have we been busy lately.  I am excited to say that we have completed our foster care training!  We are CPR, First Aid, and Universal Precautions certified.  We have even had our first home study visit.  I hear there could be one more.  Apparently the next step is what they call a staffing meeting.  In this meeting the staff gets together and goes over our file to decide if we would make acceptable foster parents.  So, at this point we have no idea if we will be licensed or not.  During the staffing meeting, they could decide to do a second home study visit for more information.  After the staffing meeting, we will either be approved for licensing or we will be finished without licensing.  We should hear something this coming week or so.  All in God's will and timing! 

Our home study seemed to go really well.  The social worker was very kind and seemed to click with our family.  She was a Christian and approved of our lifestyle.  This was the biggest concern for us.  We were told that home educators sometimes have a difficult time with social workers, especially when it comes to foster care.  This lady seemed to really enjoy our kids and she wasn't even concerned about "socialization".  One thing I will share is that we cleaned frantically and doing this has led me back to the Fly Lady!  Her way of doing things is so easy, and if you follow her routines, you never have to worry about a social worker visit whether it is a home study or not.  I am enjoying getting back into Fly Lady's routines too.  I love knowing my sink is shiny and my toilet is puke ready ;)  If you struggle C.H.A.O.S.  (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome) then F.L.Y. (Finally Loving Yourself) Lady is for you.

This week God has shown me a verse that I am resting in.  ‎"The LORD your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing." Zephaniah 3:17   To think that the God who created the universe and everything in it would delight in me, and rejoice over me by singing leaves me feeling so humble and loved.

We have a winner!

I want to say thank you so much to each of you who have participated in our American Girl giveaway!  This has been so much fun to do.  I also want to say thank you to each of you for donating to help us provide a home for one of God's children.  We are so blessed and so humbled by each one of your generous donations.  Thank you so very much.

I am thrilled to announce that we have chosen a winner by using Random.org.  I listed each of your names 1 time for each entry and had the list randomly generate the winner.  Our winner is Lisa Keva of Homeschool Circus!  Congratulations Lisa!  She has chosen Marie-Grace as her prize.  I am sure there is a little girl in the Keva household who is very excited today!  Maybe we can get Lisa to give us a guest post with pictures when they receive Marie-Grace!

My Prayer Tonight

Thank you Jesus, for becoming my sin, giving up all You are, all You have, to save me from eternal damnation, separated from You, burning in eternal flames.  May I live my life as a living sacrifice to You, Lord.  May I be so used by You, that I would be called Your hands and feet.  May I love others, as You have loved me.  May I be the vessel You use to reach the lost, love the unloved, Mother to the orphans, giver to the needy, and friend to the friendless.  May I never forget to be humble.  May I remember that to die to myself, is to LIVE in You!  Thank you Jesus, though these mere words aren't enough, they are all I have to say, Thank you Jesus.

Proverbs 24:12

12 Don’t excuse yourself by saying, “Look, we didn’t know.” 
For God understands all hearts, and he sees you. 
He who guards your soul knows you knew. 
He will repay all people as their actions deserve

What will you do?  I read recently a cute little quip about the Bible, I giggled and then realized over and over again how true it was.  There is always truth to humor, have you ever noticed?  Anyway, the quote was on facebook and was posted by a dear home educating friend of mine.  You can find her blog here, although she doesn't have much time to blog any more.  She is quite busy being Jesus' hands and feet.  The quote...There's a reason the book after the four Gospels is called "Acts" not "Talks".  Let someone "see" your faith this week not just "hear" it...pretty heavy hitting words that made me think of James 2 vs 14-20

14 What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone? 15 Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, 16 and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?

17 So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.

18 Now someone may argue, “Some people have faith; others have good deeds.” But I say, “How can you show me your faith if you don’t have good deeds? I will show you my faith by my good deeds.”

19 You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Good for you! Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror. 20 How foolish! Can’t you see that faith without good deeds is useless?

Thank you Lord for reminding me yet again what Your word has to say about what we should do...

Discouragements and Rays of Hope

Recently I have been struggling with discouragement.  I truly thought we would be further along on our fundraising efforts by now than we are.  God has been faithful to our efforts though!  Every time I am really down because the money is not there yet, He brings in another trickle of funds.  I know He has plans to prosper us.  Plans for our good, but it will be in His timing.  I need to remind myself that my timing isn't necessarily His timing.

For every discouragement we have, there is a ray of hope.  We have decided to become foster parents.  No, this isn't a replacement for our foreign adoption, it is in addition to our foreign adoption.  We know that God has placed multiple children on our hearts.  There have been so many times that we have needed a foster care license and didn't have one, that we have decided to go for it!  We never know where God is leading and He may have chosen a child for us to raise in the foster care system also.

Please pray for us as we are in our foster care training currently, while simultaneously fundraising for our international adoption.  This is taking a lot of my time and attention, along with educating my children at home and babysitting.  Satan has been attacking our family often, and we would greatly appreciate all prayers you feel led to send up for us.  Thank you so much for the support and love that you all have shown to our family.  We are trusting God in His perfecting timing.