You know how every now and then you will come across an organization, cause, or family that just pulls at your heart? You know immediately what they are doing is great work and you want to help them? That is how I felt about Bring Love In. I watched their video off of Give1Save1 and was instantly compelled to help this family. I sometimes get the urge to donate, but if they don't have Paypal I will just move on and not go get my credit card. However, this was deserving of walking into the other room and getting the moola!! Sooo...Watch this video. Check out their site. Invest in their call to look after the widows and orphans!
"We work with local churches to find widows and mothers who’ve been left to lead their households on their own. In a country like Ethiopia, where resources are scarce, these women often find themselves on the streets, with no way to provide for their families.
We will train and provide for these women, so they can support their own families and, in turn, open their homes to children who’ve been left as orphans.
We will provide a first class private education to each of the children living in the Bring Love In homes.
We will have a team of nurses and social workers on our staff who will visit each home on a regular basis, ensuring the level of care – both emotional and physical – remains high.
Our focus is on building future leaders, residing within their home countries – leaders who will bring vision and direction to their communities."
- Bring Love In- The Project
I am always on the hunt for gifts that give back. I love to find anything cute that also helps provide for someone in need! Today I hit the jackpot! I was over on Danielle Burkleo's blog and she was highlighting a great adoption story!
I have already bought a necklace...you should too!!
We have been DTE for over 2 months now and have moved just a bit on the unofficial wait list. We are now at #81! I have been seeing lots of changes over the last few weeks of people requesting a larger age range. I think it is wonderful that these families are opening their hearts and homes to slightly older children! Here are some of my favorite blogs of families who have adopted "older" children.
Dreaming Big Dreams- Jamie Ivey's parenting journey through childbirth, domestic adoption, and international adoption! She is married to Aaron Ivey from The Austin Stone!
Rage Against the Mini Van- Kristen Howerton's story of fostering to adopt, international adopting, and child birthing of four kids in four years!
Jen Hatmaker- I don't actually follow her blog much, but I did love her book 7. She has adopted two children from Ethiopia along with her 3 biological children!
Change the World for One- If this story doesn't give you chills or tears, I'm not sure what could! This boy's smile is just precious!! You HAVE to watch the video at the bottom!!
Pure and Lasting- This is a bit of a different story! Instead of adopting an older child, this couple is "hosting" a Rwandan teenager!! I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I know he lives with them and they are his American parents!
"I don’t much care if you breastfed your kid until they started kindergarten, or if you fed them formula from day one. I don’t really care if you turned your infant car-seat forward-facing prior to age 2, or if you homeschool, or if you send your kids to daycare while you go to work. Do you cosleep? Did you circumcise your son? I DON’T CARE. Do you babywear? Push your kid around in a stroller? Use a leash for your kid at Disneyland? Whatever. Good for you.
When it comes to issues of motherhood, there is one issue I care about: some kids don’t have one. All of these petty wars about the choices of capable, loving mothers is just a lot of white noise to me, Quite honestly, I’m often astonished at the non-essential parenting issues I see moms getting their panties in a wad about. Particularly when there are so many kids in this world not being parented at all."
In January, Ryan and I took about 30 college students to Passion.Passion is a college aged conference that held over 40000 people! Out of those 40000 people, we break up into small groups. Those small groups consisted of about 8-10 people. In my totally random, find two strangers, make a group, small group, I met Rebekah and Will. They happened to be adopting from Ethiopia! (love it!!-Thanks God!!) They had just gotten their referral for a two month old baby boy they named Israel. Fast forward to April, and they have gotten all the clearances they need and are going to pick up baby Israel!! They leave very soon and are doing some last minute fundraising. The flights to Ethiopia are EXPENSIVE!!!
If you want to help them chip away at the costs, head on over to Rebekah's blog and buy some of her super cute stuff!!! Here is the link : Saying Yes to Adoption
Here is a sneak preview of some of the items she is selling:
Hurry though! She is shipping on Friday!
Coasters- $10
Tukula Purses:
Navy/Maroon/Yellow Wristlets (1 available) $12
Wreaths $25
Remember, not everyone is called to ADOPT.
BUT every believer IS called to do something. This small little act could be your something!
Yesterday was a reality check for me. I had two different occasions when I was hit in the face with the real life reasons we are pursuing adoption. My first experience was with a girl we will call "R". R's mother considered given her up for adoption. R is now a young teenager living a life far from happy. She constantly gets moved around to different family members that are in her words "not right". She has no security and is expected to focus at school? R told me she wished we would have been adopted because her life is so bad. Y'all...break my heart! It took everything inside of me change our age range up to 13!! As if R's story wasn't enough. I met another girl last night, we will call her "B". B has been in and out of the foster care system since she was 8. B has a loving foster mother now and from the outside looks like she is thriving. B hasn't had it easy. Im sure she has a lot of hurt inside of her, but she is safe and receiving the love she deserves.
It was just a very real day yesterday. I had been having some confusing thoughts as to why the heck I am adopting a baby, and last night God reminded me why. There are real kids out there that need loving, stable families. I have love ready to pour out and engulf a child. I know that I can provide a secure, stable family for a child that would otherwise get lost in the "system". These kids are real that need families. They are real.
I am not sure I have ever felt more sure of our adoption decision than I do today. Ryan and I are called to do this and I can't imagine passing it up.
If you feel even the slightest tug at your heart while reading this, please look deeper at that tug. That is the pull of God starting something in your life that you don't want to miss! I would love to talk more to you if you need some advice! You can email me at Arin19@aol.com
This past weekend was a great weekend! I attended the Created For Care Retreat in Atlanta, GA. Me and one of my besties, Beth, that is adopting domestically had a great time together!
Ahh! Driving in Atlanta in this HUGE (haha) SUV!
I would say I had twothree four highlights of the actual retreat. It was totally great, but these things realllly were the icing on the cake!
Yes we were only gone for the weekend...
Speaking of cake, lets talk about food! These ladies knew what women want. FOOD! They had great meals, but even better snacks! We had all the sodas and candy we could want for free all weekend. They even had one of those candy shelves that they have at candy stores filled with some healthy and some not so healthy treats! Every night they provided multiple types of cakes and desserts. At one point during the weekend, they even had free ice cream bars! Yes. The food alone would have been worth the trip!!
Although...it gets better!! Not only was there great good but they had some awesome ministries represented. I was a little excessive the first night there and bought something from just about every booth. (Well maybe not, but I did buy a lot!). It was just as cool as I had imagined seeing and meeting some of the women behind these ministries!
I was pretty pumped I met and talked to Kelly Putty from Ordinary Hero.
Here is a run down of the ministries we got to support!
On a more serious note the next highlight was the experience of worshipping with over 400 women who have a heart for adoption. Sometimes I would catch myself just staring around the room thinking these women all know what I am going through. All these women get it! Most of the worship songs were cleverly geared towards trusting God and his timing. It was so much more powerful to sing those songs with these women that clearly have had to trust in His great timing and release their plans to God.
Adoption Friends!!
The last highlight was the most personal one to me. If you have read anything about this retreat you have probably heard of the Date with God session. I was very apprehensive about this because I thought it was corny. However, we got into the room and the leader explained that we shouldn't talk to anyone else. It would be like being on a much anticipated date with your hubz and your chatty friend comes up and talks the whole meal. Something about that picture whipped my mind into the mindset that this was in fact a "date" with God. So for the first time (maybe ever) I just sat and released myself to God. I just really felt like God wanted me to talk about myself. He wanted to hear everything I was holding in, He wanted ME to talk, He wanted all the attention on ME. I know that sounds weird and kind of not really the way God works, but it was something I needed. It was really cool and I am glad I went and had that experience on a Date with God.
My soul is so blessed this week. I am forced to be grateful and content with the present. I want to say "I can't wait for Friday" because I am anxious of our DTE date! However, if I wish away this week then I will wish away my Spring Break! So here I am. Happy with the present!
We received a pleasant early surprise yesterday in the mail. The White Flags: Passion CD was delivered early! I didn't even know we ordered it, so I was super surprised and excited! Needless to say it has been on repeat since about 3:00 yesterday.
I have started looking a little more seriously at designs for our baby's nursery. I have several themes running around. I just need to pick something and run with it! As I was looking around on Lay Baby Lay, I came across a ministry that makes my heart explode.
Mwana- "At Mwana, our vision is to make a difference for the children of Africa. A visit to the small village of Mgyawi in Malawi, Africa identified a specific need of its children—to receive shelter from the cold night. We are impassioned to help. You can too. For each Mwana blanket purchased, an additional blanket will be personally delivered to a child in need in Africa. Make a difference. Share Warmth."- Mwana Share Warmth.
They have the cutest blankets and when you buy one, you give one! Perfect.
We had an exciting weekend filled with adoption events!! We started the weekend early on Saturday morning with the Together For Them conference in Katy, TX. If you are adopting or considering adopting you don't want to miss this! The worship was great, the breakout sessions were awesome, and the food was amazing!! It is $10 a FAMILY, yes you read that correct a family! (If you have children, they have child care all day!) This was a steal. We had breakfast (donuts!), main session, three breakout sessions, lunch (Chic Fil A), and a discussion panel. They had tons of yummy snacks for free, super cheap resources, and children's adoption focused books. It was great!
Ryan and I went to a behavioral, African hair care, and transgender adoption: does my skin color matter?, break outs. They were really fun and personal.
After the conference we met up with my brothers and my cousin for dinner at Cyclone Anayas. It was really yummy and we had a great time catching up with the boys!
Sunday we met up with my oldest little brother and went to Houston's First Baptist Church, then we ate at Chipotle. Next up, we were suppose to go shopping. We made it to Z Gallerie and West Elm, and bought a few things. I was really banking finding some great deals at IKEA. However, on our way to IKEA we noticed Ryan's face was starting to get blotchy. He was obviously having some sort of minor allergic reaction to something. So we detoured to a pharmacy to get some meds and went back to the hotel and took a nap instead of my IKEA trip. Bummer, but I didn't mind the nap! We finished the night with a date to see Safe House.
Monday was the main reason for the trip (aside from the conference). We had our fingerprint appointment!! Yahh! It took about an hour of waiting and filling out forms, but only about 5 minutes total for the fingerprints.
Then came home and made copies of all our dossier paperwork!! (If your local I would recommend Master Copier on Nederland Ave. They were super friendly!) Woohoo! Once we get the form back from the fingerprints we are ready to mail off the big DOSSIER!!!
Last night I had a dream about my baby. And orphans.
It was a really special dream because I actually saw his face. I have had a dream before of me holding a baby, but this was a different baby. This baby's name was Everett (Real Ethiopian right? lol), and he was very young and very sick. I don't actually remember if I was looking at his picture or if he was actually with me, but nonetheless I saw his face.
I am very grateful for that part of the dream.
The rest of the dream was really sad. I was at an orphanage with lots of older boys and I was like "studying" their personalities. I guess I was trying to see which one I was going to adopt. Strange. At one point we went into a room and all the beds were built in cages. It was really sad. I woke up with just a heavy heart because all the boys wanted a family so badly.
I really felt like I had been at an orphanage first hand. All day I have had a longing to be back there. I want to love on those boys and they weren't even real!! I don't know how I will handle actually seeing children in an orphanage.
So that was my dream. Funny how hard dreams can pull on your heart.
Tomorrow J.J. Heller's new cd drops. I am so excited because I recently found a song she wrote to her unborn child. It has like one part that is obviously a mom singing to her newborn baby, but the vast majority could definitely be an adoption anthem. Yes, and adoption anthem. The song isn't even on youtube yet, but I found it on some random radio links. You can check it out here OR wait until tomorrow and download it. I know I will be!
Well hello Llittle baby Your eyes have never seen the sun You should know, Little baby That I am the lucky one
I get to be the one to hold your hand I get to be the one Through birthdays and broken bones Ill be there to watch you grow I get to be the one
Don’t feel alone now, Little baby Do you hear me singing you a song I can't wait to show you Little baby How to crawl, how to walk, and how to run I get to be the one to hold your hand I get to be the one Through birthdays and broken bones Ill be there to watch you grow I get to be the one
How does someone so small Hold my heart so tightly I don’t know even know you I love you completely
I get to be the one to hold your hand I get to be the one Through birthdays and broken bones Ill be there to watch you grow I get to be the one to hold your hand I get to be the one Through birthdays and broken bones I'll be there to watch you grow I get to be the one
