His Ways Are Perfect

   I haven’t given any updates in a while, so I thought I should do that!  Things have been interesting this past month, and it has been fun to see God working!  (This is kind-of a long, twisty story, so bear with me!)

   Last month we were contacted by a Christian woman (I’ll refer to her as Patty) who had found our profile online.  She had befriended a young woman (I’ll refer to her as Leah) in a hospital in MN, who was faced with a difficult situation.  Leah’s son had a severe health condition, and she had no means to parent him, so she was making an adoption plan.   Patty was praying for Leah and wanted to help her either find a family that would take Leah and her son in their home so she could have the opportunity to parent her son, or find a Christian couple that would be willing to adopt the baby.  She came across our online profile and contacted us, feeling like we were an answer to her prayer.  Dan and I prayed and considered this situation, but didn’t feel the Lord was telling us this was the child we were to adopt.  So, we continued to pray for Leah and her son, not knowing what part we should play in this story. 

   Patty called us a few days later after Dan and I had made our decision, and she had wondered about a family I had mentioned to her, who had a baby that had the same health condition, if they would be interested in adopting Leah’s son.  So, I contacted a family (the M family) from our church, who knows this family, and gave them Patty’s phone number to talk with her about the situation.  The M family talked with patty that night, and they decided to pray about the situation, and see what the Lord would have them do with this situation.

   Well, the M family decided they wanted to meet Leah, and possibly offer their home for her and her son, if she decides she wants to parent her son.  Well, they met with Leah and Leah said that they were an answer to prayer, and she has since decided to parent her son, and she has moved in with the M family until she can get on her feet.  She is professing to have been born again, and has been coming to our church!  It has been great to be able to meet her and her son after first learning about this situation!  She is currently working on getting her license and an apartment so she will be able to care for her and her son.

   The interesting dynamic to this story and an update on our adoption situation is this…  Back in October, Dan and I decided to get on the waiting list for our agency’s “Waiting Family Book.” We were then 23^rd on the list.  After discussing some things further with our agency, they said because we weren’t open to one area of the open adoption, we couldn’t be in their book.  So, because of this news, Dan and I decided to try our online advertising, not knowing what else to do!  Fast forward to a couple weeks ago. Dan and I had decided we wanted to get back on the waiting list, being more open to the area that we previously weren’t very open to, and because the list was now 32 people long!  My social worker responded back to me saying that she never did remove our name from the waiting list, because we said we’d consider this particular situation!  So we found out that we are # 7 on the list, as opposed to #33!  

   If this miscommunication hadn’t happened, and we knew that we were still on the waiting list, we would have never paid the money to do our online advertising.  But now, seeing Leah’s situation; her getting saved and being able to parent her son, this all came to happen because we had our profile online!  When God wants something to happen, he makes it happen! 

So I wanted to share this testimony of God’s power, and how He does work everything out for good!  We’re excited to get into our agency’s book in the next month or two, and have our profile shown to real people!  We’ve got a couple more months on the online profile, so it would be wonderful if we connected with our child’s birth family through that still.  God has continued to give us patience and peace through the waiting and the unknowns!  He has provided for all that we have need of!  We do appreciate continued prayer for us regarding our adoption, and pray that our little one comes soon!

I feel like this song has been my "theme" song lately!  I cry every time I hear it.

 

Great is His faithfulness!!

I have been a horrible blogger as of late!  In my defense, there hasn't been a whole lot to share!  Until yesterday.  We received some INCREDIBLE news, and today Dan and I are filled with thanks and praise, and we want to give glory to His name!!  I mentioned in October that we applied for an adoption grant.  There were several grants we could apply for, but we only applied for one.  Dan and I both thought it would be a long shot for us to receive a grant, as there are many applicants, but we thought it would be worth it to apply, and continue to have faith that the Lord would continue provide for this adoption.

Well, yesterday we got a letter in the mail from Show Hope.  They send out letters to everyone who applied, whether they received a grant or not.  I opened the letter, expecting it to say that we weren't chosen to receive a grant.  (O me of little faith!)  Well, Praise the Lord, we were chosen to receive a LARGE grant from Show Hope that will cover most of our remaining expenses!  We are SOOO blown away with the Lord's provision, and His care for us!  He continues to reassure us that He is the author of this adoption, and we are in the Lord's will!  He has provided EVERYTHING up to this point, and He has shown Himself strong and deserves all praise!

So I broke down crying when I read the first paragraph of our letter and just started Praising God!  I called Dan to tell him the good news, but I think I gave him a heart attack when I was crying while saying "I just went and got the mail..."  (Dan's advice was to always preface a call like this with, "It's good news...")  He was in awe for quite a while!  We are both so thankful for ShowHope and the donors that have donated to ShowHope to make adoption grants possible!  We are beyond blessed!!

The words of the song "Great is Thy Faithfulness" popped into my head last night as I was processing all of this.  The chorus which goes "All I have needed Thy hand hath provided,"  is the song on my heart!

In other news, we've had a few adoption situations come up through our networking.  We've been scammed and lied to, which is no fun; but we've learned to be cautious with our dealings with people online!  We would appreciate prayer, that we would have wisdom when dealing with these situations, and that we'd know when the right situation comes!  Also, that we'd be protected from the sick people that try to scam adoptive parents. 

We are so thankful for everyone who has prayed for us or passed our prayer requests on!  "Behold, the LORD'S hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear!" Isaiah 59:1  He hears our prayers!

With great thanks,
Dan and Katherine

Necessary

I saw this picture this morning, and it seemed fitting for this time of year.  We have so much in America, and I am so thankful for all that the Lord has blessed us with!  I think of these children's empty bellies, and I am thankful that I have never had to experience that, but my heart hurts for those skinny arms, reaching out for help.  

One of the blogs I follow has started an organization to help give these children a voice. voices4thevoiceless.org

I hope everyone has a blessed Holiday season!

Coffee Filter Wreath

I've seen these coffee filter wreaths on many blogs and I've been wanting to make one for some time!  There weren't very many good tutorials out there, so my first one turned out poorly!  I came across a blog that showed a different way of making them, and it worked out SOOO much better!  Here's the natural coffee filter wreath in baby's room.

I absolutely love how this turned out!  It was super simple to make, and pretty cheap as well!  Here's what you'll need:

A foam wreath, coffee basket filters (white or natural), marker, and glue gun.  You may need 2 packages of filters depending on the size you're making.

Put the marker (or something similar) in the middle of the filter, and gently wrap it around...

Like so.

Next, place the hot glue on the bottom of filter, and hold to the wreath for 5 seconds.

  Repeat this all the way around, making sure to glue the filters close together.

(The second filter was glued right next to the first)

Half-way through!

It took me a couple hours to complete this wreath.  Dan couldn't believe how beautiful it turned out!  He really likes it in the baby room!

 I am definitely going to be making more of these.  Many of our walls that  have bare spots are looking like they need a wreath!  I am currently in the process of making a novel wreath for our bedroom.  It is pages of an old novel, made into flowers and then glued onto a wreath!  This one has taken more time, but I am excited to share the results once I am able to finish it!  Happy crafting!

Happy Thanksgiving!

A day late...  We had a good time celebrating Thanksgiving at my uncle's house.  He is a chef and owns a restaurant, so the food is always incredible!  I got to meet a cousin of mine for the first time!  My aunt and uncle adopted her as an infant 3 years ago now, and we just got to meet her now!  She is such an adorable little girl!


Today is also a special day, and not because it's "black Friday"!  Dan's 24th birthday is today!  I am so incredibly blessed to be married to this man!  He is such a wonderful husband and he makes it so easy and fun to be his wife!  I didn't have to babysit today, but Dan had to work....  :(  We'll have a fun evening together though...   

On the adoption side of things...  Nothing new and exciting yet.  We were contacted by another "birth mother" last week.  I put birth mother in quotes because I highly doubt it was a a legitimate situation.  Somebody was definitely trying to scam us; there were red flags all over the place!  They were basically asking for $$, but it was so obvious, we realized it was a scam right away.  It is so sad that people prey on hopeful parents like that.  We never did heard back from the first woman, and we are beginning to think that may have been a fake situation as well.  We're remaining hopeful though!  We know that the Lord will bring us the baby He wants us to have and on His timing!  He has, and will continue to provide for all of our needs!  We have so much to be thankful for, and although we're extremely excited to become parents, we are really cherishing this continued time of just the two of us!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

"In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." 1 Thess. 5:18

"Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." Eph. 5:20

Updates

Dan went deer hunting this year and we were really hoping he'd get a deer, his first, so we could enjoy the meat.  Well, he got one!  A good sized one!  He got it in the first hour of being in his stand on opener morning!  It bedded right under his stand, and he was able to get a good shot amidst the branches.  I'm so proud of him!  We cooked up some venison the other night, and we were just saying how it is so much more satisfying cooking and eating something that Dan 'slayed' for our family!  :) 

Dan with his 8 pt. buck

In other news, we were contacted by an expecting mother this week!  After being on our new profile site for less than a week!  We don't know a whole lot at this point, as she has only responded to one email.  We're not getting our hopes up yet, as there have been some adoption scams out there, but we haven't seen any red flags at this point.  It is just exciting knowing our profile is being viewed!  In only 24 hours on the new profile site, we had the same amount of views our original free profile did in 2 months!  So I guess you get what you pay for!  We're just really feeling optimistic, even if this situation doesn't work out, we feel like something will come from this new website.

Please continue to pray for us!  We know the Lord will cause this situation to fall through if this is not our child.  We also need wisdom when talking with expecting parents, as it can be a little awkward knowing what to say or not say.  We are praying that the Lord would use this new website to connect with our child's birth parents!

Scratch That

Well, things are going well around here.  We finally received our typed up home study from our social worker, so we were able to send our grant application in to Steven Curtis Chapman's, Show Hope.  We're excited to see what the Lord does with that!  We also found out last week that we will not be able to enter the agencies book due to a requirement we were not made aware of until now!  There are some things that we're not open too, post placement, and you need to be open to those things in order to be in their book.  So we were really disappointed finding that out, we wish we had known about it earlier in the process.  Oh well! The Lord wasn't surprised by this!  I also sent in our paperwork to an online profile listing site.  It is one of the most popular online adoption profile sites and they have a lot of success stories.  That should be up and running sometime next week.  We're so excited to see what happens with that!

I am part of a website that adoption agencies can post 'birth mother' situations looking for adoptive families.  There have been a few situations we probably would have sent our profile to, but the fees these agencies are charging are so high!  Many are double what we were expecting to pay!  It is so sad that adoption has turned into such an 'industry'.  It's sad.  There are children that need homes, and families that would love to adopt.  I wonder how many families considering adoption, don't, because of the high fees.  I read on an adoption blog that of the 34% of Christian families considering adopting, only 1% actually does.

Thanks everybody for your prayers and words of encouragement!  We really appreciate it!  It is good to be reminded that God is control of all of this.  I was reading in Proverbs the other day when I was feeling discouraged about the recent happenings.  This commonly used verse really gave me peace.
"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." Proverbs 3:5-6

Out to eat with friends