Happy Birthday Sweet Boy

To our sweet boy,

Today is your fourth birthday.  We sent you a cake, so prayerfully you will get it around your birthday.  We do not know if you ever celebrated your birthday or understand the fun of being a new age.  We do not even know if someone left a note so you know your true birthday, or if someone chose this day because it was a good guess.  We know that God knows when you were created and when you were born and He celebrated you. 

Although I am happy that you are reaching a new milestone, it makes me so sad that we have missed four years of your life now.  I wish it wasn't that way, but all we can do now is look to the future and plan to always make your birthdays special, as well as each day we are blessed enough to get to spend with you.  

I also think about another mom somewhere in China.  Does she get sad every year around now missing you and wondering how you are doing?  Does she wonder if you are still in China, or if you have been adopted somewhere?  Does she think about the situation around your birth and the six months that she got to spend with you?  I wish that I could at least put some of her worries to rest and let her know that you are going to be part of a family.  Maybe someday we will be able to make this happen with God's help.

Someday we will get to tell you how on your fourth birthday we were already making plans for you and praying for you and we already loved you as a part of our family.  Someday we can tell you that when you turned four, we were finishing up our dossier paperwork and praying that things would go speedily and that we could go and get you in record time.  We can tell you that we thought about you when you turned four in China at midnight, and again around 7 am when we thought you might be waking up, and again when you would be eating lunch and then we celebrated you on the date of your birth in America.  Someday we can talk to you and help you to celebrate the joy of your birthday, as well as help you deal with any sadness of this day that makes you think about all of the questions you have about the parents that you knew the day that you were born.  We know you won't get to celebrate with the family who has been with you since birth like your sisters do and I'm so sorry that you have already had loss and sadness in your little life. 

Know though, sweet boy, that we are celebrating you!  We are thankful to God for you!  We are so grateful that you were brought into this earth four years ago today and we pray that God gives you a peace and a joy today in knowing that you are loved and wanted.  Happy Birthday!!

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.   I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.   Psalm 139:13-14

March Fundraiser

Happy Halfway Through March!  We are still promoting our T-shirt fundraiser to celebrate Jenn's 40th birthday month.  We have had friends, family and friends of friends and family help us out in this way, and we have already made a little over $100!  Thank you so much to everyone who has purchased a shirt, and if you haven't, please feel free to take a look at what is being sold on the site.  You do have to order through our link:

www.adoptionbug.com/ryanfamilyroundup

So, in adoption news, we received our PA, so we were approved to send our little one care packages!  We probably would have waited to send him a package, but his fourth birthday is next week, so we wanted to send him a package and add-on a cake for him.  From what we hear, most children in orphanages do not celebrate their birthday, so we wanted to be able to show him a picture of the earliest birthday that we could and when you send a cake the orphanage is required to send back pictures so that they show that they are using the money that was sent for the cake that you ordered.  We didn't know if we would be able to get his package sent to him this month, but the lady in China who sends the packages got back to us right away and sent out the package a day later!  Mind you, this also included her translating our 500 word letter! 

So, I looked at a variety of blogs to see what people send their child in a package.  We used a package service that our agency recommended which saves us on shipping and she purchases the items in China.  So, we were able to send a letter to him and we also included a letter for the people who take care of him, we added on a six photo book of each of us, him and our family, we added on a reading book for him because he might as well get used to looking at books if he's going to be in this family, we included a camera and film for the workers, and then we added on the birthday cake for him. 

I can't even imagine what he will be thinking when he gets these items.  I've been praying so much that God would help him to be excited and not nervous, and that people around him will explain things to him and help him to understand the huge change that will be coming up in his life.  I don't know if he has seen other children get packages or what the caretakers tell the children about adoption.  I love finding ways to help children understand things, and it is very difficult that I can't even help with the process to explain to our own son what is going to happen to him and to help prepare him for the biggest change of his little life.  It's teaching me such reliance on God, because I have to trust that God is preparing him and bringing people to him that will help him until we can get there and love on him and help his transition.

We are almost done with our dossier paperwork and we had our last homestudy visit, so prayerfully we are planning to get everything mailed in during April.  We also have some fun fundraisers coming up in the coming months including an amazing virtual 5K that our great friend is setting up for us.  We are also beginning to apply for grants, although most of them need a completed home study for us to be eligible.  I can't even express how excited we all are!  We have started studying Mandarin and I even bought him his first hawaiian shirt last week and his very first homeschool book today! 

Thank you so much to everyone for prayers and support!!

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.  Hebrews 11:1 (Although I would encourage everyone to read all of Hebrews 11)

Celebrate Jenn's 40th Birthday Month!!

Happy March everyone!!  This month Jennifer turns 40 and in honor of her birthday, we are doing a month long fundraiser.  We found this great website that allows adoptive parents to choose 6 T-shirt designs and receive a portion of the sales for each T-shirt.  We are so grateful for such a wonderful fundraiser and we are excited to be a part of it!

So, if you are ready to shop for a new T-shirt for summer, you need to go through our family's link for adoption bug:

http://www.adoptionbug.com/ryanfamilyroundup

We are so very grateful for any prayers and support!  We will keep this fundraiser going through the whole month of March.  

In adoption news, we were received our official Pre-Approval (PA) this week, so we can send our little guy packages now.  We are also on our way with our home study and we will prayerfully have that completed soon as well as the remaining dossier documents.  This is such a different process than our Ethiopia process which was so indefinite and obscure for who and when and how long.  I feel like that experience prepared us for the steps that we would go through this time, just at a much faster pace.

I will keep everyone posted about our progress and news.  Thank you so much to everyone!!

"By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures."  Proverbs 24:3-4

Huge News!!

So, I've noticed that whenever I don't write anything for a couple of months, then I am making a big announcement.  Short of moving to another state, this is pretty big and exciting news!  

I will try to make this long story as short as possible.  When we moved to Texas, we were already discussing the possibility of adding on a second and simultaneous adoption.  We knew that Ethiopia was still going to be a wait for a referral more than likely and we were excited about the possibility of adopting a waiting child from another county in the mean time.  So, we knew that we weren't going to do anything definite until we were a little settled in Texas, so we prayed and did a webinar with our agency about a new partnership in China.  We definitely knew that we were interested, so we prayed some more and settled into our new home.  

One of the things that we have always felt very passionate about is that we wanted to be a family who could adopt a child who needed a home.  We did not want to be a family who needed a child to fit into our criteria or meet our need.  This may seem like two ways of saying the same thing, but basically we did not want to create a perfect on paper child and wait for that child to appear.  We wanted to be very open to children who need homes.  For anyone who has gone through adoption you know that this is difficult since you have to fill out tons of forms stating what age, gender, and array of disabilities that you are open to.  

So, fast forward to January and we were ready to begin our home study update process and decide what our home study was focusing on.  We talked to our agency about joining the China program and she asked us if we were interested in pursuing any of the waiting children listed on their website.  More praying, discussing and we decided to pursue a beautiful little boy on the waiting children list!  So, we started madly working on the paperwork since we have now been matched with him and we are working towards getting to go and get a child whose picture we have already seen and whose beautiful little face and heart we are already praying for!!  I want to be careful about how much I share on here about him to keep his details private, but he will be four years old next month and he has had spinal surgery and he walks with braces and a walker.  He is the cutest thing ever and the update received in December calls him a "ball of fire".  

Part two of our news is that we also started getting some emails from our agency about the changes happening in Ethiopia as they work very hard right now to make sure that all adoptions are done ethically.  Although this is always good to make sure that children are protected, while the changes are occurring it usually means lots of slow downs and extra red tape for the families in the process.  Our agency was offering a short term help to parents in the Ethiopia program who wanted to transfer programs to allow our agency fees to transfer.  Although it seemed like such a disappointing way to end our almost three year process of trying to adopt from Ethiopia, we terminated our contract with Ethiopia and switched completely to only pursuing a China adoption.  We of course had very mixed feelings about this after planning and praying for a child from Africa for years, but God asks us to trust.  He does not assure us that we will understand the reasons.  

So, for now please pray for our process, our preparations and most importantly our sweet little boy's heart to be prepared for this big change that he probably does not even know about.  We are looking into some fundraising that we will post about here soon, because we are flying through the process since we are trying to get him as quickly as we can and that does mean that all of the funds are coming due more quickly as we already have a referral.  We have such faith and peace, though about God's provisions for our family to grow in this way.  

Thank you to everyone who has been praying for us and following our journey.  We will keep you posted on our progress.  Oh, and I guess we will also change some things about our blog since we are no longer "blogging our journey to adopt a child from Ethiopia from our home in St. Louis".  

 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.  You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.   Jeremiah 29:11-13

We Don't Know The Ending

I was first introduced to this concept when I studied Esther.  We think of her story as heroic and see God's hand throughout as it all plays out.  However, I had never though about the night that she goes back to her room and has asked for a second dinner with her husband, the king.  What must she be thinking?  What was she questioning God about?  Did she feel hopeless?  We know that while she is back in her room that amazing things are happening and God is most definitely intervening on behalf of her and the other Jewish people of the time.

Bottom line, we love the story because we know the ending.

It got me thinking about other people in the Bible.  What must David been thinking and feeling when he was facing Goliath, when he was crowned king and when his son died?  What about Moses when his world fell apart and he found out he was actually a Hebrew instead of an Egyptian?  What about Naomi when her husband and sons died and she wondered how she would live?  Think about the disciples as they watched or heard about Jesus being crucified-not really believing that it would really happen, that some miracle would be performed and Jesus would be spared, but then he really died and then one day goes by, then two.  In our minds, we skip ahead to the ending because it is so awesome and so amazing that we forget that there were real people who were tormented and thought God had completely abandoned them and that maybe everything they had believed was wrong.

Here's the thing.  We don't know the ending to our life.  We don't know if we are in the part of our life that is right before something amazing happens.  We don't know if our life is going to end up to be something that people will want to read about some day. We don't know how God will work through us to reach others.  We just don't know the ending.  When you know the ending, you can see how everything else has led up to this ending.  It puts all of the pieces together.  We may never get to know our ending or how the pieces played out, but that is where we have to learn from the lives of others to TRUST GOD and put our beginnings, middles and endings in His capable hands.  Why?  Because He already knows the ending.  He knows the beginnings and middles too.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.  Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil.  Proverbs 3:5-7

Well, we're Texans now!

It has been two months since I last posted, but they have been very full months!  We have packed up our whole house in St. Louis, said good bye to all of our friends, family and church there, and headed to Fort Worth, Texas!  We are definitely settling into our house, mainly because we have been iced into it since Thursday.  For our little family living apart for five months, we have gotten to spend a lot of time together lately.  The house is starting to feel like home and we have started homeschooling again and are finding ways to get plugged into life here.

It all feels so different, though, whenever we leave the house.  Not knowing which way to turn, hoping the GPS leads us the right way (which it already hasn't!) and not knowing whether we are close to a grocery store or what cities are far away and which ones are very close.  It's very disorienting and it is a good exercise in not feeling in control.  We both felt God leading us here this year, so we trust in His guidance and wisdom.  We stay focused on the fact that we have family here, we have a wonderful new home, we do have GPS to help, and we do not have a busy schedule, so if it takes us longer to find a place, that is okay.  Since this is our blog to focus on adoption, I cannot help but focus on the small amount of disorienting we are experiencing and comparing it to that of our future children.  We understand the language, we knew what to expect, we could research and plan, we have familiar people around and familiar places.  Our future children will have none of that.  My heart breaks for how lost they will feel and how long it will take to build some trust.  I would love to do whatever I could to prepare them for it now and make it easier.  I do pray often that God will help someone prepare his heart for a new family, for a life in another country, and for him to know that we love him and that God loves him and cares for him so much.

M has been very concerned about our blog and whether we should change the name since we are not living in the Gateway To The West any more.  We are not going to change it, because that is where our journey began.  That is where we began praying about adoption and where we filled out the many forms and had our home study, and even squeaked in a home study update a few months before we moved.  That is where we were married, first lived and where we had our first two children.  No matter where we are, St. Louis is still where we began and, as my friend so beautifully put it, I will be 80 years old before I've been a Texan longer than a Missourian.

We fully expected to bring our son, or children, into our house in St. Louis when we started this process two and a half years ago.  If there is anything I have seen as a common thread through all adoption blogs is the intense lesson of waiting you learn through the process of adoption.  Some things we just have to go through to know what they feel like-waiting, fasting, moving and even the life-changing of giving your life to Jesus Christ.  It's a journey.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.       Romans 15:13

Focus on what you don't have

We hear that we should focus on what we have instead of focusing on what we don't have.  However, sometimes we need to focus on what we do not have in order to be grateful for what we do have. 

Think about things you don't have to do.  I know someone who has to carry her disabled son up stairs in her house every day.  I know someone who has to know the bus schedules in order to take her daughter anywhere or go get groceries.  I know people who have to worry about illness their children have and how that will affect them.  There are people who have to strive to feed their children, have to wonder what they will do if they lose their house, have to go to the laundry mat to do all of the family's clothes, have to send their kids into unsafe situations, have to make incredibly hard decisions and have to deal with constant mourning and grief.  Focusing on these things, makes me pretty grateful for what I don't have.

Think about the things you don't have to experience.  War, abuse, poverty, starvation, sickness, lack of freedom, all things people around the world face every day.  If you look at news picture on the internet, you can see the way so many people live around the world.  I am so thankful I don't live in a war-torn place where I cannot protect or feed my children.

I could go on listing things, but the point is not to feel guilty, but to be grateful.  It makes the little problems in our lives seem so very little.  It also helps us to realize that other people have it rough sometimes, and if we can take some of the blessings and resources that we have and help someone else out, it is how we would want to be treated.  You just never know how much something that we take for granted can mean to someone else. 

 Sing to the Lord with grateful praise;
    make music to our God on the harp.

He covers the sky with clouds;
    he supplies the earth with rain
    and makes grass grow on the hills. 

 He provides food for the cattle
    and for the young ravens when they call.

His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse,

    nor his delight in the legs of the warrior;

the Lord delights in those who fear him,    who put their hope in his unfailing love.                       Psalm 147:7-11