Well, still no court date! At some times I am ok with this. I remember that we are exactly where God wants us to be today. I think about the sermon Pastor Bill preached about God holding governments and rulers’ hearts in His hands and turning them whichever way He desires. I run through all the possible reasons in my mind why we might be waiting….
….what if by waiting God is placing our case directly into the hands of a sympathetic judge? Someone who will approve our adoption right away with no more paperwork or delays!
….what if by waiting we will be able to come home with our oldest daughter because more of her paperwork can be getting completed right now?
….what if by waiting our in-country stay will be only the 3-4 months we are planning on, rather than the 4-6 months that we have seen some adoptive families have?
And then sometimes, I get tired of the “what ifs” and the waiting all together and I just feel like crying! It is a hard balance for me to find. The balance between trusting in the Lord, waiting upon His perfect will for our lives….and my yearning heart that feels overwhelmed with the desire to hold my children. To hug them. To take care of them and love on them and to just be their Mom!
Thank you to everyone who has prayed with us. Please don’t stop! We are pounding on the doors of heaven and asking our God over and over again to move things along in Ethiopia.
Meanwhile, we hosted our final fundraiser. Our Zumbathon was a huge success! Every single thing involved with our event was donated…the facility, the DJ, the decor, the stage, the instructors, the raffle/auction items…EVERYTHING! And we had so many people volunteer their time to pull it off. Here are a few pictures for those of you who couldn’t be there. So sad for you because we sure put the “FUN” back in “FUNdraiser”!
Raffle/Auction Items
Half of my family 🙂
Having Fun On The Dance Floor
The Cutest Dancers
My Dear Friends (just 2 of the MANY volunteers)
My Family, The Instructors, The DJ
I hope to be able to write a blog post VERY SOON telling you that we have our court date!! In the meantime, thank you for everything you are doing to support us. Please keep praying with us!
Sometimes I feel like I am on the receiving end of entirely too many blessings.
*The woman from my gym who came up to me after class and told me she is a swim instructor. Then she told me she wants to donate swim lessons to all of my kids when we get home.
*The owners of my gym – who in 25 years have never hosted a fundraiser at their facility. They offered to host my Zumbathon. And then they called last week and told me they want to pay someone to work the front desk during the event to sell snacks and drinks. And they want to give me 50% of whatever they make.
*The gentleman who wanted to donate to our adoption so he wrote us a check for $20. He post dated it and asked us to wait to deposit until his next pay-day. Talk about giving what you have!
*The family from our church who contacted us after we spoke. Their hearts are being stirred towards adoption and they are praying and asking God what He has planned for them.
*Another adoptive mom who invited me for coffee and told me that anytime I want to cry and scream and complain, just call her and she will let me do just that. And then she will pray for me.
I look back on my lifetime of walking with God and I wonder, have I just never been paying attention before? I have never before seen such obvious movements of God. I have never seen His hand so clearly. I have never felt His presence so closely. I have never watched Him answer prayers in such a direct manner.
And so I am writing tonight to ask something of you. Will you join our family this week in a specific prayer? Please. We have been waiting and hoping and feeling slightly discouraged that we STILL have not received our court date. It has now been 7 weeks since we accepted our referral. We are getting anxious to go to Ethiopia and get our children! So we are praying specifically that we will receive our court date THIS WEEK! Please, will you pray this with us?
This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of Him. (1 John 5:14-15)
I am feeling a bit discouraged today. This waiting thing isn’t all that its cracked up to be! When we received our referral and found out who our children are, our adoption agency submitted us for a court date in Ethiopia. At that point they told us to expect to wait 3-4 weeks until we found out when that court date is, and then another 4 or so weeks until we travel. Well, tomorrow it will be 6 weeks since we were submitted to court. And we just received an email that the courts are requesting two more pieces of paperwork for our file. Once those are turned in, they will assign us a court date. So 6 weeks, and we still don’t know when we are going to see our children! We are still waiting! Waiting for the paperwork to be completed. Waiting to be able to book our plane tickets. Waiting to hug our children for the first time.
I keep reminding myself that God is in control. He knows the days and hours and minutes of our lives and He knows what is best for us. He has been in charge of the timing of every part of this process. But honestly, I am having a hard time with this! I feel like crying!
I am very much a planner. I have my to-do lists organized by the week. I have my days scheduled and I don’t like to be late! I like concrete plans and knowing that things will happen as they are supposed to. So pretty much….all of that is out the window right now. And, being a mom of 6 kids, I have a feeling I won’t get it back anytime soon.
Scott keeps reminding me that when we have six kids, I shouldn’t expect everything to run smoothly all the time. He says it is ok to be late. He says it is ok to have a messy house. In fact, just the other day (and he seriously said this…this was not a joke), he came home from work and told me that he thought it was great that I wasn’t stressing myself out over having a dirty house! He thought I was practicing for the mess that six children will make. But no…I just hadn’t had time to clean up yet after Easter weekend and all of our company.
To try to encourage myself I read an on-line bible study on waiting. Here is what I took away from it…
WAITING and HOPING are wound together like the strands of a rope.
Waiting involves an expectation of something special. Waiting means anticipation, expectation, confident hope in something that will take place. Ultimately, waiting on the Lord is like waiting on the sun to rise—waiting expectantly for the Lord’s answers to human needs as the sun brings the warmth of the day.
The ability to wait on the Lord stems from being confident and focused on who God is and in what God is doing. It means confidence in God’s person: confidence in His wisdom, love, timing, understanding of our situation and that of the world. It means knowing and trusting in God’s principles, promises, purposes, and power.
Thank you God for being exactly who you say you are. Thank you that I can trust that every single one of your promises is true. Thank you for loving me and wanting only the best for me. Please help me to remember this when I am short-sighted and only focused on what I can see. You see ALL and you know ALL. Help me to wait patiently upon you.
This last weekend we had the privilege and blessing of speaking during our church services. We had the opportunity to talk to so many people before and after we spoke and hear how God is working! Here are just a few stories we heard…..
The Mom of 3 adopted children who was remembering her own family’s journey. They came to church on Sunday, April 1 already filled with joy because it was the anniversary of the day they received their referral for their youngest child. She hugged me and promised blessings abundantly that can come only from adoption.
The young lady who was crying the whole time she talked to me about her own adoption journey. She had been adopted from Ecuador and told me she feels thankful every day for the family that God chose for her. She has a huge heart for adoption and was so blessed to see it being spotlighted at our church.
The lawyer for the insurance company in my husband’s automobile accident case. He was the person who received our file just over a year ago and had to pass it on to someone else because he knew us from church. He had been surprised at that time that everything had settled so quickly after they received it. He told us how it was not unusual for it to drag on another year from the point that it crossed his desk. And yet, in God’s timing, it settled the day that we need confirmation for our adoption journey!
I can not tell you how encouraged we were by our church family this weekend! And, of course, how God used them to provide EXACTLY what we needed. When Todd Skinner first asked us the amount of money we had left to raise, we almost didn’t want to tell him. In fact, I think we said something like, “Whatever is raised is more than we have!” But when he asked again we told him it broke down something like this….
Visas for 8 people x $400 each = $3200
Travel vaccinations for our family = $1150
We figured these expenses would be covered by the online button for giving that we opened on our blog.
In-country travel package from our adoption agency(including lawyer fees and government fees)Â = somewhere around $3000-$5000
We figured this would be covered by our Zumbathon fundraiser.
What was left?
$15,000 for plane tickets + $5,000 to stay in Ethiopia for three months = $20,000
And what did God provide through our church family?
$20,387.54
Nothing is too big for our God to handle! We want to say thank you to each and every person who has been a part of our story. We don’t even know all of your names, but we feel your support. We can not wait to walk the hallways of our church with all 6 of our children trailing behind us!!
Scott and I met in high school. He was this sweet, nerdy computer kid who went home after our first date and said, “I am going to marry that girl!” We dated for three years and got married at the ripe old ages of 19 (me) and 20 (him). We had no clue what we were doing but we loved each other, we loved our God, and we believed that we had met the person He had picked just for us. We balance each other perfectly. Scott is easy-going and lets things just roll off his back. I am fiery and opinionated. He is patient and I am intense. He is messy and likes to leave things out around the house for easy access. I am neat and like to clean up after him. (Well, that might not be exactly true.) He relies on me to show him the silver lining in every situation, to remind him the glass is half full, and to bring laughter to his life. I rely on him for his level-headed approach to every situation, for his unselfish way of moving through life, and to bring peace and stability to my crazy days. Together, we form this amazing team. I can not imagine walking through this journey with anyone else by my side.
When we started dating, I joined Scott at his youth group and started attending church with him at Neighborhood Church of Redding. We were mentored in high school ministry with Randy Winton, had pre-marital counseling with our pastor Dale Edwardson, joined the young married sunday school with Dave Hall, worked in children’s ministry under Mark Wood, started a young families bible study in our home, and have felt in every way a part of our church family. We have so many years and love and ties at this church that it feels like home.
When we received our referral, we thought about asking our pastor if we could mak an announcement about our fundraising efforts. Or maybe we could at least print our fundraiser in the weekly bulletin. But God had something even better planned. We got a call asking if we would mind sharing our story with our church family during ALL 5 of the weekend services. Would we mind? Would we mind talking about all the blessings we have received through this journey? Would we mind sharing how God has moved in very real ways in our lives? I often think about our story in this way….our lives are like a lake that God is dropping little stones of miracles and blessings into. My desire is to have the ripples from those blessings spread out and touch as many people as possible. Maybe this might cause someone to pause and be more aware of all that God is doing. Every day, in every life, God is working. How is He working in your life? Or better yet, how might He use you to work in someone else’s?
So this coming weekend we will be sharing God’s workings in the Putnam family with our church. Even if you don’t normally attend church, we invite you to come. Come and listen and hopefully be blessed like we are every day!
*When I was showing off the pictures of our new beautiful children and someone commented, “I can see the family resemblance. They look just like Scott….bald!”
*When we were playing a family game of charades after dinner one night. It had been a long day of filling out paperwork and placing phone calls! As I stand up to start my turn, my son yells out his first guess, “A tired woman!”
*When Scott asked me with a straight face and serious voice, “Do you think we should tell them they are adopted? Or wait until they are older?”
*When we came home from a date and found this picture……(the kids were learning Amharic)
*When I told God at the beginning of this journey, “Two children God, maybe three. But no more than that! I absolutely put my foot down. I could never take four more children!”
Hahaha! God…you sure have a sense of humor! Here we are now, praying and hoping to be able to bring home all four of these beautiful children. It is amazing how God will change your heart. He used other people, books I read, my husband, and ultimately the Holy Spirit to change my heart according to His will.
This is not to say that I don’t get scared sometime looking into the future. I wonder if I can handle this! When I think about the challenge of raising 6 kids I can freak myself out.
Things I get nervous about….
*The language barrier and communicating when 4 of my children don’t speak English yet.
*Dealing with the inevitable grief and bonding issues that our new children will have.
*HOMESCHOOLING (this is a big area of fear for me) all 6 of our kids.
*The amount of food I am going to have to be buying and cooking and how much time I will have to spend in the kitchen.
*If I will have enough patience and be able to speak kindly and calmly to my children in the midst of the chaos.
*How messy my house might become and if I will be able to handle that mess without stress.
But you know what? That is part of the reason I started this blog. To be able to remind myself when I think I can’t handle it all…this was God’s plan for me. I keep thinking of that saying, “He won’t bring you to it unless He can bring you through it.” And really, what do I have to complain about?
These last two years I have watched two of my very best friends deal with their husband’s cancer. I have seen them cry over the doctor’s words. I have seen them lovingly minister to their husband’s failing bodies. I have seen them sleep-deprived and bleary-eyed because they were up all night helping manage their husband’s pain. I have seen them say good-bye to the men they love and plan funerals. And I have seen them rely on the only One who can be our strength in times like that. They are examples to me of grace under pressure. Of peace in the midst of the storm. Oh that I would rely fully on God for everything I need, just as my dear friends do everyday!
When we first started talking about the possibility of staying in Ethiopia for the three months while we waited for our children’s paperwork to be cleared, I admit that on my part, it was all about me. I wanted to keep my kids close. I didn’t want to meet them and then leave them. IÂ wanted help with the language. And the culture. And the transition. All of those things are still true. I am so excited about the thought of not having to leave my children in the orphanage for an extra three months. I can’t wait to hold them and hug them and not have to leave them behind.
But an interesting thing has happened. While we have been busy planning out the details and figuring out all that needs to be figured out for us to do this, God has been busy working on my heart.
When Scott and I got married, he was very open with the fact that he felt called to missions. One day, he told me, we would spend some time overseas doing missions work. He didn’t know when or what that would look like, but he was sure of what God had placed in his heart. I just nodded politely, smiled quietly, and inside kept thinking, “We’ll just see about that!”
But just as God opened my heart to the idea of adopting four children, He has also burdened my heart for the people of Ethiopia. I am amazed and humbled that I will get the opportunity to live and work in Ethiopia for three months. I am so thankful that we will get to be God’s hands and feet for just a few of the people who so desperately need to feel His love. What an opportunity it is to leave behind all that we know, the comforts of home, the security of the familiar and to step into this other world for this short time in our lives!
Honestly, part of the excitement for me is knowing that this is for just a short time and knowing that eventually I will get to come home to all that is “safe.” But I can say now, as I have never been able to say before, that my heart is much more open to the idea of missions than it has ever been. I heard a pastor say once (and have always remembered this), that the safest place to be is in the center of God’s will for you. Who knows what God has planned for our future? Certainly a year ago I would never imagine that we would be traveling to Ethiopia, spending three months working with the orphans and widows there, and come home with four new children!
Here is a short video about the capital city of Addis Ababa, the place that we will be calling home for a short time. Please take the next 5 minutes to watch this. And then pray about what God might be asking you to do. Not necesarrily for these people or this country, but what does God want from YOU? How can YOU be His hands and feet?
When we decided to adopt from Ethiopia, we knew that we would be required to make 2 trips. The first trip is about a week in length. This is when we get to meet our children for the first time. We spend a few days together at the Transition Home where they are living (kind of like an orphanage but for the children who will be adopted into families soon). We go to court and if everything goes as planned, the judge signs all the paperwork to make the children legally ours! It is after this court date that we will be able to post photos of our new kids.
But, after they are legally ours, they are still not allowed to travel outside the country until all of their paperwork is in order. We have to apply for visas and passports and wait on the embassy to clear them to leave for the United States. This process usually takes about three months. During this time, our kids would stay at the Transition Home and we would wait in U.S. until we get the call that they are cleared to travel! Then we would fly back to Ethiopia and bring them home.
Almost from the very beginning, my husband and I have been talking about our crazy plan. What if we stayed in Ethiopia with our children for the three months that we are waiting for their paperwork to clear? What if we could all move into a home together and start getting to know each other? What if we could have help with the language and the culture and start bonding while we are in an environment somewhat familiar to our children?
We started praying about it. A lot! Our prayers went something like this….
“God, this would be wonderful! This would be amazing! This is crazy but we would love to do it! If this is your plan, please make it all work out. If this is not your plan, we will know because we for sure can’t make it all work out ourselves!”
If our new family of 8 was going to stay in Ethiopia for three months, we needed a safe and affordable place to live. We also wanted to find a ministry opportunity for our family to serve in while we were there. We found all of these things through God’s direction to Levi and Jessie Benkert.
Levi and Jessie and their four children have been living in Addis Ababa since 2009. They moved there because God called them to serve the widows and orphans of Ethiopia. They started a ministry called Bring Love In. Here is an excerpt from their website…
We are Levi and Jessie Benkert, and even though it still sounds crazy to us every time we say it, we live in Ethiopia with our four children. We are still not sure what part is more unbelievable, the fact that we have four children or that we call a place like Ethiopia home. Since 2009, we have lived here to work with children who have been orphaned and have no families to care for them.
Together, we are doing our best to advance the work that Bring Love In is taking on in Ethiopia. As a family, we have devoted our lives to finding better ways to give orphans the love they deserve. It’s not always easy – and, at times, just plain frustrating, but we are passionate about the call we feel God has placed on our lives. We strive to do what we can with what we’ve been given.
Our family has lived in Ethiopia for the past two years. During that time, we have met countless orphaned children on the streets, children we wanted to help. However, when we’d try to do something, we’d always run into the same problem: Even though these children wanted to be in a safe orphanage, they could not be placed. They could not, because every single one of the orphanages, private and government, is already full.
In Africa, nearly 12% of the children have lost at least one parent, and Ethiopia has one of the highest orphan rates of any African country. To make things worse, the orphan population in Ethiopia is growing exponentially as HIV and malnutrition run rampant among the population. The infrastructure simply does not exist to care for the children who are left alone when their parents die.
We know that it’s always staggering to hear these numbers – overwhelming really. But when you come right down to it, it’s not about numbers. It’s about each and every one of these children, each orphan forced to grow up on the streets – each one a child, a person, God’s creation, no matter where he or she was born.
I have met with government officials and was told that the need for new orphan care projects is so great in this country that, in Addis Ababa alone, if we were to build to the capacity of two thousand children, the orphanage could be filled to capacity in less than six months. Of course, we would love to meet the needs of each and every one of these children, however we are going to start out smaller and build from there.
Through God’s providence, we “met” the Benkert family via facebook. Take a look at this chain of God connections….my mom sent out a christmas letter to all of her friends that included the news of our adoption. Her pastor from 23 years ago who lives in Oregon read the letter and told my mom about his daughter who is living in Texas. His daughter had a friend who was adopting from Ethiopia. This friend had a blog. I started following the blog. I asked this friend about a place to stay in Ethiopia. She gave me Levi and Jessie’s name and the name of their ministry. I then sent Levi a message. From that very first message I knew we were on to something special.
For the past three weeks we have been corresponding about our possible place in their ministry. I will boil all of our conversations and plans down to this. Our family will be living in an unfurnished guest house one block away from the Benkert family home. This is also in the same neighborhood as the intake center for Bring Love In. While we are in Ethiopia, we will be working on furnishing the guest home and getting it ready to open by the end of summer. When this guest home is open, the income provided from it will help to fund their ministry. We will also be helping in whatever areas are needed most by Levi and Jessie with Bring Love In.
Not only are we so excited about this wonderful ministry, but we are also so excited to live and work closely with this amazing family. They have children close to our children’s ages. They have experience in this culture and knowledge of this language. They have a passion for orphans and widows. And they have a love for the Lord that can be felt from half a world away. I am so thankful that God saw fit to introduce us!
Our care packages were delivered to our children!! The wonderful family who delivered them for us sent pictures and video of the event. I so wish I could share all those amazing pictures and videos of our beautiful children. I sat at my computer and cried happy tears when I watched the little 30-second video over and over again! The thought that kept crossing my mind was, “They look so happy!” My kids all had smiles from ear to ear as they unpacked their little bags and looked at their new treasures. And little Micah pulled out his photo album, held it up for all to see, and I heard someone say in the background, “That is your family!” What an amazing thought! They were seeing pictures of their new family for the first time!
Here is one picture I can share with you…..
Are those not the most beautiful brown hands you have ever seen?
It seems like we are living in fast-forward mode these days. Everything is happening all at once. I will share more next week about what God is doing because He is pretty awesome! But let me just say this, it looks like we will be living in Ethiopia for about three months. Doesn’t that sound amazing? I am reminded again and again that our God “is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think” – Ephesians 3:20
Ethiopia has opposite days and nights from us – they are 10 hours ahead. This means that tonight while I sleep our children will receive their packages. They will get to open up those ziplock bags and hopefully they will feel all of the love that we poured into them. We sent the packages and the videos with a family that is in Ethiopia right now getting ready to bring home their newest addition – a little boy! And this family is delivering our love to our children and taking pictures for us.
I keep thinking about it. How will our kids respond to this? While we are hoping they will feel excited and loved and special, I am sure they are also feeling scared and unsure and sad. They are both joining a new family and losing their old one. They are rejoicing at the chance for a new life in a new country, and grieving the loss of their homeland and their people. We are feeling so blessed to be able to adopt these beautiful children, and yes they are blessed to be able to leave the orphanage and join our family, but all of this blessing stems out of sorrow. The sorrow of losing their mother and father. The sorrow of poverty.
For our adoption video, I chose the song Beautiful Things by Gungor as the background music.
Here are the lyrics….
All this pain
I wonder if I’ll ever find my way
I wonder if my life could really change at all
All this earth
Could all that is lost ever be found
Could a garden come up from this ground at all You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us All around Hope is springing up from this old ground
Out of chaos life is being found in You
This is my prayer for my children. That God would make beautiful things spring up out of the dust of their lives. That He would trade their ashes for beauty, their sorrow for rejoicing. That our family can be a place of healing and fill their lives with joy.
Here is the letter that we included with our package. This is what my children will be reading tonight while I sleep.
To Our Dear Beautiful Children,
We are so excited that you will get to be a part of our family. We have been praying for you for a long time now. The first time we heard your names and saw your pictures, our hearts melted! We can hardly wait to see you and give you a hug! You will love living with us and we already love you. There is so much we would like to tell you. We can’t wait for you to meet your new sister Hannah (she is 7 years old) and your new brother Joel (he is 10 years old). Both of them are so excited to meet you!
We promise that we will always love you and take good care of you. We are so happy that you will be a part of our family. Even though you don’t know us yet, we already consider you to be our precious children who we love with all of our hearts. We pray for you every day. We look at your pictures all the time and hope that you are happy and have everything you need. We are working hard to come get you soon and bring you home with us. We promise that we will not leave you there, we will come get you and love you forever.
We live in a small town. We have lots of land for you to play on and a swimming pool to swim in. We sent you some pictures of us and Joel and Hannah and our house. We know that having a new family is probably scary but do not be afraid. We will always keep you safe and give you what you need and love you and take care of you. You are so special to us and so precious. Together we will be a very happy family. We will have a lot of fun together and will play a lot of games together and watch movies and read books and laugh together a lot. When you are sad we will wipe away your tears and give you hugs and hold you close until you feel better.
We love you so much our two handsome boys and our beautiful girl. We will never stop loving you. We are coming soon.
Love,
Mommy and Daddy
By the way, my husband wrote that letter. Isn’t he an amazing man?
