Lux et umbra vicissum…

The big, multifamily yard sale at Round Hill Ruritans club was yesterday.  It was pretty big, all right.  Inside, there were nine tables set up, and outside were… a bunch.  I was inside so I only saw the outside vendors from the window.  I was just as glad I was inside… they said it was pretty hot out there.

Say I had gone into the sale, sold every single item I had brought with me, and also managed to collect thousands of dollars in donations.  Would that have been a success?

Say I had gone into the sale, not sold anything, but had caused a revival in the town by sharing my testimony and exhorting everyone to trust in God.  Would that have been a success?

So now, say I went to the sale, sold a few things and made just slightly over $100, and also made some friends and had the opportunity to share some of my testimony but without being able to see the results.  Would you consider that a success?

I guess what it comes down to for me is that I could get depressed about not selling much and not feeling like I shared my faith with many, or I could figure that I prayed before, during, and after the sale as well as having the prayers of friends and family behind me and I looked for the opportunities open to me, so I did what I could with what I was given.  That seems more like success to me.  Doing the best you can in any given situation.

But we still need a lot more money for the adoption…

You’d think if I determined I had the body of a goddess I’d be pleased. It’s just tough luck that when I get a goddess body, it turns out to be modeled after the fertility goddesses… [Read more →]

Joel’s at work, and now that Eli’s not eating Desta’s chapstick the kids all seem to be playing quietly for a moment.  I shall try to seize that moment….

Adoption:

Home study update, which should have been done long ago, is finally within reach.  *pause to change a stinky diaper*  All we need, I think, is Joel’s medical and to find out why the pediatrician didn’t say when the kids’ last tb tests were done (I was pretty sure they had them for the last adoption, both on our end and on the Ethiopian end.)  *pause to explain to Charis why she and Eli can’t go outside to play by themselves*

Dossier has been coming together piece by piece.  We haven’t felt rushed on it since it can’t go anywhere until the fees are paid.  We’ve started getting a couple of donations (thank you to those who have sent them!), and the big yard sale is this Saturday.

Yard Sale: if anyone’s in the area and wants to come to the sale (the one where I’ll be selling a bunch of Ethiopian hand-made things), it’s actually taking place just west of Winchester.  I figured it was in Round Hill since it’s being coordinated by the Round Hill Ruritans club, but apparently they have a building just off of Rt. 50 west of Winchester.  Amusingly, it’s on Poorhouse Rd. (going west on 50 you’d turn left).  I don’t know if the name is a bad omen or if it’ll draw more donations.

Current Praises and Prayer Requests:

The van is a huge praise!  *pause to stop Charis from playing with the screen door*  The Lord led us to one that we could manage to get without a loan by trading in our minivan.  Of course, it makes things rather tight for now because it took the rest of our savings as well as the trade-in, but that should be temporary and *pause to explain to Eli why he can’t go outside with just Charis* we won’t have any extra monthly payments to make which is just about priceless.  Thank you, Lord!

Praise the Lord for His provision thus far!  I haven’t always been able to figure out where the money came from, but we’ve had what we needed to cover bills as well as the extra things that have been required for the adoption so far (like the home study).  It’s all the Lord’s blessing.  I’m constantly amazed by how freely He’s been choosing to bless us.

*pause to let Eli know that, yes, I see his toy car*  *pause to explain to Charis AGAIN why she can’t go outside without supervision*  Praise the Lord for inexpensive used dressers!  We were able to buy two for a good price, so now we should have space to put things for L and B.  *pause to stop the screaming and give the toy back to Charis that Eli took*  I was able within a couple of months to get a bunch of used clothes and have been putting them through the wash, so now I can fold them up and actually put them away.  Btw, I found that if I put clothes through the washer two times with regular detergent, oxy-clean, and clorox 2 on “heavy soil” setting, it tends to get rid of the smoke smell.   *pause to make Charis give Eli the glittery purse she said she’d give him so he’ll stop screaming*  In case you’re wondering, we didn’t get both dressers for L and B.  One is for them, the other will probably be in the nursery.  Up till now all of the kids have shared two largish dressers *pause to zip up fuzzy purse and tell Alexis that she can’t take a large toy castle up to her room* which have served just fine during the warm weather months but which don’t hold everything in the winter.   With two more children coming in, it seemed prudent to try for two more dressers.  One is bigger than the other, so the bigger one will go in the room with the four children, and the smaller will go in the room with three.

Praise the Lord for the healing work He’s done in my grandmother!  She’s still in ICU, but has been progressing well and I’m hoping she’ll be able to move to the step-down unit soon.  She needs to get off the ventilator completely, I think, before they’ll move her.  They take her off of it for a certain period of time each day to build up her lungs, but I think she’s still on it when she sleeps.  She’s awake a lot of the time now, though, and is to the point of whispering to people (she can’t talk with the trach in), smiling, and even laughing at times!   *pause to put in a Psalty CD*

Please continue to pray for the funds to come in for our adoption.  God is in control and it’s all in His timing, but the girls in Ethiopia get more and more discouraged as time goes on and they see all of their friends leaving and new people coming in… and them leaving, too.  I know God can and will use this time for His purposes, but it’s hard to think of them over there waiting… and waiting… and waiting.  I haven’t yet heard how sick L is, either.  I’m going to try to get in touch with our case worker about it again today.  I’m assuming that if she was terribly ill we would have heard, but it’s hard to tell with this process.  There are so many communication breakdowns along the way.

Please pray for L and B.  This waiting time is harder on them than it is on us.  At least we have plenty to keep us busy.

Please pray for *pause to unsuccessfully hunt down and kill a bug for Eli* the sale on Saturday.  Not only is it an opportunity to raise some funds and spread word of our need, it’s also a wonderful chance to share our testimony thus far.   Please pray that the Lord brings the people to the sale who can most be touched by our adoption story and that He would give me wisdom and discernment when talking with people.

Ok, now I really should go and do some more laundry.  I think I’ll do a few smoke-free loads before starting another two-timer.  Wow… as if we didn’t have a lot of laundry before!  I guess I better get used to it, huh?

PRAISE THE LORD!!!!!

He (he’s way to large and clunky to be a girl) has been christened “Red Rover” by Alexis.

God is awesome!!!!!  Now to focus those prayers on the adoption funds coming in…

Please pray over us and our Ethiopian items for next Saturday, August 24th!  I managed to procure an indoor table at a large community yard sale in Round Hill, VA, and I’ll be setting up to sell all of the items I brought back from Ethiopia (except one statue which my father-in-law very kindly purchased for me so I wouldn’t have to give it up).   I’m no good at advertising, but the group running the yard sale is advertising it and said they usually bring in a pretty good crowd.  My thinking, however, is that prayer is better even than advertising.  Not that we shouldn’t do any advertising at all for things, but since I know that’s not where my gifts lie and since I know others are handling it to some extent, I’ll focus on the prayer part.  After all, it’s God who can bring the right people in to purchase things and/or donate to the cause.

I made up a poster that tells people where their money will be going, but I can’t show it here since it has the girls’ pictures on it.  I did take pictures of the main things I’ll be selling, though, and I can post those.  I’m also planning on having a box of miscellaneous yard sale items that people can paw through and pay whatever they think something’s worth if they want it.  Those items were all going to be donations to Good Will or some such place anyway, so anything we get for them is bonus.

Here are the Ethiopian items I’m selling:

hand-woven baskets, trivets, coasters…

hand-woven loose-knit Ethiopian scarves…

hand-woven Ethiopian traditional scarves (which also make nice table runners)…

and one 13″ hand-carved ebony statue…

Please pray with me that God would bring people to the sale who are interested in these items or who will be moved to donate to our adoption.  God is a miracle worker, and He can do anything.  If He wishes, He could bring in the whole $15,000 in one fell swoop!  Not that it’s my expectation, but I certainly don’t want to limit Him!

That’s really what she looked like yesterday after I braided and beaded her hair and had her all dressed for church. Eli insisted on being in the picture, too…

Charis (sitting at the dinner table): My food will help me grow up!

Me: Yes.

Charis: And then I will get to wear pull-ups! And then I will get to wear panties! (At this point she starts getting very excited and clapping her little hands) And then I get to go on the POTTY TRAIN!!!

I haven’t figured out quite yet how to break it to her that potty training doesn’t involve an actual train…

I so much want to call someone and chat right now.  It’s not that I have no friends in the world, it’s just that the two or three I’m closest to aren’t home right now.  Cursed jobs that take my friends away from their telephones!

My back is bad again.  I twisted it a couple days ago searching for a book that Alexis had lost.  (Somehow I managed to pull a muscle in my lower back by climbing her bunk bed and trying to avoid hitting my head on the ceiling fan.)  Anyway, I’m limited in what I can do which is frustrating.  The older three folded my clean towels for me (folding is a chore they still enjoy, especially towels which they can do without help), and the younger two switched my laundry with me supervising.  Since I have the front load washer and dryer now they can pretty much do it themselves (though half of the time that it takes for them to put the wet clothes in the dryer is spent pushing the button that turns the light on and off inside the drum).  Anyway, they were a good help for the laundry chores, but now that that’s going I can’t think of much else that I can take on with or without their help.  I have cleaning I want to do, but it all involves bending or twisting.   Well, maybe it’ll be feeling well enough in another day or so to get more things done.  In the meantime… look out ebay!  I’m on the hunt for clothes for the new girls!

Swim lessons…

A (chicken) pox on Eli!

And this past week was VBS. I volunteered to work in the nursery, but due to there being plenty of workers in nursery and my almost-kindergartener throwing a fit, I ended up transferring to kindergarten. I learned something very valuable – large groups of small children don’t scare me like they used to. They still exhaust me, but they don’t scare me. I actually had a pretty good time helping in their class, even having a few little troublemakers in there. (Yes, there was one fist-fight, but I broke it up right away and the parents of the children involved didn’t seem surprised.)

My grandmother has gone through at least 3, maybe 4 times where the doctors didn’t think she was going to make it. The most recent of these times was last week when they found she had developed a perforation in her colon. They had to do emergency surgery to remove her colon (she now has an ileostomy) and the doctor didn’t think her body could take another surgery. But there was a lot of prayer going on, and God brought her through it. Since then, she’s improved dramatically. She can now sit in a recliner some days, she’s responding more (nodding and shaking her head, lifting her hand sometimes, etc.), and it seems like she’s trying to talk sometimes. She has a trach in now, so she can’t talk at this point. They’re planning on putting on the flappy thing that allows the person to close the trach and talk, but the first one they tried was too large so they need to get a smaller one fitted. We’re all looking forward to that. At this point we’re not sure how many people she actually recognizes or if she’s just responding to people sweetly like she normally would without knowing who’s talking to her. Once she can talk we should be able to find out. She’s still in ICU for now, but maybe they’ll be able to move her to the step-down unit soon.

And we’re almost finished with our adoption paperwork. We’ve finished the required training now. We just need to get a couple more clearances and letters from agencies and I think we’ll be done. We’ve looked at several vans, too, but we haven’t found the right one yet. (In other words, they’re all too expensive or too… er… well-used.) Anyway, the main thing now is to somehow come up with the more than $15000 we need to send in our dossier. I can’t wait to find out what this testimony will be!

A new friend came to visit today! Here’s a couple of pictures of him…

Though we enjoyed the visit (the kids loved it!), we decided that our friend should probably be moving along his way. Joel and I then spent about a half hour chasing him around the yard trying to catch him in a bin so we could relocate him. He started out not minding us at all (he was a very mild mannered black snake), but after we had tried to direct him by poking him with pieces of wood and such he started getting annoyed. The way we finally got him was by taking advantage of his coils when he got upset. Joel managed to slip a long narrow board under one and he lifted him up bodily and dropped him in the bin at which point I very quickly threw on the lid. (We had gotten him in the bin at least twice before that but couldn’t get the lid on fast enough.) Joel then took him back into the woods a ways and let him go there. I’m sure he’ll like his new home.