Back by Popular Demand

In case you did not know, well since we did not tell you so I guess it is our fault, but honestly this really just happened, we are going through training to become foster parents. Charles and I have been discussing our desire to adopt and started to look into some agencies and the process. Well, turns out that Maggie is too young to start the process for some agencies, that in combination to the cost factor we just would not be able to do adoption (international) in the near future. So we put this on the back-burner keeping it in our thoughts and trusting that when the time is right we would go for it and God will provide, 'cause lets be honest we don't have that kind of money laying around. 

We have also discussed foster care before, but at the time it did not seem to be what we really wanted to do as much as adoption. This was until the South Riding Expo. While working for the Gateway booth Charles spoke to someone who works for a local private foster care agency. They were looking to make a presentation at our church, apparently they need more foster parents for the 7,000 children who are in foster care in Virginia. 

Charles told me this when I stopped by to visit and we had some more questions that he asked and again we did not think this was something we would be able to do. Apparently there can only be two kids to a bedroom and since we already have two (even though neither sleep in their own bed) and my brother has the third room we technically did not have any space to foster. However, we were eligible to do respite care. All you need is a couch for these kids to crash on for any where from one night a month to no more than 29 nights. This is for the kids who are being placed with a family or to provide the foster family a break on weekends or if they are going out of town and the caseworker will not give permission for the child to go also.

So we went to the informational meeting prepared to go through the training to do respite and come to find out that children under 18 months can actually "live" in the parents  bedroom, which allows us the opportunity to foster one child for a while until Maggie gets the heave hoe (are you laughing that this is never going to happen also?) 

So far we are going to finish our last night of training tonight. We still have to have a Safe Crisis Training class and a class that basically goes over medications and how to administer them and what not. Plus we need to do paperwork and a homestudy, which should start in about a week and take about three weeks to complete, fingerprints, CPR classes and all sorts of fun stuff. We are moving along and I would say no later than the end of July we could have a placement. 

According to our trainer most of the children they place are 8 and above. Unless there is and older sibling in school it is hard to detect any abuse. They get all sorts of cases, mom running a prostitution ring, physical abuse, drug abuse and sexual abuse. The goal for 90% of the children coming into care is reunification with their parents. Currently it is more like 50-60% actually are reunited. At age 14 they start preparing the children for independent living by teaching them basic life skills for when they are aged out of foster care. Basically after about age 13 these kids have no change of being adopted.  Virginia gives the parents multiple chances to regain custody of their children so they might enter care at 9 and be 14 by the time their parents rights are terminated and are then probably left in foster care until they reach 18. Right now we are open to male and female through age 12 and female from there up (they also work with teen mothers) 

We are excited to see how this goes. If I did not answer your specific question just let me know!

Please keep us in our prayers as I am sure there are some crazy and exciting and rewarding times ahead!

Learning Not to Be Selfish

Meet the Rudy's. These are some good friends of ours that we had to selflessly allowed to leave us less than 24 hours ago. While we hold on to hope that we will get to visit with them again soon, it is not the same as knowing they are down the street and we will see them at least weekly for great fellowship. They have the cutest kids and are always willing to lend a helping hand or a shoulder to lean on. 

Do the Rudy's sound to good to be true? Well what if I add the fact that while we selfishly want to keep them to ourselves, they are unselfishly moving to Uganda to help others? I know! Here I am struggling daily with how I can help my self, make my world more comfortable and they are giving up everything and everyone they know to go across the world to help people they have never met! We send our prayers and wish them a smooth transition to their new life and that God will watch over them and provide them with everything they need; in particular some decent friends (we need them to want to come back) that will help them from getting to homesick.

The Rudy's are moving to Uganda because of an amazing organization called International Justice Mission, IJM. 

 

This video pretty much sums up how awesome IJM is. Located throughout the world they deal in the areas of sexual violence, slavery, illegal detention, police brutality, illegal property seizure and sex trafficking. You can get all sorts of information at ijm.org.

 It is only after we realize what amazing thing it is that Jesse will be doing that we can get past our sadness at losing them and look forward to seeing how God is going to use him to work in the lives of others.  

Have Some Compassion

I am a bleeding heart. There is nothing around it. I cry during sad movies, when other people are crying, during Extreme Home Makeover and most of all during Compassion Sunday. Even though I may cry at the drop of a hat Charles has never cried. Ever. (I may have seen a single tear drop once, but if I wrote that he would deny it until his ending days, saying he had something in his eye) So when Charles and I turned to each other after the request for help and said so how many? Not do you want to think about maybe, one day, in the future sponsoring a child. We wanted to know how much of our own comfort did we want to give up in order to sponsor as many children as possible. Now I will be honest we only are sponsoring one child, but we want to be able to continue our tithe to our own church, feed our own kids (I don't think Compassion has a local Virginia chapter) and we wanted the opportunity to help in other areas.  

If you want to learn more about Compassion International and how you can help visit www.compassion.com You can view images of the children who are waiting to be sponsored. While not as moving as Compassion Sunday, the faces of these children reach out and tug on your heart. 

A New Look

So, again a lot has happened since I last posted. Mainly we did welcome Margaret to the world in December. She is now almost four months old and greatly loved by her big brother.

While I would like to use this blog to keep people updated with current photos and information about what is going on in our lives I also would like to use it for another purpose. Hopefully, either way I will actually get around to keeping it updated.

Lately I have been wrestling with how I can reach others outside of my little world. I spend my days either alone with the kids or at my parents house. I do not really come into contact with anyone else outside the house. This makes it hard to really make an impact on anyone else's lives. Last night I finally made the decision to use my endless unproductive hours spent on the internet as a way to reach out to others. By way of this blog, email, and perhaps even my Facebook account I would like to touch others lives with information that has touched mine. 

In the past couple of months I have grown a heart for the children of Africa, namely those in Ethiopia. It probably greatly has to do with the fact that two families from our home-fellowship have either adopted from there or are in the process of adopting from Ethiopia. Without knowing these friends my heart would not bleed for these children who faces have become  ingrained in my mind. I want to help these beautiful children, but I also realize that I cannot do much by myself. This is where my lovely friends come into help. 

Whether we talk daily or you are just reading this because you are curious about what I was writing, you can help. Get involved or  follow along with what I hope will be a journey in helping others. You can even pass along information or connect to my blog so that we can make a spider web of connections.

We must start somewhere and what better place then with Bale.

Drawn from Water from Drawn From Water on Vimeo.

This beautiful child was going to be thrown into the Omo River to die because her top teeth grew in before her bottom teeth. Bale is the first child they have been able to save from superstition that runs deep in rural Ethiopia. This child was just saved within the past few months and has spurred the creation of the Drawn From Water orphanage. To hear more of the story and how you can help visit www.drawnfromwater.com

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress

James 1:27