Fost-adopt update: Meeting with Rolf

"So how did the meeting go?"

Without a doubt yesterday was wonderful! I got up and changed shirts about 3 times before I was satisfied. (Partly because I couldn't decide how casual or dressy I should be and partly because of the bad sunburn on my back.) After finally picking a shirt I proceeded to iron it. For anyone other than Steve or my mother this is a big statement. I NEVER iron. I must have been anxious. Shortly after my nicely pressed shirt was completed we headed out the door for Sebestaphol. It's a little town about an hour or so north of where we live. After getting turned around several times we figured out where we were going and grabbed breakfast at the McDonald's just down the road. Once we finally got our order (and I mean finally! How long does it take to make a sausage biscuit?) we quickly ate and showed up right on time for our meeting. We took turns describing what we imagined Rolf to look like. I suggested 35 skinny and balding. Steve felt he would look 40-45 and chunky. It turns our in reality our Rolf was quite normal in body build with a full head of hair (mostly gray) and a full beard. He told us at some point in the meeting that he was 57 years old. So we were both way off. Personality wise we were a bit more on par. He was super sweet and comfortable to talk too. While we don't think after talking he is a Christian he is surly a person of peace.

He began the meeting by asking us if we had any pressing questions. We had some but felt that if he went over the process it might answer some of them. He slowly walked us through the process and shared potential scenarios with us of things that might happen. After sharing he gave us time to ask a few of our unanswered questions and then gave us a few minutes alone to discuss and make sure that this is what we want. We shared we sill wanted to move forward in the process and that led to a mound of paperwork. Half of the paperwork we filled our at the office. The other half he sent home with us.

Things we learned that surprised and encouraged us

The process of adoption is much shorter than we expected. Each child's parents are given 6-18 months to meet the requirements that will allow them to get their children back. If in that time frame they have not been able to get their act together they are offered to us for adoption. Once we agree it is then a 6 month process until the adoption is completed. So the entire process could be completed in 1-2 years. There is risk involved no matter how low risk they believe the child is. This is because at any point if the child's relative wants to keep them they get first choice in adoption. Please pray with us that the child who we receive will stay with us.

We also were encouraged by the prudent parenting law. This allows us to leave our child with an adult we trust for less than 24 hours without having to get them fingerprinted. It also allows us to have guests in our home for less than a month without having to have them fingerprinted. We are so grateful that our friends and family who want to help us will not have to hassle with red tape.

One last very cool thing we learned is that can travel with our child before the adoption is completed. For example if we want to vacation back to Mississippi or Washington we can bring them with us! The court simply has to approve it. 

Most people have been asking us, "what's the next step in the process?" 

The  answer is filling out all the forms we were given. This includes 75 essay questions on our life, getting a physical, a financial form, getting finger printed, drawing a floor plan of our house, going to the DMV (YUCK!!!!), paperwork for our employer to fill out, emergency contact information, and instructions on how to prep our house for an inspection. (Feeling a bit overwhelmed just thinking about it all!) Once this is all completed and submitted we are then going to be assigned our social worker (Rolf will be their supervisor.) She will then come to our home for the home study. Much to my surprise this does not mean an inspection. She will be coming to "interview" us over a series of meetings in order to write a 15 page document on us that will be sent out to agencies looking to place children. Once our home study is complete we will go to our intensive 18 hour training weekend. We have several other training events to attend after that and then we will be certified! So we still have a long way to go but we are so excited about what lies ahead of us in the next few months. We are still on track for a January or February placement of a child!!!

Well I guess it's time to start working on all this paperwork I have have instead of just blogging about it! We love you all and want to thank everyone who sent us encouraging messages last Thursday. It is such a blessing to know we're not in it alone!

Ps. if you're interested in doing foster-care or fost-adopt yourself in California check out: http://www.tlc4kids.org/

San Diego Mission Trip

Last week Steve and I had the chance to go with 2 other adults and 3 of our youth to San Diego for a mission trip. It was a great week and very challenging. We spent each morning working in a local nursing home building relationships and each afternoon serving in the SD Food Bank distribution center. Here are a few pictures from the week!

 Mount Soledad

 Steve, Ryan, and Zac during the daily Starbucks run

 My with my nursing home friend Ms. B.

 Joesph the puppet gave us a lot of joy throughout the week!

Packaging food boxes at the SD Food Bank

Our rice baging gear. Notice the beard net on Steve!

Carlena and I enjoying the beach

One night we went to the board walk on the beach for a treat. We enjoyed some rides and some good funnel cake!

TBC with the whole Youthworks group at the end of the week.

Thanks to everyone who prayed for us while we were gone. We were truly blessed by the experience and saw God moving in huge ways!

Fost-adopt Update Q&A

It's been a while since our last update on our road to adoption so I wanted to let you know what's going on. The questions below are some of the most popular we've been getting recently.

Where are you in the process?

This Thursday (7/12/12) is our first face to face meeting with our social worker Rolf! We are so excited to get to know him and learn more about how this process is going to work. Our meeting with Rolf will be an in depth explanation of how everything will work. He has also asked us to come ready with all the questions we can think of to ask. So far Rolf has been a great person of peace through this process as we have spoke on the phone several times. Please pray for us that this meeting will clarify any questions we have and set us at ease.

How are we feeling right now?

I suppose like all soon to be Parents out there we have been experiencing a verity of emotions thinking about our new son or daughter; excitement, joy, nervousness, anticipation... Knowing, however, that our Heavenly Father has his hand over it all has given me a lot of comfort.

What's the time line looking like?

We unfortunately were unable to do the most recent intensive training weekend we will need for certification because we were out of town. We don't expect this to slow us down because we have another chance to do it in the fall. Please pray for no more scheduling problems. After our meeting we will know a little better what the overall time line will be but we were originally told that our goal of a February placement was realistic. We look forward to updating you on what the next few months will look like after Thursday.

Who are you looking at adopting?

As of now we have no update on who the child will be. We listed on our application boy or girl age 0-11. In the interest meeting we went to they said normally older children are not put on the adoption track and babies are hard to get because the demand for them is high. So, with that being said, the likelihood of a baby or an older child is much smaller than a toddler or a young elementary school aged kid. We praise God that he knows who we need and who needs us! Please pray with us for our child's physical safety and spiritual health.

On behalf of Steve and I, thank you for praying for our family as we continue through this wonderful crazy journey! I will try to update you all after our meeting Thursday so check back soon for more details!

Mississippi Team Day 5

This will be my final blog on the awesome week we had with the Mississippi folk. Sorry it's taken me so long to post about! I guess this news is almost 2 weeks old now, but I wanted to share some more stories of what God did through this group of people surrendered to his will. I pray that as you read this blog and the others from the Mississippi team's stay in the bay you too will be challenged to go out and share your faith as you live life wherever you are. (And of course if you want to come take a trip to share in the Bay we would be happy to host you!)

We began the day bright and early and headed south of the city to a place called Daly City. Our plan was to work with habitat for humanity to minister to both our fellow volunteers and supervisors while giving us the chance to pray for those who will be receiving the home we worked on. This particular sight was a condo complex with 32 homes. Each future resident must put in 500 hours of work as their down payment and then commits to giving 1/3rd of their income as their monthly rent. This allows people to continue to make their payments even if times are hard.

Upon arrivals we were asked to volunteer for jobs. Our group split up into three of the 5 offered jobs. I ended up on the insulation team. (I think the sucker the people who have never done any house building before into doing this job... not knowing all of what it involved I happily chose it because it needed the most people to help.) I will say I enjoyed the people I got to know... the insulating not so much. I was blowing blue jean out of my nose for the next three days! Once again I had some great chances to share so it was totally worth it! I'm sorry to say I can't remember his name now (I can picture his face but that doesn't help any of you) but I was able to speak to a gentlemen there to gain experience about Christianity before I even arrived at my insulating sight. He had just been to a Catholic church last week for the first time ever. He told me he was searching out what he believed and thought he would give it a try. I got to explain why I chose a Baptist church and I think it gave him a few things to think about. Please pray that he would hear the truth of the Gospel and find salvation!

Once we had received instructions I got to work with a small group of high school seniors from LA. None as far as I could tell were Christians. I got to talk to one boy Johnny an international student from China about his beliefs more in depth. He said he didn't believe there was anything so I was able to ask what he thought would happen after he died. (Thank you Evangelism 101 with Dr. Pate!) He said he thought he would go to heaven. I found this a little humorous (on the inside of course) but I was able to share with him my thoughts on life after death. Please pray specifically for Johnny to pass the Toffel (sp?) an entrance test international students must pass to enter college in the United States. Please also pray for a campus ministry to find him and minister to him next year.

My final good conversation at habitat was with a girl named Audrey. She was a pleasure to work with. She had some social problems but she figured out quickly that I was a trustworthy person. She would come to me and ask what needed to be done next. After a while we were able to get into some spiritual conversation. Knowing that she would be going back to LA the next week I suggested that she try out a Baptist church. She told me she would (and based on our short time together I think she will) Please pray for Audrey that she is welcomed into whatever church she tries and that the Holy Spirit would prepare her heart.

Some people got more fun jobs than insulation :)

After a long day at habitat we headed over to FBC San Francisco for their Wednesday night dinner. We were able to spread out to meet different people who showed up off the streets for a meal and try and be an encouragement to them. I was so impressed with this ministry! They offered a free hot meal bathrooms to clean  up in and as one man told me an environment where he felt like he could catch his breath for a few minutes. It's amazing how easy it is to take 4 walls and a roof for granted. I was able to meet a great new friend that night named Francis. We talked about sports for about 30 minutes and he could name every big player who had come out of Mississippi even though he was originally from New York. I asked if he was going to stay for the bible study later and he said he hadn't really thought about it. I told him I was going and that I would love him to join me. He said ok and I prayed he really meant it. He found me about 30 minutes later after he finished his meal and we headed over to the small group forming in the corner. He listen as we sang and didn't say a word through the entire lesson just listened. I took a few peaks at him and noticed he had found himself to the book of John and read through the first 10 or so chapters. After it was all said and done I was able to get him a Bible to keep and ask him what he thought. He said he heard some things he had never heard before and that he liked it. Please pray for people to follow up well with Francis. Please also pray that he comes back again for the weeks to come. Selfishly I would finally ask you to pray for me that I will see Francis again to follow up with him myself since we hit it off so well.

Thank you to everyone who lifted this Mississippi team up in prayer. Please know that God was moving in powerful ways as a result of it. I am so glad I got to be a part of it and am thankful for boldness the Holy Spirit gave me to speak the words He wanted me to say. We will miss this group dearly. One final way you can pray for us that we also shared with this team is for more workers to be sent here. As you can tell from even this one blog people are willing and ready to hear the good news they just need someone to tell them! We can't depend on them finding there own way into a church we need to meet them right where they are. So Please pray for San Francisco and the people God is calling to come and share the good news here!

Mississippi Team Day 4

Day four was a lot of hard but rewarding work. We got up early and drove about 45 minutes to south San Francisco. Our goal was to reach out to people working along side us at the San Francisco Food Bank. We wanted the community to know that we as Christians are concerned with helping others. Many people in SF see Christians as uncaring and judgmental. We wanted to help break that stereotype by bringing a holistic gospel to them. One that meets needs while bringing the good news of Jesus. There were about 40 other volunteers working with and around us. We had the chance to engage in good conversation with several of them. The other volunteers were there for various reasons: community service hours for school, court appointed hours, filling up time while looking for a paying job, wanting to make a difference... Bringing up this topic was an easy inroad to learning about them. It also gave them the chance to ask us why we were there serving.

The food bank where we served distributes food to all the other food banks around SF. There are over 400 food banks around SF. This food bank is like a warehouse. They send out over a million pounds of food every day. It was an impressive operation to say the least. While there we had two jobs. The first was to repackage rice from 100 pound bags into 1 pound bags. The second was to go through crates of oranges and pick out rotten ones After that we repackaged the good ones into small boxes. Together with the other volunteers we were able to package over 11,000 pounds of rice! That rice averages out to about 33,000 meals! We were shocked to find out that we packaged 25,000 pounds of oranges! We learned that they along with all the produce there will find there way into someone's hand within a maximum of 72 hours! All along the way we made it a point to pray for the many people who would receive this food. Steve and I hope to bring our youth group out to do this again because we had such a fun time and it was such a great ministry opportunity!

Please pray for all the people who have recieved and will continue to recive the food we packaged. Please also pray for the many people we had conversation with like Rebecca, George, and Vladimir.

Packaging Oranges

Some of the team working  hard making rice bags.

After the food bank we headed off to do a little sight seeing. Our first stop was Lombard Street. The steepest street in America. While our dreams of driving down it were crushed (no cars with more that 8 seats are permitted) we did get to get out a look at it.

The van parked on Lombard Street while the team got out to take pictures. I admit was was nervous to get back in for fear of it tipping

Our next stop was China Town for some souvenir shopping. After driving around for a while we finally found a cheep spot that would accommodate our 15 passenger van. (We give God the glory for this spot because we were almost at the point of giving up!)

Picture of China Town

Molly and Will showing off some of their purchases.

We ended the night with a great cookout and hangout time put on by Brett and Allison. It was a true blessing for us to get to know everyone more and refresh after a long day.

Mississippi Team Day 3

Day three of the Mississippi Mission team was possibly the most challenging for me as well as my favorite. We began the day bright and early in the Tenderloin. For those of you who don't know this area got it's name because the cops who worked this area had to be paid extra as an incentive because the area and crime were so bad. Therefore those cops could afford a more tender piece of meat. Hence the tenderloin got it's name. Today the Tenderloin is still one of the roughest parts of SF. Many of the city's poorest live here including homeless as well as many drug dealers and prostitutes. These are the people we spent most of or day ministering too.

The group in down town SF.

Because Justice Matter's is an offshoot ministry of YWAM and is located in the tenderloin. their primary focus is ministering to those who have been sex trafficked to work in massage parlors and Salons. We teamed with them in the morning to pray for those all around us being held as prisoners to do this work. They gave us an orientation on their ministry where my heart was just broken for the girls it affects. Many times pimps look for girls in the wrong place at the wrong time who are essentially courted into this lifestyle. They give them gifts and then guilt them into paying them back for the things they have been given. Other girls who are brought from other countries are promised a better life. Over 40% of all trafficked people coming to America come through the Bay Area! Once they arrive they are then told that the government is corrupt and will hurt them if they are caught. These images and lack of self worth are enough to keep many girls from reaching out for help. Another huge problem that leads to the high percentage of sex trafficking going on in SF is there is only one health inspector. On top of that he has to have three warning signs of illegal activity before a business can be shut down. BJM asked us to pray for stronger laws that will make sex trafficking much more difficult. Another prayer request they shared was for the women's minds to stay clear and not be infiltrated by false information.

After a few things to look for we then ventured out into the Tenderloin to find massage parlors and salons to pray for. It was sickening how many we easily spotted that illegal activity was likely taking place. Being that this is the second most organized crime after illegal weapons we did not enter any but we know that regardless our prayers were powerful.

After lunch we then shifted our ministry to the needy of the Tenderloin. Two of our friends Spencer and Carlena helped lead the group in this because they are a part of a weekly ministry to the homeless in this area. Each of the 4 groups we split into were able able to share the gospel with about 4-8 people. We also helped to meet physical needs with giving them socks, water, and fliers of where to find a free meal. 

My team was made up of Spencer, Lindsay and myself. We met two Davids, George, Mary, Denis, and Larry. I was super impressed with both Lindsay and Spencer's boldness to share and was blessed to have them with me.

Here is a picture of our whole group with the first David we met. He's a Christian and a Veteran. He asked us to pray for his foot which was hurt. Please lift up David along with us and the many other's that we met.

After a long day of ministry we headed to the Pier for a treat of Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. It was a great way to end a great day!

Anna and Ashley at Bubba Gump.

Lauren, Molly, and Sarah at the Lefty's store.

Trying to stay warm in cold San Francisco.

Mississippi Team Day 2

Today the team came and experienced our local church. We all enjoyed worshiping together and then had a local minister to the Gay and Lesbian community speak during our Sunday school hour. This was to prepare us for our afternoon excursion. This was a very informative and well done time. We were all incredibly blessed by his testimony, information on how to reach out to this community and ways to pray. If you are interested in having him come and share at your church I would be happy to get you his information. Just message me. 

During our second hour at church a group taught our 1st and 2nd graders about God creating everything. They did a fantastic job! It was such a blessing to our pastors wife who has not been able to attend a full worship service in a year.

After a great BBQ chicken fundraiser (put on by our youth!!) we headed off to the SF Castro district. It was a new experience for all of us. During our time there we were able to meet a few people and pray over many different buildings. Our local minister shared with us that the average time it takes to work with a homosexual person before they are ready to talk about the sin aspect is 18 months of trust building. We pray we were a loving example of Christ to all we came in contact with.

A few people you can pray for that my group met are Jeff, Joe, and the woman with the striped socks.

We also drove around  to a few different places of specific spiritual strongholds in this area.

The Castro Theater

Magnet does HIV/AIDS testing and is a big supporter of the Gay and Lesbian community

Metropolitan Community Church: The second Homosexual accepting church in the country

After driving home we were debriefed with the local minister and enjoyed a good question an answer time. We are all challenged to love our homosexual friends with the love of Jesus; "compassion without compromise."

After all that hard work we ordered a few pizzas and enjoyed getting to know each other a little better. Again we were so blessed by the group's willingness to serve and be teachable on this hard topic.