Sweet Alli

My dear firstborn,

   This has been burning in my heart for some time, but finding the emotional fortitude to compose all these thoughts has escaped me until today.  I can't believe that we only have a few short days left until we take you down to Biola and then drive away to come home...without you!  If I wanted to, I could sit here and think of all the wonderful memories we have and cry myself into a puddle right here on the couch, but I want to find the joy in your amazing new adventure, so instead we will recap your amazing life...so far!

I remember well the day that we found out we were expecting you.  I wasn't sure what to think at first since we were so surprised!  But God wasn't surprised, and I am so thankful that He chose to give us you so early in our marriage.  I was so thrilled when you were born with all that amazing hair and tiny little features.  We had a rough start in the nursing department at first, but thankfully we both figured out what we were doing!  

As you grew, it became apparent that you loved people and socializing!  You talked before you walked!  You loved music and would dance and twirl whenever you heard any tune.

I remember how much fun I had going around town with my little sidekick!  You were our "only" for nearly 4 years, so we did everything together.  You loved going to women's Bible study with me and hanging with your peeps in the nursery.  While you were super fussy and colicky your first few months, you quickly grew out of that and were always easy to leave with a sitter or nursery worker.  I look back now and see that God instilled in your very being a sense of security and a lack of fear when encountering new situations.  We could even see that when you slept---arms spread out and your body sprawled out on the bed.  You didn't sleep all curled up in a ball like some do.

You developed many great friendships in your early years down in El Cajon.  Even though we moved to Oregon when you were just barely 5 years old, it was very hard for you to leave your friends!  Josiah, Luke, Lara, Bethany...you missed them so much!

You loved to play dress up, and we still joke about the pathetic outfits you wore since we didn't own any "real" costumes!  hahaha!

You were so happy when friends flew up to visit you in our new home in Oregon.

Watching my super social girl have to move far away from her friends was so hard for me.  We still had almost 6 months to wait for Kindergarten to start after moving here.  But God had a plan!  I am so thankful that we found CCS right across the parking lot from Dad's new job!  Central Christian School became our school--your school--and it was filled with friends for you!  The day that you graduated from Kindergarten was such a great day because we could see the joy on your face!

As the years began to fly by, I distinctly remember thinking that I wanted to stop time for awhile and just sit in the moment a bit longer.  Sadly, I wish I could go back and really take more time to enjoy life's experiences even more with you.  I think what probably many mothers think---I would spend less time worrying about stupid things like a clean house and would focus more on building memories with my children.  I am sorry that you had to be the "guinea pig" kid, because I am sure that you got to experience the vast majority of my freaky psycho ways!  Hopefully I am learning to lighten up a bit (maybe??), and won't mess up as much with the others!

I am so thankful for a God who covers over mistakes and has developed you into a beautiful woman after His heart. I love that He is helping you and your sisters find your common interests and build a bond that is unbreakable.  Your sisters adore you and admire you so much!

What a gift it is to have sisters!!

So, as you embark on this new chapter of your life, I want to tell you a few more things.  First off, I am SO proud of you and who you are.  You are filled with so many gifts--more than your share!

  

However, those many gifts do not define you or contribute in any way to your worth or value.

  My perfectionistic personality took a LONG time to learn this myself.  Your value is based solely on the fact that you were created in the image of God and when you trusted in Him for your salvation you put on His righteousness and traded in your fleshly sin nature made of filthy rags.   So when God looks at you, He sees the righteousness of His Son and has removed your sin as far as the east is from the west!  Sounds like an awesome deal to me! As a woman, you will be continuously bombarded with society's message that you must look a certain way or act a certain way in order to be considered "worthy" or "beautiful", but I pray that you will have the grace and faith to reject that lie from the enemy! 

 I want you to KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt "who you are and Whose you are"   

(remember these words from Grandpa?? ;-)!

I read this in Jesus Calling this week:

"Wear my robe of righteousness with ease.  I custom-made it for you, to cover you from head to toe.  The price I paid for this covering was astronomical--My own blood.  You could never purchase such a royal garment, no matter how hard you worked.  Sometimes you forget that My righteousness is a gift, and you feel ill at ease in your royal robe.  I weep when I see you squirming under the velvety fabric, as if it were made of scratchy sackcloth.

I want you to trust me enough to realize your privileged position in My kingdom.  Relax in the luxuriant folds of your magnificent robe.  Keep your eyes on Me, as you practice walking in this garment of righteousness.  When your behavior is unfitting for one in My kingdom, do not try to throw off your royal robe.  Instead, throw off the unrighteous behavior.  Then you will be able to feel at ease in this glorious garment, enjoying the gift I fashioned for you before the foundation of the world."

My dear daughter, this is what I pray for you!  Know who you are!  Know that you are royalty in His kingdom!  And when you mess up--as we all do--confess and move forward into the calling He has for you!!  He has a huge plan for you that is only beginning.  I pray that you will heed His voice, even when it is quiet and hard to hear.  Wait on Him for clear direction when you need to make a decision.  I heard some great advice once about listening for His voice.  It was from Beth Moore, and she said that when she asks the Lord for an answer about a decision she has to make, she waits and doesn't choose until she hears clearly from Him.  If she waits and hears nothing?  She assumes His answer is "no".  I think that is great advice!  

Finally, just because you are moving out and into a dorm where you get to practice being a full-on adult, don't forget that Dad and I are still here for you.  We will always answer your calls and help you through this next phase of life.  We will still probably mess up, and I will still nag you to study (just to help ease your homesickness!), but we will always be your number one cheerleaders and fans!  

You are precious, gifted, beautiful, and LOVED hugely!

~Mom

And here are a few more pics for your enjoyment~

Roommates at Biola and best friends since 1st grade!

Alli and Quinn

Aren't you glad you'll be living so close to your first boyfriend, Mickey Mouse?

Rocking bunny in your 100 year old rocking chair~ so serious!

These crazy sisters are one of God's best gifts to you!

The mom and dad who love you tons!

It's "Puzzling"

Well folks, I told you I am not great at this "post-frequently-so-people-will-keep-reading" thing!  I so want to be better at it, but I confess that I am just not!  Also, when I don't have great news, it's hard to type more of the same thing...

Anyway, some of you faithful friends and family have been asking me where we are with our adoption and where we are with fundraising.  I'll tackle the fundraising question first because, surprisingly, that is the easier question to address!  The PUZZLE fundraiser that we are doing has stalled for awhile (my fault for not keeping up on posting), but we did make it to 304 pieces sponsored at $10/piece!  That is fantastic, and we are so very thankful for that.  The $10,000 we hope to raise from our one thousand piece puzzle along with another $14,000 we have saved will be used for our "referral" fund.  We need to be ready to pay half of Haiti's fees when referred/matched with our children and the other half is paid when we travel to Haiti to file some paperwork before picking them up to come HOME!  This total of $24,000 covers fees for two children--if we are matched with 3, we will be doing some frantic fund raising and even more praying!

As said in some previous posts, these are strictly Haitian fees, not our agency fees (which are already paid in full!).  We will also need several thousand to cover travel and some document fees, but we are trusting the Lord to work all that out.  So, we have 696 pieces left in our puzzle ready to be sponsored....

This is a picture of what our puzzle looks like.  A beautiful compilation of the Haitian map, flag, and a sweet boy.  We love it and can't wait to frame it on our wall!

Now, the difficult topic to address is the one about what is happening in our adoption.  We knew going into this that there would be delays and disappointments as well as a load of unpredictability.  Sadly, many of the documents in our file (which has been sitting on the stateside desk of our orphanage for months!) are beginning to expire and we are having to re-do things now.  I can't tell you how incredibly frustrating this is when every document needs a notary, a certification from the Sec. of State and then a authentication from the Haitian consulate.  It takes so much time and hoopla just to get each one done correctly.  In the meantime, Haiti has recently decided to become a Hague country, so they are in the process of figuring out what that will mean for the families that are currently in the system (us).  Essentially, we are being told that this is a GOOD thing for Haiti and it's children, but we should expect more delays and must purpose to hang in there while we wait.

When we asked about when we would possibly be matched with children (which we thought was going to happen between March and June), we were told to not expect anything before the fall.  So, we wait.  We trust that God knows best and only has our best interests in mind, but I would be lying if I said that it wasn't hard to continue down a road of uncertainty.  Our hearts and minds are invested in Haiti, and we know that God has called us to this country, so switching to a more stable country is just not an option for us (as some have asked).  We wait and trust that His plan is best and that He has just the right children for us.  For some reason the timing is very different than we originally planned and hoped, but 
regardless of our feelings, we trust.

I feel a bit like a broken record with no real "new news" to share, but I am so thankful that Mark and I have the Lord to carry us through the uncertainty and to uphold us with His righteous right hand~ We thank you for your continued prayers and support through this time of waiting on His will.

~Holly

Brief update~

So sorry to keep many of you waiting to hear how things are going with our fundraising efforts!  We are moving forward and are SO THANKFUL for the many gifts we have received so far!  We have 179 pieces sponsored so far, and we are GRATEFUL!!  Only 821 to go! 

We also received a very large donation from a family member on Thursday. We will combine that with our current puzzle piece money enabling us to send the (approximate) $12,500 fee down to Haiti that is needed in order for us to be matched!!  This is so exciting to us!  After we are matched (don't know for sure how long that will take), we will need to send the other half of the Haiti fees.  The way that our orphanage matches families is by prayerfully considering each adoptive family and each child available for adoption.  We don't look at photo listings and "choose" our children.  The director chooses who she feels God is leading her to choose and matches families with children.  Some of you saw on FB  that I mentioned a sibling group of babies (3 months and 24 months) who were just admitted to GLA this week.  While I could mention to her that we saw the post about them and would love to parent them, we will wait for God's leading.  We know and trust that He already has the children picked just for us.  We don't want to get in the way of His leading--even if the babies are SO CUTE!  We will keep you all updated on our match FOR SURE!

In other adoption news, if you are my FB friend, you know that we received our USCIS approval this week!  That was a major milestone in this journey.  One that took a lot more time than we anticipated!  It turned out that since our oldest bio child, Alli, turned 18 this month, we had to do all the same background checking, FBI clearances, and biometric fingerprinting on her that we did on us!  That was a bummer of a delay, but all the needed documents and appointments turned out to take less time to process than ours did, so we praise the Lord for that. 

I know this isn't long, and I am so lame at posting pics, but I will give a better update later when we know more.  And I will post puzzle pictures then too!

Thanks for your continued prayers and supportive gifts and comments!  We are so thankful for the community of friends and family we have to walk this pathway with us!

Does the teacher listen to the Teacher?

I have been mulling over and re-writing this post in my head for the past few days and pray that the Lord enables me to speak with His words what is on my heart regarding our adoption.  

First off, let me address our oft-asked questions: "Why in the world is this taking SO LONG??" and "Where are things in your adoption process?"  There are many reasons that it has taken us longer.  I have mentioned some of the reasons in previous posts---long ago.  :-)  One main reason was that it was a very difficult process finding the right agency who works with the orphanage that we wanted to work with.  Also, adoptions were technically closed until April of 2011, so we really were limited in what we could do anyway.  But mostly, the Lord has allowed things to take longer than we thought because He is accomplishing His will through the wait.  I will admit, however, that waiting for all of this to be completed is not easy.  Those of you that know us well can probably imagine how Mark and I handle the waiting--he is calm, cool, collected and just ready to do the next thing.  I, on the other hand, am so tired of having this "mountain" of things to do hovering over us.  My type A personality just wants to 'git er done' and get our kids!!  This is where the Lord is teaching me, and I am SLOWLY learning.

Right now we are up against a financial wall.  Haiti sets the fees for their courts to process adoptions, and the 2011 fee is $12,500 per child.  In order to even send our dossier into the country to be matched with children, we need to send half of the fee along with it.  Now, I am not sure what they will expect since we are adopting siblings, and we don't know how many that will be.  We are thinking that we probably need to send enough for 2 and be ready to send another $6250 if we are matched with a group of 3.  Our homestudy case worker has approved us for up to 3 kids ages 0-9. 

We have already spent several thousand on homestudy fees, agency fees, FBI clearances, fingerprinting, etc... and we are realizing that it is time to ask for partnership from our friends and family.  This is where the Lord is teaching me through my precious first grade class.  If you are my facebook friend, then you have likely already read the sweet things that happened in class just this week.  Teaching in a Christian school is such a blessing for many reasons, but one in particular is that we have a class prayer time every day.  We lift up the burdens they are carrying (like the cat's hurt eye, the scratch on their finger, and many other 'interesting' concerns!), we pray for a new school building, we pray for our business partners, and occasionally I will share something to pray about.  Several weeks ago when I realized that the financial component of our adoption was rapidly approaching, I asked the children to pray that God would provide the funds for us to complete our adoption. I think I mentioned it in prayer time twice over the last 3 months.  Well, 2 of my students have written me the sweetest notes and enclosed their hard earned money to contribute to our fund!  I was BLOWN away!  I went in to the school office to tell our sweet secretary about it (she is also the leader of a Bible study that I have attended and a spiritual 'mama').

As I stood there with tears in my eyes feeling guilty that my students had done this, she began to share with me,

"LET THEM GIVE TO YOU!"  

"LET THEM BE A PART OF THIS!"

"THIS IS SEED MONEY!"

 "THEY ARE BEING BLESSED AS THEY GIVE TO YOU!"

  

(and the one that REALLY got me)

"WHEN THEY GET TO FINALLY SEE AND MEET YOUR CHILDREN, THEY WILL  KNOW THAT GOD USED THEM TO HELP BRING THEM HOME!"

I knew that God was trying to get my self-reliant self to see the bigger picture. This is not just about us and our family!  All of His followers are called to help the orphan, but obviously not all of us are called or able to adopt.  My students were JOYFULLY giving from their limited means, and God was blessing it! 

Now comes the part of this post that I don't want to write, but know that I must.  I have been in somewhat of a "faithless funk" for the past few months.  I know that my God is able to do ANYTHING and I believe that He will provide for His children, but I didn't want it to be this hard.  I selfishly wanted the money for this adoption to just fall into our laps.  I justified my thinking with all kinds of rationale--"We both have  demanding full-time jobs!  We don't have time to focus on fund-raising or applying for grants that we likely won't qualify for anyway." Or, "Alli graduates this year!  We must go to every function of hers before she leaves us!"  Or, "Man!  Senior year is expensive!  Senior pictures, announcements, yearbook stuff, and all her concurrent (college) credit fees!"  On and on and on went my list of excuses.  Mainly, I wanted God to just show up in a big way and do it quickly!  I didn't really care if that was His way or not....

"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."  Is. 55:9

I BEGAN TO REALIZE THAT HE WANTED TO GIVE OTHERS THE OPPORTUNITY TO PARTICIPATE IN A STORY OF REDEMPTION.

I don't want our adopted children to feel "rescued" or "saved" by us. And I certainly don't want them to feel obligated in any way to us for "saving" them--God saves them, just as He saved you and me.  

 "I have made you, and I will carry you; I will sustain you, and I will rescue you."  Is. 46:4

We want to increase our family, and we know that the Lord has directed us to do it in this way.  He is allowing us to enter into a broken situation and be a part of bringing beauty out of the ashes.  He weeps over the orphan and longs to comfort and soothe their tears.

"God sets the lonely in families..."  Ps. 68:6

So as I have contemplated my precious students who have given with their BIG faith to their teacher with her little faith, I realized that I wanted a way to remember FOREVER all those who encourage us with their faith and joy.

I wanted a way to memorialize their sweet names and hearts.  

Here is our plan:  We are ordering a specially made 1000 PIECE PUZZLE with a map of Haiti on it. We are inviting you to be a part of our family's adoption story by first PRAYING about what the Lord might have you do.  If he directs you to participate financially, we will be adding your name to the back of a puzzle piece for every $10.00 increment.

SO EACH $10 OF YOUR GIFT GETS YOUR NAME ON THE BACK OF A PUZZLE PIECE!

After we complete our puzzle, we will have it mounted with glass on both sides so that our family will FOREVER REMEMBER 

the love and kindness shown to us by so many.

I know that there are so many worthy causes, and I certainly don't want anyone to feel obligated at all, but the Lord is reminding me that His ways are not mine!  He moves upon the hearts of man, and I need to get out of the way!

If you do want to give, there are a couple of ways: 

First, there is a Paypal button at the top of my blog.  If you have a Paypal account, you can give directly through that.  If you don't have an account, they are easy to get and very secure.  There are instructions if you click on the "donate" button.

Secondly, you can email me at "teachermahnke dot com" for my address if you want to send something through the mail. 

Thank you for taking the time to read.  Thank you for praying for our family.  I am humbled beyond words that many of you have asked how you can help--prompting this post.  Feel free to link this on your blog or facebook and share with anyone that you think may want to join us in this journey.

"I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants."

Let it be, Lord! 

 

 

Where we are now...

Guess what came in the mail yesterday??  Our totally complete and notarized home study!!  Yay!  In my last post I mentioned that we were at the end of that and were having our in-home visits with our social worker.  Those visits went so well, and now we are DONE with that portion.  We have also completed our Psychological Evaluations and have only a few more forms to complete our dossier that will be translated into French and sent to Haiti.  Just a refresher for those of you who don't know what a dossier is--it is a compilation of MANY documents that show who we are and reveal just about everything about us to a foreign government so that we can be cleared to adopt from that particular country.  Our dossier requirements include things like medical forms/tests; marriage/birth certificates; bank statements; tax forms; fingerprinting; government clearances (federal ones); verification of employment/income; letters that state our motivation to adopt (written by us to the head of the foreign gov't); personal reference letters; etc....  It is daunting, to say the least!  And everything has to be done just right--with the proper notarizations/authentications, or it might have to be done all over again!  Our new agency that we chose, All About Adoptions, Inc., has a dossier specialist on staff, so hopefully everything will get her stamp of approval!

We are growing more and more excited as we get closer to being done with our portion.  Then we just wait on the orphanage (we did go with GLA --see previous post) to refer us to the child/ren that they have for us, and we wait for our documents to make it through the Haitian courts.  People ask me often about how long this will take.  I wish I knew for sure!  If we get our documents there in the next month or so, we could have a referral by the end of this year, or early January.  Then, it's up to the courts on how long it all takes to process.  We did just hear a few weeks ago that files are making it through in about 8 months right now--that is WAY faster than before the earthquake!  The Lord knows the timing, and we are trusting that He also knows how we are going to pay for this, because I am still a little in the dark on that one!  We know that this is what He has called us to do, so we will trust that He will provide. 

Along with trying to gather the last documents we need, I am also beginning another school year!  I have 22 first grade students this year, and our first week went swimmingly!  Aside from the heat that makes my room almost unbearable by the last couple of hours, the kids did great.  Each year I find that I have just a few more tricks up my sleeve to get the results I am looking for in performance and behavior.  The keys that work best for me are extreme organization (everything in it's place and no extra clutter), and taking the time to really TEACH and practice all of our routines.  There might not be a whole lot of actual lesson teaching at first, but taking the time to show the class what is expected at school will pay off all year long.  I know that even though I have to watch where I step so that I don't trip over all of the MANY bodies in my little room, we are going to have a great year of learning together.

The first two months of school also bring volleyball season for the 2 big girls!  With Alli being a senior **sniff, sniff!**, we are trying to go to many of her games.  Thankfully, this year Alli and Erica's games aren't always on the same days like last year.  That was crazy!  So, I will be jetting out of school as early as possible to drive LONG distances (seriously--some are 3 hours away!) to watch my kiddos play.  I love it! 

God is doing great things!  Can't wait to share more...

So close!

So we are almost sure about the agency we will use to help us complete our Haitian adoption!  We will know for sure in a few more days, but after talking with them it sounds like just what we are looking for....

Here is a link to the orphanage they work with (and the main reason we are choosing them!)

http://www.glahaiti.org/home

If you go to this site, scroll down on the left-hand side to Blogs and click.

The orphanage director, Dixie, writes the "Life Goes On" blog, which is amazing reading.  We have been reading this blog for over a year, and just really believe that our kids are here!

They were closed to new adoptive families until just this last spring, so now we see one possible reason that the Lord was slowing us down....

Just look at those beautiful faces!  Anyone want to join us on this journey??  It would be amazing to do this alongside dear friends and family....:-)  (seriously!!)

Back on track

So this post might seem strange after my last one, but now here we are.  It is 18 months after we first knew that God was calling us to adopt from Haiti.  We haven't made many steps toward that happening.  After stopping everything while we considered whether God was leading us to adopt the little guy in the previous post, we now have officially started it up again.  We still have unknowns with his situation, but at this point, we feel that it is unlikely to lead to us getting to adopt him.  We will still continue our weekends with him, and we will trust God with the rest.

Anyone familiar with adoption knows that one of the first things that needs to happen is that there must be a Homestudy done by a licensed social worker.  Basically, our whole lives get investigated to make sure that we aren't crazy people that want to adopt kids.  We write entire histories of our lives that include what our families were like growing up (grandparent relationships, parental relationships, sibling relationships...) and what our own family is like now.  We have to have fingerprinting done, medical tests done, references written, tons of forms filled out, taxes copied, financial questions answered, guardianship chosen for our kids, and the lists go on....

Anyway....we have done all of that!  And now our assigned case worker is visiting us to document that what we wrote is true, and to walk us through the first approval process towards adopting internationally.  I am thrilled to say that we have an awesome case worker!  She lives in our town, and was a delight to meet.  She has completed our first in-home visit, and we will have our second meeting next week.  After that visit, she will write up our completed homestudy that will be the basis of our adoption approval.  Now our new job will be to finalize exactly what agency we will use to complete our international adoption.  The agency doing our homestudy only does domestic adoptions, but they are licensed to complete Int'l homestudies as well.  Some of you that have read from the time that I started this blog will remember that we did choose an agency a long time ago.  However, they seem to be pretty inactive right now.  Nothing has changed on their website in over a year.  We aren't receiving email updates at all.  Needless to say, this has us worried about continuing with them.  We are actively looking for a new path.  We need to find it soon since the clock is ticking once our homestudy is complete.  We would like to have this plan in place in the next two weeks.  But I am learning that what I think is a good plan may not be what the Lord thinks is a good plan!  We are asking Him to lead us to the path that He has for us to take.  Maybe the original agency?  Maybe a new one?  Maybe a direct adoption through an established orphanage that we know about?  We will keep on following His lead. 

On a side note, while I seem to rarely write here anymore, I do LOVE reading other blogs!  I especially love the ones that post a variety of topics.  So, I may diverge from the topic of adoption and our family occasionally to write about something fairly random.  Like how awesome the fresh raspberries are in my MIL's yard, or how excited I am to be almost finished writing my Unit Guides for my 19 unit math curriculum!  You never know, it could happen....;-)