It is official

We are not leaving in 2.5 weeks for our Gateway training. We will be leaving in a little over 4 months, January 4th to be exact.

It has been very frustrating for me and I was hesitant to post about the whole thing because I just wanted to sit and cry. Our support is very low still and we didn't have enough for our training class. Our house has not sold yet though we have had several leads that we followed through on. But the Lord's timing is best.

After thinking this through for the past three days we have come to realize that waiting for a few more months is not a bad thing. This gives us 4 more months to speak to more churches and 4 more months to either sell or rent out our house.

We will not be going to Benin but will fly directly into Togo where the M/V Africa Mercy will be in February 2010.

So though I am sad we won't be attending our Gateway training with the new friends we met in Texas in June I am excited to see God at work in our lives as we wait on Him.

Please continue to pray for us as we seek God's will in our lives and pray that we glorify Him in our lives.

Yard Sale and Anna's Classroom

We just had a 3 day yard sale to help get rid of a lot of our 'stuff' in preparation to leaving for our training in one month! The yard sale went really well and our house is emptying out.

Anna's Kindergarten teacher on the Africa Mercy just posted pictures of Anna's classroom on her blog, click here to see them. Anna is very excited about going to school on a ship. We have completed 5 weeks of homeschooling so far this term but just took off this week because of our yard sale. We are also taking next week off for Vacation Bible School at our church.

We won't be on the ship until the end of November but it's nice to see aspects of it before we go.

Schedule Clarification

We are leaving New York on September 14th to head on down to Texas for our Gateway training which starts September 19th. We won't be on the Africa Mercy until mid November. We are planning on driving back to New York and flying out of the Rochester airport after our training is finished.

We need to sell or rent out our house before we leave for Africa so that is our biggest prayer request at this point next to raising our support.

We have found homes for both our dog and cat and are now getting ready to have a yard sale next week to get rid of a lot of our 'stuff'.

We basically have 5.5 weeks to downsize from a 1900 square foot home that we have lived in for the past 11 years into 8 duffel bags.

Presenting at church

I asked Deborah and Anna what I should write about this week in our blog and Anna told me I should write down my adoption story! I had to tell her I wasn't adopted so then she wanted to know how I got here, don't I have a story? I assured her I had a story but it wasn't as exciting as hers :-) I had completely forgotten that Deborah at age 4 had also thought everyone was adopted. What a fun age :-)

So instead of writing down my adoption story I thought I would share about today. We did our Mercy Ships presentation at church today. We showed a clip from one of the DVDs that Mercy Ships had given us to show and then Ray spoke about what we would be doing. I was standing next to him along with Deborah in case Ray choked up and could not continue but God answered my prayer and Ray did just fine. Anna chose at the last minute to not come up front with us and sat with our good friends.

We were very encouraged by the response of our church family.

I am posting a picture of our display table. The girls want to know if you thought the dolls were the girls at first glance :-) I was going to have the girls wear their African clothes but they are much too small for our growing girls and we will have to wait until we return to Africa to buy new outfits for them. So I put the clothes on their dolls.

Anna's Story Part V

Anna had a rough time flying home, she screamed every 15 minutes on both big flights from Monrovia to Brussels and then from Brussels to Washington, D.C. We found out she had an ear infection too. Daddy and Deborah had flown to meet us at D.C. so we had some family time together before we flew the rest of the way home. Here is a picture of Anna and Daddy meeting.

The girls really seemed to connect right from the beginning and were a joy to watch together. And then my Mom, brother, sister and several of my sister's children stayed up very late to welcome us back to our home airport. Both of my girls slept through the whole thing and didn't wake up until the next morning! They were both exhausted! Here they are giving a kiss and then pretending to sleep in the Washington D.C. airport.

Anna's Story Part IV

Anna's caregiver (not the same woman who had taken care of her first) brought her to me and we chatted for about 30 minutes while Anna sat on her lap staring at me. I tried to interact with Anna but she was not impressed with me. At that point the caregiver said that she would let us get to know each other and she just walked out of the room! For some strange reason I thought we would have a nice slow transition but it was not to be.

Anna immediately started screaming at the top of her lungs and so I started to walk towards her. Anna turned around and started running away from me screaming. I had no idea what to do and I had an audience. There were about 5 other people present all watching to see what I would do and of course I didn't know. I finally just ran after her and scooped her up in my arms and tried to comfort her. I knew she was scared but there didn't seem to be anything I could do about it at that time. Finally she calmed down enough but then she seemed to transfer the anxious attachment she had with the caregiver to me. After that she would scream if anyone tried to take her away from me. This went on for a good 7 months after we got home too. We worked very hard on getting a healthy attachment with Anna and it has paid off!

Anna's adoption was tricky because her adoption wasn't actually done yet when I went to Liberia. I had appointments at the US embassy, a paper that needed to be signed by the Ministry of Health, an interview by someone sent from the embassy to see me and then another appointment at the embassy. It took an entire week but the adoption was complete in time for me to fly home one week after I had gotten there.

Both of these pictures were taken the day we left Liberia, we were all dressed up ready to go to church.

Anna's Story Part III

So in October of 2005 I got back on an airplane, left Deborah for the first time ever but in the capable hands of Daddy and two beloved cousins Caitlin and Cai. I met my friend in Washington D.C. where we flew the rest of the way together to Liberia.

We had some interesting experiences in that the person who was supposed to meet us at the airport thought we were coming in on a flight arriving two days later! My friend's daughter's aunt was there instead and took us to her relative's house. Liberia had just come out of the war so there was still no electricity infrastructure but if you had a generator you had power. The house we went to had a generator but they couldn't get it going except for about one minute.
The bathroom looked really nice but there was no plumbing hooked up to the sink or shower but there was a barrel of water in the bathroom to flush the toilet with. That was fine, we were good. The cockroach crawling up my leg gave me pause but I was still okay. But then we were half asleep on the best bed in the house and I felt something in the pitch black crawl along the pillow. I just said something just crawled on my pillow when my friend let out this scream!!!! The cockroach had decided to crawl over her face. Can I just say I was glad that wasn't me?

But this story is about Anna so let's get back to it! The next morning my agency sent a driver to take me to another place I could stay at and where Anna already was. And there she was! She was sleeping out on the porch so I went inside and waited for her to wake up.