The days are flying by...

We had a wonderful Children of God benefit concert at our church on Saturday night.  Our orphan ministry has been working hard for months to pull everything together.  The music was great and turnout was wonderful!  Our youth pastor (who is part of our ministry and is adopting from Ethiopia) had a great sermon on Sunday morning, Orphan Sunday.  His challenge to our congregation to live out James 1:27 and be doers of the Word caused a traffic jam around our ministry's table after service--so great!  We had a wonderful response to our annual foster care backpack drive, as well as many asking for information about foster care/respite care/mentoring and adoption.  God is good!

Life is been full but great lately.  I keep telling Bill that I feel like God has me in a refining process--doing so many more things that I never felt I would be capable of.  And doing all with His strength---and that is why I would never think I could do all that I have and not be too overwhelmed (although some of the kids might argue that part about being overwhelmed!).  So thankful for His faithfulness!

I am seeing more and more every day ways to improve what I am doing, some of those eliminating my expectations of how things should be.  I've learned more about flexibility and thinking out of the box the last month or so with the travel Nate, Ellie and I have done for some therapy for Nate (more to follow later on that), seeing the time in the van as a time with a captive audience and spending lots of time listening to great books together, as well as finding creative ways to learn on the road.

In adoption news, we got the draft of our home study yesterday!  Yeah!  Lots of excitement here when that e-mail arrived.  So thankful to be almost to the point of getting our I800A in.

Joe is loving his Photoshop and Illustrator classes.  He designed the logo for our Show Love foster care backpack drive and helped me design a bunch of things for handouts/boards for the concert.  So thankful to have creative kiddos!  And kids willing to help!

Here is a fun sample of Joe's "homework"--yes, that is Ellie flying on a leaf!