Romans 12:12

"Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer."

I read over this passage multiple times last night and realized I don't "do" this verse very well.  I thought about each part...Be joyful in hope.  Hope is defined as: "To trust in, wait for, look for, or desire something or someone; or to expect something beneficial in the future.”  Often times I let the things of this world weigh me down and can't see outside my little box.  I can't turn on the TV without seeing something devastating that is happening somewhere in the world.  I'm thankfully reminded that this world isn't the ending place or the goal line. 

Patient in affliction...patience is a weakness of mine anyways so if it has the word patient in the verse...odds are I struggle with it.  If I'm not patient with the good things going on in my life, Lord knows I'm not patient in times of pain and suffering.  Often times it's when I go through these trials that God is molding me and maturing my faith.

Faithful in prayer...I believe maintaining a committed prayer life is an essential part of walking with God.  James 5:6 states that "The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective."  It's encouraging to know that there is power in prayer and that God is listening.  Right now we have a child on the other side of the this world that needs our prayers. I'm anxious to see God work and to see what child He has chosen for us.

BACK IN BUSINESS!!

When it rains it hails in the Flora house...last week we had more truck issues.  You would think this truck would be like new after all the work we've put in to it in the last 6 months.  After taking the truck back to the shop last Thursday our computer decided to die that evening.  Friday morning it appeared (and smelled like) our kitchen blender was smoking.  This nearly threw me over the edge!

Nearly a week later...here I am...back in the saddle! The last week has been challenging for us not only financially but mentally and spiritually.  We began having doubts on whether we would really be able to handle this adoption financially.  We looked into some other options for creating our family and it truly felt like all signs pointed to Africa.  I can truly say that the money side of this adoption terrifies me but we are going to have to figure it out. We are going to have to get creative, work hard and trust God.

Our last home study interviews were last Thursday as well (busy day :) )  We tied up some loose ends with our social worker and that was it.  She is waiting to get our reference forms/letters back from our references and then waiting on our medical exams.  Once all that is done and our paperwork is all together on our end we'll send it off to AFAA, which will be our child placement agency.

Would you believe that I still haven't done my autobiography??  My computer broke folks...I have a good excuse...well maybe.  Anyways we HAVE to knock those out and get all this paperwork together.  Our original goal was for everything to leave our hands and be mailed to AFAA by the end of June.  I'm thinking that can be pushed up a few weeks if we get in gear.

Hang with us...

We are still alive however our computer is not! We should be up and running in the next couple of days. Gotta love when things like this happen. We completed our home study visits this last week...will post more later...hopefully sooner rather than later!

The Beginnings of an Addiction...

Although we've been working on some fundraising...Jason and I haven't been taking a backseat when it comes to our own finances and getting our baby home.  We wish we had $25,000 that we could write the check out for today and get this thing rolling...but we don't.  So we are looking for ways to save and have come across couponing!!!!

Now...I've been cutting coupons for awhile and try to match them up with our grocery list that week but it usually amounts to saving $3 or $5 if I'm lucky.  Then one night I watched "Extreme Couponing" on TLC.  These families would use buy crazy amounts of food and products, use a ridiculous amount of coupons and save insane amounts of money.  Insane meaning a grocery bill that totals over $1000 and then walking out paying $6.59 for the entire bill.  The idea of saving lots of money quickly got my interest!!

So, I've been dabbling in this couponing thing for a couple of weeks.  I can't believe how much time and energy it takes to make these on sale items and coupons match up BUT when I do I get addicted!  I'm light years away from getting $1000 worth of groceries for $6 but I sure have gotten excited when I've bought a name brand body wash for 89 cents or walked out of Walgreen's with $45 worth of stuff for $15.  (baby steps!)  Just be aware that shopping trips can be stressful and if you take your spouse try and be patient with each other.  :)

3 to 4 Pages?!!

The task at hand:  Autobiographies

Okay, the other week I started on my autobiography and it was a rough go.  I was so proud of myself when I got the rough draft typed up earlier this week.  A whole page and a half was written!!!  Wow, I'm thinking...over achiever.  Well, today I got ahold of AFAA's formal application and it states that each parent needs to submit a 3 to 4 page autobiography.  What?!  That's double what it took me forever to come up with!  I do understand that the country of Lesotho would like a little bit of information on us and it's kind of important for them to know what we are about :)  Saying that...this has been the toughest part of the paperwork so far...and I have a feeling I will be having to help edit another one.  Jason's not big on writing so this will be a fun task for him too! :)  Well, I spent so much time thinking about the 3 to 4 pages thing that I didn't do anything on it tonight.  Maybe in the next few days ahead I will make some progress.  Wish us luck!

Home Study # 2!

My Easter evening was spent mostly cleaning the house...and my car.  I decided that since the weather man was predicting 6 to 8 inches of rain in a weekend that I would leave my car windows down and back my car out of the nice dry garage and let it sit out for 7.5 hours.  Nice! 

On another note...tonight was our walk through home study visit and our joint interview.  The walk through went really well and was pretty simple.  Then we had an interview as a couple and it was actually kind of fun.  It was fun to listen to Jason answer questions about his childhood, parenting views and then me :)  Our social worker asked him what he admired most about me...and then one thing he would want to change.  Yesh...loaded question! :)  I think she got a kick out of us after awhile.  She quickly caught on to how laid back Jason was and how laid back I'm not :)  Guess we make a good pair!

Then for the wild man....Cash did really good!  I'm so proud of him.  Since it was raining we couldn't kick him outside during the visit so...we had a talk beforehand and asked him to be on his best behavior.  He was a bit too excited to meet our social worker but after the walk through he calmed down.  She told us that she has 2 labs. (yay! she understands!)  During the entire interview he laid on top of our feet and snored. 

It was a good evening and we felt like we connected with our social worker more tonight.  She is very sweet and I'm glad we get to work with her.  We have one more visit scheduled where Jason and I will be interviewed separately.  We will continue to work on getting papers together and then have a physical coming up at the end of May. 

Good Song...Better Message