It is so cool that 3 different countries and one Wonderful, Amazing Savior are all represented in this picture. Ellie (Albania), Samuel (Nepal), me (USA). Jesus brought us all to the place where we could be together. I pray that we can always show people that it is Jesus who made the joy of adoption real for us all.
The center of attention
Well, the fact that I haven't written on my blog in about a month, shows what can happen when you get out of the habit of doing it. I am sorry that I haven't kept this up. I will try again. Things have been going well. Samuel is loving his pre-school, is as independant as ever, still thinks he is the center of attention, and is retaining prayers and bible stories that he acts out vividly. He is pretty funny. He makes my heart swell when he kneels down to pray somewhere or after someone gets hurt, he prays right away for them. Don't get me wrong he still prays for some really silly stuff, but he is getting the idea and concept that he is talking to Jesus. I love to hear him do it too. Veggietales has been a good influence on him and it is pretty funny for him to retell the stories to me. Samuel has learned how to ride a "big boys bike". He has training wheels, but is pretty amazing on it. He can stand up and pedal and loves to go fast. When he falls he gets right back on. He really has impressed me. I will try to get a video of it and put it on the blog soon.
I am doing well. Starting to get the winter darkness blues. Yes, it gets very dark, way to early here. However, I have one friend who truly encourages me, even if she does say that the blues will come every winter. I have a wonderful friend named Jennie Weaver (she is a Swede who is married to an American). She has been a great help to me.
I have been working on getting a Thanksgiving dinner together for all the internationals as well as the nationals that want to take part in it. So far we have 22 people coming and I am quite excited. When I first moved here, there was no way of getting certain foods for this season, but times have changed. Now I can get as much canned pumpkin as I can afford (Libby's even), I have found Stove Top Stuffing, canned cranberry sauce and even Crisco for baking. I know this does not sound like an exciting thing, but if you ever lived outside the country and could not get these things, you would know how excited I truly am. So now I just have to find a place that sells turkey without having to sell my car to buy it. I am truly thankful that we have friends and church family to share this meal with, it makes home seem a little closer.
Andreas is doing well, but very busy with his 3 jobs. We are working on finding a way to relieve some of the pressure, but so far no solution has presented itself, please pray.
We have some possible exciting news. Not to long ago Nepal released their list of agencies that will be allowed to adopt out of Nepal. The program the I helped start is one of those agencies (Praise the Lord). However, Sweden had two agencies on there also. Andreas and I were beside ourselves. One of the agencies is actually the agency that we are registered with here in Sweden. Now we are trying to become a pilot family for that program. Please pray with us that it will be possible. We have to finish our homestudy before we can officially apply to be a pilot family, but all looks positive. Our homestudy will be finished on Dec. 16th (that is when we go before the social work board and get voted on). Pray that they vote we can be parents! If all goes well then we will be getting a little girl from Nepal (they will only allow us to adopt a little girl since we have a boy). The thought of this is really exciting for both Andreas and I. We would love to go back and pick up a little girl and minister in that country as much as possible. We wait upon the Lord to see what he has in mind.
The pictures above are more of the pics that Cydil Waggoner took (thank you again Cydil). I can only put a few up at a time and I have not been taking new pics lately. I will try to do better.
We love and miss you all.
Blessings,
Laurie
