Help for US Adoptive Parents to Nepal

Friends, I found this on another adoptive couples website. Please fill this out and past it on. It would be better for the countries to work with Nepal rather than shutting them down. Thank you for your time.

Dear Nepal Adoption Supporters:

I am writing to ask for your action to help prevent the U.S. government from stopping the processing of visas for adopted children in Nepal.

To participate in this effort, you would need to immediately e-mail your Senator and Representative to ask them to sign onto a Congressional Petition by MONDAY. I have written a letter you can use below, and there are also links below to easily find your senators and representatives.

WHAT:
Senator John Kerry is sponsoring a Congressional Petition to Secretary of State Clinton regarding the current Nepal adoption situation. The purpose of this letter is to urge the U.S. Government not to close Nepal adoptions, allowing current in-process families to go through. The letter asks the U.S. State Department to work proactively with the Government of Nepal to strengthen their newly reformed system under the new Terms and Conditions.

TO DO:
Please contact your Senators and Representatives immediately to ask for their support for the continuation of the US-Nepal adoption program by signing onto this letter. For their signatures to be included please have Staffers contact Megan Thompson atmegan_thompson@kerry.senate.gov by noon on Monday, March 1. Ms. Thompson can provide a copy of the letter. This is a non-partisan, bicameral initiative.

To make this as easy as possible:
1) You can look up your Senator's e-mail address on this website:http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_informat ion/senators_ cfm.cfm?OrderBy= state&Sort= ASC
2) You can look up your Representative's e-mail address on this website:https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
3) You can use the following text in your e-mails:

Dear [Senator/Representative]:
I am writing to ask you to sign on to a Congressional Petition being sponsored by Senator John Kerry to urge the U.S. State Department not to close adoptions from Nepal. I am [a family member or friend of a Nepal adoptive family] and know first-hand how important it is for orphaned children to have a family to love and care for them. Nepal is in the process of working toward reform in its adoption laws, which is a difficult process and takes time. This process should be supported by the U.S. Government so that vulnerable children in urgent need of families should not be kept in institutionalized care, which is detrimental to their health and development. Please contact Megan Thompson atmegan_thompson@kerry.senate.gov by noon on Monday, March 1, to sign on to Senator Kerry's letter.
Thank you in advance for your immediate action on this issue.
Sincerely,
[name, address, phone/email contact]

4) If possible, please forward this call to action to your friends.

Blessings,

laurie

A Voice for the Children

Hello all,

Not much to say for now, but found a great article on Nepal adoptions. Finally someone speaking up who knows the culture and knows the value of adoption for the children that are in the orphanages. Copy and paste the following address because I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to get my blog to link again. It use to but I am about the rip out my hair trying to make it do it again. If anyone that has tips to do that in the english language would like to help me it would be appreciated. Here is the site. to go to:

www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=15541

Blessings and prayers to all,

laurie

Still Here

Yes, we are still here. We have all been sick and trying to get our barrings again. We have had a huge snow storm (4 days worth on top of all that was already here) and we are still digging ourselves out from that. Today we went to our house in the woods and had to fight our way through the snow to the house. It was really fun! I do love this winter with it's ton of snow (sorry mom).

I did want to say that we are fighting for our dream. For those of you who know what that means please pray accordingly. My faith has not been shaken, but my emotions are taking me for a ride.

I will get pictures of everything up as soon as I can. Hope everyone is well.

Blessings,

Laurie

Blessings

During this time I have been looking around and taking in the blessings of life. Here are several that I have found.

1. First is my faith. Jesus has given me more faith than I thought I had. A gift from Jesus is a huge gift and I will treasure it and hang on to it.

2. My family. I have an amazing husband that works so hard for the Kingdom. He is a wonderful husband and father. I also have an amazing, smart, handsome and loving son. He amazes me in so many ways. He has been so sweet through me being sick and working out the adoption stuff. He is also in the stage where he is really wanting to hear about his own adoption.It has been a very sweet time with him. I also have great in-laws that support us and take care of us and family at home in the States whom I miss greatly and Mexico (my cousins are missionaries in Mexico).

3. Friends... known and unknown. My known friends have been very supportive during this time and others. I am thankful for all of you. The old standing friendships (one example is Pam and Dave Rhodes, the longest standing friendships in my life) and the new ones (those who have made living in Sweden so much sweeter). The unknown friends who I have met through this blog and have been supportive and comforting. Thank you all, you are a blessing from Christ.

4. My home. That I have a home (which is an apartment in the church that Andreas is pastor of). I am thankful for a warm place to feel safe everyday.

5. That we do have the chance to adopt another child. Being infertile it is never a given if we can have more children. So I am thankful that we will still be able to adopt another child. Not to say the financial part of that is taken care of, but I know the God is faithful and it will be taken care of. I also know that God will lead us to where we need to be and what child is suppose to join our family. Thank you God for preparing the way.

Of course the list can go on, but I will say one final thing I am thankful for. I am so happy that we have had snow on the ground since before Christmas (sorry mom). In the past Swedish winters have been grey, rainy and frankly depressing. This winter has still be somewhat grey, but the snow makes it so much more fun and lively. It has helped me a lot this winter so I am thankful for it.

Just wanted to say some positive things in my life. Hang on to Jesus!

Blessings,

Laurie

Thank You for Your Kindness

To All,

As you may have noticed several posts have disappeared for the moment. We do not want to inadvertantly hurt anyones chances of still adopting, so we have removed them until a time that we are able to be more open.

Also, the Robinson clan and the Collins', I would love to respond to you and see your blog, but it says I am not invited.... can I be invited now? You both gave me your blogs, so I don't know if it something I have messed up or not.

I will continue to put up posts with our lovely boy and what else is going on with the fam and let you know what steps we choose next. Blessings to all and thank you for all of your kind words and needed prayers. They have all meant a lot to us both. I am rooting and praying for all of you.

Blessings,

Laurie

Prayer is Best

Please pray for the adoptions in Nepal.

Thought For The Day

Refinement hurts

Backlog of Pictures

I think I am finally finished with my backlog of pictures. So if you are reading this there is a long line of pictures waiting for you. Not much text this time. I am now sick with a sinus infection, a cold on top of that and an eye infection in both eyes. Tomorrow I will go to an eye specialist so hopefully it will be gone soon. I hope everyone is well and enjoying the snow that is falling in so many places.

Blessings,

Laurie

This is my family at the end of a log snowy and fun walk. We made it out of the really deep snow finally. The house you see is Andreas' uncles side of the ocean house. Andreas' parents have the other side.

The dog was waylaid in the snow. So Andreas lifted him for a few feet. Heavy lifting!

Sam was having a fun time getting through snow that was up to his chest at times.

I really like the next two pictures. The first was taken at New Years before the freeze and the second after the freeze. I will have to get one this summer when it is warm. Cydil, how do I put them together to make one pic?

Backlog of Pictures cont.

Pictures at the Ocean. I love the contrast of this one.

I posted the next two pictures because I really like them. They are from where the boats are kept and it shows how the is forming. It looks to be forming from underneath first. So cool.


This one was taken with me laying on the boardwalk and looking under. I think it looks so cool. Natures art.

Backlog of Pictures cont.

The next pictures are of us walking on the boarder of the ice. I love the look of the board walks in the ice.

You can see how thick some of the ice is as it has pushed up.

Backlog of Pictures cont.

I have finally made it to this past weekend. Andreas finally had a weekend off and we went to the ocean house again. We wanted to see the frozen ocean. This hasn't happened in 24 years so it was worth going to see. No, mom, we didn't go far on the ice. We stayed very close to the shore. We didn't have any ice gear and we had Samuel. Not worth the risk. However, we did see several people on the ice and tracks that went out pretty far. The west coast of Sweden is frozen down to Gothenburg. It really is pretty amazing to see.

On the picture below, the top part is frozen ocean with snow on it. I am on top of the hill were the house is and Andreas and Sam are far ahead. I had the camera.......

The ocean looks like land because of the snow, but the land you see past the first bushes are all islands. Very cool.

Backlog of Pictures cont.

Samuel started school a few weeks ago. I believe I wrote about it in an older post, but here are the pictures to the beginning of the day.

He does really like his new school. Please pray that he finds friends that are good for him. So far it has been a beautiful little girl named Tilda. I think this is the beginning of many more girl friends.

Backlog of Pictures cont.

Here are some videos of our sledding day at Otto's. We had a ton of fun. In the video of Andreas and Samuel I gave them a ''watch this yall'' shout out. It is the last thing a redneck does before the ambulance is called. Luckily, it didn't hold true. But then again, a Swede can't really be a true American redneck.

Backlog of Pictures cont.

Sometime in January we went out to our house in the woods (otherwise known as Otto's) and had a fun family day in the snow. We have a sand quary around the house and that means large sand hills covered in snow (totally fun).

I love this picture of Sam. Here is my Nepali climber. To him this is Mount Everest (Sagarmatha in Nepalese).

This is Andreas and Sam getting to the top of the hill with the snow racer. Needless to say, Andreas got a good work out that day.

ready for some fun.....

Backlog of Pictures cont.

New Years pics at the ocean house. This dog loves the winter.

The ocean is letting go of it's heat. Very cool.

I absolutely love this place. You can take a million great pictures, even for an ametur like me.

Backlog of Pictures cont.

Here are more pictures of New Years at the Ocean house. It is hard to tell in the pic below, but the ocean is steaming. It was about 0 degrees F. The ocean was warmer than the air and so it steams. It looks like the ocean is boiling from upclose.

My favorite people.

Everything becomes a toy with snow on it.

The start of the ocean freeze.

Anybody want to come and visit?