Prayers answered, Passports, and Packing

About a month ago, the orphanage owner, who we're friends with, asked if I would travel to Uganda with her on her next trip. In July? I asked for prayer in knowing what to do...and that tickets were higher than normal, and not sure what to do.

Well. Here's the story of how we made the decision to book a round trip ticket to Africa, last night. :) :) :)

That Wednesday, that L asked me, I talked to Beau and he initially didn't say "no", like I thought he would. He just mentioned that we're not fully funded for the adoption and we should take that into consideration. Never once, was I upset with Beau, or wanting to convince him otherwise. I wanted to be unified in our decision. We sought wisdom and council from others, and God's word. We just, prayed. I had a peace either way of going or not going.
That same night Lise asked us to pray about the trip and that she too would be asking the Lord to provide for her ticket, since they were exceptionally high ($2,600).

I also knew that I would NOT go to Africa if her trip fell on a week that I was working. I couldn't justify taking work off to go. So Thursday morning, on the way to work, I prayed, "Lord, would you just make her schedule her trip on a week I AM working- so I don't even have to consider the possibility of going?"

That Thursday night, L called me at 10:30...."Kendra, you'll never believe this. I found out today, I'll be receiving a refund check for about the price of the current tickets! It should be coming in July rather than September! So, it should come the second week of July, and I'll probably book my ticket around July 10th for the last week of July into August...."

You have got to be kidding me. The family I nanny for, will be gone for a solid two weeks for various reasons starting July 26- August 7th. (the last week of July into August!) The thought, "Serioussssssssly, God?"

Now I felt like not only did God NOT answer my prayer, but he was very specific in not answering it- with the timing of the exact dates I was NOT WORKING. Crud. But hello, how are we going to pay for this ticket? SO WE PRAYED SOME MORE. "Lord, please provide if you want me to go. I want to do your will. Just make it clear please, you know I like GREEN MEANS GO answers, BLACK or WHITE, no GRAY....ha!" My friend Laura even said, "Soooo, we too, should pray for a surprise check?" My response was, "Uh, ya. Good luck with that. That's not possible!"

Fast forward to Monday....Beau was gone on a business trip that week, we knew that meant more time to ourselves and away from each other, and encouraged one another to pursue the Lord in his Word and prayer to see what God might reveal to us about this. Anyway, he called me late that night before bed. Out of no where he casually says, "Oh ya, I remembered that I'm due for a bonus. If you make the bonus they are in January and JULY. (not October, or December, etc.) It will be about the cost of a ticket." SAY WHAT?

This. Was. God. I knew it in the deepest part of my being.
This was the Almighty God.

Later that week, I decided to go run some errands. One of the things I decided to do, was make color copies of our passports. They were needed for our dossier paperwork that we will later submit...just thought, might as well get it out of the way. No reason really, and I typically am a PROCRASTINATOR. Well, after they handed me the prints, I realized, and when I say realized, I mean like sick to my stomach, that my passport still had my MAIDEN name on it. Ugh. That doesn't work. OH MY WORD WHAT AM I GOING TO DO!?!?!?!?!?!?!? (all at the printing counter) More money. More time lost. What a headache.

Then it hit me. Was this "random day of errands" not random at all, and very purposeful in this quest of wondering if I was to go to Africa? Nah. It couldn't be. Either way, MY PASSPORT IS WRONG, I CAN'T BOOK TICKETS WITH A WRONG PASSPORT. So I called to see how long it would take to get it fixed...the dude said "Three weeks." I said, "Excuse me, how long did you say?" He said, "Three weeks m'am." Three weeks from when I sent in my passport to be fixed, was July 10th....the day Lise would book her tickets......not such a coincidence in my errand run and deciding to make color copies wayyyyyy in advance, at all.

HEAR YOU LOUD AND CLEAR, LORD. (I'm such a doubting Thomas)

I don't know why You want me to go. But I'll go.

Well, the last three weeks a few things have changed. Lise is no longer able to go in July, and is postponing her trip until September or October. Not such a terrible thing, that may be a crucial time for our adoption process in Uganda around then- it would be great to have someone from the states, over there. A friend approached me and said, "Kendra, would you have pursued this trip if Lise hadn't of asked you?" The answer to that was, NO! She offered the inclination that the Lord may have known, that's what it would have taken for me to even consider this, and for me to GO.

Also, Beau realized that his bonus, after taxes, 401K, etc etc his bonus would be much much less. So bummed. I took these two things as, "Lord, do you NOT want me to go now? These things seem to be saying different? This is turning gray. I hate gray. SHOW ME." (seriously, I'm so desperate for his guidance, it's not even funny.)

I was sharing with someone about the bummer (still thankful for) of Beau's bonus that wasn't what we were quite planning on. This person said, "WOW, well that's great! (uhhhh no it's not?) because my wife and I have been praying about helping you with your ticket. We think you should go and have been praying about it. We'd like to give a portion to your ticket...and with what you've told us, our portion and Beau's bonus- would be the price of your ticket!"

ohhhhhhh myyyyyy lannnnnnta.

So, here I am- all "ready to go"....waiting on my passport. I began thinking if my passport doesn't come on time- I maybe shouldn't go.
My passport came yesterday. July 9th. I JUMPED UP AND DOWN in the street! Ripped that baby open, and knew- okay Lord, I'll go. Now please go before us and help us find a reasonable ticket. I was really struggling with the price of tickets when we looked. Last night Beau and I signed on, and first check- a round trip ticket to Entebbe, Uganda leaving on July 29th- August 7th for $1,212.94.

CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT? (They were $2,600+!!!!!!!)

So there's that.

I will be flying to Uganda. I will be meeting our little man and our little lady.
I will get to hold them, hug them, squeeze them, kiss them, play with them, pray over THEM,  snuggle with them, and LOVE THEM by the time July is over. Praise the Lord. Beau and I are both so united in this, he of course, is so bummed about not getting to go- but glad one of us does! 

I've somewhat struggled a bit with this trip too. Although I get to SEE THEM, and meet our attorney, deal with some paperwork things, etc.....they aren't coming home. A wise adoptive friend/momma told me that even if I didn't get to meet with the attorney, to GO FOR BONDING. 100% Go for the bonding experience, start that attachment and bonding process.

Here I am Lord, send me.

Future little Christiansen's, here I come. :) Momma loves you. Daddy too.

Our Adoption Story: Part 3 (The BEST part!)

I promise I'm not dragging this story out for the dramatic effects. HA! It truly is that long, with many details depicting how God made it very clear the time was NOW, THIS was the country, and THESE were the children we would pursue. 

So if you need caught up on part 1 and part 2 of our story to make this all flow, click here and here. 

We left off with Beau encouraging me to get ahold of "L". I was still being a hard-hearted snot and kindly told him off, because what was the point, when I knew his plan was to not start the adoption process until the end of 2014. Can't mess with a woman's heart when it comes to one of her biggest heart's desires! 

Well, I couldn't sleep laying there in bed that night after his prompting. (Or was it His prompting?) I did what I do best, stated up till 2:00 in the morning researching the site for the orphanage and this lady's Facebook page. I wanted to know every little detail I could before contacting anyone about anything. Honest to goodness, I used to want to be a detective- LOL, so I investigated the you know what out of those sites. All the while thinking, "Lord, WHAAAAT AM I DOING!?!?"

Eventually I came to the site that showed a few of the pictures of some of the kids staying at the orphanage or that were there during the day for the daycare they also offer. I clicked through picture after picture looking into the faces of adorable little African babes. Then I came to this picture of a couple of two year olds- a little boy and a little girl. The caption read "2 year old Little D (name changed for privacy) is the sweetest thing to walk this earth and his smile can bring only joy to your family. (His friend Asha is not for adoption) says hi also!" 

In that moment, I had the FLEETING thought (I kid you not), "God, is this our son?"

Then immediately freeeeeeeaked out on myself for thinking that. Why would I think that? Oh my word, Beau would freak out if he knew I just thought that. But again, why would I think that!? Then I remembered a time I heard, "You know when people POP into your mind at completely random times and you think what in the world!? Well, instead, just drop what you're doing and PRAY for them!!

I did just that. I just stopped and prayed for little D. I prayed for his day, knowing it was morning across the ocean, I prayed for his heart and to know Jesus, and I prayed for a forever family for him, his parents wherever they would be. 

Ok. Well after that crazy moment I decided that this site and lady seemed "legit". Haha!!! I also asked God to not let my heart get too invested with anything but to just follow through with what Beau  wanted me to do. 

So sitting there in the middle of the night, I emailed "L" through the site. I basically first apologized for the randomness of my message, and told her a little about myself and Beau and that her friend C told me to get ahold of her. I didn't tell her how many children we were interested in adopting some day, our timeline of starting the process, boys or girls or both, I didn't tell her the ages we would be interested in adopting- just that the country her orphanage was in, was one of two we had extensively researched in looking into when the time came. It was short and sweet and I pushed send while thinking I was a complete nut job, and hoping she didn't agree with me. ;) 

Side note: if we had started the process through an agency (like you're supposed to) we would have filled out the application blanks asking about our preferences like this:

* open to sibling groups? - yes! 

* Agess: any age up to 5 (because God was working on my heart for a baby, when we previously wanted 2+, also secretly wanting an older brother for a little sister) 

* Gender: any gender (preferably a boy and girl) 

(Also: * that they would know each other/be around one another) 

I woke up the next morning (Thursday) with a reply from "L".  Here's what she said copy/pasted, with a few details omitted for privacy: (my thoughts as I was reading this are in red & L in black)

"Not a completely random message, but a God inspired message.  Kendra we have some beautiful children for adoption.  The first course of action is to find an adoption agency there in Iowa that will work with us in "Africa".   My advice is to adopt 2 or 3 children at one time as the cost of traveling and your stay there all adds up (among other reasons) She didn't know we were absolutely wanting to adopt 2 children, for most- that would be a shock to adopt more than 1 at time. But two, was our desire.  
The children are all living together as a family, so for them, staying together would be a comfort although none of them are blood related. Prayer request of them "knowing each other"- answered.  
Next week I will be posting a few of the kids for adoption on this site.  Two kids we wanted to adopt two! that come to mind are "N", our Christmas newborn (born 11-22-13) YOU GUYS THAT WAS THE DAY we went to the hospital to visit our very good friends and their new daughter. REMEMBER? (click here in case you don't ;) ha!) The day GOD STARTED TRANSFORMING MY HEART walking out of that hospital after holding Kallie, and God stirring in me to consider wanting a baby- in whatever form that was....our sweet baby girl was born in Africa. The. Same. Day. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?,  she is just a doll and "Little D" who is 2 1/2, also a very sweet little guy.  
THIS IS THE LITTLE BOY THAT GOD GAVE ME THAT FLEETING THOUGHT the night before!!! Little D! In the picture!! The one I STOPPED AND PRAYED FOR, for his heart for Jesus, for his forever family, for him to be adopted. Housing while in country would be right next door at a nice inn.  I am going to Africa Feb 9th and will return with current pics and lots of new information.  So start now and find an agency there in Iowa. God Bless and keep me updated." 

- "L"

(Beau later mentioned, "Man, she just assumed the sale right there, didnt' she?" HAHA! The thoughts of a business major/man! ;) 

Ummmmm can you believe that!? My heart stopped. And I immediately knew and doubted at the same time, that this could be God being VERY intentional about telling us NOW. Not to mention, our very hearts desires if an agency had been reading our preferences. 

I DIDNT TELL BEAU. I was terrified. Because:

 1.) the night before I was stubborn and told him I wasn't going to get ahold if "L". (Bah. Foot in mouth.)  

2) I was nervous about telling him what I thought God was impressing on my heart and afraid he wouldn't agree or say, "Okay, sure. We can pursue that at the end of the year." 

3.) I was still blown away. In shock. Ya know. 

So I did what many a-woman might do. I blabbed to my friend Erin at lunch in the teachers lounge. The same time at lunch, Beau texted me and asked if I had indeed got ahold of "L"? 

Oh crap. Oh man. What do I do!? This could be the ultimate let down of my liiiiiiiife. 

I told him yes! Only to be so stubborn, I didn't even call and tell him, I just told him to sign into my account and read what "L" had replied with. I didn't tell him about my "fleeting thought" before emailing her about Little D. Ha! 

He read it and didn't say much. Shocker. 

Well I went through the rest of the school day, and late that night crawling into bed, Beau asked if he could have my laptop (laying on my side of the bed). I said "I don't know here it is." (Fully knowing he was going to do his own investigating and my heart just couldn't take it. I couldn't take him looking it all up: the countries stipulations for adoptive parents, the agency she recommended us looking into, and mostly- the picture of Little D). Well, my husband is a brilliant man and said, "I saw your laptop on the side of your bed. Hand it to me." (You guys, I'm a sinner. I've since asked for forgiveness for my stinky attitude.) I handed it over. 

Sure enough, he did exactly what I thought he was going to do. I literally, grabbed my Bible, turned away from him in bed and read Ester (just what I happened to be going through) and prayed and prayed and prayed. "Move in His heart if it's YOUR will Lord". 

He all of a sudden says, "HEY! This little boy has my eye lashes!" I finally turned over, peered over his shoulder and saw exactly who it was. A different (non labeled) picture of Little D. My heart lept. I said, "Beau, that's him. That's little D, who she was talking about in the email. That's the little boy who..." And I told him about my "fleeting thought" the night before with Little D. 

End of part 3. 

(Part 4 will be chalk full of the ways God moved in Beau's heart and how we became unified in the decision to move forward amongst our biggest fears) 

Our home: Before Pictures

Is it March 14th yet? I'm not sure if I've been so excited to clean and paint (prior to moving our stuff in) ever before in my life. Anyone wanna help? ;) I know you wanna.....

Anyhow, I've gotten some requests of pictures of the house. Plus, this blog is to document our life. (And if you're a creeper/investigator like my husband....anyone can Google our address and see these same exact pictures as well.

A few things... it's now actually vacant, so these are pictures with the previous owners things/paint jobs. (Please remember that. Please please-haha!) Also, these pictures do absolutely NO justice to the actual rooms. I really do not understand why the photographer chose the angle they did for most of these- I questioned if I was in the same house the first time we went in. ;)

It will be nice to eventually have some BEFORE & AFTER pictures. Pinterest has been stirring some ideas up. Beau even said for a Valentine's Day "present" he'll help me with some projects. Boom. Thank youuuuu baaaaaabe!

Can't you just see little beautiful brown children running around this yard and climbing that weirdo tree? WE CAN!

Dad got all excited that the shed has a concrete floor. Things I would never think of? Lol

A fire pit- neato!

Not crazy about those bushes, buuuuut my lack of green thumb can't complain too much.

This baby gate around the grill cracks me up.

Love the open floor plan from kitchen to living room.

I'm working on "loving" the oak cabinets/trim. :)

Definitely leaving the CHALKBOARD door to the garage! Woo!

Wish they woulda left this couch- we LOVE sectionals. Boo.

Fireplace opposite "couch wall" from previous picture.

This (in real life) spearmint striped dining room will be GONE-ZO.

Master Bed (with a red accent wall at the head of the bed. WHICH totally matches all of our bedroom decor and bedding! Yay!

Yes, yes this IS above the bed....IN the ceiling. We have no idea why. No idea. WHO thinks of this?...and then DOES It? LOL

Master bath (master closet not pictured)

Two words: paint. job. (spare bed)

Spare bedroom

Upstairs hall bathroom- sadly, they didn't leave the monkey decals. ;)

Basement bathroom (there is a toilet in there, I promise)

Just in case there is any question whether the bathroom is vacant or not, or if boys/girls are allowed....ya know. Totally normal. (??????)

Screen that pulls down in front of the doorway, of the below "bedroom"/office/storage room.

Basement room. It's not technically a bedroom because there isn't a closet. Those are the electrical switches in the gray cabinet. Ha! They used it as a spare bedroom we're guessing.

So, this is our potential house! (I say potential because there's always room for something to not go quite right, and or God may chose to take this away.) Pretty neat! And super blessed. Can't wait to fill it with children someday! The LORD has been good to us.

There will be paint jobs galore, and I can't wait for this new journey in our lives. Thank you Jesus for all you've done in our lives- use these walls/roof to bring You Glory and to bless OTHERS!

Glory Story- Our Home

I'm titling this post "Glory Story" because God has done incredible work in Beau and I's lives, and there are a TON of glory stories that fell into place to make one giant piece into our ongoing God story of the Christiansens.

A lot of you have said, "CONGRATULATIONS on the house!" Followed by, "I didn't even know you guys wee looking!". And to that we very hastily say, "WE WEREN'T LOOKING! HAHA!"

We alllll know I'm long winded so grab your calendars, a blanket, and I imagine you'll have to stand up a few times and shake the blood out of your 'asleep' booty once or twice by the time I'm done. It's worth it to scream and shout from the rooftops of what GOD has been doing for us.

 I'll try to do this in steps so it's as clear as possible AND it will be long. I've warned you. 

Beau and I are kinda lame. We find enjoyment in card games between the two of us, bike riding, and time spent on the internet looking up and researching things. Three things in particular that Beau enjoys is looking up the housing market around our area, AND the Iowa wrestling stats, post-meet interviews with wrestlers/coaches, and stats of their competitors to predict the upcoming meets, and Gotcha Day adoption videos/adoption info. Crazy I tell ya. Crazy. If his laptop is up, he's doing one of those two things. For the longest time my response would be, "Quit looking that (house) stuff up. It gets me excited and I know we're not planning on a house for another year." That was the plan. That was our plan. (God MUST laugh at us, just has to.)

For months and months, this is how it went. One time we drove by a house (we love drive bys- we're those people) that has the little container stuck in their yard with paper handouts by the FOR SALE sign- they're the best. We make a game out of it and I tuck and roll jump out of the car and sprint up to the yard and dash back. He times me. Well one time, we did this 310 Crystal Street and when we took a look at it, it was WAYYYYYYYYYY out of price range. Sweet house. Not so sweet price.

Fast forward to two weeks ago (four months later), we do another random drive by- we like to dream. :) This time we noticed 310 Crystal seemed vacant. Although it took the thrill of grabbing another sheet, we decided to grab another and see if the price had gone done at all- FOR FUN. WE WERE NOT LOOKING TO BUY A HOUSE. Seriously, this was a lame hobby of ours. Well, the price HAD gone down. We didn't think anything of it, went home, Beau hopped on his laptop...looked around. The pictures seemed pretty neat/nice. End of story.

Next day, Monday, Beau goes to work (he's a banker, remember?) and asked one of his mortgage lady friends OUT OF CURIOSITY (I didn't know he was doing this) about the process of buying a house. What do we need to consider, what things do they look at/need to be lined up, time frame, documents needed, etc. Her response? "Oh, I actually just printed out a sample packet of all that information on a house listed by a realtor that works with me. Let me go get it." She comes back with the packet of information, and it was a packet of information on THE EXACT HOUSE WE RANDOMLY LOOKED AT. Beau brought it home and told me, and as exciting as that was random, I replied, "Sweet, but don't get my hopes up."

That night, we head to my dads where we bring up ^^ to him. Show him the pictures, run/crunch some numbers for fun, dream a little and then my dad tells us we should look at it. "It doesn't cost anything to just go look, call Chad!" Um, WHAT? We're not looking for houses. We're planning on resigning our lease for our one bedroom apartment, THE NEXT DAY.

Wednesday night, we go look at the house with my dad. Beau says, "Don't get too excited, this is for fun." We loved it.
Dad comes over, (who is a very picky, thorough house-hunter/builder) and says, "You guys, I just can't find anything to tell you to stay away from this house, except for a few paint jobs- and that's a piece of cake." Um, WHAT? My goodness. WHAT IS HAPPENING? We go to bed that night, and we just go before the Lord and ask him if this is HIS WILL, rather than our will. Who wouldn't love to move out of a one bedroom apartment and into a 3+ bedroom with 4 bathrooms house, with a two-car garage? Wowzers. We prayed very specifically, asking God that he would make it very clear as to what we should do. In order for this to be possible we needed very specific things to be answered/taken care of.

1. Kendra needed a job for the spring. I had graduated but could start subbing, since jobs for full time positions for the start of the school year in August were posted in late spring. Subbing is very inconsistent though. 
2. Kendra needed a job for the summer. (story of a teacher's life, eh?) 
3. Kendra needed a full time teaching job in the Fall. 
4. We needed to sublease our apartment (knowing if God wanted us to pursue this house, we'd probably close in March sometime) from April-July 31. 
5. We wanted to purchase this house for no more than $___,____ (significantlyish lower than the asking price)

***I'll tell you what, it's such a special and uniting thing to come before our Father as a couple together, knowing we're totally reliant on Him for this situation. (We also let Him know we had no idea why he was presenting us with this, where it came from, etc) We knew we were asking for very specific, very BIG things from Him- but what choice did we have? Our lives are HIS.

Minutes after we closed in prayer, I reached over to grab my phone and set an alarm, and my phone jingle-jangled....I had a new email. The email? From my summer nanny coordinator, telling me she had TWO FAMILY PROFILES for me to look at for a summer position. THAT IS PRAYER REQUEST #2 ANSWERED. In less than five minutes.

Thursday (I posted about this day here) I was at a friends house, where I received a call from a principal to come in for an interview for a FULL TIME position at a school I student taught at. The job would go from ASAP to the end of the school year in MAY. THAT IS PRAYER REQUEST #1 ANSWERED. in less than 12 hours. (Also, a hopeful foot in the door for positions they are posting for the fall full time....for prayer request #3)  I started Tuesday. :)

The weekend passed, we took a 2nd look at the house that Sunday...still loving it all. Beau also put an ad on Craigslist for our apartment. It's almost impossible in a college town to find a subleaser for the summer months. Yipes. However, we had two people email us within hours of our post, who both came to look at the apartment, and one girl committed, but then the next day found out she lost her job, so no longer would be able to sign the sublease. Bummer. God still provided, but chose to take that away- we're okay with that. He is still good. We will still rely on Him to provide for prayer request #4.

We continued in prayer, and decided to put our first offer on the house Tuesday. We were still waiting on our Pre-approval for the mortgage, it was MLK day so the bank was closed, but we got the go ahead from our realtor that we could still put an offer in. We went back and forth all day Tuesday (every recess duty I was on, I was praying- out loud with my scarf wrapped around my head as I walked around the play ground, just asking for wisdom/clarity) with the buyers with offers and counter offers, and by the end of the day we weren't really excited as to where things were going. It was looking as if God may be saying "Be patient.", so we chose not to put another counter offer that night. Instead, we chose to pray about it again, and go at it Wednesday morning.

Wednesday, Beau called our realtor and gave him our "almost" final offer, the offer that was our "ideal price" that we wanted to pay and had prayed for the week before. It was a long shot because it was still further away from their last offer. I got a text from Beau on my lunch that said, "THEY ACCEPTED THE OFFER!" You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me. I got tears in my eyes and just said, "Thank you Jesus. This is all because of You, Lord." YOU GUYS I CAN NOT EXPRESS TO YOU how much of a miracle that was/is. They accepted our offer, not a penny over our price we SPECIFICALLY PRAYED FOR ONE WEEK EARLIER. I was convinced, (how I had not been by now? Oh me, of little faith) that He must want us to have this house for some reason. HERE IS ANSWERED PRAYER REQUEST #5. Holy. Moly.

By Thursday we're still waiting for our Pre-Approval letter which also had to be in the sellers hands by February 1st. We had run the numbers a hundred times (and by we I mean Beau and the mortgage lady) and knew that we should be good to go. However, Monday was MLK day, bank was closed. Tuesday- her computer crashed and lost everything. They were to overnight her a new computer for Wednesday morning, and it didn't come. Thursday, she says the earliest it will be completed and returned would be this upcoming Tuesday (26th), but could be as late as Friday (the 1st. It HAD to be in by then). CRAP. So, that night, again, we came together- and I remember laughing out loud in prayer, "God, I know "W" said the EARLIEST will be TUESDAY, but can you perform a miracle and knock her socks, and our socks off and have it come in TOMORROW- as in FRIDAY?". Amen.

Friday, Beau texts me after my lunch- "WE GOT APPROVED!". I'm SORRY, WHAAAAAAT? (we weren't surprised it came back approved, it was the time frame that shocked our socks off.) The lady who DOES MORTGAGES EVERY DAY FOR A LIVING JUST TOLD US YESTERDAY, THE EARLIEST IT WOULD  BE DONE WAS TUESDAY? And he just texted me and said it came back that day- FRIDAY. The day I had asked God, laughingly so, if he could perform a little miracle- and He answered that prayer. YOU GUYS. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? (again?)

It's now Sunday. There is a Sale Pending sign stuck in the yard in place of a container full of pamphlets with information on the house, that will now potentially be our home for years to come. A home of which I have asked God that if he allowed us to have, (Ha- a WEEK AGO) that we would whole-heartedly use it to bless others. Wanna know what? Beau's sister is moving back from Ohio this summer and needs a place to live while she finds a new job and her own place to call home. Guess what? We have room. :) We have married best friends that will be moving back from Florida in October that also need a place to live while they find a place to call home- we have room. We have two sets of friends from Indiana and Michigan who will be traveling here this summer for my cousin's wedding and need a place to stay- there is room in the Inn. :)

One more thing- I got a little panicked about the thought of cleaning, painting, packing, moving, unpacking, putting things away, and cleaning the old apartment now that I have a full time job. We close (pending) March 14th. That's the day we would get the keys, that next day is Friday the 15th of which I don't have school and so starts Spring Break at my school....TEN DAYS now blessing me to relieve that little tiny stress. God cares. :) He really does.

If the process of sale pending continues to work out, which I have faith and trust in the almighty that it will, and if not, He is still good- that Beau and I have been praying about what else we can do to bless others with the room we have in our home before we begin the adoption process.

We are so blessed and I can NOT believe the last week. Just can NOT believe it. I'm still giggling and asking the Lord what He has up his sleeve....but I'm willing to go along with it. I want an attitude of YES.
Even if He chooses to take this away, the message today in church really spoke to my heart in complete trust in Him. Sometimes things don't always work out as we think they might, and it might be a huge bummer, a time of suffering, major disappointment, maybe even painful- but ultimately it's Him conforming me to be more like Christ. And I can't think of anything I want to be more, than more like Him. (it's not easy though, please know that. I am very weak. He is strong through me.)

WE DO NOT DESERVE these blessings, but it has only secured our trust and faith in how God will provide and guide us for our future. He is good. He would have been good STILL, had things not gone this particular grand way. 


BE AMAZED AND GIVE GOD GLORY WITH US! :)