James 1:27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
We have a date for our home safety visit! Monday, a social worker will come and spend about 2 hours doing a walk-through of our house and an interview. Makes me a little nervous! I don't know why. Maybe it's the unknown. Oh wait - a LOT of this is unknown. Silly me! Better just roll with it :) Just 36 days until V*ktor will arrive. In that time, we will have this safety visit, I will go to a day-long training in Denver, I will be downloading (hopefully) a translator app onto Brian's tablet he got from work for his 10 year anniversary, and I will be printing numerous "instruction" cards in Ukrainian to put around our house. I'm sure there are a million other things on the list!
We still have a ways to go on our fundraising! Asking for money is definitely out of my comfort zone. I've realized, though, that giving to this experience for V*ktor is just as vitally important as what we are doing. Just by donating towards this, other people have the opportunity to serve God and minister to V*ktor - even if they will never meet him. Through everything with my pregnancy last year, God taught me that people WANT to help. People WANT to be a part of something and do whatever they can. If we don't give them the opportunity to serve, let them know what is needed, then they can't do it. So, if you want to be a part, want to reach out to an orphan, please consider donating towards V*ktor's expenses. Every bit helps. Even giving the amount you would spend on one meal eating out - that can really add up :) For those prayer warriors out there, please continue to pray for V*ktor's heart, for our family's preparation, for the details of the safety visit and training, and for the finances. I know God has a plan for all of this. We're just waiting on Him. Is He going to use you?
or www.newhorizonsforchildren.org Use the yellow donate button on the bottom left and make sure you note " hosting U-92" in order for it to go towards our hosting fees.
Thought I'd share some about our fun camping weekend. Totally unrelated to V*ktor, but still possibly entertaining to someone :) We went on our first camping trip of the year with friends over the weekend. 6 adults and 11 kids (ages 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 4, 3, 3, 3, 6mo, 6wks). They all had tents, and we took our popup camper. Friday was lots of setup, the kids had fun playing in the woods, riding bikes, and checking out the pond. We all just enjoyed visiting with each other :) Saturday, the Dads took the older ones fishing for awhile, we had lunch, and then we all loaded up and headed up the road to a fish hatchery and aquarium. It was only .50 a kid and $1 adult to get in, and a really neat place that I think few people have even heard about! The kids had fun feeding the geese at the pond. When we got back, we started hearing that there may be storms later. We ate, kids played more, and then the other families packed up their tents. Ang and R headed home. The weather was still fine, so we just hung out at the fire with everything all packed up. When it started raining, we moved older kids into our van and we sat in our camper with the younger kids. We got the call that the storm with 1" hail was going to hit in 20 minutes, so we decided to pop down our camper and go to the bathhouse for the 5 minutes it was supposed to take for the storm to pass. So, everyone went to the bathhouse while Brian and I started to put the camper down. Oops! Must have pinched a cable with the loads of stuff we threw in there. So, as it was lightning and raining, we couldn't get it to go down! We had to slide the beds back out with the canvas all collapsed on them and get to shelter! As it turned out, there wasn't any hail, but strangely popup campers aren't meant to be half up and take loads of water! We sopped a LOT of water off of one bed (glad that's the one that had a plastic sheet), and the other bed wasn't terrible. A and K took their 5 kids home at that point because setting up a tent in the rain at 10pm just wasn't appealing. Can't imagine why! The remaining 8 of us slept in our camper. It actually wasn't too bad! My back was killing me that afternoon when we got home, but otherwise I'd say it was a great trip!
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