The news just gets BIGGER

It has been a little strange for us to look back on how much has changed since last Thanksgiving.

Last year our closest family member would have been Brandon's cousin in Morocco, this year all of Hannah’s cousins were together.

Last year we ate sweet potato casserole with food coloring to make it orange at the “Toyota Thanksgiving”, this year we have three snowy Thanksgiving feasts planned.

Last year the only Christmas decoration we had was a stick of chapstick with Santa on it, this year we can't escape Commercial Christmas and our tree has been up for a week.

Last year we were bike-riding or moto-riding into town for groceries in the 90 degree warmth, this year Brandon has been driving his 21 year old car through record-breaking snow and record-breaking cold.

Last year the rest of Brandon's family was in Maine waiting out his dad's quadruple bypass surgery after a mild heart attack, this year the family is spread back across countries and continents.

Last year we were making new friends in foreign languages, this year we shared a meal with 40 friends under one roof.

Last year the first ebola case was still a month away, this year it has closed the Louis Pasteur Clinic in Bamako, Mali where we first heard our baby’s heartbeat in May.

Last year we were anticipating the January arrival of two college grads who would be spending several months with us, this year we’re anticipating the (possible) January arrival of up to 2 foster children AND the July arrival of our own baby.

We hope you're as excited to hear the news as they were before. You got that right: for the third time we’re clinging to the hope of building a human to raise to honor God and live with Him. If you haven't already heard this part of our story, you can catch up here and here. 

At church this past week we were encouraged to thank God for imperfect gifts. Waiting to thank God for things that are just how we wanted them to be is a road to bitterness. So right now we’re thankful for the joy of being pregnant and the hope God has given us.

You’ve heard that it “takes a village to raise a child” and we want you to be a part of our village. But we don’t even think that you have to wait to meet our baby to be a part of our village. We’re asking our village to be serious about praying for the safety of Hannah and baby. We’re thankful to still have each other despite some dark circumstances that could have turned out otherwise.

In our quest to live genuine, open and vulnerable lives, you can help our growing family in an unusual way. Because Hannah is considered high risk, she has to give herself shots twice a day. Anyone in our village that wants to, we’re willing to let you give Hannah one of the 450 shots she’ll need to take between now and birthday. So if you've always kinda wanted to give someone a shot and want to be a part of our family in that way, here's your "shot". (See what I did there?)

And since some of you are wondering, just because we’re having a baby doesn’t mean there are any fewer kids in St. Joseph County who need a foster home: we’re still in 100%!

Our Next Adventure

Although it was not our intent to continue this blog after returning from Guinea, We thought some of you may wonder where God has been leading us since returning to Indiana.

Several months prior to our return, a part time position opened up at the bank and I returned to the same chair I left two years ago. Brandon's boss saved him a spot at work where he now helps run the shipping department.

We've done some work to our house and it has taken on a little bit of an African flavor, including a few vintage West African maps. Fenley was, of course, thrilled to see us. We've spent a lot of time traveling to visit family and catching up with friends over the summer.

We've also gotten much more deeply involved at church: We serve on the missions committee and are leading a small group through a 12 week Bible study (we hope it continues beyond the 12 weeks). We're also helping with a "business plant" (like a church plant but a community/missions minded business instead). Our experiences with the curriculum research for GBU in Guinea have led us into a long-term project to help members of our church integrate faith and work.

Outside of church, God has called us to something a little more personal and challenging.

Jesus advocates for the cause of the broken, the disenfranchised, the hurt, the helpless and the defenseless. We are called to do the same. It's not the government's responsibility to care for these people, it's the church's -- ours. We are all called to it in different ways. But God asks all of us to reflect His amazing Glory to a dark and broken world around us.

Knowing that this marvelous task has been entrusted to us we are setting out on our next adventure:

Becoming foster parents!

This is both exciting and terrifying. And we will need constant prayers now, as we finish up the approval process, and later, when we get our first placement. We have been told that we could have a placement as early as Christmas!

For many people (us included before we got deeply entrenched in this), the term “foster parent” and all that it entails is pretty fuzzy. But for us, this is what it means:

We will be placed with either one child or a sibling set between the ages of 0 – 3 years old of either gender. The child could stay with us for a short period of time and then be reunited with their parents or they could be with us for much longer, up to 15 months. There could be cases where the biological parent's rights are revoked and the child is then legally available for adoption. In those cases we would love for our home to be the child's forever home. But whether the child is with us for a short while or for life, we are delighted that for that season we get to be their parents.

We have received nothing but good news from my many visits with my OB/GYN and my hematologist, and they all seem optimistic that we will be able to have biological children in the future. Maybe God has sent some rough times our way to shift our perspective and put us together with a child who wants a family as badly as we do.

There are so many other aspects of becoming/being a foster parent that we are looking forward to sharing with you all. We know that it will be challenging. We know that it will mean regular meetings with biological parents and caseworkers. We know that it will mean having our own lives under the microscope. We know that it will mean only leaving our children with someone who has been fingerprinted, had a background check run on them and has been approved by the department of child services if we ever want a night out. We know it will mean sacrificing our free time, our own wants and our money. We know it will mean a whole shift in our current life and in some of our mindsets. We know it will mean facing challenges, having our hearts broken and seeing a side of the world that can be gut-wrenchingly sad.

We know all this, but we are still in it 100%...

Because Jesus came to rescue us when we were orphans and give us a family in Him.


-Hannah



Also, if you are interested in reading more about foster care, from some experienced foster parents, I highly recommend you go here.