Trusting Him.

I'm sitting at work. I was reading a book that has really affected me and I'm only on the third chapter. It's called " Kisses from Katie." It's about a 22 yr old women who went to Uganda on a mission trip when she was sixteen. She fell in love with the country and returned when she turned eighteen. She has since adopted thirteen children, and often has ill or injured adults and children living with her. She only has electricity sometimes and is surrounded by poverty and disease. Her mission work is incredible, but not because of her. She does it only to glorify God. To show so much love to the people of Uganda, that they see Jesus in her. She writes: " He(God)blinded me to the filth and disease, and I saw only children hungery for love that I was eager to share with them. I adored them, not because of who I was, but because of who He is. I just sat right down on the cold, hard floor and snuggled my nose into their dirty necks and kissed their fungus-covered heads and didn't even see it. I was in love."
I am humbled by her faith. She glorifies God. It's that simple. She spends many days working from sunrise till she climbs into her bed covered with netting to keep out the bugs. All this because God has called her to love. The children there are covered in filth. The red dust blows in the wind and it's impossible to stay clean.Yet she loves them because Christ loves them. We were covered in the filth of our sin. Dirty and not worthy of Gods mercy and grace. He washes away the dirt and filth of our sin and forgives us, making us worthy to someday live with Him. Thank you Lord.

Reading about the children in the orphanages of Uganda, makes me excited to finish with our process and bring home a little one who needs a forever family. We counted up the total cost of the adoption and found that it will come to roughly $25,000. Our fund raising is not going as well as I had planned. We have had our puzzle for two weeks and have only sold one piece. I still believe God will provide. He has not called us to do this only to fail. He will provide and be glorified in the sight of the nay sayers and people who don't believe this to be God's will. If you feel led to donate, please contact me and help us bring our little one home.Praise the Lord!

Paper Quicksand

Hi All,
I know it's been awhile since the last blog. We are done with our autobiography though, so that is a big step that is completed! We made contact with our agency coordinator Aneata. She has been really great! I guess we got so busy with our homestudy paperwork, we forgot to do our IAN policy agreement...oops!No problem right? It turned out to be thirty one pages long. The hardest part is getting a paper notorized in the doctors office. We are going to have to find a notary who will travel.Once we get that paperwork turned in, we will simultanously finish our homestudy, and begin our dossier. You guess right...more paperwork. I don't want to sound like I am complaining. We truly believe God has orchestrated this adoption from the beginning. Christians through out history have overcome more with less lipservice.

The garage sale was a great success!!! It was Labor Day weekend if you didn't have a chance to come. We made just over a thousand dollars in two days of sales. We still had lots of stuff left over, and our awesome christian friends(family really) came thru again and donated more stuff. We are praying for another successful sale since this will be the last garage sale. After this, everything goes to Goodwill.I hope to buy the puzzle this week.Your prayers are welcome.

The family is doing well. Emily is back in soccer. I'm so glad she is interested in sports and physical fitness. She exercises with us all the time. She joined running club at school, so we went running together the other day. She ran 1 3/4 miles with some walk breaks. What can I say? She's a Ramey. Becca is doing well too. She is beginning to drive. Yikes! Caden is well. Loving school and making us laugh.
I wanted to recommend a movie to everyone. Katy and I actually had a date last week and went to see the movie Courageous.

It is a call for men to step up and be the kind of man a wife and children need. I lack in many areas believe me. I'm a work in progress, but I thank God for the conviction to change and the grace when I don't measure up.I won't go on. I said plenty on this in my last blog. Will you meet the challenge? If you see the movie let me know. See ya soon.

Lend Me Your Ear

Here I sit at work, having a cup of coffee, missing my family desperately. There is a clipboard sitting next to me with my half done autobiography on it. And only a rough draft at that. Writing this blog is actually a stall tactic if truth be told.I still have the parenting, religion, reasons to adopt, and the last section called "general" which is really the section that's about me to do. I mean the real me. My personality,strengths,weaknesses,my fears, likes,dislikes, etc.Self examination is a really strange thing. Most people don't enjoy looking inside and examining the bits and pieces that make us who we are. Isn't it easier to look at others and their shortcomings instead of ours?You can look at just about any sitcom and see people doing foolish things and looking like an idiot.Why is that funny? Because it makes us feel better about ourselves.And while I'm on the subject men, lend me your ear. There is something seriously wrong with television today and the way people perceive men. Look at all the popular sitcoms today. Family guy, Everybody loves Raymond, King of Queens,the list goes on. The men in those shows look like morons and like they are completely inept.What happen to the days of men being strong leaders in our homes?Being respected by their children instead of the kids making snide comments and walking away only to ignore what their parents say?Most kids that grow up to be disfunctional adults are that way because their dads were not present. You can live in the house and still not be present in your childrens lives. It takes more than just DNA to be a dad. Pray AND play with your family.Respect your wife and treat her as an equal. She is a child of God the same as you. Look your children in the eyes when they are talking to you. Why should they listen to you when you talk, if they feel like you're not listening to them? Respect is a two way street. Think about it.So I got off the subject...sorry. I'm down off my soap box now.The whole point was that this homestudy is tough. It's our first big hurdle.

So yes...homestudy...big hurdle...got it! But God gave me a scripture this week. A promise to claim when the frustration comes or the fear of the unknown. This adoption is a very big deal in our lives, but we serve a very big God. I was driving in the car with Caden and heard this scripture in a childrens song on one of his cd's.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And lean not on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him
And He will make your paths straght.

Proverbs 3:5-6


The alarms went off in my head. God was telling us to trust Him. We have had alot of anxiety over the fund raising and the travel we'll have to do. Two trips to Ethiopia is way out of our comfort zone. Let me tell you something. God has put some amazing people in our lives. We have a group of people that are some of the most generous, loving,and selfless friends anyone could ask for. We are gathering alot of things for our garage sale fundraiser and much of it has come from our friends. I got another fundraising idea from a blog written by a woman who has adopted from Ethiopia.

We are going to sell pieces of this puzzle and whoever buys a piece can sign there name on the back. We can show our new little all the people who helped bring them home to their forever family. Praise God for His promises. His Word is truth. Watch and see the amazing things God is going to do in our home. Thank you Lord.

Our Own Personal Nightmare!!

So I told myself I was going to blog regularly so I could keep all those who care up to date on what's going on in the adoption process Right now we are faced with writing an autobiography.Not just any autobiography mind you...but eight to ten pages of our life and everything personal or important to us, put down on paper. Not an easy task. It is very overwelming to say the least. We of course have nothing to hide, but it is awkward giving all that info to people we don't even know. And as luck would have it, we are trying to get all the homestudy stuff done with all our day to day stuff still to do at the same time. The kids are back in school so that might help us find extra hours during the day.

I feel alittle guilty complaining about the homestudy,(but I still do of course). I was reading a blog today from someone who has already adopted from Ethiopia.She had some heart wrenching and humbling stats.

*Only 24% of households have access to clean
drinking water.

*82% of the populaton survives on less than
a dollar per day.

* One in ten children die before their first
birthday.

* One in six will die before age five.

I want so badly to go and rescue all of the children in danger.They are in danger!
"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the father, is this:to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world." James 1:27

This is what God has called us to do.So I will claim this when I start to feel sorry for myself and complain.There is no other way I will make it thru this process without claiming God's promises. I cringe and sometimes feel like I can't do what's required of us in this adoption.But, God tells us we are "more than conquerors"Rom 8:37, against the things of this world.So please pray for us. That God would be present and give us the strength and patience to do what needs done.

We know there is a little one waiting. They are so far away.

God, please keep our little one safe until you bring them home to us.Amen.

The New Adventure!

Man it's been a long time since I blogged. Not alot has changed, but the things that have changed are pretty important. For awhile I felt like crap all the time. I was tired and my body ached all the time.I knew it couldn't be just because I just turned 39 yo.So, I finally went to the doctor and ended up on thyroid medication. It took about 3 wks to feel better, but I got rid of some of the weight gain, and I don't feel as sluggish.Hopefully this doesn't seem ridiculous. I don't know the TMI rules for blogging.
Anyway, I'll get to the good stuff.We have been certified to adopt in Arizona since October 2010. We have't been matched yet, which in and of itself is not a surprise, but we were feeling impatient.I felt like we were really limiting ourselves by sticking only to Arizona. Of course we were always in prayer and giving God complete control over all that happens with the adoption.I don't understand God's ways nor am I expected to, so I don't know what God's plan has been for us over the last year. I may only know in looking back. I was looking for something unrelated when I came across a link for adoptions from Ethiopia and started to surfe around alittle. The more I looked, the more interested I became. I came across a site for International Adoption Net.I read that Ethiopia is less restrictive, and this agency is considerably less expensive than others.The total fee is $14,000. (That doesn't include the visas and air fare.)I talked to Katy about the site and we prayed over it for several days. We really were very nervous about it, but really felt God pulling us to this country. It is sooo outside of our comfort zone. God is good!!! He gave us a peace about it at the same time. One way to judge if something is from God is to ask yourself if it furthers His kingdom. I always pray that God will be glorified in all He does in my life and this is no exception. So how will this glorify Him? God tells us to care for orphans and widows in His word. Teaching a child we bring into our home about the gift of salvation, and Jesus love for us. And last, teaching our children through it all how blessed they are, and teaching them to care for others. My prayer is that God would prepare the child he has for us, and prepare our hearts to witness his grace and glory first hand. Glory to God!!!

So, that being said, we are also preparing ourselves for the enormous cost. We are trusting God to provide in one way or another. We will be setting up a paypal account on a website we will create. We will be asking for donations in the weeks to come. Please pray and ask God to place an amount on your heart to help us bring our little one home. We are beginning the home study process this week. Thank you for your prayers and generosity.

Brian