So Dominic and I just made a 1500 mile road trip in a great big circle this week. It was amazing. We were blessed to spend so much time together.

On the way home, I was reminded of another reason that we would love to have a girl in our home.

It was late Monday evening, we still had 300 miles to go before our day was over and we had been eating out three square meals a day for the last three days. (Do you see where this is going?) Dominic had been playing his gameboy all day, pausing only to ask, “Mom, are you still awake?” every thirty minutes or so. We were in Knoxville when I hear a cry from the backseat,

“FIRE IN THE HOLE!!!!!!!” And then a loud explosion from my son’s followed by even louder giggles. Yes, the fast food had caught up with his digestive system. Thank goodness this car had a sunroof.

Reason #9 that we need a girl? So she can teach our sons how to simply say, “Excuse me.”

We started on June 1st, 2009 and received our referral for one 2 1/2 year old little girl on Thursday, November 19th!!

We are so excited. She is just a little thing, 19 lbs, with tiny feet and big beautiful brown eyes. Her cheeks are plump and ready for kisses.

We are so excited and have been so blessed by the outpouring of love from our family and our friends. Really and truly, once again, God has shown us that He is in control and that she is His daughter, sister, granddaughter, and niece first before she is ours.

WOOHOO!!! We will be waiting for many things to happen in the next few months. I sent off our I600A today, am waiting for a final homestudy, and get our dossier off to Ethiopia. From there, it is about a 6 month wait. In between that wait, we will be applying for grants and working toward the next 9,680 dollars in expenses, plus travel. But in all this, God is good. And I am blessed to watch Him work!

Thank you for your prayers! ~ The Green Family

This was on BBC’s front page today. It is a bleak issue for the future of many ET peoples and families.

Please watch this video.

#10 Because of Princess Underwear.

Weird, I know. But in a household of boys, this is an example of two weekly converstations:

1. We have company in town from Nathan’s childhood/adulthood. John Young has invested and mentored Nathan in  many ways since highschool. He’s a fantastic man who has just met our children for the first time, making them so comfortable with their hours of playtime, that come night – when it’s time for bed – my children see no reason to wear pajamas around him. Cayden, Nathan’s mini-him, comes down on the stairs to bid Mr. Young farewell and goodnight. I see him on the steps in his shamrock underwear and I say, “Cayden Green, please do not come down in front of company in your underwear that you have been wearing now for two days. Go put jammies on.” To which Cayden looks up to the sky and replies, “Mom. I’ve had these on for a week.” He waves goodnight with his sweet smile and heads to bed with undie-crusties.

2. Silas, our youngest wild man, has started his own revolution. If he were a girl, he would probably have been part of the bra burning of the seventies. But he’s not, so he rebels in his own way. He’s anti-underpants. Ever. Church does not warrant underpants, nighttime does not warrant underpants, cold weather does not warrant underpants. 

Yesterday was a beautiful day – and he was so intent on wearing shorts -that he found a stash of this brother’s (I had hidden all their shorts so that my children will actually dress like it’s fall). I didn’t fight him, he had on an oversized hoodie with longsleeves. Everything was fine until he decided as church last night that shirt and shoes were not required. No shirt, oversized shorts, no undies = recipe for disaster. 

Why do we need a girl? Reason number #10: I’m hoping she’ll comply to normal societal behaviors, such as the wearing of Disney Princess underpants.

Ok, so fall has officially set in and the colors are gorgeous! We are awaiting the final draft of our homestudy and have renewed energy to finish this great ‘race’ of adoption. It has been so hard. I thought we had a majority of the money in and found out that, in fact, we do not. We are officially in a better place (praise God!) but back to square one on this adoption fundraising effort.

If there is a prayer request right now, this is it. Our homestudy worker has been wonderful and we are almost certain an approval is around the corner. Life can always surprise us, but…. I am hopeful. Holt is moving at breakneck speed with referrals right now. They have so many children waiting for families that they do not have a waiting list. This means that upon completion of our homestudy, we must have the dossier ready to go and can receive a referral before this dossier (ie. life packet of the Green family) reaches Ethiopia. A referral is when we are appointed our daughter through Holt! Amazing!! It also requires a payment of almost $9,700.

This is it. This is our prayer. That God will show us what we must do to bring her home. Please join us and let’s see what God can do.

Also, Orphan Sunday is November 8th. Woohoo! It will be a time when churches across the nation will be able to bring the cause of orphan care through it’s doors and celebrate what it can look like to be the hands and feet of Jesus to these children. For more information click here.

So I taught kid’s church yesterday. It’s a small class, only four kids right now, but they are hilarious. Three boys and one girl, the little princess milking her leading role for all it’s worth!

Yesterday’s lesson was simple. Love is patient, love is kind. 1 Corinthians 13.4. We chanted it together in class, read a sweet story about David and Mephibosheth and then – when they could handle following directions no longer – we went outside for a peaceful, kind game of human bumper cars. It went like this:

I set up a tic-tac-toe grid of masking tape on the parking lot and gave each child a paper plate to use as a steering wheel. It was perfect mathematically: I had four children and four corners, so they each started in their own corner. (That should have been my first red flag, setting them up like they are in a boxing match.) We reviewed which hands were our right and our left. No, the other left. And then we practiced making car noises while stepping, one.space.at.a.time!

Finally, with all preparations finished, it was time for human bumper cars. “What happens if you find yourself face to face with another car?” I asked. They had already forgotten. “One car says, ‘love is patient’ and the other car says, ‘love is kind’. Then step around each other nicely!”

They nodded. I thought to myself, I am good, Miss professional-kids-church-teacher.

Calling out directions, the first few ‘roadblocks’ were pulled off without a hitch. They were playing and memorizing scripture, perfect! I let my mind wander while I called out, “Left, right, straight two spaces!”

Five minutes into the game, I began to hear an extra phrase being added to the end of 1 Corinthians 13.4. I looked down and realized it was my son, Cayden.

He kept running into the same boy, to which he would kindly let this boy speak first, “Love is patient.”

My son would then respond, “Love is kind- You need to brush your teeth!”

Three different times they ran into each other and three different times my son (who coincidently didn’t brush that morning either) kindly told the boy his teeth were yellow.

So, Cayden didn’t get the life application behind the verse, but he did make me wonder how many times I add a small kick to the tail of my ‘acts of kindness’.

Monday leaves me thinking two things. First, I must check the condition of my heart when being kind. Am I doing it for kindness or for appearances? Second, I’m taking the ‘professional’ out of my kids’ church title.

Yay!! We are scheduled for our first homestudy appointment for Friday June 24th. This is really, really exciting. The homestudy will take 6 weeks (3 visits every other week). During that time, we will be filing our immigration pre-authorization papers (I-600A), getting our fingerprints done, reading over the homestudy, compiling the rest of our dossier, sending off for passports, and…refinishing our basement and remodeling a new church building. Am I a little busy? Nah…

We are already blessed by this process. The more time I have to think about it, the more excited I get! God has been keeping me busy by faithfully giving me orders for purses. This is very, very cool.

I can’t think of much else. I do know that we are using Lutheran Family Services as our homestudy agency (we didn’t have a HOLT branch in our area). They provide an fantastic service of letting us do our FBI finger prints there for $60 less than what we would pay at an immigration branch office. They also are allowing us to do most of our education classes online. We will be taking one on-campus workshop on August 29th. The other four classes: With Eyes Wide Open, The Journey of Attachment, Medical Issues, Finding the Missing Pieces; will all be taken by us before August 29th. Wow…o.k. I’m a little busy.

Thanks for ALL of your support! We are very grateful.

This video moved me to tears. It has been a tough weekend mentally, trying to decide how we are going to make it to and from Richmond on seven different trips to complete the home study and education. I’ve been thinking about how many hours the boys might be with sitters during the first part of the process. Then…I watched this video. It is such a beautiful thing to know God speaks with the same words to so many others.

I finished my first bag tonight. Purse number one has been sold and contributed to daughter number one. Will you pray for us as we try to decide if we are open to siblings? The thought of it blows my mind, but when I think of these older children, my heart breaks for their families and their loss.

Watch, let your heart open, and see if you, too, hear the words calling you to adopt.