10 More Kids!

10 Kids were placed with sponsor families on this link in less than 10 days.

10 More were added, and they were once again joined with sponsor families.

Original 10 More Kids Post:

A big thank you to those of you who sponsored the original

10 Kids at Kechene school, where Paul and I will be  visiting in Ethiopia. 

You guys gave me so much hope for what can be done by willing hearts, that we have taken

10 More Kids. 

Round Two:

11.  Leiya - NOW SPONSORED!
By Teresa Toney and Family

12.  Mekdelawit - NOW SPONSORED!

By Kelly Sedeyn Borchert and Family

13.  Befikadu - NOW SPONSORED!

By the Popowicz Family

14.  Debora - NOW SPONSORED!

By the Geaslen Family

 

15.  Selemon - NOW SPONSORED! 

By the McCoy Family

 

16.  Mikias

17.  Hirut - NOW SPONSORED!

By Laura Harms and Family

18.  Serkadise - NOW SPONSORED!

By Vicki Willems Hookham and Family

19.  Dawit

20.  Tessema - NOW SPONSORED

ALSO by the Geaslen Family (see #14)

Share this post.  Share the pictures.  My personal goal in this project is to be able to sit and tell as many children as I can at that school about Jesus Christ and their sponsor families. 

Learn more about Children's Hope Chest and Kechene School on Greta's blog.

And don't forget to check in and pray over our original 10!

I've Got 10 Kids...

UPDATE:  These children have ALL been sponsored!!!

10 Kids were placed with sponsor families on this link in less than 10 days.
10 More were added, and they were once again joined with sponsor families.




I am recruiting 10 Bloggers to take their own 10 Kids.

10 x 10 = 100 Kids loved, fed, remembered.
10 For 10.

Join me today, by requesting your own 10.
Share the gift by visiting the links below and sharing these 10 For 10 posts with YOUR friends, helping us to extend our "reach".

ROSTER:

1) Driggers Family Post

2) Preedy Family Post

3) Jensen Family Coming Soon

4) McCoy Family Coming Soon

5) Lewis Family Coming Soon

6) Wagner Family Coming Soon

______________________________________________________________
Original 10 For 10 Post:

Remember Hope Chest?

Well, I've "brought home" 10 Hope Chest children to The Oasis. 

I want them to find their sponsor families today. 

I want to share my "Christmas Joy" with you. 

I want you to find it right here, in one of these beautiful children. 

1.  Aynalem - NOW SPONSORED!
By Sarah (Test) Pierce and Family

 

2.  Kidist - NOW SPONSORED!
By Erica Eaton and Family

3.  Andualem - NOW SPONSORED!
By Diane (Test) Kucmerowski and Family

4.  Elsabeth - NOW SPONSORED!
By Carrie Fudge and Family

5.  Getahun - NOW SPONSORED!
By Buffy (Burchette) Lentz and Family

6.  Getaneh - NOW SPONSORED!

By (my uncle!) Paul Spoutz and Aletha Madden

7.  Henok K. - NOW SPONSORED!

By Abbie (Buresh) Zulim and Family

8.  Henok M. - NOW SPONSORED!

By Tina (Cottrell) Razzano and Family

9.  Matewos - NOW SPONSORED!

By Katie (Rheinhardt) Watkins and Family

10.  Setotaw - NOW SPONSORED!

By Heather Whitcomb and Family

(Don't worry...10 More Kids coming soon!)

Today is the day.  I am giving you your own little "referral".  You can be a part of this miracle.

Email me with the child you have chosen at Mroepnack@gmail.com.  I will send you a sponsorship packet and a referral # for the child that you chose, along with a your child's profile and more information to get you started right away with Children's Hope Chest.

Commit to changing one life, today, right now. 

I have partnered with the project leader at
http://www.greta-givemeyoureyes.blogspot.com/ to bring this effort to The Oasis. 
Support Greta, and see Kechene from her eyes:

Overwhelming Joy

What happens after you decide to adopt two babies?


Total joy, covered with an invisible, spiritual battle. 


Swords crash over your head. 
You don't see them.  You feel them.   


You love your babies so completely and so instantaeously that it shocks you.  You never believed the stories about this instant love. 
You assumed it takes time. 


It doesn't.

You LOVE them.


You love them so much that at the sight of their malnourished little arms, you forget that God has brought them this far and has this under control, and you stay up all night long trying to ship extra formula to Ethiopia.  Overnight express.  On a Friday night.  You beg, you plead, and you discover that this is impossible.  And unnecessary.  And rediculous.


You love them so much that you go post-natal.  And when the first relative calls to voice general concern about adopting two infants when you already have two toddlers, you unleash a Mama Bear response.  You cry and bang your fists at how badly you can mess things up, even when you try not to.  The Sermon on the Mount breaks your heart anew, and you ask Him to teach you again, for the thousandth time.


Your car gets broken into.  They take your stuff. 
(You remember that it's just stuff.) 
You get dressed for church.

Your other car breaks down.  A blown transmission and more money.  You look up to the sky, still fresh with Sunday morning hope, and you know that the battle is just beginning.  You are only at the 46 hour mark.  You realize that there aren't enough seats in that car anymore, anyways.


You regroup.  You ask God to protect your joy, and you remind Satan of where he lives and how to get there.  You read Philippians, the Timothys, Titus, and you pray. 


You show the pictures to friends at church; crying, laughing, and already bragging about imaginary special talents and strengths that you think your new children might have...they are strong, determined, brave, joyful....


You carry your referral pictures up and down the stairs, from room to room, because you can't bear to be away from their sweet little faces for one second. 


You clutch 8 pieces of paper containing all the information you have about your new babies, and you march into an International Adoption Clinic in Raleigh.  You decide ahead of time that if this doctor does not have good news, you will find another one who does.


You sing songs in the waiting room with the kids, all the while praying harder than you have ever prayed in your life, because these babies are already yours regardless of any test results.  You already love them.  You are Mommy.


You cry in the car after the doctor tells you that your babies are going to be okay and gives you her home email address.  You praise God that you carry two new growth charts. 

You sing in the car, in the shower, in the kitchen.  You dance everywhere.  You wake up next to the happiest man on the planet, because he thinks it's "Christmas" everyday.  You realize (all over again) that you married a very brave man, and you can't believe you get to spend the rest of your life with him on this crazy adventure.


You thank God, over and over again, for His perfect timing.


You dossier lands in Ethiopia, sent over just days before your referral. 


You realize that you wrote this post the day before you got your referral pictures and met your children, and that God was preparing your heart for what you would see.

You realize that the day

you mailed in your initial application

to the adoption agency was also the day that
your son was born.

Your prayer journal shows

that you began praying for his Mama

 on that same day.

You wake before the sun, kneel to meet your Maker, and He tells you in His own special way what every adoptive mother wants to hear from Him and Him alone, because it is the only legalization that matters....

Because Ultimately, 

they are His.

Our New Babies!

We accepted referrals
for two little miracle babies!

In one afternoon,
two unrelated orphans from the same orphanage
became the newest loves of our lives, and received the promise of family to each other.

I can't post pictures until after court, but I did take a video of us opening our referral email and seeing their faces for the first time.  These are the still frames:

We saw our boy first...

We loved him in an instant.

He is about 1 month old and weighs about 7 pounds.  His face is strong and determined, and he has taken my heart.  Finally, we have our boy!

Then we met our girl....

There aren't  any words.

She is about 6 months and weighs about 9 pounds.  She is a happy little miracle.  Her smile is something that I am not capable of describing with a keyboard. Just wait until you see her; she will take your breath away.

What happens now?  We pray.

We need to travel to Ethiopia twice in the next few months for court and then for pick-up, but in the meantime we ask that these babies will be covered with your prayers. 

We praise God that these babies who had no one now live together and have each other as "family" while they wait to come home.

Their stories belong to them,

but I will tell you that they need and deserve

to be shown mercy and justice in this life.

Both babies are malnourished. 

Pray for their health, and for the lives of the other babies who are fighting to survive a famine.

Lastly, pray for our family.

This is now a double adoption.

We do not have ANYTHING it takes to pull this off...

But God does.  He offers us Hope. 

(Hope is seeing things as they should be

in order to make them change.)

Babies should not starve.  

Children should have parents.

They should have hope.

(On Earth as it is in Heaven.)

¹⁵ The Spirit you received does not make you slaves,

so that you live in fear again;

rather, the Spirit you received

brought about your adoption to sonship. 

And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”

- Romans 8:15

Abba, Father!

Thank you for letting us love your babies! 

Thank you for being the same,

never-changing God of the scriptures;

working your miracles even today.

Thank you for choosing us,
and for showing us that there were
two little people missing from our family!

- Missy

(proud Mama)

A New Day

I wrote this post on Thursday September 29th.

   We received our referral the next morning.

                             I hadn't slept all week.....

__________________________________________

Every night, I fall asleep with expectations for the next day that can only be equalled with the palpable childhood joy of Christmas Eve.  I fall asleep thinking of what could happen the next day.

At any moment of any day (including today!), my phone could ring, and within 2 minutes of that call, I could be looking at an emailed picture of my child's face.  It's an experience that normally happens in the delivery room.

Every time the phone rings, my chest bottoms out like I have been shot out of a cannon.

About noon everyday since we began the waiting, I light a candle on my mantle.  It helps as 5 o'clock draws nearer. 

At the end of the business day, I know the call is not coming.
Another day has passed, and the sleigh has passed over the house.

We haven't been waiting long at all, but there is something odd about this first period of waiting.  Right now, we are waiting for our child to "land".  They are out there, somewhere, in a famine-filled third-country.  My prayer is that they are already in "the system", or that they are still safe within someone's arms or tummy. 

I don't like to think about the in-betweens.  There are other scenarios that my mind protectively does not allow me to fully process.

Once we get that picture, we know that our child is being fed and recieving medical care.  We also know that someone who loved that child has died or had their heart broken in the process.

(I was stunned to find out that most of Africa is not afforded the priveledge of medical care.  Africa contains 10% of our world's people and carries 60% percent of our world's HIV.  -Red Letters) 

No medical care.  Just AIDS. 

So knowing that our child has landed in an orphanage is a comfort to us, because they are more likely to receive medical care there.  Isn't that odd?  The sentence I just typed is a tragedy, and it brings this Mommy comfort.  Welcome to adoptionland.

After 5pm, my faith flickers, and a slight panic sets in.  Night is falling.  Where are these kids, all of these kids, going to sleep?  Is my child one of them? 

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia:

I pray.

Tomorrow is a new day. 

Tomorrow could be the day that a child, even my child, finds refuge.. 

The truth is, Christmas Eve hope is available to all Christians, every single night.  Because tomorrow, you may see your Savior's face.  Tomorrow could be the day that the trumpets blast, and the day that this hijacked planet sees its Redemption Day. 

For the believing,

Every day is Christmas Eve.  

“Live as though Christ died yesterday,

rose from the grave today,

and is coming back tomorrow.”

-T. Epp



Missy