A little more

Mark returned from his four day field op. We are all glad he is home. Just wish he did not have to leave next month, but trying to enjoy every minute. Every day becomes more precious. No time for petty fusses. Makes one aware how very many things are actually trivialities. That is the bittersweetness of wartime deployments - all the silly little bad habits or once-irritating annoyances of eachother are forgotten. Suddenly, it is enough just to reach over in bed and feel the others warm hand or hear his heart beating.


I found this quote by C. S Lewis, made as his wife joy underwent cancer treatments:

"We are not necessarily doubtful that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be."

Also still waiting to hear about our travel approval to go get Josiah MingHua. Stephanie will go with me. at this point it looks like Mark may be gone before we return with him. Sigh. Such a disappointment to me and also to Mark, who very much had hoped to see his new son before he left.
But our God is not unaware.

Adoption Stats

It is estimated there are between 143 million and 200 million orphans worldwide.

Approximately 250,000 children are adopted annually, BUT...

Every day 5, 760 more children become orphans.

Each year 14, 505,000 children grow up as orphans and age out of the system by age sixteen.

Every 2.2. seconds another orphan ages out with no family to go to and no place to call home.

(Stats courtesy of recent UNICEF numbers, see link)

James 1:27 says:
"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress..."


http://skywardjourney.wordpress.com/why-adoption/

Blurps, Blogs, and Care Packages

Just a few days ago someone on a yahoo adoptive parents group asked if I blog. They wanted me to send them my blog address so they could follow our adoption. Hhhhmmmm. Do I blog? Well, since my last post was in April, I am not sure I can claim true blogger status. I am more of a blurp-er, sending out little blurps every now and then.
I was encouraged to fix myself.
At first I wondered who in the world would care if my blurps became blogs anyway, except those four groupies who have me on their watch list (Hi Mom, Dad, Uncle JimBob and Aunt Ellie!). But in an effort toward consistency, I will give it a try and see if I can offer a post more often. Then maybe one day I can reach true "blogger" status. Sigh...

On August 9th, we received that long awaited Letter of Approval/Letter Seeking Confirmation -otherwise known as the LOA in adoption lingo.  It took 49 days from the time our dossier was received and logged in to the CCAA in China to get the LOA. During the wait, Mark was doing pre-deployment training in the Mojave desert. This is a picture of him (above) as he visited the airport USO...

Anyway, after the 30 day mark I was on my knees every morning pleading with God to send the LOA asap. After all, I argued, we are on a time crunch here with Mark's deployment approaching at the end of October. God was silent, except for a whispered "Wait" in my ear.
On August 9th, Mark's Battalion returned and I drove over to HQ to meet him. Some Marine missplaced his weapon and we all had to wait, but eventually they were dismissed. Mark followed my van in his car. As we pulled out, my cell phone rang. It was our agency! I swung into a nearby parking lot with Mark behind me. Then I got the good news we had been waiting for! We had received the Approval from China to adopt MingHua! Now, I was told, they needed us to BOTH sign the emailed copy TODAY and fax it back immediately to confirm that we would accept!
I got out of the car and told Mark. We had a little mini-celebration right there in the parking lot, laughing and crying and hugging. The Battalion S1 saw all the commotion and had pulled in beside us to ask if everything was ok. As Mark grabbed me in a big hug I heard him say "Everything is great, Captain!  We're having a boy! And he's eight years old!"
We could not have been happier if some one had told us we were expecting a baby!
On the way home, I marvelled at God's perfect timing. If that LOA had come a week earlier as I had asked, then Mark would not have been there to sign those papers. And I would have been one very frustrated mother!

Another good thing about getting the LOA was that we were given permission to send our first care package to Josiah (MingHua) along with photos and a letter introducing us as his new family. We used a service called LADYBUGSNLOVE which puts the package together and mails it from within China. This is a picture of the items we had placed in his package. It includes a toy car, a soft blanket (blue), some candy and nut, and a photo album. Angela, the gal in China who does the packing, chose the yellow fuzzy tiger photo album to put our pictures in because this is the year of the Tiger in China. We also included a disposable camera so that we could get pictures and money for the orphange to buy a celebration cake (these are very popular in China). 
Now we are waiting for the USCIS to grant approval for us to bring him home and then a travel invitation from China to go get him. All adoption proceedings will be finalized from within China.
Just heard today that the package was received from the orphanage on Thursday the 19th. So we hope to get pics soon. I would LOVE to post pictures of our little guy. But because of Hague Convention rules, we are not allowed to do that yet.  One day...

The Journey Continues...

We just received new pics of our soon-to-be son yesterday. He is beautiful. He is amazing. He is a tiny-for-his-age eight year old squinting into the sun. I wonder if he even questioned why they were taking his picture? If there was even a little flicker of hope in his mind that someone, somewhere could be requesting a picture of him(we did)? For me, receiving them was like getting those ultrasound pictures when my own babies were in utero...a little glimpse of someone very very special, someone you dont know yet, but who your whole world is about to revolve around.
And yet I am finding that the adoption journey, especially the adoption of an older, special needs child, is a weird, lonely trail. Unlike pregnancy, most other moms don't have a story to tell you. As a matter of fact, most people don't even know what to say except "Are you crazy?". So they just don't say anything (which may be preferable in some cases).
But there are those people in your life who you really want to get on board: namely your close extended family members like the grandparents, aunts, and uncles and very dear friends, all of whom will have something to do with welcoming (you hope) this little person into their new life. Of course the underlying hope is that they will eventually warm up to the whole idea.

For now, it is enough that we are warm to it.

The Beginning of Our Journey...

As most of you know, last Summer, after several months of prayer and a general feeling that the Lord wanted to take us out of our comfort zone but not being sure exactly HOW, we made an inquiry with the International Mission Board concerning a return to the field. We were not certain that this was where God was leading, but we wanted to be willing to go back, and we were. We also met with Pastor Mike and Diane and they counseled and prayed with us. We sincerely wanted to follow God's leading and we conveyed this to our Board. The Board's answer : No. Sadly, their number one reason was the fact that they have actually been forced to reduce their missionary number due to lack of funds. Another concern was the age of our daughters now -preteens, which is a tenuous age to take kids out of their own culture and into another one. We were a little sad, mainly because we will always miss Africa, but also relieved because God had answered our prayers and closed a door He obviously did not want us to go through.


So we continued to pray and continued to be convinced that He was calling us to follow Him in some new and possibly terrifying way! It wasn't long before our daughter Grace began to talk to us about adoption. One day on a walk she asked Mark and me if we ever thought any more about adopting. You see, five years ago in Zambia we often worked with an orphanage for babies and children affected by HIV/AIDS which was only about 200 yards from our home. Grace and I would go there and help care for the little ones. We fell in love with a little boy named Kayawe. Thats when God first opened our minds and hearts to adoption. However, because of US and Zambian laws, we could not adopt a baby with AIDS. Thankfully, the orphanage director allowed us to bring Kayawe into our home for visits, and we would play with him, bathe his sores, and try to make him smile through his pain. Kayawe died in July 2005. We tucked away our dream of adoption with our memories of him.

Until that walk...

I answered Grace "Grace, we have four children already. We can't save every child in the world!"

To which she replied "But Mom, it might MEAN the world to just one child -to have a family, to be loved."

Mark and I were broken that day. We prayed and asked God if THIS was His new and terrifying direction for us. It wasn't long before we both came to the conclusion that it was. He began to confirm it in many ways.

Soon, He brought Dawn Lucas into our path and very soon after that we were looking at lists and lists of precious children. At first we assumed that the Lord would direct us to adopt from Africa. But we could not stop looking at that list of waiting, special needs little boys in China. And then we found M H. And we all knew it was him. Even our children knew that HE was the one.


Our family is committed to bringing M H home. In our hearts, he is our son already. We hope that you will embrace him as well and through our family and friends he will truly know and feel the love of Christ and one day embrace Jesus as His Lord and Saviour. No, we may not be able to go to the world. But we can bring one little child out of the world, into our home.



Please pray for us:



Provision: of prayer and finances and smooth paths for all the paperwork.

Protection: from the enemy's schemes -he does not want M H in a Christian home.

Preparation: for our family and for M H as it will be a big adjustment for everyone!

Salvation: that M H will one day embrace Christ as Lord and Saviour.



Blessings!!

Mark and Stacey Conard

"Behold I will do a new thing,

Now it shall spring forth;

I will even make a road in the wilderness

And rivers in the desert."

Isaiah 43:19

Cecil G. Smith

Nov.18,1917 to Dec.25, 2009

Beloved,
Some days I love you with passion and recklessness. You walk into a room wearing those dress blues and my heart does a crazy flip flop over you. Our love is like children playing in falling leaves and rolling out-of-control down brown, grassy hills. Laughing and certain, I am all yours without hesitation.

And some days I love you with an amiable thoughtfulness. Peaceful and reserved. We are two lovers walking hand in hand on life's path. Quiet and content, together.

And then there are days like today...
Days when our love is a wound, sharp and burning, then a dull ache and a scar. We have wrestled and fought and injured. We have hurt but then we have mended. We have shaken hands and resolutely called a truce.

So today our love is a peace treaty.