Soup, Soap and Salvation

Have you ever been inspired to do something big? Something great? Something so powerful it could change the way another human being lives their life? Yah...me neither...

Let me tell you a wee little story about our friends Jeff and Ana. We met this couple through our small group and have adored them from the beginning. I could describe them in so many ways but what you really need to know is that they love God and have been called by Him to do something very special. In February they are traveling with our church to be missionaries in India. It kind of takes my breath away how incredible it is. I'm sure there has been a time in your life when you clearly heard Gods calling and ignored it. You probably said something like, surely that's not Gods will for me, He wouldn't tell me to (insert missed opportunity here)! Maybe you're pre-G right now and you felt something stirring in your heart and you dismissed it - coulda' been the Holy Spirit trying to break through...just sayin'...

I truly believe that we grow most when we're forced to be uncomfortable for Christ. When we're out of our comfort zone, in unknown territory, uncertain of whats ahead on life's road map and fully trusting that Christ will get us to where He needs us to be. Just thinking about how uncomfortable I would be in India makes me believe that Jeff and Ana are going to experience some serious growth! More importantly, they are going to help grow the people of India. These people worship millions of gods, its all they've ever known. To me, that's crazy. Jeff and Ana are going to go over there and tell them there is only one God< to them, that's crazy.

If you've been moved to spread the Good Word but you don't know how or you aren't quite ready to step off this continent to do so, would you consider donating to help Jeff and Ana get to India? As you can probably imagine the costs are significant but as previously stated in other posts, only significant alone. Perhaps you could skip Starbucks tomorrow or Taco Bell at lunch or skip your massive car payment this month (ha no jk, don't get silly) and send a few dollars their way.

If you are ready to do this, here's how:
Go to Cornerstone Chandler website www.cschandler.com
Click on ministries
Click on missions
Click on upcoming trips
Click on information
Below "India" and "Support a Team Member" (on the left) there is a Click Here area, do it!
(I will assume that most of you reading this tithe to your own church and not ours, so you'll have to set up an account which takes 5 seconds and no the church wont spam you or sell your information or try to take your firstborn son.) (Its fully tax deductible as if you needed more reasons to donate)
Scroll down to Jeff and Ana, select amount to give... and voila!

Literally that easy to bring the hope-less to the hopeful.

And if you're the praying sort:
+that the Holy Spirit would speak through Jeff and Ana to the people of India
+that everyone they come in contact with would be moved to salvation, fully believing and living out the word of God
+that the Holy Spirit would move Jeff and Ana to places they've never been and clearly show them what their ministry should be

Update? Nothing...

I haven't posted in a while because there's nothing to really update about but I feel like I should say something so y'all don't think I'm flaking!

We start our Infant Adoption Classes next Tuesday. They are every Tuesday evening until early December. They will probably be informative and I'm sure we will learn stuff and it will all fly out the window the second a baby arrives in our home. I think that anything anyone tells us or whatever we read in a book will not prepare us for a child, in any way, shape or form. At least, that's what I hear from those of you who have already done this baby thing...The real lessons come when the baby arrives. But hopefully the classes aren't just a big, expensive waste of time and money.

Until next week when I detail whatever happens in class 1!

An Opportunity to Bless Us

So excited! Today's the day where I get to share an amazing opportunity with you guys!
Our friend Ale came to us one night recently and told us that she's decided to help out with our adoption fees by offering photography sessions with her for a discounted rate and blessing us with a portion of the proceeds! I cried (possibly an understatement) (possibly getting teary-eyed now). Ale is talented in ways you cannot believe until you see it. Go - see it - Imaginale Design, or visit her blog which has images of her work as well - Imaginale Blog. Right?! Right?!
Want to help out? Want to have photos of you/your family that just happen to be the most phenomenal keepsakes you'll have? Want to bless an awe-inspiring local photographer? 
Win. Win. Win.




+You can contact Ale through the link on her blog or through her website+

Temper tantrum

Heard much interesting news yesterday. The agency raised their rates. Yaaaaaaaaaay...stab me. Nick took my moment of despair and outrage and turned it into a "learning opportunity" for me. Further proving he is the ying to my yang, or whatever. The realist and the optimist, we are quite the pair. I look out the window between Heber and Show Low and remark that it makes me feel sad that the land is still so damaged from the fires. He looks over and says, yah but look at all the baby trees growing! I didn't even notice them, probably because they look like bushes, and I am entranced with how cute and little they are. He says if we were both one way we wouldn't get anything done. I imagined we'd be walking around bouncing into one another and then giggling about it, never accomplishing anything. In my imagination we'd be optimists, obviously. ;)
Next. Taylor Johnson Temperament Analysis which I'm calling the Temper Tantrum Test. I'm not even sure what to say about it. I'm intrigued by psychology and analyzing pretty much everything. But these tests? Hmmm. We each have to take the test twice, once for ourselves and once answering about the other.

• Does Lauren feel uneasy when riding or driving in traffic? Depends on who is driving.
• Does Nick seek to keep peace at any price? ANY price? Including death? What kind of question is this??

I tried to be honest. Almost all of the answers are "sometimes" "maybe" "I dunno". But you cant answer too many like this. Out of 180 you can answer less than 10 with a "mid". So I didn't answer any like this, I swung completely left or right. If I can't answer the questions the way that I actually feel about them then why does it even matter if I do the test at all? It isn't accurate according to reality. Things aren't always black and white. More than 10 areas of life are gray. The Temper Tantrum Test is lame.

Rock with me.

I thought I had writers cramp. Or block or whatever it is. I have an idea in my head that I really want to talk about but I just can't find the right words to say. Its for another day I guess. So I started a new post and deleted the nothingness that filled this box. Take two.

I was listening to a sermon from our old church and I became inspired. On fiiii-ya, rather. The pastor used a term that I was not familiar with so I paused and summonsed the Goog. I got trapped by my deep curiosity. Forgive my delay, apparently this term has been in study for 20 something years. Its post traumatic growth. I'm sure you can gather what it means but let me break it down Barney style: an intense growth spurt (emotionally, spiritually, mentally) following a deeply challenging life experience.

Maybe I'm so intrigued because the moment I heard him say the words I knew what it meant. I knew because Ive experienced post traumatic growth...exponentially. The trauma was in 2010; pretty much the whole year was a wreck from the afternoon of March 13th on. There were four major traumas that year and 365+ days of a variety of emotions spawning from a secret trauma we dealt with.
I touched Nicks body with my hands and begged God for healing. I prayed OUT LOUD Y’ALL. When my Papa passed I questioned the suffering. Why did someone who loved God so much suffer so greatly. When B went, things spiraled. Why did You do this, are You punishing us, I don’t understand, show me, show me, show me, why, why, why. Another life lost after B. More questioning. How come some people get to choose, how come B didn’t get to choose. All this heartache flying around me barely giving me a chance to grieve for myself and my husband, for the baby that wouldn’t be.
It was the year of why. I’ll admit, I still question, I still don’t understand sometimes, I still ask why. I still pray for our acceptance of His will and for peace in our hearts. Because I hurt so bad, so often from these events that often times I couldn't see/hear/grasp any reasoning as to why anything at all. Instead of flopping about like a fish out of water, I dug in. And I did ask why. This takes me back to the sermon, when the pastor said, God is at work in the crisis, making you into the person He wants. Ding, Ding! God needed to transform me into the person He needs me to be. I needed to suffer so that I could grow. Wait, what? Eww. That sounds awful. Yes, because it is. Growth spurts hurt remember? I would not be as tall as I am (ha) had I not suffered through growth spurts. I would not be as firm in my faith had I not suffered through trials. So what was God preparing me for? Could He be pulling me closer to Him so that I could hear His plan for us? Was He showing me that He was in control of everything and that what I needed to do was to lean harder into Him?

I titled the post "rock with me" because its another part of the sermon I wrote down. You know when you're so sick, so tired, so beat down, you just rock yourself. Its a soothing mechanism that I love. I love to rock. And we all need someone to rock with.
Has anyone else been transformed by the pain? Had a particularly unpleasant period of growth? I'm here to rock if you need me....

PayPal!

Exciting news here people!! We've got PayPal up on the blog! If you haven't found it yet its in the top-ish right hand area. Many thanks to our friend Kylan for putting it up for us. His unrivaled patience and IT smarts are awesome!

I don't exactly know how the button works yet. I'm hoping, for my sake, that it allows y'all to donate to us anonymously though! I foresee lots of tears in my future in regards to this, as they've already started (more on this later!!). Time and money happen to be pretty high on the list of "MINE" or "mine, all mine! ::evil laugh::" so for people to set aside their own needs and wants in regards to their time and money means THE WORLD to us. Its not easy to part with your money, I totally get it. If you guys have been praying about it and talking about it with your spouse or pondering your financial situation and have decided to help us out....ah its going to bless us in more ways than you will know! Please don't feel guilted or pressured to give anything though. Praying is free and that will take us places we cant imagine.

Another friend of ours has decided to bless us with her time AND money - be on the lookout for more news on that once it all gets settled - this gift to us will ALSO be a gift to you guys!! That's like triple awesome or something...

 Prayin' folks:
+ Prayer for our support system to have compassion, acceptance and true understanding of our desire for adoption and our reasoning.

Back to business

Nick and were in San Diego over the long weekend! It was such a great vacation! Super special thanks to our AMAZING friends Marco and Mavis. They let us move in essentially and catered to us while we were there. We would go nowhere if it weren't for their generosity. We went boogie boarding, tried surfing, went to Coronado Island, ate at a Brazilian steakhouse for the first time and of course played Kinect on the Xbox. (its actually a ton of fun, well just the Michael Jackson game, even though I'm opposed to video games as a whole)

**Shout out to our friends Rich and Kristie! They watched our pups for us which is what really allowed us to go on vacation. We can't take them with us because we aren't able to have them at M&M current place of residence;) Its really the girls vacation from Mom and Dad. So we couldn't have done it without their generosity either.**

We woke up this morning back in reality (the fact that we did not automatically adjust back to these temps really helps that). So we're back to filling out the homestudy paperwork and the questions aren't exactly black and white, yes or no, they are kind of deep. I hadn't really thought of what the questions would be but we are faced with a few thought provoking ones.

Outside of the paperwork we need to get the girls registered in our county, which is going to be such a hassle I'm not looking forward to. Judge if you like but we're not the kind of people that think we should pay the county to have a pet. (This line of thinking could be parallel with our feelings about adoption as well) We also need to get some sort of safe for our gats/pieces/heat aka guns. I am positive there are benefits to that but we don't have a kid right now so I cant figure out how they apply to us. Mostly a safe is just for the benefit of the murderer/burglar/uninvited guest at this point. (JK on the last one...uninvited guest, ha, no one comes all the way out to our house uninvited!)