Another Blow

Another blow to the orphanage occurred last night. I checked Tina’s email and saw a note from our agency director that stated she is resigning her position. Now, in another agency this may not be a big deal. But with our agency, there are (were) two directors and that’s it. One knows Africa (Ghana) and ours knows Haiti.

My mind is going through the possible scenarios of not finding another director anytime soon all the way to finding director right away and merely having a period of learning before things are caught up to speed. In the first scenario, it could get as bad as the orphanage being dissolved (which isn’t unrealistic) in which case the question becomes “What will happen with Lou?”

Additionally, this morning Tina and I were talking about missions and I was feeling overwhelmed with a sense of being lost. When the leader is leading somewhere (along a difficult road, in this case) and the leader suddenly looses his sense of direction and, perhaps looses sight of the goal (if he even had it), the whole group under that leader is in trouble. They all don’t know how to get back to where they started. They all don’t know where they are going. Since they don’t know where they are going, there appears to be no reason to head one direction vs. another.

I am re-evaluating the original purpose of going to Haiti. If I don’t get caught up in feeling depressed and having a one-person pity-party, I think I can come to a conclusion. Let me think as I type:

All along I have said that Lou is our son. He feels like our son. The (roughly) two weeks that we spent with him have resulted in a great bond. As I have stated before, if Kayla or Carter were in Haiti alone, we’d be doing anything and everything to go to them and help them. If they weren’t being taken care of medically, not being fed enough, not being fed good food, not given encouragement from others, we’d have dropped EVERYTHING and been there already. It is no different with Lou. I want to be with our son taking care of him.

Now that being said and being completely separate, I have an interest in finding out what it means to be a missionary. I have no issue leaving all that we have here and taking a long, extended “vacation” and finding out what missionary life is like. This is good for me and my whole family. I believe that it is God honoring, I believe it is not sin and I believe that it is the best path I can think of right now for my family (my family includes Lou every time I mention it from here forward).

That brings up a question. Does going to live with missionaries for a year and letting the Lord lead a person’s future direction make a person a missionary? Are we missionaries by going to Haiti for a year? Perhaps. Perhaps not. We are going to help at the mission in anyway we can while we are on “vacation” as a family. I am willing to do this on my own dime. The Lord has blessed us with finances and I pray (and believe) that this is a God-honoring way to use some of those finances. Christ Jesus is our treasure and it is Him that says we are to take care of the orphan, to take care of the down-trodden, to take care of widows. At what point does someone officially become labeled as a missionary? Frankly, it doesn’t matter how I am labeled. If as the leader, I feel that I am following God, call me what you want, but I will continue to follow Him.

I think all this partially because I am trying to determine how we fit into Bethlehem’s Nurture Program. Should we be approved as “missionaries” and sent by them before we go? I see great value in their designed process and requirements for being sent. I am beginning to realize that our decision and timing is independent of the Nurture Program. I see us starting to work on the Nurture Program and that process will take 3-4 years…oh… AND we’ll also be going to Haiti for a year in the middle of working through the program.

Still thinking while I type, I am beginning to get a sense of direction and am beginning to realize the value in having time to sit and think – something that I haven’t had for at least one and a half to two weeks. Tonight I will get more time.

OK, so here is a summary of my thinking. The prioritized reasons for going are: 1) Following Biblical principals by a) taking care of Lou, b) helping out the needy by helping out at the mission, c) determining our place in spreading the gospel in world missions (specifically Haiti).

As I typed that list, I had things numbered 1, 2, 3 but realized that a, b, c were not separate from number 1 but rather a subset of number one. This is further confirmation that I believe that I am on the right path.

It was my friend Greg that really taught me that I should be leading my family. Being a leader is not easy. Knowing that you are on the right path and heading in the right direction has not been easy for me. I haven’t seen or had much experience in that type of leadership to draw an understanding from.

Getting the House Ready

The last week has been extremely busy. I posted that we spoke with out realtor and we had planned to put the house up on Monday the 21st. Well, we were completely blessed by God using a friend of Tina’s (from her book study group) who stages homes (among other things) for a living. Tasha (http://www.cidhomeservices.com/) came and checked out our house. We like(d) lots of colors – mostly darker, relatively speaking. She encouraged us to change the colors and do various things to our house to help it sell.

All week we were packing things up and putting things in the garage to make the house look presentable and to get ready to leave. Our three car garage now has room for one car (if I would pack it all together). As it stands now, I cannot get the truck in the garage. We have to figure out still if we are going to container some things to Haiti or just sell it all. I am beginning to think that we should container it, but we have to figure out how to get it to MI (the “home base” of BHM) so they can ship it out to BHM in Haiti. It will take about 2-3 months to get the container there from MI to Haiti (slow ponies I guess).

Our children have been extremely well behaved. They have gone through so much and have been little affected by it (at least what is visible to us and others). On Saturday, April 26th, we made one of the most difficult decisions – to get rid of our cats. Tasha took our youngest cat, Spidey, home to her family where there is at least one other cat and a dog. Spidey didn’t want to be put in the cage out of our home, but as I understand it, he is doing good in his new home.

The other three boys (cats) that we have had for 12 years were put to sleep. I had second, third, and fourth thoughts as I sat in line to give them up. There was a lady who just found out that her daughter has asthma and they had to give up their two cats (and a gerbil, but that died that morning). While she was giving up her cats, I had a lot of time to think. Tina was with the kids and cats in the truck while I waited in line. I took care of the paperwork and then I had to walk out to get the cats…some things I will never forget and this part of our journey is one of them. Kayla stayed in the truck and Tina and Carter came in with me. I had to grab my favorite cat by the arm as I pulled him from under the driver’s seat. When you have to give up a cat that has been with you for 12 years and that will come when you call him, it’s not easy.

Kayla was a little down for about a day and has since popped back to her normal self. Carter didn’t really seem to react much except to say that he missed Spidey once. The cats were such a large part of our daily routine that it’s quite an adjustment to not have them around.

So…back to house stuff. Not having the cats and their litter boxes has made things much easier to keep clean. Dust bunnies have gone extinct and litter no longer points the direction to the little boxes. We had officially told our realtor that we are ready and gave him the pictures of our house when he stopped by this morning at 6:30am. It should be up on MLS tonight. We have one showing already – probably from a realtor our realtor knows. That’s at 5:30pm. Tina is putting finishing touches on the house with Tasha and will have it all set. My mom and dad have been gracious enough to invite us to dinner tonight during the showing. THANK YOU MOM AND DAD!!

Another thing to think about (to add to the list from a previous post) is how we will travel to Haiti. It turns out that the rules for American Airlines have changed and shipping a dog has a couple restrictions that we may not get past. First, the forecasted air temperature cannot be higher than 85 degree anywhere on the itinerary – Haiti’s average in it’s coldest month of January is 89 degrees. Additionally, AA (the only US airline that goes to Haiti) has a 100lbs. limit. Our dog with cage is already close to 100lbs and she is only 9 months old. We got her specifically with Haiti in mind. Haitian voodoo practices make practicing Haitians afraid of black dogs. And so I decided since I like Great Danes, we would get a black Grate Dane (the bigger the scarier, right?). I think we should have waited a bit so the dog wouldn’t be too big by the time we got there, but we’ll figure it out.

Recently, I have the thought of how we can save money in our travels and one way is to drive to FL and then fly to Haiti. The one airline that I can find that goes from FL to Haiti goes to Cap Haitian which is northern Haiti and we need to go to southern Haiti. That’s if we bring the dog (which I think we’ll go through quite a bit of effort because of what the children have gone through already). If we don’t bring the dog, it’ll be an easy trip via AA to Port au Prince. If we bring the dog, then we have to find a way to get from Cap Haitian to Kenscoff where BHM is located. We’ll also be maxing out our other luggage allowances so we’ll have one large load of stuff that will need to last us until the Lord brings us back, until the container meets up with us at BHM in 2-3 months, or…when in Rome…

Tina set up the appointment to speak with the psychologist on Thursday. This is the final step in Bethlehem’s Nurture Program before we sit down with the Mission Pastor to see if we can coordinate things with them for prayer and financial support. We are trusting in the Lord that whatever comes of this will be just fine. We are not sure how we will fit into their program, but we’ll soon find out.

So the journey continues. Christ Jesus is our treasure – not our home, not our cats or dog, not our possessions!

Selling the House

We spoke with our Realtor on Tuesday evening and signed papers to put our house on the market on Monday. We had originally planned to go to a homeschooling conference on Wednesday of this week, but since we'll will have our house on the market in five days, we decided to stay home and start making our house look like a model home.




We are going through a lot of the stuff that we have accumulated and it's amazing the sheer number of things that we have. Tina has been decluttering things for a while and I had been, too, (in the garage) and still there is still so much to get rid of. We are having a hard time figuring out what to do with things: store them and pay for that storage, sell most of it and have nothing, or ship it all right away. I hope to figure this out soon!

I am having trouble at work with not being forthcoming of the things I am going through. The fact that I am selling my house isn't a secret, but the true reason why is still a secret. I have decided that until I know without any doubt that we are going, my work will be the last place to know. If by the slim chance that we do not go, I do not want my work to think that this is a possibility and have it affect their decisions in the future. I don't like doing this, but I haven't told a lie yet - if we do not end up going to Haiti, we will be moving somewhere between Woodbury and Minneapolis.

So we'll work hard to get the house ready and continue to take the next step(s).

Things to Think About

I have not taken the decision making process lightly. This is not easy to know that the direction that we are heading in is 100% correct. I grew up feeling that I had to know exactly what I was going to be doing, when and where. As we take our steps towards serving God, in Jesus’ name, we are handling the larger decisions first.

The prioritization of these decisions has not been easy. If we were not adopting, this would be easier in that we wouldn’t have to think about unknown medical conditions, we wouldn’t have to think about when our paperwork for the adoption expires because it is taking so long (11 months so far), we wouldn’t have to think about changing that paperwork because we are moving or, not just changing jobs, but quitting all together. On the other hand, I believe that the Lord is using the adoption and the poor conditions at Lou’s orphanage to bring us to Haiti sooner than we had originally planned. God is the ultimate planner and His ways are not always known to us.

Additionally, I took a new job in October 2007 and I received a signing bonus that I would have to pay back if I leave before one year. The possibility exists that I could take a leave of absence which would do a couple things: 1) if the Lord’s plans are that we do not stay in Haiti long, I would like to come back and work where I am currently employed and 2) I would be employed and on a leave through the October 2008 date which would mean that I don’t have to pay the bonus back. This is a lower concern item because it’s just money. It is the Lord’s money and he can do with it as he pleases. This is just another thing to have to think about.

We have stepped out in faith in a number of ways recently, but none have felt as “large” feeling as placing our house up for sale. I specifically say “house” and not “home” because I do believe in the cliché that it is the people that make a “home.” Right now, I am thinking that the length of time that the house takes to sell will determine our date. When it sells, we’ll be leaving within a couple weeks.

This will be a huge step in the process because we have to determine what we will do with our earthly possessions. Do we store some? Do we ship some to Haiti in a container? If so, when? What if we do it right away and things don’t work out? Do we leave it there and consider it a donation? Do we sell everything? A 10’ x 10’ storage unit would cost $720 for six months. If we stay longer than six months and end up either wanting the stuff in the unit shipped to us or sold, we would either have to come back or ask someone Stateside to do that for us – a burden we do not want to put on anyone. This is just another thing to have to think about.

I am starting to finally understand the spiritual world that we live in. Many people talk about spiritual things easily and lightly when it comes to movies or stories, but it is not something that should be taken lightly. As we move along in the process of obeying the Lord’s calling for our life, I am starting to see the reality of spiritual attacks regarding the progress we are making in the direction that we are heading. These attacks come in the form of people saying or doing things that discourage. They come in our own thoughts that bring our moods up and bring our moods down. We truly need to think on all things pure and holy.

One other item of concern for us is our monthly fundraising. We are not sure when to start this process. I have written a draft of a fundraising letter that I believe we will send to those who we know. I am making a list of those we know. Related to fundraising is the amount of money that we should take from our emergency funds and retirement funds. This is just another thing to have to think about.

If I may, let me make a recommendation to any single person considering becoming a missionary - get a good wife. I did, 12 years ago last Saturday by the grace of God, and I believe it is making a world of difference in this process (not to mention my whole life since I was 14). The encouragement that my wife provides is awesome! Where and when I need help, there she is. When I need a bible verse to keep me going, there she is. She takes a lot off of me – more than I realize. It’s like having training wheels – there to keep you upright. It’s like cruise control - making sure that you are going the right speed. Having a good wife is like the power cord to the GPS unit (God is the GPS providing direction). I pray that the Lord has a great place for her in Heaven already laid out to allow her to have peace and be able to glorify God forever!

Another thing that we have to get rid of is our cats. We have four cats - three of which we have had since 1997. One is just a couple years old. They are very friendly, very nice cats. It will be hard to get rid of them. We do not know if we'll bring them to a shelter or give them to people we know. Someone doesn't usually just come by and take four cats. This is just another thing to have to think about.

Trust

I trust the Lord and my confidence lies in Him! The soverignty of God is what Christians trust in. He is in control and this is evident everyday when our spritiual eyes are open and we pay attention.

"The opposite of boldness is fear or anxiety. It's not surprising then that God not only calls us to be bold for Christ and his kingdom, but he also makes a provision for us to get rid of our fear and anxiety. Giving us courage and taking our fear are two ways of doing the same thing. "

From DesiringGod.org, here.

Nurture Program Paperwork: Complete!

Sunday marked the day when all of the necessary paperwork requirements to begin Bethlehem's Nuture Program for missionaries were submitted. We handed in our marriage compatibility analysis (Enrich questionnaire). It was a fill-in-the-dot-with-a-pencil test that asked some good questions that were difficult to answer within the five-dot range.

As with the phych evaluation for the adoption process, this test brought up some old memories of how we were raised, what we went through as we grew up, and it made us think about how our children will answer questions like these in the future about their childhood. Nothing makes you feel more like a failure than raising children. It is by the grace of God that our children grow up to be decent members of a society.

We have been in email contact with a number of the people from BHM. They are so very willing to answer questions that we have. I am having a difficult time coming up with questions for them right now because I feel that my questions are not easy to ask or easy to answer (especially via email). As we get closer to moving to Haiti, I am sure I'll come up with specific logistical-type questions.

One of the more strange things to be going through is to continue to work at my job. Six months ago (to the day as a matter of fact) I started a new job. The days in my old job leading up to my last day were strange as well because we were talking about things that were to happen in the future when I wouldn't be there. Now, it is a little different. I haven't told my director anything about the missionary possibility because if it does not happen, I don't want anything to be in the back of her mind about my future there.

My heart is simply no longer in my work at my job. I have little interest or motivation to do the things that I need to do - a true test of perseverance. I continue to pray that if the Lord does not take us to Haiti that He will provide me with a renewed perspective regarding my current job so that it doesn't seem so burdensome. I would assume that most who consider missionary work and have other jobs go through this same thought process of their existing situation.

Another thing that I keep trying to focus on is what life will be like at BHM. I want to do the things that I think we'll be doing there. There will be no TV. There will be limited internet access. There will be a lot of quiet time. To prepare us for this, we have done and I am trying to do a number of things. We got rid of our TV (as I mentioned in the last post), I am trying to spend more time sitting and reading with the family when I get home (Tina does that a bit with the children now during homeschooling), and I want to continue to think of and find things that we'll be doing there.

Another thing that I want to make sure is solid is our family devotional and prayer time. We have been reading devotionals together since about the beginning of the year or slightly before on a consistent basis. We just started a prayer list last night and I hope to continue that. We have to start getting ready for bedtime about an hour earlier to accomplish this. If the Lord leads us to Haiti, this type of family time is an absolute must! We must Gird our Mind (read / listen)!

Our Missionary Beginning: The First Post

The right time to start blogging seems to me to be before I actually start blogging. I started to create an adoption blog so that others considering adoption can see what we went through and do a comparison with what they did (or will) go through. I haven't published it because I never felt it was a thorough enough history of what happened - and I never finished to the point where we are today in the adoption process.

As we proceed through our missionary journey, I am feeling ever more convinced that blogging will be beneficial for a number of reasons. Two of which are 1) so that people can understand what we are doing and why we are doing it and 2) it will be good for me to get my thoughts and feelings out in written form. During our January 2008 trip to Haiti, I kept a blog and have looked at it a few times in the months following. It is great to be reminded of the things that happened and how we felt during the events.

Our missionary journey started really with the decision to adopt a child from Haiti. That decision led us to visit him in June of 2007 while on a mission trip organized so that adopting parents could visit the children that they were adopting. Our primary focus was to spend time with our children. While we were there, there were many things that impacted us significantly. I wish now that I had the ability to blog during that first trip because there are certainly things that I would have liked to remembered, but have forgotten. Things like almost being in the middle of a physical fight between people trying to get our business of handling our luggage to passing out for the first time in my life and cracking my head open (including cleaning the wound out with baby wipes and hand sanitizer).

It was that June 2007 trip that started me thinking about becoming a missionary. As we neared the end of 2007 and it became clear that the adoption process was going to take at least another 6 months and, furthermore, I was continuing to look into becoming a missionary family, we planned a trip for January 2008. During the planning stage of that trip, I was looking to stay with a missionary to better understand what life would be like as a missionary in Haiti. I had attempted to contact Troy and Tara Livesay (The Livesay Haiti Web Log) and it ended up that they were going to be recently back in Haiti from being in the States on furlough. They were going to have too many things going on for us to be there. I had also contacted the Baptist Haiti Mission (BHM) to find out if we could stay there. They were not able to have us stay there either. I had given up my attempt to stay with a missionary and just stay at the Visa Lodge in Port-au-Prince (PAP). We had a number of great things happen while we were at the Visa Lodge, as you can read from our Jan. 2008 trip blog. During our visit to BHM, we found a great connection. So I don't duplicate information from our other blog, I will not expand on the events of that day.

When we got back home, we filled out and sent in our application for BHM and we immediately started looking into our church's (Bethlehem Baptist) missionary Nurture Program. I have reviewed the requirements and have been workings towards completing them. As I write this, today is April 1st and I just sent off our paperwork / application to start the process. BHM reviewed our application that we sent in February and has invited us to stay with them for about six months.

I want to put a plug in for Missionary Talks. As I searched the internet for resources about becoming a missionary, I ran across this helpful resource that gave us good insight into the lives of other missionaries. A sincere thank you, David Peach, for your work in helping us learn and decide to become missionaries! You have done a great work for the Lord in His name!

As it sits now, we continue to examine what the Lord has done in our lives leading up to this point and what we have left. Some of the examples of the Lord's work include:

• Pulling on our hearts to have Tina quit working and start homeschooling our two biological children

• Removing our desire to keep our 27' travel trailer (camper) and finding a buyer rather quickly from South Dakota (a great couple - I hope they are blessed by the camper!)

• Helping me to see the wastefulness of having a racecar and selling it quickly for a good price (and selling the third vehicle we had)

• Guiding us to work toward minimizing our dependencies on worldly things (decluttering the house and things we have. This includes activities that took our time up like our 51" big screen TV and entertainment system and Playstation.)

This is just a small list of some rather large things that would put us in a position where we would feel too tied down to our current life if we hadn't done them.

We are now looking toward the future and that includes selling our home. One advantage that we have is that we have been considering moving closer to our church, so whether we go to Haiti or not, we would be looking to move towards Minneapolis. With this comes a number of decisions that have to be made regarding how to leave the States:

• Does this mean selling everything / almost everything that we own now? Garage Sale? eBay? (we have already starting selling some things on eBay) It seems strange, but instead of going through the house and looking at what we think we should get rid of, we're looking at that stuff we have and are determining what to keep.
• Does it mean keeping most of what we have, and if so, where do we keep our stuff?

If by going to Haiti we find that the Lord isn't calling us there long-term, then we should keep more things so we don't have to buy them later. If we stay long-term in Haiti, we have to at some point determine how long so we know when to bail on the things we keep in storage. Either way, God is bringing us to the resolution that having less things and being light on stuff will make us more easily ready to do His will.

There are so many things to think about and consider! Since we are in the middle of an adoption we had to determine if moving (more specifically, leaving the country) would present an issue regarding our ability to adopt. We also had to figure out if I quit my job and neither Tina nor I were earning an income per se (aside from the donations through BHM), what affect that would have. We found out recently that all of that is OK. So now we are in the middle of determining what is going to happen with the adoption. Haiti is very difficult to understand. Right now they seem to be applying a 1974 law (they do this off and on) that says that you cannot adopt if you have two or more biological children. I am currently thinking that it is a real possibility that we may not be able to adopt Lou. The adoption process in Haiti is very slow and inconsistent. It appears as if UNICEF is also creating MAJOR issues. From what I understand, they are trying to "fix Haiti" by keeping children with their parents. This is no doubt the best place for the children, but the way to solve the problem is not after the children have been born, neglected and then sent to an orphange. They need to attempt to solve the problem at the source. Their current methods are only creating a backlog of children in Haiti. The children who cannot get out of an orphange cannot be replaced at the orphange by starving and neglected children in the streets. These children in the streets are not surviving. In the end, UNICEF is causing the death of Haitian children by slowing the adoption process down.

There are also issues relating to the adoption that I cannot explain on this blog that are causing us significant concern.