Undetectable!

Exciting news!  My sister's viral load is undetectable!  She still has HIV but it means that her treatment is working to lower her viral load, the amount the virus in her blood. Here are some answers from my sister Jessica's blog:

What is the Viral Load?

o       Viral load is the term used to describe the amount of HIV in your blood. The result of a viral load test is described as the number of 'copies' of HIV RNA per milliliter (copies/ml). The more HIV in your blood, the faster your CD4 cells (immune system cells that fight infection) reduce, and the greater your risk of developing symptoms in the next few years.

 What does it mean to have an Undetectable Viral Load?

o       The amount of HIV in your blood is so low that a viral load test can’t detect the virus. However, having an undetectable viral load doesn’t mean you’re cured. You still have HIV. And although having an undetectable viral load reduces the risk of HIV transmission, you can still infect another person with the virus.

Here is a great and simple depiction of what an undetectable viral load means.

And here is a great blog post by a mom that adopted a positive little girl.  This is an amazing family so check it out!

So blessed,

Stephanie

Updates on my sister

My sister Jessica went to Florida last week to meet the Director of the Peace Corp and hear him speak. She got the chance to meet him briefly and the next day spoke to a group of others that are going into the PeaceCorp. She is so brave to share her story and it is saving lives and preventing the spread of HIV. So proud of her! Read her recap of the events here.

Jessica hugging the Director after she told him why she was medically separated...

She also got results from recent lab work. Check it out here. So excited for good news!

I didn't blog this past week or do much of anything because I had a terrible migraine all week. Hoping this next week will be better!

Blessed,

Stephanie

What I'm Reading Right Now

So I'm reading this amazing book right now called "Kisses From Katie". It is so eye-opening and heart-wrenching as to the true plight of orphans and people in other places. The author, Katie, went to Uganda as an 18 year old and fell in love with the people and country. (I had a glimpse of this on my mission trip to Guatemala...LOVE IT THERE, AND THE PEOPLE? ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL! We would have totally stayed if our son was with us!) Back to Katie...she started out with a one year stint working as a teacher and helping in an orphanage there.  She didn't want to come back to America for the "normal" college education, although she did for one semester.  Her heart was and is in Uganda. Her writing style is so honest, poetic and intensely descriptive that I have been moved to tears every time I sit down to read it.  I have gained so much spiritual insight from her and God has used her book to speak to me about many things so far while reading it. She is an amazing testimony of what God can and will do with a life surrendered fully to Him.  She is living out true faith every second of the day. As a single 22 yr old she has adopted 14 orphans so far! Check out the book here.

As a middle-class American I really have no clue what it means to be hungry, to struggle or to live in poverty.  According to some standards, I grew up in poverty, but I never realized it. We always had plenty of food to eat, clean clothes and a nice roof over our heads. We were well educated and cared for. All of the things I had growing up would be considered luxuries compared to a large part of the rest of the world! We take so much for granted!

God has called us to care for the "least of these", "to look after orphans and widows in their distress" and "to love your neighbor as yourself." If we are not even aware of how other people are living and struggling then how can we be obedient to His commands? I challenge you to read this book and have your heart broken for the things of God! Also check our Katie's blog here.

If you order the book, please shop via my amazon link so that I get a part of the commission to help fund our adoption. It is no extra cost to you to order through my link here! Thanks!

Blessed more than I even know,

Stephanie

Learning Fun!

Roll the dice, add up the dots and mark the sum on the paper! He LOVED this!

Here are our home school highlights from this week! We continued to use some of the worksheets from the Jake and The Neverland Pirates Kindergarten pack from last week. We did several activities with coin money and a couple Valentine's activities, as well as educational iPad apps, reading books galore, working on some speech activities, pronunciation, playing Legos and pretend!

As you can tell from the variety of clothing choices on Nehemiah in the pictures, we have found that we do not sit down for an extended home school time all at once (for now). I used to beat myself up about this. I seriously thought I wasn't "doing" home school because we weren't at the table starting by 8 am or doing it all at once. Nehemiah cannot sit still that long and finds worksheets boring if I give him too many at one time (Who doesn't?!?!?). I can tell already that my traditional educational mindset (having grown-up in public schools) is going to be greatly challenged in the schooling of Nehemiah. He is a very active learner to say the least! It actually works to our benefit to spread it out throughout the day and right now we have the flexibility to do so. It also helps that our BIG boys have homework/tutoring time after dinner each school night from 6:30-8 pm and Nehemiah usually asks for some homework then too! Mostly I try to have worksheets, activities and concepts prepared in advance for the next week or two so that when I have spare time, when he is in a cooperative mood and when he is asking for home school/homework that I am ready! We mostly try to keep learning fun but also stimulate that BIG brain of his!

Links to the cool books above are here and here.

 Money Bingo with Coins

 Character name matching from Jake Pack.

 An iPad app called Sight Words by Little Speller

 Crayola Color Wonders Sound Studio

 Matching and gluing the rhyming words in the correct category.

 He asked me to draw an oval and triangle so he could cut them out. Then I spelled the words and he wrote them all by himself!

Practicing his name!

Hope you all had a great week too!  Anyone know how to make the pics smaller and to have more of them together? like in a 3X3 grid?  I've seen it on some blogs and couldn't figure out how to condense this anymore!

Blessed,

Stephanie

True Love

Happy Valentine's Day!  I hope you have a great day filled with opportunities to face your enemies, to share the company of those who annoy you, and to interact with the unlovely! 

What??? Not what you expected?  Not what you wanted to hear? Oh well! I can't ignore the message I see throughout the Bible.  Stay with me for a minute and you will see where I am going with this.  Throughout the Bible God chooses the unlovely and weak to show His love and strength.  Over and over, this is the case. We are told to be like God, to love like He loves.  He says to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us and if someone demands a little from us to generously give them more than they demanded! 

This has been on my mind for a couple weeks since I heard a man named Samer Mohammed speak at my church.  He was raised by a Muslim terrorist and had become a religious leader in the Muslim community. He shared with such passion about how he finally read the Bible in secret and saw that Jesus was love and that he was telling his followers to do the exact opposite of other religions.  He said his Koran told him to kill Christians and Jews but Jesus said to love your enemies! What a contrast! This love is what drew him in to the Father. He shared an amazing testimony of how he has been shunned by his family for the last 10 years and has been jailed 3 times for just being a Christian. He has no fear. When asked if he was afraid he'd be killed for his faith he replied with tears, "Look what Jesus did for me, how I can be shy for him?" (You can watch him share at our church here.) One of the life-changing passages from the Bible for Samer was in Matthew chapter 5:

You're familiar with the old written law, 'Love your friend,' and its unwritten companion, 'Hate your enemy.' I'm challenging that. I'm telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best-the sun to warm and the rain to nourish-to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that. In a word, what I'm saying is, Grow up. You're kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you. (Matthew 5:43-48 MSG)

So I ask, who are you going to love today? Only the nice? What about the nasty? Christ died for us while we were still filthy in our sin; pitiful, weak, and unlovely. The challenge is to welcome the opportunities before us to demonstrate TRUE love to those around us each day!  

Let me reiterate Matthew 5:48 as I go, 
"Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you."

Blessed beyond my wildest dreams,

Stephanie

Back to a "dumb" phone...

Well, today we made the switch! We cancelled our "smart phones" and went to plain old $19 pre-paid flip phones! We haven't been so happy in a long time! How weird is that? The Verizon worker said "you don't hear about someone wanting to do that everyday!" LOL

You see, in this adoption process we are trying to be financially smart and we are re-evaluating our budget over and over to see how we can cut back and save more. By switching cell phones today we have freed up an extra $100 every month! That's $1,200 in a year (for those of you with slow math skills like me)!!!

Tonight Nehemiah noticed my new phone and asked why I had that one. I told him we changed to different cell phones so we could save more money to bring his baby sister home. His reply? A HUGE grin! I LOVE that kid!

So this saving money and adoption thing is a blessing all around. We are becoming better stewards of the income God has given us; we are deciphering better between needs, wants and gluttonous excess. Nehemiah is learning that we are obedient to God's plans for our family, that it is important to save money and that sometimes we must sacrifice for those we love (even if we don't even know her yet)!

Awesome, huh?!?!?

Blessed BEYOND measure,

Stephanie

Homeschool week in review

We had a fun and productive week homeschooling, even though Nehemiah got sick towards the end of the week.  I am so thankful to have a child that already loves learning!  Below are a few pictures showing the highlights of what we did.

Skills we worked on were: cutting, gluing, sorting, sight words, beginning sounds, simple addition and subtraction, money (coins and their values), handwriting, drawing, making Valentine's cards, number lines (which number comes "before", "after" and "in between"?), fine motor skills with tongs and pom poms, etc.

Blessed beyond measure,

Stephanie

The cost of adoption

Adoption is a funny thing.  It brings out some REALLY funny HILARIOUS comments and questions from people.

Here are some of the winners so far and what I would like LOVE to say to them:

• "It costs money to adopt?" (No, we've decided to pay with Chuck E Cheese tokens this time!)
• "HOW MUCH DID YOU SAY????" (you heard me correctly)
• "Shouldn't they be paying you to adopt?" (If only...)
• "Can't you just fly to the country and find a baby?" (Is there a store for that I don't know about?)
• "Isn't there a pregnant teenager that will just give you their baby?" (I wish! Why don't you get pregnant and just give me your baby?)
• "What if the baby has a different color skin than you?" (GASP! I never thought of that!?!!?)
• "What if the baby has something wrong with it? (What if your biological baby has something wrong with it???)

Now don't take this the wrong way, (especially if one of the above questions came from your mouth and we are now laughing at your expense) but adoption is just not that simple.  It is a complicated process with reasons behind every cost, fee and hurdle to jump.

So here is some basic info about the Russia program:

• The wait time from start to finish is estimated to be between 12 and 20 months right now. (A little perspective: The wait may be double the length of pregnancy!)
• Boys are more readily available for adoption than girls. 
• We can request the youngest child possible, which is what we are doing.  Our child will be between 9-36 months at the time of referral (which is when they match us with a child). 
• The fees/cost covers the application, adoption agreement, all of the legal issues/court costs, language translation, travel, home study, agency needs/paying the awesome caseworkers, helping the community where the child is from (one reason we like CHI), in-country agency workers, hotel, food, airfare, document preparation, medical evaluations, psychological evaluations, fingerprinting, immigration, visas, passports, etc...
• We must make 3 trips to the country, with each trip being between 3-7 days long.  We will most likely be able to bring our child home from Russia about 3 months after meeting her for the first time.  
• The estimated cost to adopt our daughter from Russia is $50,000!

We are of course overwhelmed with the length of time, costs involved and the magnitude of this decision. We have not come to this decision lightly; it has been our heart's desire since the foundation of our relationship.  It is a call upon our lives from God.  It will definitely stretch our faith and build our character!  We pray that everything we do during the journey and afterwards will bring God honor and glory!

I am so thankful for supportive family and friends that will be taking this journey of faith along with us. I just hope I don't annoy any of you dear ones with my onslaught of fundraisers!  ;)

Blessed Beyond Measure,

Stephanie

HIV: it's not the end of the world...

In September 2011 I got a call that would shake up my entire world; a call that I thought at the time was the second worst thing that could happen to my family...my sister had contracted HIV while in Africa with the Peace Corps. You can read about how I handled this shocking news here.  

My sister Jessica was very sick and it took the doctors a couple of weeks to figure out what was wrong with her.  She was then flown back to the States and cared for in Washington D.C. Once released she moved to New York to rest and recover.  I'm happy to report that she is doing very well and is extremely strong!  

It has been a wild ride already with my family, especially since Christmas Eve.  That morning my sister decided to share her medical status with the "world" by sharing her blog and detailed story with Facebook. She couldn't have had a better idea! All of us who knew the secret felt such freedom, as did she. We were now able to speak up as advocates and educators to try and spread the word about transmission, protection, basic information and the fight against stigma. 

Despite all of the research I did (remember, I carry the dork gene), which brought such relief and comfort that this wasn't an immediate death sentence for Jessica, the whole situation was still just plain ol' scary! A day or two ago though I realized all of a sudden that the idea of my sister having HIV felt completely normal and not scary at all to me. When did that happen?!?!?? I am not really sure but I am glad it did because it has brought even more peace. Of course I still get sad thinking about the rejection she will face from others in certain situations, but I know she is strong and will work though those times.

The truth is that my sister is an amazing woman. The truth is she made some mistakes in her life.  The truth is so have I. The truth is that HIV is a disease that has no cure at the moment but with good treatment and taking care of oneself, she can probably outlive me!  

I will continue to do my part to educate others about HIV and battle the stigma.  Check out her awesome blog here.  It has already been read in 79 countries around the world! How amazing is that!?!?!?

Blessed beyond measure,

Stephanie 

This week in home school

I have begun homeschooling Nehemiah already because he is just so stinkin' smart!  I can brag about my son on here, it's my blog!  ;) He goes to WEE school at our church for 3 half days per week but it is not challenging for him so I supplement with some home school activities.  One of the great resources I have found are free printable theme preschool and kindergarten packs. There are some great blogs that have TONS of free printables!  Here is one of my favorite blog resources.

One new pack I found is based on the Disney show "Jake and the Neverland Pirates."  It looks super cute and Nehemiah is extremely excited about working on it this week!  I'll update with some of our favorite activities later  this week.

Homeschooling doesn't have to be complicated or expensive, especially in the younger years.  If you have any questions about homeschooling just let me know! I am still learning and it is so FUN!

Blessed beyond measure,

Stephanie

Requirements? You mean they don't just give you a kid?

I've been researching different adoption agencies, country programs and their requirements. 

That is a ridiculous understatement.  My family does not just casually "read up" on subject matter.  We get obsessed and consumed by research.  I come from a long line of dorks, I guess!  ;) Don't hold it against me!

I found it interesting that each country has its own set of requirements for an adoptive couple.  Some requirements are: age, income, net worth, number of children already in the home, education of the parents, BMI, health problems, depression...

We were completely ruled out of adopting from certain countries by some of these requirements.  I've had to come a long way in my thinking about this.  At first, honestly it didn't bother me because none of the countries we were interested in were affected from first glance.  The more I thought about it and found out the vast numbers of orphans around the world, it frustrated me. Perfectly good, loving families were seeking to adopt only to be disqualified for seemingly unrelated reasons.  Obviously you have to have enough income to care for the child, but how dare "they" decide your standard of living!?!?!? So a child is better left in an institution rather than be adopted by a loving family that might not be able to afford the latest gadgets or fashion item?  Then I came full circle in my thinking and just accepted that each country has reasons for their requirements based on their cultural ideas and past experiences with adoptions.  

We have jumped some initial hurdles in meeting requirements and have another big hurdle ahead. I will be calling the agency we want to work with on Monday to see what all can be included in estimating our assets.  We do not own many large items (and we are fine with that).  Because of that, we don't have much debt either!  Pray with us to have at least $30,000 in positive net worth so we can apply to the Russia program! 

Blessed beyond measure,

Stephanie 

Why adopt?

"Why do you want to adopt?" Good question! So glad you asked!  ;)

As long as I can remember I have wanted to adopt.  Even as a kid, friends would say "how many kids do you want?" I would reply, "have seven and adopt six!" Little did I know how crazy that idea was! 

One of my favorite books of the Bible has always been James.  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 and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." I felt like this verse was a call upon my life by God. As a follower of Jesus, I have been adopted by God into His family and kingdom (he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will– Ephesians 1:5). God shows me his unconditional love on a daily basis.  I am to show this same love to others.  Adopting a child is an amazing earthly picture of what God has done for us!  A great book to read on this subject is called "Adopted for Life" by Russell Moore. It was also very influential in our decision to adopt. 

As I got engaged to Joseph, we talked about adoption and both wanted that to be a part of our family.  We got married and then started trying to get pregnant.  It was taking longer than we expected and we looked into adoption through foster care.  We began taking the MAPP classes to foster to adopt.  During those classes we found out we were already pregnant!  We put that on hold since we would have a big adjustment with a newborn.  Life continued on, got pregnant again and miscarried. That was almost 3 1/2 years ago. 

Currently we work at the children's home in Louisiana as cottage parents to a houseful of boys! This has quenched my baby fever for a couple years but we still couldn't ignore the calling by God to adopt. Through a series of events, God has caused us to re-evaluate some things and decided that now is the time to start the adoption process, especially since it can take a few years to bring a child home. 

I am a little overwhelmed by the length of time to wait, the amount of money needed and the piles of paperwork to complete! BUT, I know this is what God wants us to do and I know he will help us through it all.  It will be a growing and stretching process for me, since I HATE to wait and trusting God with huge financial numbers is HARD no matter who you are! 

Join us on this journey and pray for us, support us and rejoice with us when we get to bring our child home! 

Blessed beyond measure,

Stephanie 

Here I go!

Well, I've decided to start a blog.  Watch out world! :).

I plan to use this blog to keep friends and family updated on our life, ministry, adoption journey and adventures in homeschooling! This will also be a base for ideas, fundraising, sharing information, pictures and other fun stuff! 

Thanks for following along and seeing all that God does in and through our life! 


Blessed beyond measure,

Stephanie