Good News, Not So Good News and a Neat Video...

The good:

            We finished our homestudy today!

The bad:

We got some sort of bad news from our adoption lady.  There is a problem with some people in the part of the country that we are trying to adopt from.  But God is bigger than an annoying problem.  He can choose to bless us with these beautiful kids, or give us another.  Although it would be really hard to give us the faces that i thought were my sister and brothers, we are trusting God to work everything out in His perfect way. 

Here is a video that i made and Brandon and David acted in. Please ignore the beginning:) 

I'm IN!!

I auditioned for the play, The Jungle Book at a local theatre, and i got the call today that i'm in!!  I will be playing the part of the village girl.  I'm so excited!  More about it later:)

adopting families least favorite word

1. wait·ing/ˈwātiNG/

   Noun:

   The action of staying where one is or delaying action until a particular time or until something else happens.

Yep.  That's the one.  Families wait for days, weeks, months...years to see their child(ren).  Even though my family has just began our journey, the wait is just as hard.  I want my brother and sister home right NOW. 

And is our God is for us, then who could ever stop us?

One of my favorite worship songs is Our God, by Chris Tomlin.  My favorite verses are,

And if our God is for us, then who could ever stop us?  And if our God is with us, than what could stand against?  

W.O.W.  It reminds me so much that anything God wants us to do will get done.  If God want us to bring Chance and Benjamin home quicker than we ever could have hoped for, He will do it.

God gave us a love (for the orphans), before we even asked
He gave us a country, one other than what we had originally thought
He gave us an agency, better than what we could have hoped
He gave us faces, before we expected 
He gave us Himself, more than what we deserve 

A life changer video, and a day in our lives

I found this video on All God's Children's website.  I was very touched by it.  I hope you are too.  Please pray for all the orphans who are/will be adopted, but even more, pray for those who wont.

Also...

• On Sunday my cousins brought their kids over to play with us.  Their kids names are Rylan and Allie, and they will be staying with us for a few days while their parents go to Colorado for a wedding.  They were a lot of fun, and they are really sweet kids.  

• A cutie pie named Liam came over to play. (be babysat)  He is such a sweetheart!  He wakes up laughing and is a really easy baby.  What is really neat is that he is the same age as our Benjamin.  Wouldn't that be cool if they became friends!?  

Hi, everybody!  I found this video a long time ago, (before we new we were adopting) and i want to share it with you.  I hope you all are blessed by it.

A new sister and brother

We got the pictures and...accepted!!  I have a new little brother and sister all the way in Congo!  Their names are Chance and Benjamin.   We might chance the names, but we aren't sure.  We were joking that we are, "taking a Chance, and getting Benjamin:)" Chance, the little girl, is three years old and looks like a little rascal!  The little boy is 7 months old and is malnourished.  He looks like a quiet, sweet baby.  I wish i had them home right now!  But we are very fortunate compared to almost all other adopting families.  Our agency's lady told us that we have an average of 4 months after the home study is finished. we are expediting the home study and might have them home in 6 months.  Please pray for my brother and sister in Congo, and please pray for us.

A quick update:

We went downtown today to get Brandon and David's birth certificates, and some other things.  Someone from the agency we're adopting from was supposed to sent us pictures of a possible sibling group, but they haven't gotten here yet.  Please pray for these children and for our family.

Blessed.

We are so blessed to be living in America.  I was always told by my parents and other adults that we were blessed, but i guess i never really got the picture.  I see it now. I started to get it, for the first time, last year when I went on a missions trip to the Dominican Republic with our church youth group.  I saw just enough to get a picture of poverty. But recently I have been researching the Democratic Republic of Congo, (where we are adopting from) and what i read just broke my heart. People die all the time.  There is so much civil unrest and not enough food, malaria, sickness, so many things i cannot describe, and so many people.  So many orphans.  From a survey taken, over 45,000 people died or were killed.  Half of those were/are children under five years old.  Here is some of the article:

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

 The survey, released Tuesday, estimated that 45,000 people continue to die every month, about the same pace as in 2004, when the international push to rebuild the country had scarcely begun. Almost all the deaths come from hunger and disease, signs that the country is still grappling with the aftermath of a war that gutted its infrastructure, forced millions to flee and flattened its economy. In all, more than 5.4 million people have died in Congo since the war began in 1998, according to the most recent survey’s estimate, the latest in a series completed by the International Rescue Committee, an American aid organization. Nearly half of the dead were children younger than 5 years old.

Source:http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/congothedemocraticrepublicof/index.html

How every orphan must feel

I was listening to the Radio Theater version of Anne of Green Gables recently and what something Anne said really caught my attention.  She said it right after she arrived at Green Gables to find that the Cuthberts wanted a boy and not a girl:

"You don't want me!  You don't want me because i am not a boy!  I might of expected it; nobody ever did want me.  I might have known it was all too beautiful to last, nobody has ever wanted me." 

           "there is no need to go on so about it," Marrilla said.
           
           "Yes there is a need.  You'd go on so too of you were an orphan and had to come to a place you thought was going to be home... and found that they didn't want you because you were not a boy.  This is the most tragical thing that has ever happened to me!"

That must be how every orphan feels.  They aren't wanted.  No body cares.  They are a nobody.  If only people would show them to truth!

Our News

No comments, guys?   Really?  Oh well, just comment on this post.  Here is our news:  Our family...  is... ADOPTING!!! yep, you read it right.  The Gilbartes are going to be adding two new members from Africa!  Mom and Dad told us December 3, 2011.  At that point we only new that we were going to adopt, not from where.   The weeks following the announcement were spent on ALOT of prayer, research and discussion.  Then on December 31, 2011-the last day of the 2011- we made the decision to adopt from an extremely needy country in Africa.  I did some research on the country and what I read broke my heart.  One of the most heartbreaking things i read was that, from a survey in 2004, every month over 45,000 people died or were killed.  Nearly half dead were children under 5.  The agency we are working with doesn't allow us to put the country on the internet for some reason, but after we get our little people home, I'll make a page all about their native country.
Please pray for us and our little ones, and keep coming back to my blog for updates.

Huge News!!

Our family has some humongous new that I'm allowed to tell now!!  I'll post it tomorrow, though, because I want you guys to guess what it is.  And thoughts?

 

Look Back on 4th grade

When i was in fourth grade it was my 2nd year homeschooling.  I don't think i liked it very much the first year, but I LOVE it now!  Well anyway, now that Brandon is in fourth grade he is doing all (or most) of the same stuff i was doing, so it is fun to compare his writing assignments (etc) to mine.  Here is a funny example of a limerick from today:

This is my poem from about 3 years ago:

Brother Bran, what a man!

Always watching ECU if he can,

What will do for the rest of the day?

Who knows… will he ever play?

Yes Bran, that’s a better plan!

And Brandon's from a few hours ago:

The cow jumped over the moon,

And he said, "all see ya soon!"

And said, "a-wick-a-wick-a-wee!"

"And then I’ll see yee!"

The cow jumped over the moon!

First Basketball game of the season!

This is Brandon's 3(?) year playing basketball and David's first.  They play with Upward, baskicly it is a way to play sports without so much of the compition and have more a Christ centered game.  They really have fun!

 

before the game

 

go David!

 

notes, notes, notes!

 

yeah!

Gilbarte Randomness over Christmas and New Year

This is what we did over Christmas and New Year and the days following:

 

Our New Years Eve party food

 

watching the clock

 

 killing time

 

simply weird 

 

even weirder 

 

A light show in Benson