You have $50,000...

...well, you have to power to give it and to do so without spending one single cent of your own money!

Cultivate Wines is giving away $100,000 per quarter to non-profits via a democratic voting system. The winner will receive $50,000, and the five runners-up will each receive $10,000.  Project HOPEFUL has been privileged to be chosen as one of the potential recipients! To vote, you can either register or login through facebook. Once you’re logged in, you will have 1 vote per day. 

We’re sure you can imagine what this much money could mean to Project HOPEFUL’s ability to fulfill our mission to Educate, Encourage, and Enable families and individuals to advocate for and adopt children with HIV/AIDS and other of the MOST OVERLOOKED children for adoption! So be sure to come back and vote for Project HOPEFUL again each day!

Please consider printing off our Get out the Vote reminder card and placing it in a place you will remember every single day from May 1 through June 30.  Every vote is going to be absolutely crucial! Also, every time you vote, would you please tell all of your contacts and ask them to vote, too? The power to multiply votes with these very simple actions is enormous!

Here are the rules:

1.  You must be 21 years old to vote.  If you aren’t, ask your friends/family who ARE.

2.  NO gifts; contests; give aways.

3.  You must sign in using a FB account to vote.  If you don’t have one, would you consider registering for one just for the next 60 days?  You can take it down thereafter….

4.  Absolutely no use of voting companies who do all the work for you.

Thank you so much for your help and support!

Voting Reminder Card

HIV/AIDS Adoption: Teen Selah Twietmeyer Gives Her HIV Adoption Testimony

I just love this girl!!! Please share it on your blogs and social media:




From the description of the video:" HIV/AIDS Infected teen Selah Twietmeyer from Project Hopeful http://www.projecthopeful.org tells how she was adopted from Ethiopia into her family and talks about disclosure...she said "I am not ashamed and not afraid to tell the Truth"...Incredible testimony...repost this link http://youtu.be/sRxDRzZxDbI Tweet: http://clicktotweet.com/020db subscribe http://www.youtube.com/mothertheworld"

Posts and other things I love on this sunny Monday

Challenging thoughts about requesting 'Healthy' kiddos in adoption: http://5millionminus1.blogspot.com/2012/04/each-one-of-them-is-jesus-in-disguise.html

Some very special sibling love: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10100480867824196

This list of Fundraising families: http://www.projecthopeful.org/waiting-kids/matched-children-and-families

Adoption encouragement from Jen Hatmaker: http://give1save1.com/2012/03/05/guest-post-by-jen-hatmaker/


What links do you love today?

Who do we love?

"God's love is perfect love. It drives out fear, it doesn't expect anything in return..." It's so easy to worry more about protecting ourselves and our families from grief than the fact that a child may die without ever having been loved, and belonged to a family, or heard the gospel from the lips of loving parents who care about his never-dying soul. My heart is shattered daily, I tell you. :(

"Cautious Love"



Can we love the broken, dying, rebellious, forgotten? Who will we allow ourselves to love?

Updating the Timeline

Fost-Adopt can be a short process. Unless you are a procrastinator like me.

Since adoption is something that I have wanted SO badly for so many years, you would think I would be whipping out paperwork and checking off boxes like a Type A Superstar.  Seriously, what is my problem?!

I could blame the 'system' for taking so long between steps. I could even leave it as chronic procrastination, but I know it's more than that. It's fear.  I'm terrified about a whole laundry list of what-if's. I know so much about adoption and the good, bad, and the ugly, and I'm terrified that we will only experience the bad and the ugly and none of the good.

It gets harder and harder to hold on to our resolve to 'get our hands dirty' when you start to see the mud puddles. Intellectually, I believe that we are not in this world to have everything easy and that eternity will be worth any pain, suffering, rejection, and grief that we experience in this life.  But signing up for all that FOR REAL is just plain scary.

But,

" For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline."
 2 Timothy 1:7
New American Standard Bible (NASB)

So today, I am going to look to Him for the power, love, and discipline for each new task on the adoption process timeline and pray for the wisdom to do the same each day for all my days. To God alone be the Glory.

(Be sure to check for updates to our timeline HERE)

The Timeline Post

Since I know that there are some people reading this blog in order to keep track of our adoption process, I wanted to have a permanent post where I will continually edit updates to the timeline.  There isn't a lot to it, yet, but hopefully it will help people to understand our particular process.  Our sincere thanks to all of those who are praying us through it! I'll put the official steps in bold as we complete them.

First discussed adoption as a couple - Fall 1991 (while we were dating)
Finally decided that it was time - November 2010
Agonizing over who, what, when, where and how - November 2010-June 2011
Finally fill out the first piece of paperwork for an adoption agency May 6, 2011 (for domestic infant adoption)
Foster Care/ Adoption Orientation Seminar at our Church - June 11, 2011
Convinced that God has called us to adopt from the Foster Care system instead of domestic infant - July 4, 2011

The Official Process:

Orientation:    June 11, 2011

Application Rec'd: July 29, '11

Application Turned In: August 29, 2011

FIngerprinting/Background Check: October 5, 2011

Homestudy Visit #1: November17, 2011

PRIDE Training #1: February 18, 2012

PRIDE Training #2:February 25, 2012

Learned about a child available for adoption: March 13, 2012
Program-changing decision month: March 2012
Saw his picture for the first time!!: August 31, 2012

Excuses, excuses...

My blogging has all but disappeared.  I keep having ideas and start typing up a post and deleting and typing and deleting, then I move on to something else and don't come back.  It's just sad.  But, I do have a nice little list of excuses:

• I became the Communications Administrator for Project HOPEFUL about a month ago and it has almost completely taken over my computer energies
• I recently organized a giant (for me) yard sale to raise money for three families who are adopting and became re-acquainted with the fact that my skills lie in being an idea person, not an implementer.
• I organized a three hour orientation seminar at our church about foster care and adoption and actually implemented it - the same week in which I implemented the yard sale...simply amazing.
• We went public with the fact that we have officially taken the first steps toward adopting domestically.  We're only in the early 'Papercut Stage' of adoption.  The stress of sharing that information with certain people made me physically ill. I cried off and on for days. We seriously were going to wait until we were further into the process, but we can't get further into the process until we do some fundraising, so.....we just had to do it.
• My kids just started summer vacation and we're trying to get into a good routine (and I've been sharing the computer with 5 other people...even if they only get half an hour per day, that's a lot of time!)
• My parents are moving next week and I've been helping with painting and landscaping.

So, bloggy peeps, I'm sorry, but I just about fell off the map.  Thankfully I grabbed the edge and hopped back on, so let's just get back to it, shall we?  Here is my blog post recommendation for the day:


"Christians Should Put Up of Shut Up"


~Jennifer

What is the Church doing to have a 21st Century understanding of HIV and AIDS?

Romans 8:15  For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!"


As I've been spending time stalking following Carolyn Tweitmeyer's posts, blog, media spots, etc.  I've started wondering what it would be like to bring an HIV+ child into our little community.  What would that neighbor over there do?  How would the kids' school react? Would my family disown us? and most of all, What would happen at our church?

What is the best way to disclose that kind of information to our church body?  How many Sunday School classes would we have to do to convince our people about the truth of HIV and how it is transmitted?  How many people would leave the church once they heard that we were bringing HIV+ children into their midst?  Would everyone stop putting their child in the nursery if we put ours in there?

I'm certain that the initial reaction would be one of terror and anger that we would even consider exposing their families to this disease.  But once the truth was given to them and the fear was minimized, what really should be the reaction to the thought that HIV+ children were going to be in our church?

I've asked the same question of the Project HOPEFUL people and really look forward to reading their answer.  In the meantime, I've been brainstorming for some of the answers and here is what I've come up with so far:

* Pray that the hearts of the whole congregation would be broken for and genuinely, passionately love children with any disease, disability, brokenness or hurtful past.
* Pray for the church to be granted courage, a love for Truth, and a peace that passes understanding.
* Learn about Universal Precautions and implement them throughout the church building.
* Establish a nursery policy regarding training of workers, and implementation of Universal Precautions.
* Decide as a church body how/whether to disclose the information to visitors.

I'm sure that I'll come back to this question over and over as I learn more.  What ideas to you have?  Do you belong to a church that is already prepared for this?  How was it presented to your church body?