::..:: gathering my way ::..::
March 30, 2002
its saturday and once again i have been too long away from writing my thoughts about the past week. we have had no major happenings. i filed for unemployment and had to answer some silly questions. i also spoke with two prospective clients, one who just gave me a new commission that will keep us going for another month. it is becoming clear that we are to be pursuing abrahams promise fulltime. the question is how to make that happen. we have to apply for 501c3 status so people will donate some money. i have always wondered why we need that tax exemption and why its is such a hinderance for giving. we did receive about $200 toward the adoptin and are nearing 8k now, it is so amazing to see it all happening. if i am to stay at home and work as an architect and push abrahams promise then so be it. the shaky financial ground we are on doesnt seem to bother me to much, although a few of my creditors might see things a little differently. was any of us ever promised an easy way in thsi life in our following of god, i think not. i had lunch wednesday with a friend how posed the question what if christianity is really about caring for widows and orphans like the bible says so many times. i keep going back to micah 6:8, seek justice, love mercy and wlak humbly with god, those are the tasks before us and to truly carry those out is amazingly hard, and sacrifcial in their doing. anyway thats about it for now, we are still waiting for the adoption process to proceed so we can bring our new daughters home asap.
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March 26, 2002
i have been finding it hard to get time on the computer being at home all day. i spent the last few months at my office wihtout much to do so i was online all the time. now with life happening all around me i have very little oppotunity to surf. our story continues to get interesting. i told my mother today that we are adopting two "more" kids from africa. she was speechless and didnt say another word about it the rest of the time she was here. many people seem to be bewildered and some angry about what we are doing. we have received some very pointed notes form friends telling us we should not be doing this,adopting that is. my struggle is how can someone else tell me what God's will is for my life when i cant even figure out what it is and im the one living it. there is no burning bush or clear sign from the heavens to show us that this is the path we should be on. yet, the way people have given us money and support thorugh prayer and encouragement has been so cool. we found the names of our girls yesterday, Salamwet and Negifti. it seems that Negifti has a sister that has been placed with another family and there may be an outside chance she would become available. then i guess we would be adopting three. our friends at the bank continue to amaze us, today they gave sydney a $50 gift card from kroger for our easter meal. the people there are very inot helping us and at times it gets a little trying to accept all of it. yet, i know that this is giving us a needed boost in the finance and encourgament department. yesterday we also applied and received coupons from the WIC program, the four youngest are eligible so it gives us about $200 a month in milk/cheese/cereal/penaut butter. it is also a great exprience actually seeing the social safety net first hand. when we were applying the dietician was a young women who wants to volunteer in africa so we told her about TLC, where we founbd isaiah and micah. it has been so cool watching all this stuff happen and just sit back and be amazed at how it all fits together.
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March 23, 2002
well its been a few days. i thought i would post the letter we wrote that started this whole thing and the pictures of our girls. so here goes.
Dear friends, February 14, 2002
We would like to let you in on the next mission trip of our life. We feel very strongly that God has once again called us to add to our family through adoption. We have been praying about it for sometime now and over the last month have become sure of our conviction. I have been communicating with an agency out of Montana and on January 7 we received a picture of the little girl we know is to be part of our family. When her picture came up on the screen I was overcome with love for her and Cecilia said, "mommy, she is so pwetty…can I hold that little girl from Efiokia." Sometimes from the words of my children my heart is convicted.
We will name this precious little girl Casey. She is from the northern part of Ethiopia and does not have a name or a birthday, let alone a family to call her own. They do not name the children in the orphanage and simply call them girl or boy! She does not have a birthday because no one knows when she was born. They are doing an evaluation on her to determine her approximate age, but they are guessing that she is about 15months old. If that is true she will be given a birthday on the same day as John’s…October 5. We feel that will make her birthday a bit special. At this time that is all we know about her…nothing…but we know from looking at her eyes that she needs us as much as we need her. We know that we do not have much to give her except love, but how can we tell her no when she has absolutely nothing! And most importantly how we can say no to God.
We have at this time completed all the paperwork that needs to be done to proceed with Casey’s adoption and have sent the agency a small part of the money needed to go forward. We know that we have the money to provide this little girl with a home and all the love she will need. We also know that we do not have the funds we need to get her here. We have prayed long and hard about what to do about the money. We are certain that God wants us to bring this beautiful child into our family, but we know that He has another plan for the money. After four years of seminary and four children later we just don’t have the extra money stored up to get Casey’s adoption moving like it needs to be.
We now come to why we are writing this letter. We know that there a many people who have supported us and prayed for us over the last four years and we know that we would not have survived without you, each other and God. We would like to ask you to commit to pray for our family once again. We know that it will not be easy to wait for her, have the activity of another toddler and to deal with all the adjustment issues she may have. But we do know that we can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens us! We would also like to ask you to pray about whether or not you would be able to help with Casey’s adoption fees. We feel very strongly that we as Christians need to take responsibility for the needy children and people of this world. There is a generation of children who are being lost as they sit in orphanages or in the streets and even in homes where they can not be taken care of due to the extreme poverty. We know that adoption is one thing that needs to be done to help with this problem, but we also know that adoption is not for everyone. We would ask that you consider partnering with us to help this beautiful child of God be able to come home.
We would like everyone to know what we are up against in the financial arena and it is as follows. The agency we are using is A New Arrival. The agency fees are $3000 of which we have paid $500. The country fees are $3000-3500 depending on whether or not the agency gets its own license in Ethiopia before we proceed. We also need about $455 for the INS processing and $500 for our homestudy to be able to be sent. The plan is that the agency will be escorting home about 4-5 of the families’ children in April, one of the reasons why we choose to adopt from Ethiopia. We do not have to travel which is less costly and easier on the other children. We are working on raising money, but we know that we can’t do this alone in such a short amount of time. We humbly ask that you prayerfully consider if this is something that you feel God wants you to be a part of.
Carol Galvan, Kim and Mike Siman, and Heather and Rick Ingle have offered to help us with this endeavor and would like to host a couple nights of prayer and fellowship at their homes. March 3 @7:30pm at Siman’s and March 5 @7:30pm at Carol Galvan’s. Please come if you can, as we would love to invite you to become a part of this whether it is as a prayer warrior and/or to help out with Casey’s adoption fees.
We appreciate all the prayer that will go into your decision and for Casey as she waits to come home.
Blessings,
Sydney and John Wallis
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Dear friends, February 14, 2002
We would like to let you in on the next mission trip of our life. We feel very strongly that God has once again called us to add to our family through adoption. We have been praying about it for sometime now and over the last month have become sure of our conviction. I have been communicating with an agency out of Montana and on January 7 we received a picture of the little girl we know is to be part of our family. When her picture came up on the screen I was overcome with love for her and Cecilia said, "mommy, she is so pwetty…can I hold that little girl from Efiokia." Sometimes from the words of my children my heart is convicted.
We will name this precious little girl Casey. She is from the northern part of Ethiopia and does not have a name or a birthday, let alone a family to call her own. They do not name the children in the orphanage and simply call them girl or boy! She does not have a birthday because no one knows when she was born. They are doing an evaluation on her to determine her approximate age, but they are guessing that she is about 15months old. If that is true she will be given a birthday on the same day as John’s…October 5. We feel that will make her birthday a bit special. At this time that is all we know about her…nothing…but we know from looking at her eyes that she needs us as much as we need her. We know that we do not have much to give her except love, but how can we tell her no when she has absolutely nothing! And most importantly how we can say no to God.
We have at this time completed all the paperwork that needs to be done to proceed with Casey’s adoption and have sent the agency a small part of the money needed to go forward. We know that we have the money to provide this little girl with a home and all the love she will need. We also know that we do not have the funds we need to get her here. We have prayed long and hard about what to do about the money. We are certain that God wants us to bring this beautiful child into our family, but we know that He has another plan for the money. After four years of seminary and four children later we just don’t have the extra money stored up to get Casey’s adoption moving like it needs to be.
We now come to why we are writing this letter. We know that there a many people who have supported us and prayed for us over the last four years and we know that we would not have survived without you, each other and God. We would like to ask you to commit to pray for our family once again. We know that it will not be easy to wait for her, have the activity of another toddler and to deal with all the adjustment issues she may have. But we do know that we can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens us! We would also like to ask you to pray about whether or not you would be able to help with Casey’s adoption fees. We feel very strongly that we as Christians need to take responsibility for the needy children and people of this world. There is a generation of children who are being lost as they sit in orphanages or in the streets and even in homes where they can not be taken care of due to the extreme poverty. We know that adoption is one thing that needs to be done to help with this problem, but we also know that adoption is not for everyone. We would ask that you consider partnering with us to help this beautiful child of God be able to come home.
We would like everyone to know what we are up against in the financial arena and it is as follows. The agency we are using is A New Arrival. The agency fees are $3000 of which we have paid $500. The country fees are $3000-3500 depending on whether or not the agency gets its own license in Ethiopia before we proceed. We also need about $455 for the INS processing and $500 for our homestudy to be able to be sent. The plan is that the agency will be escorting home about 4-5 of the families’ children in April, one of the reasons why we choose to adopt from Ethiopia. We do not have to travel which is less costly and easier on the other children. We are working on raising money, but we know that we can’t do this alone in such a short amount of time. We humbly ask that you prayerfully consider if this is something that you feel God wants you to be a part of.
Carol Galvan, Kim and Mike Siman, and Heather and Rick Ingle have offered to help us with this endeavor and would like to host a couple nights of prayer and fellowship at their homes. March 3 @7:30pm at Siman’s and March 5 @7:30pm at Carol Galvan’s. Please come if you can, as we would love to invite you to become a part of this whether it is as a prayer warrior and/or to help out with Casey’s adoption fees.
We appreciate all the prayer that will go into your decision and for Casey as she waits to come home.
Blessings,
Sydney and John Wallis
March 20, 2002
lets see where i am tonite, im not sure. had an incredible time with a good friend last night, she is wise and passionate about god. she nad some others have been feeling that something is happening in our lives that is going to change our lives dramatically. no one including us has a clue what is but we are feeling that god is at work and we need to be ready to respond. well my wife just got home so i have to go.
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well we just got a call from our favorite teller at our bank and it seems the local rotary chapter wants to help too. they are going to talk about our family nest week and want a list of things we need for our kids. were should i start.>>>>>>
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it has been interesting the past few days. i got laid off on friday and we are in the midst of adopting two girls from ethiopia. the past few months have been chaos. about a month ago we decided to send a letter to about 90 people asking them to support us with prayer and money if they felt that was what they should do. the response has been amazing people i never imagined that so many people would help so much. it has been hard for me to stop and admit i have been wrong about the church we attend i wnated to believe that the people there wouldnt support our choices. i was wrong and it has been a painful lessonm to learn that i should not be the one pasisng judgement about who is right and wrong. in the past weeks the support has changed our lives. i was at the bank the other day and one of the 6 or so tellers asked me if whe could do something for us. she said she is passionate about clipping coupons, of course my first reaction was cynical, but she really wanted to help our family (we have 8 kids, 4 biological/4 adopted) monday when i was at the bank again she ran out to my van (we have a 15 passneger to haul all of us around) and asked if they could use money they donate for dressing causally every friday and aslo have a food drive at all 18 of their branches to support us. there are more stories like this people at the edges of our life helping in small ways and big ways. our 12 and 10 year old daughters piano teacher gave us the next 2 months free. our 14 year old cello company always encourages us with notes and a flexiable payment schedule. others have given money for the adoption, we have recieved over 7k to date. and we and a few close friends God is preparing something more for us. it is hard to step back and let go of my need to be in control but i am trying and i think the things that are happening are a reslut of that freeing process.
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