Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

We are hoping and praying that these little shoes will be filled by next Christmas...

Isaiah 7:14 "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel." 

Why Congo?

I'm often asked why we have chosen to adopt a child from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). And to be truly honest, all I can say is that this is where we have felt God calling us to adopt. I hadn't even heard of the DRC until a few months ago, when I found out a friend from high school was adopting from there. Since then, we have done a lot of research about the country and believe that this is where our little one will be or is waiting for us.


The DRC is the second largest country in Africa. It's population is about 73 million people. The official language is French. The Second Congo War has been going on since 1998 and over 5 million people have died. The prevalence of rape and other sexual violence has been described as some of the worst in the world. The DRC has the second-highest rate of infant mortality in the world.

I know that there are children in other counties (even here in the United States) that need caring homes, but after learning about this country, we just feel led to get a child out of there as soon as we can. The future of a child living in the DRC isn't good. There is very little hope there and if we can offer a little hope to one innocent child, why wouldn't we?

We are currently patiently waiting for our homestudy to be completed so we can submit it to our adoption agency in Denver. We are hoping to get our dossier information started this week as well. I haven't been able to get in contact with our adoption agency in the past week, so I really don't know where we stand. For those of you who don't know what a dossier is, here is the definition from Wikipedia: A dossier is a collection of papers or other sources, containing detailed information about a particular person or subject, together with a synopsis of their content. This information gets sent to DRC and then hopefully we will receive a referral of a child. We have specified that we would like a child between the ages of 6-18 months of either gender.

I have been thinking and praying a lot recently of our adopted child. Here is a little note from me to them.

Dear Little One,

I think about you daily and wonder what you look like. My heart aches for you even though I've never met you and you may not even be born yet. I pray that God will keep you safe until your daddy and I can come and rescue you. There is no greater place to be than under the protection of our Lord and Savior. So during this time, I must trust that He will protect you and bring me peace until you are in my arms.

Love,
Mommy

"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." James 1:27

Beginning Our Adoption Journey

This is what Jim and I have been staring at for the past few weeks. This is the paperwork for our adoption applications--just the applications!

For those of you who had no idea that Jim and I were considering adoption, well, we are :)
For some time now, we have felt God's calling on our lives to adopt. I think we both thought it would be a little later in life after we were done having children of our own. However, our plans are certainly not God's plans and we both feel that he is urging us to pursue adoption at this time. We have decided to adopt internationally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa. After prayerfully considering other countries, we both feel a calling to this country. It is a country with very few resources and the children are living in very poor conditions. Many of them have malaria and parasites because of the lack of medical treatment. Jim and I feel that God has provided us with so much, that we need to help a child who has very little.

We have started our home study process. For those of you who don't know much about the adoption process, the home study is the first part that needs to be completed in the adoption process. We have to meet with the social worker 3 times and she asks a lot of questions about us. We also have to have physicals done, fingerprints taken, and give them all our financial information for the past few years. It seems daunting, but I am just trying to stay focused on why we are doing this.

I'll try and post when I can to keep everyone informed. Right now, Jim and I just ask for prayers as we step out on this journey. We know that God is in control of this and guiding us as we go along.

Here's our current family...it will be exciting to see what it looks like a year or two from now :)

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.

James 1:27

Life

I'm not even going to begin trying to catch up for the past 6-7 months! I have been a horrible blogger for all of our friends and family. So instead of trying to play "catch up", I'm just going to start with what's going on in the Warne household now...

Jade turned 11 months old last week! I can't believe she's almost a year old. That means I have to get serious about planning her first birthday.

I have had so much fun being a mom. It is the most exhausting, exhilirating, emotional roller coaster that one will ever be on, but one that I would never give up. Jade is crawling and pulling herself up, which means she's getting into EVERYTHING and she's not happy when mommy takes stuff away. She is talking a little and can say 'dada' and 'uh-oh' and she "roars" when we point to a green dinosaur in one of her books. She loves to be with mommy and likes to help in the kitchen. She enjoys jogging in her BOB jogging stroller and likes to be outside anytime. It's so much fun watching her learn new things everyday.

In other news, for those of you who may not know...Jim and I are in the process of adopting. I will post more on this later this week.

Catching Up

Well, a lot of time has passed since my last posting. Jade has turned 3 months old, went on her first major trip, started daycare, and turned 4 months old! We have been having so much fun with her! She is getting so big and she is interacting with us more and more every day.

Jade turned 3 months old on Jan. 6th.

In the middle of Jan. we headed south to visit our amazing friends in Arizona! Of course it nice to go to AZ in Jan and the weather was wonderful, but we really just wanted to see all of our friends. They made us feel so welcome. It was as if we hadn't left. Two of my best friends in AZ had little girls around the same time Jade was born. It was nice to meet their little girls.

Jade did great on the plane!!

                                           

Here's Jade and Kinley. Kinley is 1 week younger than Jade and she was born 4 weeks early, but she has more than made up for it :)

Here is JoAnne and Lucy--Beautiful girls! Lucy is about 3 weeks older than Jade.

Mike and Diane...they were our neighbors. It was so nice to see them!

Here are Chris and Jim with the girls: Kinley, Harper, and Jade

This is Dana and I. Dana and her husband Brian allowed us to crash with them for a week.

And here's the Holohan family: Harper, Rachel, Kinley, and Chris. This picture pretty much sums them up. And we love them!

Our time in AZ was great and Jim and I both have hopes of maybe moving back someday...

Jade turned 4 months old on Feb. 6th. Taking pictures was a lot more challenging because she wouldn't sit still.
Here stats were:
14 lb 5oz
24 1/4 in

So that has been the past few months in a nutshell.
Now for today...Jim and I have been busy in the kitchen. Here's what we made today.

Honey Oatmeal Bread

Homemade Almond Butter

Granola

And Caramelized Onion and Italian Sausage Pizza (our own recipe)

Needless to say, we are eating very good today:)

Hope everyone is having a blessed day.