Adoption Updates

So much has happened since I posted last, so I am just going random here!!
We got all updated in the state of Florida and were ready for our kids, but our bring them home by Christmas deadline was busted!

In January 2013, Wade and I ran the Disney Marathon, and hopped on a cruise ship for our first trip away without the children since Sara was a baby.
Ahh, Rest and Relaxation, after a 26.2 mile run, of course!

The Special Home Finding List came out while we were away and we looked it over.
No matches...again.
On January 18th, the day after we came home, we got an amendment to the list and saw two young girls there that kind of matched our profile.  One of the sisters was out of our age range, and at first, that was a deal breaker.  As we walked the little kids to school that morning,Wade and I talked over all the reasons it would not be a good match, but by the time we started walking back home, I was teary, knowing that those reasons were null and void... these girls needed a family!
We went home and immediately sent an e-mail to our agency... we wanted them!

Months pass, more paperwork, including ANOTHER (#3) updated home study to get the oldest sister's age into our paperwork. E-mail traffic goes back and forth with our agency, but there is no word and the waiting is torturous, as we have already started to pray for the girls, in our mind they are ours!

During the wait, God has answered prayers and leads us to make the decision to move on base. Thinking the wait is a year, we put our name on the housing list and get a call back in ONE WEEK!! God is working, and we are moving... again!

On June 28th, we move into our new home, and on a day when boxes are supposed to arrive, no truck arrives, but an email does.... we have been approved to move forward with the adoption!!!!!

On July 15th, we have our FOURTH home study done, and all the paperwork is submitted to USCIS on August  26th.

Meanwhile....
On August 22nd, while a mission team from Koza Baptist Church was at Gentle Hands, where the girls are, someone snapped this picture... They finally know they are loved by their  forever family!!

We are Adopting

After much prayer, Wade and I really started to believe that God was calling us to adopt.

Our selfish sides struggled with what a true call form God looks like.  Maybe we just thought He was calling us. After all, we already have 4 kids. We are a military family who move often and endure long stretches of time apart.  How could we be sure?
Would there be a miraculous sign? Will we hear His voice? Would there be writing on the wall?

In the end... we read His word; we listened to His cry for us, as His people, to care for the orphan, and in the small still voices in our hearts, we knew.

I felt like I had started all of this, and I wanted to make sure Wade could see what I did before we made our final decision.
After all, I had seen the children, the desolation, the poverty, and I wanted Wade to be on board with that same experience in mind... so,  we planned a trip to the Philippines that December.
We took all of our children and spent Christmas with "the least of these", and if I had any doubts that adopting was what we were supposed to do, they were gone by the time we made it back to Japan. Wade agreed, and our children's love for others there was so beautiful, and they too were on board.

It was time get serious, and find an agency... before we chickened out :)
Being overseas, and a very transient military family shut the door to so many agencies, but there was one, Adopt Abroad, Inc., that was willing to take us on, and they had a social worker in Okinawa that was available to do our home study.
We started the process in January, and in true Nordberg form, we charged forward, full speed ahead!

A process that takes a log time, under the best circumstances, would not deter us, and we did it!

We were home study complete, with a complete package to submit to the US government in May.
A week before we were to leave the island.
and report for our next duty station.
in Tampa, Florida.
where we would have to start the process
All.
Over.
Again!

Our Summer Mission Trip to the Philippines

The next logic post would be about our Mission trip, but it won't be.

I have tried, so many times, to relay what happened in the Philippines, and two years later, I still have yet, to be able to put it into words. Even when I was there, I would stare at my journal each night after our devotion time, and close it without writing a thing.

I can tell you that we did great things; we had fun; we were the hands and feet of Jesus.

We laughed; we cried; we met amazing people.

I can tell the funniest stories, that would be meaningless to you, because they all end with...
"HA, HA, Ha....you just had to be there!!"

But the magnitude of what happened to my heart there, makes the true experience, literally, more than I can put into words.

There IS one story, that stands above the others.
It changed me, and challenged me, in ways I will affect me for the rest of my life.

It is about a 12 year old boy.

It is about love at first sight and how looking at a child, through God's eyes, can make you do and think things you might not otherwise; about having to say goodbye and living with the reality of having God "break my heart for what breaks His".
It is about going back to a life you thought was wonderful, and finding out God has plans to make it better.
It is about how good our God is, and how in trusting Him, I was able to start putting my broken heart back together, and only then did I notice there were missing pieces.
It is about listening to Him, and knowing that by obeying His word, adoption was the answer to finding those "missing pieces".
and it is about trusting Him and finding peace in the midst of trading our plan for His!

Second Chance

With the deployment behind us  (WOW, if only the really went by that fast!!) We moved to a new house, on a new base, and were settling in nicely again as a whole family.  That is something you can actually go back on the blog to read about :)

I can't remember exactly when it was brought up, but our youth was invited to participate on a mission trip over the summer.  Sara mentioned it briefly. Once she found out some of her friends were planning to go, she brought it up again and again saying that she wanted to go, too.
Sara has never really been my child who loved being away from home. Sleep overs took a couple of tries before they lasted all night long, and this one was going to be for 10 days! Wade and I decided one of us would go, and the closer it got, it was obvious that would be me!

I had given it all to God, after all, he had been faithful during Wade's deployment, and I saw this as a way to pay him back.  Spreading his Love, and loving on His children.

We paid our deposits. We went to the meetings, and had such a great time bonding with the other people who would be on our team.  It was a youth trip so I completely believed that I was going as a chaperone, to protect the kids ( and mostly Sara) from what she would see and experience on the trip. We learned or mission verse, and got the t-shirt... literally.

 Things on the home front were falling into place too.
Wade was able to take a few days leave. Because it was during the summertime, Jackson was out of school, but since the babies were in Japanese pre-school, they had some where to be everyday.
On the days that Wade did have to go to work, he had permission to just bring Jackson along.
I know what a good dad he is, so it was all good!

Things were falling into place, and I had set my heart on going with the flow....take me and use me God, but there were a few stipulations....

I didn't want to work in the nursery, because I didn't think my heart could take seeing babies with no families. I also didn't want to work the school room, because I had just put everyone in school after homeschooling for a while, and I did not want God to convict me to bring them all back to homeschooling. It was fun while it lasted, but we were past that!  Also, I didn't want to get too emotionally touched by all of this. I remember my friend T asking what she could specifically pray for, and I said, "Well, I am really feeling good about life right now! I like having four kids... so pray that we wouldn't get there and want to bring any more kids home."
But other than that, I was ready.

Here I am Lord, Send me!

June 12th finally came, and my life would never be the same again!

The (Almost) Mission Trip

I wish I could call this post, "After Much Prayer", but the truth is, I didn't really pray at all.
It was more like...

Lord, what should I do about this mission trip.
I don't think I am strong enough to go there...
plus, what about my kids, and the cost, and Wade,
and, and, and....

So here I was...determined not to go, but not really wanting to admit it.

Our church continued to talk about a summer trip to the Philippines. Wade constantly brought it up, saying that Sara and I should go. I told Wade that if he wanted to, then HE should go.

We went to the information meeting as a family. We participated in fund raisers.
When people at church asked about us it... I nodded and said, that yes, we were thinking about it.
I probably even said we were praying about it, but I wasn't.

I just went along trying not to disappoint anyone, but I knew that eventually the deadline would come and a decision would need to be made. After months of thinking about it, I still just didn't think I could do it!

In the meantime, rumors started swirling around about Wade maybe deploying.

We knew a deployment would be coming, so that wasn't a big surprise, but this one was soon... like next month!  I kept thinking this is NOT how I wanted to get out of going on this trip, but, if Wade were gone, there would be no way that I could do it.
I remember getting the official word that Wade was indeed deploying in August... seems I really had been praying all along. Not that God would change my heart about this trip, but that He would get me out of it, and He did...I was NOT going to the Philippines this summer!

Now... all all I had to do, was get through a seven month deployment, in a foreign country, while homeschooling... Ha!

This deployment had me leaning on God more than ever.  I spent more quiet time with Him than I ever had before, and it should have come as no surprise to me, that when you spend that much time with someone, your love for them grows.
I was humbled by how it changed me! I wanted to learn more about Him, I wanted to do things that made Him happy, and somehow, I was lucky enough that  a little bit of Him had maybe even rubbed off on me.

I wanted to be more like Jesus, and
Jesus would have gone to the Philippines.

I wanted to love with reckless abandon, love "the least of these" and I had missed my chance.  

But...
I soon would find out what HE already knew.
I would have another chance...and this time, I would go!

Romans 8:28
And we know that in all things
God works for the good of those who love him,
who have been called
according to his purpose.

A Seed is Planted

In December of 2009, our friends, Cuong and Athena Luong, were excited to be spending their Christmas in the Philippines. When Athena graduated high school, she had been a short term missionary at an orphanage in Manilla, so she was especially excited to be spending the holidays with old friends. She couldn't wait to take and introduce them to her husband, and new son Luca.  While they were there, they were also going to take part in a mission outreach, and our Sunday school class was committed to praying for them.

When the Luongs got back to Okinawa, they talked with our pastor about how our church might be able to partner up an orphanage on a mission project; after all, our church mission statement is:
To Be Followers of Christ on Mission with God!


John agreed, and asked the Luongs share their testimony with the church. They asked that members start praying about taking part in a trip John would be making that summer. He wanted to meet the director, find out more about how our church could help out, and those going would be working in the orphanage and helping to tear down an old building, where the new one would go up.

Cuong came to Sunday school that day and shared a personal testimony from his trip. He was grateful that God had put him with a group he could realte to... had been with the David Boys (teen boys from a ghetto there called Malabon, that were now going to school), and as a Marine, I remember him proudly saying that one of the things they had done together was exercise :)  After class, Cuong was handing out some informational packets about the orphanage, and he came to me,  and knowing how much I love children, said... "Erica, you should go. There are so many babies there that just need to be held. You would love it!"

I just smiled and said that, indeed, was the problem. I would love it, but I also knew it would absolutely break my heart!  He asked that I pray about it, and I said that I would.

If you told me then, that two years later, my entire family, from Wade to Luke,  would be spending our Christmas there, I would NEVER have believed it!

Jeremiah 29:11
"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

New Beginnings

Oh, this could be taken so many ways....

A New blog Beginning:

Mostly to recap, and then update, on our adoption journey.

I am beginning, at the beginning... going back to where it all started and how God got us to this place at all. This may take a while.... It is hard to put all those emotions, etc. into words, but mostly because I can't type... at all!!

Our whole family of 6, will soon have a new beginning as a family of, hmm, well... that remains to be seen.

New Beginnings are scary and exciting...challenging and fun!

Today, I am humbled that God has given us all a New Beginning!

2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.