Please Help Giselle!

If you've been reading my blog for awhile, you know I have a special place in my heart for Giselle, a little girl who needs her family to find her. I am her guardian angel.  This means that I advocate for her and fundraise for her.



This Tuesday, March 12, will be a huge day of fundraising for Giselle!  She is part of Forty to Forever.

Forty to Forever is fundraising for 40 orphans, growing adoption grants and advocating for waiting children to find families and help the families in process to bring home a special needs child. Giselle is one of those orphans!  I am hoping to raise $400 for her on Tuesday.  This will put her Reece's Rainbow grant at just over $2,500 and she will move to the Moving Mountains page!  This will make her much more visible to families looking for their special child and give her family $2,500 to help them pay fees to bring her home (her adoption will likely be around $25,000.)

This fundraising effort is centered around the period of Lent. During this 40 days of Lent, a different child is featured with a fundraising goal, a daily Lent devotion and discussion. 

If you donate to Giselle on March 12, you can enter the giveaway of your choice.  There are some awesome prizes!

Shares:

Share on Facebook……………………..    1 entry
Share on Twitter…………………………. 1 entry
Share on your Blog……………………… 3 entries

Donations:

Give $2………………………………………… 1 entry
Give $3………………………………………… 2 entries
Give $4………………………………………… 3 entries
Give $5………………………………………… 5 entries
Give $10………………………………………. 12 entries
Give $25………………………………………. 40 entries
Give $50………………………………………. 100 entries

Please, please, give what you can to Giselle today.  She desperately needs a family.  I can't bear the thought of her locked away in a crib, receiving little if any love or stimulation.  Those that know where she is, say that it is not a good orphanage.  It is only through God's grace that she is still alive.

And I will give you the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that I, the LORD, who call you by your name, am the God of Israel.  Isaiah 45:3

Giselle truly is a treasure hidden away in the darkness.  Please help bring her into the light today!  Click here to give!

Anna is Ours!

Praise God!  Sweet little Anna is now ours.  A Bulgarian court made it official on Thursday, but of course, God ordained it long before that!

Now we wait for our facilitator to issue travel dates so that we can bring her home.  We should know something in about two weeks.  That seems like forever!  I want to hold my little girl now.  How hard it is to love someone so much that you're never even met.  And how weird it is to know that she is mine, but that I can't get to her right now.  Can you imagine?



Today I bought her first little outfits.  I've never had a little, little girl, so it was very exciting!  Here are a couple of pictures:



I have to be careful when picking out her clothes because her head is so large.  I can't really buy anything that goes over her head unless it has a lot of buttons.  I am also not 100% sure of her size.  People who have seen her guess 9-12 months.  She is four!  Doesn't that just break your heart!  I was in tears while shopping because it seemed so wrong to be shopping in infant clothes for a pre-schooler.  I pray that God will restore to her all that has been lost.

I will keep you up-to-date when we receive dates.  In the meantime, we have to pay the last of our fees.  If you would like to help us reach $4,000 in our FSP, here is the link:

http://reecesrainbow.org/39085/sponsorrosencrants

Now, on to others waiting.  A few months back I posted about the handsome Emmitt.  He is still waiting.  I pray that his family will find him soon as he is about to age out.



In the meantime, a project is underway to improve the orphanage in which he lives.  It really needs it!   Please read about how you can help here.

And please don't forget about my sweet Giselle.  She needs a family too!

We Have a Court Date!

Great news!  We have a court date for our adoption of Anna!  God willing, she will be ours on February 21. 

We are so excited, but have much to do to get ready for Anna's homecoming.  We should travel to pick her up in four to six weeks.  Not much time!  To be honest, losing Nora threw us for such a loop, that we haven't done much towards preparing for Anna to come.  Must get busy!

My oldest son, Damir, will be travelling with me to get Anna.  He is very excited about going to Europe, as you can imagine.  I believe he will be a big help.

Please keep us in your prayers as all of our lives, including Anna's, are about to change dramatically.  We praise God for how works everything for the good of those who love Him!

Here is a picture of my sweet Anna:

I would also ask you to consider a darling little boy who lives in the same place as Anna.  He needs a family!  He has been passed over many times.  His name is Chad.



What a blessing he will be to his family.  If you are interested, please contact Shelley Bedford at shele337@gmail.com.

The Hardest Post to Write

Sometimes words fail us.  God is so good to have given us language.  What a blessing to be able to communicate!  But there are times in life when our emotions are so raw (or so uplifted) that we just don't seem to have the words to adequately convey them.  This is one of those times.

We will not be able to bring Nora home.  There.  I have said it.  And once again I feel like my heart has spilled out of my chest and dropped on the floor. 

I will not be able to fully explain the reasons here out of respect for her privacy.  Her health issues should not be on public display.  So I will say what I feel comfortable with and pray for understanding for what cannot be said.  When we first agreed to adopt Nora, we had a picture of her face and a half-page of medical information.  That was it.  We stepped out in faith, fearing that once her file was returned, this precious child would never have another chance at a family.  We know now that that is not true; several children have been chosen after their files have been returned.  But at the time, there was genuine fear. 

As you've read on past posts, while Scott was visiting Nora in October, we were blindsided with the information from her doctors that her heart condition was so serious that she would not survive the trip to the US.  We chose not to believe that and began to seek out doctors here to find a way to get her safely home.  We were given much more medical information from her country.  And then news was devastating.

Again, I will not go in to detail, but based on everything we have learned, it is highly likely that the stress of the trip could kill her.  It is also unlikely that being adopted would bring any significant gains to Nora and could entail many losses.

So we have made the most difficult decision of our lives - to leave her there.  A piece of me will reside in an orphanage on the other side of the world now and I will not be whole again until heaven.  What comfort it brings to know that one day Nora will be whole and healthy there too and maybe God will allow me to love on her and hold her there as long as we both want!

We continue to work towards bringing Anna home.  Her health concerns are also significant, but we believe that adoption will be a blessing to her.  I have reports from others who have met her that she is just precious and so full of life.  I can hardly wait to meet her.

Thank you to all who have supported us prayerfully and financially through this journey.  We don't understand God's will in this, but we embrace it and move forward.  Thank you for continuing to walk with us.  We ask that you keep our precious Nora in your prayers.

A Moment

Today I am not posting news, advocating for a child, or standing on a soapbox.  Today I just want to thank God that his mercies are new every morning.

The Value of Children

I am writing this three days after a gunman opened fire in the Sandy Hook Elementary School and killed 20 children and 6 adults.  The news is on behind me with everyone giving their opinion about why this happened and what is wrong with our culture.  I've heard access to guns and lack of mental health care and violence in video games.  But you know what I haven't heard?

I haven't heard anyone speak the truth yet:  our society doesn't value children.

There.  I said it and now I'm crying because it hurt so much to say. 

Oh, we talk a good game.  We buy our children everything under the sun.  We take them to 15 different activities per day.  We make sure they have their Under Armour hoodie and Nike shoes and iPhone before we send them off for the day. 

But we do not value children.

Today, thousands of them will be murdered and we won't blink an eye.  It will not be reported on the news.  The President will not mourn their loss.  In fact, he will encourage it and wants the government to pay for it. 

Today thousands of preborn children will be ripped apart and sucked out and we don't care. 

Is it so hard to see that we live in a culture of death?  We tell our children that babies don't count because they are "unwanted" and "inconvenient"  and then we expect them to have respect for life?  Really?  Are we so blind?

Of course this is not just an American problem.  This is true across the world.  So many countries warehouse their unwanted children, barely meeting their basic needs and certainly not giving them anything close to the nurturing God intended. 

This past week the former director at Nora and Anna's orphanage was reinstated by the courts because what she did was not found to be "significant."  Eighteen children died under her care in the last year or so.  Teenagers were the size of infants.  Broken bones went untreated.  Children were left in cribs to rot.  But their lives were not important.

Children are not "significant."

Contrast this with God's view of children.  Jesus valued them so much that he said that we must become like them to enter the kingdom.  He rebuked his disciples when they tried to prevent the children from seeing Jesus.  Many of the healings recorded in the Gospels were of children. 

God values children!  All children! 

Meet Brandi.  God values her even if her society does not.  Even if no one here thinks she is important enough to rescue.  She is valued!



We can turn this thing around.  We can start to truly value children in this country.  Let's start with Brandi.  If God is prompting your heart, contact Shelley Bedford at shele337@gmail.com and ask about adding her to your family.

She matters to God.  We can have a culture of life.  One child at a time.

Henry and Harvey

I hear a lot "Boy, those kids are sure lucky to have you," about both my current adopted children and the two we are working to bring home.  I like to think that I am a pretty good mother (some days).  But any adoptive parent knows this secret - we are the blessed ones.  We can never give our children more than they give to us. 

And here is a picture of one such little giver.

His name is Henry.  His family adopted him 14 months ago from Ukraine, where he would have lived his short little life in a crib, never knowing love or home.  So it would be easy to think that Henry was the "lucky" one.  But if you've spent any time with his mom Carla, whether in real life or online, you would know immediately that she was the one blessed.  The love she has for Henry spills over in every word she says, every photograph.  And Henry has made a difference for so many other little ones in his situation.  Because Carla has shared Henry's story every step of the way on her blog, many other families have found their children.

It is with a heavy heart that I tell you that Henry passed on from surgery complications this past week.  His family and many in the adoption community are heartbroken.  But Henry will live forever, not only in the arms of Jesus, but also here on earth as child after child comes home to bless their family the way Henry blessed his.

I thought Henry was adorable.  But in his country, he was seen as a burden, unloveable.  Like Jesus himself,  "He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.  He was despised and rejected by men."  Isaiah 53: 2-3.

So many orphans are not "attractive" by our society's standards.  But Jesus says that what we do for the least of these, we do for him. 

Today I want you to meet Harvey.  Like Henry, Harvey has many needs.  Like Henry, Harvey is not loved in his home country.  He is considered a burden.  But like Henry, Harvey will be a blessing to his family.  He is a child of God who needs to be loved.  Look at him!




He is despised and rejected!  But he is not forgotten!




Who is looking to be blessed today?  Please let's continue Henry's legacy of love.  Inquire about sweet Harvey.  His file has been sent back to his home country but can be requested.  Just contact Shelley Bedford at shele337@gmail.com.