And God asked, "What's in your hand?"

We have moved and we are unpacking boxes and being creative in making every inch and corner of our new home work.  After the kitchen folks installed the cabinets and countertops I realized one drawer in a kitchen would require some extra creativity to make things fit.  Luckily I have a handy husband and he's been hanging extra shelves on a daily basis.

We absolutely love our new home and have already been invited over to our neighbor's house for dinner.  They are a blessing to have as neighbors.  Micah and I (Jen) love riding our bikes to explore our surroundings together and Ben has access to be outside whenever he likes to pick flowers, explore and find treasures in rocks and random trash that he considers to be treasure.  In addition to daily life being everything our family really enjoys, we are excited to be only 10 minutes away from the village that God has planted a church in and lets us work in.  Unfortunately so much of our work there had to  come to a stop over the months due to distance, illness in our family and ever changing schedules of the lives in that village but now a last minute schedule change on their part is no problem and instead of being forced to cancel plans, we now just adjust them.  Just today Cameron was able to set a time and change it to evening plans instead due to their schedule.

Micah's one desire was to make friends and immediately God answered the prayers of his heart. In one week, Micah had three boys out front asking to ride bikes and build forts in our carport. 

As we prepare for a baby and her impending arrival (unknown, waiting on a referral) we are also looking at the villages we are currently involved in and what changes we will need to make to support a healthy family schedule and continue to work where God is leading us.  A book I'm currently reading pointed me in the direction of Psalm 90 and as I meditated on those verses I really held onto verse 17:

"Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands!"

Later while studying the life of Moses the book I'm reading directed me to take notice of Exodus 4:2:

The Lord said to him: What is that in your hand?" "A staff." said Moses

God took it away from there and reminded me that for Moses, his staff was his identity, his purpose, his ability, his bread winning work and while God cast vision over Moses to send him back to Egypt to set captives free, Moses took off his sandals and hid his face but throughout all of chapter 3 Moses kept a tight grip of that staff.

We all have a staff in our hands, the question is what is it?  The staff represents who we are, our identity, our abilities, and what we consider our purpose to be.  At the same time we pray "God establish the work of our hands," our hands continue to be filled with what we think we are already capable of and who we claim to be.

Like Moses, God is asking us to recognize what is in our hand and then asking us to throw it down.

When Moses threw his staff down, it immediately turned into a snake and Moses ran from it.  God directs him to pick it up and when he does the snake returns to being a staff.

God created us and gave us abilities, but in our hands everything we are will always be as impressive as that stick.  When we throw down our staff before God and let Him infuse our identity and our abilities and our purpose with His power, we can then pick up that staff with the infusion of God's power and His ability for the work He has established for our hands.

My prayer over our next season of ministry here in Botevgrad is that we will daily look at what we think we are bringing to the table and throw it down, letting God change whatever staff we think we can use and transform it to be the equipping He desires us to have, not so that we can do more but so that God can be seen more.

Exodus 4:5

"That they may believe that the Lord, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has appeared to you."

Thank you for your prayers.  You are a part of everything God involves us with here because your prayers are lifted up for the people we come into contact with. You will never know the treasure you truly are to our hearts but please hear our "Thank You" and know that we depend on your prayers and the Holy Spirit working all things together for God's glory alone.

Ebbs and Flows

In July, Cameron and I will celebrate 15 years of marriage.  Something our pastor told us in premarital counseling is that like the waves coming in and out, our marriage will also experience emotions that ebb and flow.  We have been fortunate that most of these 15 years have been more flow than ebb but I wish someone would have reminded me of these words prior to coming back to Bulgaria.  Just like the beach is consistent and welcomes the waves which come and go, my obedience to follow the Lord attempts to always be consistent, but the emotions that accompany obedience ebb and flow.

“Change” brings me to places of panic in my heart.  Change really should feel normal by now, in our almost 15 years of marriage we’ve moved 14 times and are preparing for our 15th move in a week.  Regardless of our seeming expertise on the subject, internally I fight it every time even when it’s for the best.  When we arrived back to Bulgaria from our time in the States and we returned to the work in the village, I made a comment to Cameron, “One day it would be great to be closer to this work so that we’re not driving so far and we can really do life more with the people God has us working with.”  Shortly after, like literally a month there was a fiasco with our rent and a soon increase in rent would force a decision to be made on moving to another apartment in Sofia or to move closer to ministry.  I think at that moment the wind was knocked out of me because “one day” turned into the next 6 months.  In the meantime God was leading us to the decision of adoption and my last “speed bump” to following in obedience was financial.   I told a friend that there was no way we could do it and literally in December a grandma in our family gave us an unexpected gift that would erase any excuse we could come up with.  In addition we learned that we are able to adopt a child in Bulgaria without the large financial burden families adopting from the States would face.  The wind was knocked out of me again.  When we told friends that we were moving out of Sofia to be closer to work, one woman said “Oh! To Botevgrad?!  We’ve been praying someone would move to Botevgrad.”  I literally said “No, no, no, not there.  We’re going to be around there but we wouldn’t be in Botevgrad.  Working with roma there…no not Botevgrad.”  You may can tell by the way all this is going that we’re moving to Botevgrad :)  Literally we searched and searched and I told Cameron Botevgrad would be the last place he was allowed to search and secretly prayed nothing would be available there.  When he told me that two realtors confirmed only one place was available but it was outside of our price and size limit, I smiled and exhaled a sigh of relief.  Unfortunately there was only one option left for rent in Pravets and it turned out to not be an option at all.  We were left with the decision to move within Sofia again and start over in ministry, as our gas budget and family’s well being would not allow us to drive the distances every weekend we drove to get to ministry or pray that something else opens up.  I told Cameron that my heart was aching to not be able to continue doing ministry where we knew God was at work and I prayed something, anything would open up.  A colleague came to Bulgaria and met with a realtor she had a connection with and we soon were told that a home in Botevgrad was available for rent.  This time the wind was not knocked out of me, instead the familiar feeling of fear mixed with trust that accompanies obedience to God and the relinquishing of control, opinion and sight came upon me and I knew Jennifer wasn’t directing the path and the place she said “never, nope, never” to was soon to be the place she called her temporary home.

We know nothing of Botevgrad and what is waiting for us there.  All of the other villages and towns surrounding our ministry areas we’ve driven around and investigated in case God ever called us to live there but Botevgrad was always a place I said no to when Cam asked if I wanted to go visit it.  We don’t know Botevgrad but I know a few roma who live there and honestly I’m scared of those groups from which they come from.  The places we work in now aren’t easy, so how can we even think of working in some of the places in Botevgrad.  In one village close to Botevgrad, a lady grabbed me by my face and vehemently yelled that I was a liar from satan himself and that’s one of the easy places we work!  What I know to be true of God’s character is that when I say something is uglier than grace can fix, God shows me His great love even more.  When I think that I would never want to work in a place like that, God makes that place my home.  When I think I am incapable to do anything with the roma in Botevgrad, He says I’m right and then proves Himself to be capable to do all things through me when He gives me the strength to do it.  I don’t know if God has work for us specifically in Botevgrad but we do know that He’s absolutely opened the door for us to live there and we are walking through that door and taking the keys on June 15th. 

Botevgrad, Bulgaria is about an hour outside of Sofia and is less than 10 minutes away from the first village we work in.  In addition, now that we will be so close to other villages there is one christian woman in a village with little to no other believers and she’s asked that we start a Bible study in her home.  Previously we had to tell her no because we could not make another trip to another village on our currently full schedule but now we can tell her yes! It’s exciting to be closer to the people God has connected us to and to have the ability to be consistent in their lives.  We will be living in a duplex and the boys will have an area to safely ride their bikes whenever they want. One of the joys will be no longer living in limbo.  Micah really wanted to take up fencing but we did not want to begin classes in Sofia and make friendships that he would have to uproot months later and begin again in a new place.  So we are excited to have a feeling of being able to settle and create life and schedule again. 

Something different

Every mother's day Cameron buys me 5 white roses to signify the 5 lives knit together in my womb but never delivered into our arms.  He buys me two red roses to signify Micah and Ben's birth and this mother's day there was something different in the usual 7 roses.  An 8th rose sits in a vase, red and mixed with yellow.  Red, symbolizing the birth of a little girl and the yellow symbolizing the hope of her joining into our family and being called our daughter.  Not of my blood, but beautifully given into our arms by a God who has not abandoned her to be an orphan.  This mother's day is different.  This mother's day I look down at the roses and see the 8th one, something different, yet something beautifully being put together by God.  Each of those roses have made a difference in my life and will continue to make a difference, I'm grateful for each one.

I also spend mother's day looking at the white roses and praying for my friends who are childless.  Five years there were only white roses which filled my vase on mother's day and I longed for the birth of a sweet baby.  God is faithful and I pray for those of my friends who are waiting to call a child their own.

Adoption, Our Story

As many have already heard, we are in the process of adopting. Many of you know our story and the dreams God gave me (Jennifer) prior to coming to Bulgaria and were not surprised in the least bit when you heard that God was now writing this new chapter in our life, but some of you do not know that part of our story and we would love to tell it now. This is a story that has roots so to tell you about our todays, I have to take you back into our yesterdays...

Before Micah and Ben arrived, they had three brothers or sisters that came before them. If those pregnancies had come full term, this year we would be the parents of a 14 year old, a 12 year old and an 11 year old. Those three lives that left earth early, gave me the life I have now. Their short lives helped me discover a hereditary blood clotting condition I never knew I had and gave me the ability to take aspirin for the rest of my life to avoid an early heart attack. With the help of prayer and medicine, Micah and Ben were born. Unbeknownst to us, medicine was not the cure to fix our history of miscarriages and we later discovered it was God alone that brought Micah and Ben into our arms as medicine would soon fail us.

After Ben was born I became pregnant a year later. The baby was growing healthy and with a strong heart beat. We again depended on prayer and medicine but during the sonograms we saw a small shadow of blood every time. The doctor assured us that she saw no problems and that the blood was more than likely implantation bleeding. A week later, with no warning we were devastated to have lost the pregnancy.

October 2009 we were packing and preparing for our move to Virginia for training and then to Bulgaria. We had been very busy and were not trying to get pregnant, but in a very clear dream God told me I was. God has spoken to me 6 times in my life through dreams, twice in high school (one telling me I would live overseas) and without understanding why, He choose 4 dreams to show me details of this 2009 pregnancy. I woke from that dream knowing it was from God, called Cameron at work and told him (much to his shock lol) and on his way home from work we purchased a pregnancy test to confirm what we already knew. We scheduled a doctor's appointment immediately. The normal medicine began, we prayed and everything went well. Due to my high risk pregnancies, I got sonograms often. The night before my second sonogram appointment, God showed me exactly what would happen. In the dream when I laid down for the sonogram, we saw a healthy baby but instead of a little bit of blood like our last pregnancy, the dream revealed that we would see a lot of blood surrounding the baby. The next day, we were disheartened to see a dark shadow of blood surrounding the baby. The sonogram showed a weak heart beat but an otherwise healthy pregnancy with the exception of the unexplained blood. The doctor put me on immediate bed rest. Women at the seminary like Tara Guy, Erin Lepoint, Mandi Barham, and Crystin Niscavits took charge and became substitute mamas for my boys. A group of women came and prayed over me and our baby and again the night before our next appointment God showed me in my dream exactly what would happen the next day. In my dream the blood had completely and unexplainably disappeared and the baby's heart beat was strong. When I laid down the next day for my sonogram, the technician asked me if I had experienced any bleeding and turned the screen away from us so we could not see. I answered that I had no bleeding and she asked the same question again. I again answered that I had not bled at all and she immediately asked "Well where did it all go?" My heart sank as I assumed she meant the pregnancy, but to our shock and relief she turned the monitor to show us that the blood had completely disappeared and what was left was our miracle! The baby was healthy, the heart beat was strong and faster and our peanut had grown! We told her that we had prayed God would make the blood disappear and she confirmed "Well God certainly did!" I was taken off of bed rest and everything was beautifully perfect waiting for our July 10th 2010 due date. Another dream came shortly after, I was boarding a plane holding a baby and Cameron and the boys were in front of me. I could only see the backs of us but when I woke up I knew this too was from God.

Unexpectedly, while Cameron and the boys were on a weekend trip I woke in the middle of the night and lost that dream. I held a tiny lifeless treasure in my hand and screamed and cried harder than I've ever cried in my life. I felt so betrayed by God in that moment. How could all of the dreams come true in perfect detail except this one? I was so happy Cameron and the boys were away, as it was a healthy and needed time for me to wrestle all of these emotions out with God. I wanted to fix what I felt was God's unfair mistake and quickly said to myself "I must have just interpreted the dream wrong! That dream must mean that when we come back from Bulgaria I'll be holding a baby we adopted." God immediately interrupted me and told me two very clear things, "You are going to Bulgaria in obedience to me and to me alone." and "If I add to you while you are there, then I add not you and if I take away, I take away but you are to go in obedience alone. You will not go to fix your heart by putting a baby in your crib." It was clear and it was unmistakable and in that moment I prayed that God would remove my desire to adopt as I did not want that desire to ever cloud my obedience. The next weekend at church the pastor began his sermon like this "Some missionaries went to Russia and visited an orphanage. Being the Christmas season, they told all of the kids the story of Christ's birth. Later they passed out popsicle sticks and a small piece of red cloth for the children to create a manger with and place the piece of cloth into the popsicle manger as a reminder of Christ. As the missionaries looked at each child's manger, they noticed one little boy had two pieces of red cloth in his manger. Concerned that the child misunderstood, they asked the child to retell the story of Christ's birth to understand where his mistaken understanding occurred. To their surprise the child retold the story correctly but at the end said 'I am an orphan and will never be like the wise men who came to Jesus. I felt bad that I could never bring a gift to Jesus but Jesus told me that anyone who comes to him is the greatest gift of all. That's me in the manger with Jesus.'" In that moment, my heart squeezed and God said to me "Do not go to Bulgaria to put a baby in your crib but to put children in my manager. Even if you put 10,000 babies into your crib there will still be 10's of thousands who never make it into my manger." In that moment God began healing my heart and the thought of adoption was far removed from our minds and my mission was to work with children in Bulgaria to tell them about that Jesus in a manger who loves them. It's been a joy to do just that :)

After 2.5 years of living in Bulgaria Cameron had a dream of a little girl that he vividly remembered and told me about it, but adoption was not on our radar and we were completely at peace with Micah and Ben being our only children. Around this time we got an email from my brother who was attending Brook Hills Baptist Church. A man he was meeting with there had a daughter who worked for Lifeline Adoption Agency and a small team was coming to Bulgaria to visit one of the orphanages. We offered to meet them and drive them to the orphanage. While visiting, I was heart broken to see the children laying in cribs or unengaged and sitting on the floor, but sorrow didn't compel our hearts towards adoption. After seeing the high physical and emotional needs the children had from neglect, we felt an overwhelming fear to adopt. We asked about the costs of adoption on the way back to Sofia and after hearing the costs, we were even more confident that surely God was not calling us to adopt. We decided we could love on families who were called to adopt and told Lifeline to connect us to any family that was coming to Bulgaria and we would care for them to the best of our ability. We met family after family in our home and witnessed that despite the needs of the child they adopted, it was clear each time we met them, how God had perfectly called the right family to the right child. When we went back to America this fall we decided to figure out the next steps in the adoption process, "should" God ever call us to do that and met with Lifeline. Again we felt at peace that we had done our part to investigate it should God ever call us to do that, but surely God knew our financial situation and our family needs and this wasn't our calling...that was until God removed ever excuse we had and made our path straight!

Through the amazing families who have come through Bulgaria to adopt, God has used each one in a different way to answer questions and soften our hearts to His calling. God removed the cost concern and then over Christmas completely took away any excuse we could ever come up with. Without her knowledge of it, Mandy Davis wrote a blog that helped my heart have peace to say yes to the chapter God is writing in our story now and without many of you realizing it, God used so many of you to bring us to the place of saying yes, very fearfully at first, but now with exploding joy and YES!

We will turn in our paperwork later this month and will request a healthy bulgarian or roma baby girl, age 3 months to 1 year. We have been told that the process will go quickly due to our openness to adopt a roma baby and to expect a baby possibly by August. Even after saying yes, I had small concerns about the cost of a crib, stroller, car seat and everything a baby needs, but even in those things God quickly showed His love and provided all of it within a week! I now have a room filled with PINK baby stuff that came to me free (with exception of paying 15 dollars for two carseats, a bouncy chair and one highchair!) We feel so privileged to soon hold our baby girl and as you've faithfully done before for our last 7 pregnancies, please pray now for our baby girl to be delivered safely into our arms at God's perfect time!

15 Points!

I am so excited about the accomplishments of the kids in the village! I wanted to try something new during our upcoming kid's party at the church and was not sure how it would go. Usually for our kid's parties the girls gather to paint their nails and the boys head upstairs to watch a "Guys movie" basically any film that is not Barbie. This weekend for our party I previously handed them a study guide of things we had studied like "How many men did God use to write the Bible" "How many parts does the Bible have and what are they called?" "How many books are in the Old Testament, how many in the new and how many books total are in the Bible?" There was also two Bible verses to remember and 6 other questions. Each question was scored with different points and if every question was answered correctly the score would be 15 points. I told the kids that we would have a store set up in one of the rooms and they could use their points to buy a present. The gifts were candy, to a bottle of nail polish, to a bouncy balls or a pack of army men. 15 points could buy one thing but from anything displayed. I told Cameron that I wasn't sure how many kids would actually get the full 15 points since it was the first time we did this and we weren't giving any grace towards mistakes. It was a "You know the information or don't know it" type of test. I was completely wrong! We had 25 kids show up to the party and 11 kids got all 15 points and the rest of them got 8 to 12 points. Most had 11 points as they missed the harder 3 point memory verse and got one question wrong but all 25 showed me that they retained much of the Bible lesson and this was awesome to hear. We have two new boys attending church now and they're excited to participate in the lessons. Thank you for praying for this village and for the kids who are amazing and wonderful to work with.

Also I want to again say thank you to a church who gave a special gift to us that allowed us to purchase this heater for the room we sleep in and meet with the children in. Your gift has allowed us to continue working in the winter and it's been a remarkable gift! So again, thank you!

FOUND!

This has been a week of finding things that were lost! God has been amazingly kind this week with two awesome things that were lost being found. About three years ago we purchased a large generator for ministry use. Prior to leaving Bulgaria, we had stored this generator in a certain location, only to discover it missing when we came back from our time in the States. Cameron searched, asked around, searched more and still could not find the generator. Three years ago when we purchased this generator, we were able to get a great and CHEAP deal on it from a missionary who was returning to the States. After realizing the generator was not where we placed it, we began to search options to make another purchase. To our dismay, the same type of generator costs up to 900 leva to replace! Luckily God provided a different means to help us show the Jesus film in the village we needed the generator for. As we make plans for the summer we are constantly reminded of a generator we can not use for ideas we planned on using it for. Fast forward to this week. After grocery shopping at a local store, Cameron placed my wallet into his jacket pocket. In the short distance from the front of the store to our car, my wallet somehow found legs and jumped out of his pocket and onto the ground. Due to traveling by car, I didn't need to search for my bus pass and therefore didn't realize my wallet was even missing until we received an email from the US Embassy that evening that they were in possession of it. We were amazed that someone had taken the time to not only pick up my lost wallet but IMMEDIATELY travel to the embassy (which would be across town for this person) and give my wallet to someone safe. In true embassy fashion I needed to schedule an appointment to come and pick up my wallet :) The unfortunate turn of events is that the phone number left behind by the good samaritan was no longer with my wallet and could not be found when request. I really am praying for a miracle, that somehow, someway I can cross paths with the precious Bulgarian lady who did this sweet act of kindness for me! During the weekend, we were in the village and needed to place our belongings in a room at the church and lo and behold our generator was right there! Cameron had checked this room during his previous search and it was not there, but between April and now it reappeared! We're not asking any questions and do not care how or why the generator grew legs, we are just rejoicing that it is back for the events we have planned for June and all summer! Now if it's not asking too much, maybe my broom can grow legs and start magically cleaning rooms that lost their ability to stay clean. I would love those rooms to be found in tidy order! Praising God that in this life of materials and inconveniences, He gave us two sweet gifts! This week could have ended with the frustrating process of canceling credit cards, getting and waiting for replacements, new IDs and more but the Lord was gracious and we are so so thankful to Him.

Newsletters

We are formatting a newsletter to begin going out this month and would like to include those of you on our blog who would like to read some of the stories we can't post on public internet. If you would like to be included in these more personal stories and pray for the situations presented in the newsletter, please feel free to send us your email address at JenCammicah@hotmail.com Thank you for all of your prayers and encouragement.