Village of Hope

Last week as we drove away from a village of chaos everything in me never wanted to return.  However, everything in me knew that the battle being waged was not in the flesh and blood that surround us that day, but rather spiritual darkness in the unseen, that was screaming for the light of Christ to be gone.  We all came home with heavy hearts and minds and felt defeated.  This was the first time Gina led a group of her own and all around her was fighting and screaming.  Kids were trying to steal anything they could while parents with mental disabilities stood over us screaming for free diapers, water, more crayons and in the midst of this circus of crazy our boys were being treated similarly.

We put our kids in the car while the village kids reached into our pockets hoping to find something else to steal.  It was chaos, it was ugly, it was sin staring you straight in the face screaming "HOPELESSNESS! DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME HERE! GO AWAY AND NEVER COME BACK!"

When I got home, my eyes read the verse hanging on the wall:
"Be patient in tribulation, Rejoice in hope, Pray constantly." Romans 12:12

The next day I spent a lot of time in Jeremiah and was renewed to demolish and destroy the kingdom of darkness that has taken root in that village and rebuild in the name of Jesus a new season of life in this village of chaos.  I also renamed the village "Village of Hope" because while we "are patient in tribulation", we will "rejoice in hope" as Romans states and we will claim hope over this place by God's power alone.

In the midst of chaos, a group of preteens followed me around begging to study together.  I told them it was impossible in that environment but if they could make a list of 10 kids and find a house I would return to study with them.  Before we left, that group of teens had secured a location and gave me a list of kid's names.  Today Cameron will go early and tell the people that if they want to study today, each house will need to form a group of ten kids.
The characteristic of this particular village is that there is a lot of disability in one section and the adults display similar mental disabilities.  When there is a large group it is hard to have any type of Bible study because high functioning adults are being pushed out by screaming, aggressive mentally challenged men and women who are also at times very intoxicated.

Here is how you can pray today as we reenter the Village of Hope:

1. House groups will be established and will function without interruption from those outside of the house group.

2.  We want house groups that have the mentally and physically disabled meeting but pray that there will be an abandonment of intoxication in these individuals as it makes for a very challenging situation.

3. Today the Lord answered a prayer without me searching for it because God is that good! :) We did not want to take our boys back to this village and today Micah and Ben's friend invited them over this evening to play and have dinner! I spoke to his mom and she knows we will be in the village for a couple of hours and is happy to have them over.  Praise God we will be able to work there today without worrying about the boy's safety.  Please pray that a permanent solution will arrive and alleviate us of this concern.

4. Pray that the Village of Hope will belong to the Lord and His children will be found there.

5. The end of Romans 12:12 says to "Pray Constantly" and this is where our brothers and sisters around the world are such a huge part of the work we are called to do.  Please never discount your place and importance in being a part of the ministry happening.  We need your prayers and we ask you to pray specifically today.  We are in Village of Hope every Wednesday and ask you to commit to pray for us there.

Adoption Update

Well I think there was some problems made today by a recent Facebook post lol We had several people calling us to ask if the picture we posted with the baby girl was our daughter and the answer is no.  That picture was a follow up to a previous post which explained that for the last five years we've been praying for a taxi driver we met our first year in Bulgaria. Our struggle with miscarriage helped him open up to us and share their struggle with infertility and desire to have a baby.  We shared about how God was beside us during our pregnancy journeys and though he stated that his beliefs were different, he allowed us to pray for him and kept us up to date.  Yesterday we got a phone call from him stating that he and his wife wanted to drive to our city so that we could meet his precious baby girl, an answered prayer.  So the picture posted today was our moment of meeting her.  So sorry for any confusion.  So here is what is happening right now.

When we do find the little girl God is leading to, we will first notify our family (so again moms and dads rest assured you will not find out on Facebook! We love and respect you too much to do that)

Right now we are receiving letters from orphanages around Bulgaria: Plovdiv, Sofia, Lukovit, and so on.  Directors of these orphanages are writing us to confirm they have our file and are working on matching us.  Literally any day we could receive a letter for a match.
When we receive a letter of a match we will only know the name and age of the baby, nothing more.  No picture, no family history, nothing more.  We will schedule a meeting at that time to go and meet her. Micah and Ben will not go with us and we will not tell anyone when this happens.  The reason being is that we want to follow God and not emotion.  The last thing we want to do is tell everyone that we've been matched and then have to tell everyone that we've said no for whatever reason to that match. Our whole life has been calling family and sharing good news of pregnancy, only to follow up with having to tell everyone we've lost the pregnancy.  When we are sure the match is the little girl God has for us then we will notify our family and set up another meeting to introduce her to Micah and Ben.
When we meet her we will have up to one month to decide if she is the baby we are adopting.  I can't foresee needing a month to decide that but it is the given timeline.  If we say "yes" then the court proceedings will begin and we can set up more visits with her via the director of her orphanage until we gain full custody. Our social worker has stated that the more we can visit the easier it will be on her so if her orphanage is close enough it would be our desire to be with her as much as possible. If it is far away (we have stated that we are willing to adopt anywhere in Bulgaria so her orphanage could be very far away) then we will get a hotel and visit as much as possible.
If we say "no" for whatever reason then we will have to wait for the next letter to arrive stating another match then another meeting is scheduled.
If two or more letters arrive on the same day or week then we will need to choose which one to visit first and go from there but we can not see multiple babies.  We have to make a decision on one before we are allowed to visit another.  Our prayer is that the first letter we receive is her and "yes" is the only thing we ever have to say.

Once we have said yes and have notified our family then you will see the biggest, loudest Facebook post ever made :) And if there is a picture, it will be a picture of a baby in my arms!  :) She's been outside of my arms long enough and it'll be clear that she is our baby because no one else will be holding her in a picture :)

So any day now we can receive a match and every monday through friday we hope the mailman is walking towards our door with a letter!  As for right now the mailman has brought six letters from different orphanages around bulgaria so we know there are currently six directors holding our paperwork and looking to match us.  In the meantime please pray that God will lead us straight to our sweet baby, wherever she is waiting.

A week of praise

This summer a wonderful team from Louisiana came to Gulyantsi and worked with the local church to pour love out onto the community.  In addition we had a great group of translators and a christian band called Rocking Chair came and held a concert in the town center.  With so many of God's children working together, the love of God was available to penetrate the hearts of men, women and children while building new relationships and telling God's story.  We are so thankful for Cedar Crest Baptist church, the translators, awesome helpers like Ivan and Hristo and all the work they did during that beautiful week.  The events of that week helped us move forward with new ideas and opened doors that will fit our family's needs in the future and a new work is beginning in small group Bible study.

Surrounded

The beautiful story of Gina is that God is using a girl who was often overlooked in her village and has transformed her to be the girl who is constantly sought out and surrounded by people asking her to tell them her story.  What's more beautiful is that Geicha uses each opportunity to share God's story and man do people listen to that beautiful girl! ("Geicha" is her nickname)

This week God sent a team from Louisiana to help assist launch the very first UNA club in Bulgaria.  Geicha came to work with us and train in soon leading a club on her own.  On Sunday we took everyone to a monastery and while visiting, a monk asked Geicha to tell him her story.  He sat and listened intently and gave her a gift at the end. Her contagious smile and obvious joy open so many doors for her to tell of God's powerful love in her life.

God is using Gina and her story to tell people "God is powerful!" "God can be trusted!" "God is good and doesn't forgot us!" "God does miracles!" The amazing thing is that when she talks it's like the world stops and everyone is listening and God is using her in amazing ways.
I personally love working with the children and Cameron leads adult Bible studies but often the mothers of the children I work with are standing in the background unengaged.  Gina is exactly who God is using to engage them.  While I have children surrounding me, Gina has mothers surrounding her.  God is building a beautiful team around us and answering our prayers to send us workers.

On the last day of the UNA club festival we were all taking pictures with the community and a precious little girl said "I want a picture with you" but she was holding both Gina and my hands.  We asked her who she wanted a picture with and it turned into a fun game of who she likes more.  She yelled "Gina!" and gave her a huge hug.  Soon all the kids were declaring their love for Gina over their love for me.  It's was fun and later Gina said in surprise "I can't believe the children loved me so much.  I thought you would win when we asked who they loved more but they said my name."  I said "I'm not surprised at all Gina.  You are part of them.  I will always be a nice American woman who comes and loves on them and works with them but I'll always be just that, an American but you can be their role model. You are one of them."  Gina's eyes lit up and said "Yes! I know their road and I can still say 'You can trust God, He loves you' I understand them and they know that and I can show them a roma woman who loves God. They need good roma role models who love God."

AMEN!

This is when Gina won the game "who do the children love most" :)

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.