FBI clearance again?

This upcoming month is going to be pretty busy for us with the adoption. We are needing to update our home study. The length a home study stays valid depends on your state of residence. Louisiana is only valid for one year, so we are back getting documentation, letters of references, and the FBI clearance again. If you wrote a reference for us the first time, watch out...you will probably be getting a phone call soon. I am hoping that some of them go smoother the second time around, since I am pretty busy with Chi Alpha.

We also got some new numbers on the wait list. We are 34 on the girl's list and 23 on the boy's list...so we are moving up that and working our way through paperwork. I now have gained another appreciation of moving up the list, less paperwork has to get re done.

how is it July already?

I find when summer finally comes, it flies by. I am not sure where the month of June went because it is already July. I know the month of June was jammed packed with a lot of different activities.

I started the month in San Francisco working with the SF Rescue Mission. I took five Chi Alpha students and it was a wonderful trip. I love serving the inner city and the people in the Tenderloin. I was grateful for the opportunity to go back.

Leland visited Kansas with his dad at the beginning of the month. They visited the area his dad grew up and took lots of pictures. It was a great time for Leland to just enjoy the open prairie and time with his dad.

In June, I also celebrated the one year anniversary of injuring my arms. The past year I have struggle with tendinitis in both of arms and I know this is not a normal thing to celebrate. Leland and I have had many up and downs through it all. It has definitely not been fun to struggle with pain but I can definitely see the blessings because of how God has worked in my life. I have learned to set limits for myself and ask for help. Leland has been an amazing support for me through all of this. We long for a time when I go back to "normal"... but for now we enjoy the progress. We also come up with creative ways to help reduce the possibility injuring myself.

One of the things we have done to help me gain mobility was selling the Vibe. I enjoyed the Vibe and had a lot of fun driving it. The only problem we had with the Vibe was that it hurt for me to drive. We made the hard decision to replace the Vibe with the Vue. The process of finding a car was definitely not fun. The car shopping journey ended in a different direction than expected but it has been amazing to see change in my mobility. We recognize that it is the perfect car for us, because it is so easy for me to drive.

Finally, I thought it might be good to share our latest numbers on the wait list. The list moves slower than we would like but we know that God is in control. We also know that the wait is worth it. We are 41 on the girls list and 29 on the boys list. For now we only have numbers to understand our process in the adoption, eventually a child will have a permanent family and it will be all worth it.