Words of Encouragement

 I wanted to share a short devotion from John Piper that served to bring me encouragement yesterday. Hopefully it does the same for you.

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The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23)

God’s mercies are new every morning because each day only has enough mercy in it for that day.

This is why we tend to despair when we think that we may have to bear tomorrow’s load on today’s resources. God wants us to know: We won’t. Today’s mercies are for today’s troubles. Tomorrow’s mercies are for tomorrow’s troubles.

Sometimes we wonder if we will have the mercy to stand in terrible testing. Yes, we will. Peter says, “If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you” (1 Peter 4:14). When the reviling comes the Spirit of glory comes. It happened for Stephen as he was being stoned. It will happen for you. When the Spirit and the glory are needed they will come.

The manna in the wilderness was given one day at a time. There was no storing up. That is the way we must depend on God’s mercy. You do not receive today the strength to bear tomorrow’s burdens. You are given mercies today for today’s troubles.

Tomorrow the mercies will be new. “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:9).

Home-study Orientation

Well we are now officially in the midst of our home-study. For some funny reason the home-study has always made me feel a bit nervous but after meeting our social worker (sw) Monday morning I feel completely at ease. He is super personable and what was supposed to be an hour long meeting was more like an hour long conversation. We talked about our mutual love of the San Francisco Bay area as well as the all important paperwork we need to complete as part of our home-study.

Once we got down to business our sw gave us a large 3-ring binder containing more paperwork (shocker...) but also a ton of helpful information. Before I explain what this process will look like for us let me first say that home-studies will look different for each state and will even be influenced by the specific country a family is adopting from. No two home-studies are exactly alike which can be a bit frustrating when it comes to finding answers to the numerous questions a first time adoptive parent may have during this process.

Anyway, our social worker walked us through the paperwork we need to compile (copies of birth certificates, marriage license, physical exams, police clearance, financial statements, employee verification letters, autobiographies, online trainings, reading lists etc). Our next meeting with our worker will take place April 29th and will consist of a number of interviews, one with Jon, one with me and then one with the two of us together. Those interviews will count as our next two meetings. The final meeting will serve as our actual home-study where our social worker will come to our house and make sure it meets safety requirements to house a second child.

Once all of those meetings are complete our social worker will condense all of the home-study information into a 14 page document which will be submitted as part of our dossier. Apparently 20+ pages is the norm but India specified that any home-study submitted to them only be 14 pages long. There are more steps before submitting our home-study but to be quite honest I'm not entirely sure what that will look like quite yet.

All in all the meeting was incredibly encouraging. In the course of the hour and a half our worker had some nice things to say about America World. He mentioned that he has worked with numerous agencies and America World is by far one of the best he has ever worked with. We continue to hear stellar reviews and comments from people concerning their experiences with AWAA. What a beautiful reminder of God's calling and leading. He certainly brought us to the right organization.