Clearview's Orphan Day Slideshow

We have a team at Clearview starting a new ministry to support adoption, orphan care, & foster care. We planned our first "Orphan Sunday" and it was a HUGE success! Our pastor has a heart for this area of ministry and he preached about the church's role in this area. We took up an offering that day to start a Lifesong account for our church. This account would allow us to help fund adoptions through no interest loans and hopefully, in the future, grants. Our church body has responded with $53,800 to date!!!

One member of our team, Emily Jenkins, put together this slide show that we showed during the service. I thought you would enjoy it too :-)

By the way... Emily and I were on the phone for an hour a couple of days ago trying to think of a name for this ministry. We want something that will speak to all the areas of the ministry, not just adoption. If you have any ideas you are willing to share, please email me or comment to this post. Thanks!

One Way to Help AND Have FUN!

A "Shout out" for some friends of ours. Three wonderful families are hosting this fundraiser on Saturday:

Hope to see you there!

Pure & Faultless Religion...Celebrating Orphan Sunday

I wrote the following post yesterday BEFORE church. Because I am NOT a computer whiz, I did not know how to include the video at the bottom. Once I figured it out it was SO easy. Even though it is posted on MONDAY morning, it was written on SUNDAY morning :-)

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, this is National Adoption Month and today is a worldwide event called "Orphan Sunday". Last year at this time I had no idea what the statistics were around the world of how many children were living without parents. They have no one to hug them when they fall, to feed them, to clothe them or to tuck them in bed at night.

I have always had a heart to help children and had even investigated foster care at one point, BUT I had NO IDEA how BIG this problem is. What is worse, I had grown up in the church and did not know what the Bible says is our responsibility as the body of Christ to ALL be caring for these children. I am excited to tell you that our church will no longer be skimming over the issue. We will no longer ignore the plea. I have a feeling that today God is gonna move and our hearts will break for what breaks HIS. We are celebrating Orphan Sunday for the first time this year and getting the message out.

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

James 1:27

I am going to leave you with a video today. Please watch it :-) Don't say you didn't know!

Orphan Sunday from Greg Buzek on Vimeo.

Going to the Chapel...

Here are the long awaited wedding pics. We all had a blast. Rachel felt like a real live princess and probably thought her Aunt Kelly was one as she had never been to a wedding or seen anyone wear a dress like that before! The whole trip was a great bonding experience.

Poppy and Jordan

Above and below: Everyone fell asleep in the car ride from where we were staying to the church. Everything in Houston is a drive. We always feel like we spend our time there driving :-)

Rachel and Jordan, being excellent host and hostess, passing out programs.

A quick family pic after the ceremony.

Ryan dancing with my mom, "Nena". She did great considering that just 6 months ago I was in TX caring for her as she had fallen and broken her hip.

There were many more great pics taken of the kids dancing and of Brent and I, but unfortunately, none of them were on my camara.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

National Adoption Month

Many of you know that this is National Adoption Month. In addition, this Sunday is Orphan Sunday. In order to celebrate, I thought I would link you back to the many good stories, blog posts and songs that are ending up in my inbox these days. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE getting to meet and associate with all the amazing people God has put in our path over this last year. I get emails daily from others somewhere in the process of adoption. It is an amazing encouragement to me and our family.

Today, a friend sent out a link to a blog post by another adoptive mommy. It is from "It's Almost Naptime" and the post is entitled "I don't want my children to be Happy." It was written back in February, but is so appropriate for the month of November I thought I would share it all with you. It sums up much of how we feel about things too. Enjoy :-)

To Texas and Back

I can't believe how long it takes me to get a post done these days! Life is soooo busy :-) I enjoyed my weekend off last weekend and my visit with my sweet cousin Heather. She and I both needed some time away to catch up and encourage one another. I thought while we were away that I would get caught up on things like the blog, but we just got caught up with each other :-)

These are pics from our trip to Houston. We went down a few weeks ago for Brent's sister's wedding. We were ALL in it and I was really anxious about making the trip. It was the first trip we have made since bringing R & J home and it was a BIG one. We had enough free tickets for all of us to fly down, but not to fly home. That proved to be a great way to do it; only having to drive one way. The kids had an absolute blast and want to know when we are going back. I have another post coming after this one that has all the wedding pics. The wedding was SO fun and my in-laws and sister-in-law are to be commended for a job well done. Everything looked beautiful and went off without a hitch!

Above: We stayed at my cousin's house and she has a 3 mo old and an 18 mo old. Rachel loves babies and took to them right away. They loved her too!

Below: Rachel and my grandmother, her great-grandmother, meeting for the first time.

Above: Ryan taking his turn holding baby Knox. He was a novelty for the weekend!

Since we used to live in the Houston area we know LOTS of people there: friends and family. They all wanted to stop by and meet our new kiddos. I think we counted at one time we had almost 20 kids there. Below is a pic of a bunch of them...

Above: We met these guys in college. Brent and Kelvin were roommates and Kelvin and Elizabeth started dating about the same time Brent and I did. We were all in each other's wedding and have stayed close over the years. Elizabeth and I both have large extended families and it has been fun to get to know her large family over the years. They have decided to adopt from Ethiopia as well and are almost finished with their paperwork.

Below: Two of my cousins closest in age to me. I have a total of 13 and we all grew up VERY close. They all have sisters. I am the only one of the bunch that does not so I consider them the closest thing I have to a sister ;-).

Above: Whitney swinging with her cousins. My kids do not have 1st cousins since Brent and I's siblings are so much younger so we consider my cousin's kids their cousins :-)

Above: This is my sweet friend Tania. She was one of my first friends when we moved to Spring in 2000. She is a great encouragement and prayer warrior!

Below: Since we flew down, we had to rent a car to drive home. Brent went to pick up our mini van and came back with this 15 passenger van. He thought the bigger the better for our 14 drive home! The kids called it our bus and thought it was super cool :-)

Hopefully, I will have time to get the wedding pics posted soon. Until then, have a great, fun, fall weekend!

Happy Birthday Whitney!

Whitney's birthday this year was the birthday that never ended! We had Ryan's party a few weeks late and Whitney's a few weeks early so the parties ended up being 2 Sundays in a row. Whit and I had planned to travel to TX on her actual birthday so we could help get ready for Kelly's wedding. Sooo, we celebrated her actual b-day with the immediate family a day early. The pic below is of her sucking her lollipop as we took off on the plane to go to TX. Of course the grandparents were excited to have her on her actual birthday and had a cake & presents waiting. Then at the rehearsal dinner we had cake again in honor of Whit.

Whit with our waitress at Logan's on her "birthday" a day early with the family

Her new pink pillow pet which has now replaced her regular pillow :-)

Whit with our neighbors who we carpool with for school on her "day early birthday"

The birthday child always gets to eat on the "You are Special Today" plate

Whit with her cake at her Cheerleader party

We had two cheerleaders from a local high school come and teach the girls some cheers. They stayed and played with them and the girls loved them!

Mommies standing by watching the girlies

Doing the cheers...

Whit and Lizzie

Whitney started asking last October when her birthday would happen again. She has been anxiously awaiting this day for a whole year! We have a break from birthdays until December. Stay tuned for our wedding celebration and fun fall pics...