Opportunity Knocking

One morning recently (yesterday or the day before - can't remember), I was sitting and working on my computer in my living room, when someone rang the doorbell. I got up to go get what I thought was the wallpaper border for the bathroom that I ordered being delivered from UPS. When I got to the door, I was surprised to see a woman in a dress standing there. I opened, and she started talking about the nice weather, blah blah blah. Then she said something about how she was sure I had my own faith, as lots in the neighborhood do. I said yes, that's right, and I am a little ashamed to say that I was a little annoyed with her at this point. I thought about just shutting the door and getting back to my computer. She opened a Bible, and read John 3:16 (in some version I am not familiar with). Then she went on to say some things I kind-of ignored, and asked me if I'd take some reading material from her church or whatever, and on the top of the pamphlet it said "The Watchtower." I took it, and after 5 or so minutes of trying to patiently tolerate her, and not look too annoyed, I came back inside.

But then I started thinking - was I in too much of a rush to do something that wasn't really that important on my computer to talk to her and possibly present her with what I know to be true from the Bible? I flipped through the pamphlet, and in mere seconds I found some seriously shaky-looking doctrine in the papers she gave me. So yes, I reacted poorly to someone God practically put on my lap, and did not take good advantage of the opportunity that actually knocked on my door. So, I have decided (prayerfully) that I am going to read those pamphlets, and if and when she comes back, I will be ready to drop whatever it is I'm doing to have her in for coffee and conversation.

I believe that we as Christians should know a reasonable amount of information/doctrine from other beliefs. Not to the point of taking time away from studying what/how we should from the Word of God in our own study. But, from an evangelical standpoint, we know we are to witness to others, and I think part of effective "soul winning" takes place when you can take what someone believes to be true (and isn't) and refuting it with actual Biblical truths. I didn't do my best for God this time, but by His grace alone, next time I will.

"It"

As we continue on our adoption path, we will not know, likely for many months, the gender (or age, for that matter) of our future child. And, even when we do find out these things, we won't be sharing what we know until the child is officially ours when we arrive in India for the adoption. The biggest reason for not sharing is basically that we don't want to get too attached until we know for sure. So when we get there, and have Baby in our arms, we will be posting the stats and pictures likely on this site and via email, etc.

The reason for this post is to actually clarify how I will refer to Baby until he or she has a name. There are lots of people who will not call their child "It" - I personally don't have a problem with this practice. Sure, you could say "he or she" every time you talk about "him or her" but that's a lot of extra letters. I do not think of "It" as a genderless child, or sub-human, or anything like that (those are arguments I have heard against using the word "It"). My child is a unique and special and wonderful little person, created by God just for our family, and until we know specifically who he or she is, we will be referring to this little person as "It" - for no other reason than convenience and ease of communication. I think if I were pregnant, or we knew the age of the child we'd be getting, I would probably be inclined to call "It" "Baby" or "Kiddo" or whatever, but since we don't even know that, in this case, "It" seems like the best choice.

Lazy Saturday

Today I am home alone. Narasimha is putting in some extra hours in a neighboring town, so he's working all day today, which means I'm at home alone on this dreary and snowy day. There was a "dusting" of snow on houses this morning when we got up, but still no major accumulation (thank goodness - it's APRIL!). Of course I have my 3 pooches keeping me company, and right now they are reflecting the weather outside and are asleep on my lap (Bella) or at my feet (the boys). One exciting thing for us today is that we sold the car that Narasimha has been driving to work (a "junker") and so he will start driving full time the truck we inherited from my parents. This is either a good town to sell junk cars, or we priced too low - we sold the car after having a sign in the window for only 3 days :) We decided that if Narasimha would voluntarily work more Saturdays, it would be better to get that out of the way before we had children, so we could have more family time then. So, I am getting caught up on some things around home, and am seriously considering joining my dogs and their perpetual nap on the floor. Narasimha will be home in a few hours, and then maybe we'll get some sort of a life (or maybe not) but for right now it's just a lazy day.

Therapy Dog

Yesterday I went to volunteer orientation at Narasimha's hospital. There are lots of things that look like fun, and I will probably sign up for shifts in a few of them. One of the things that caught my eye as the most unique/fun is the Pet Therapy. I didn't grow up with dogs inside, but now Narasimha and I have 3 inside dogs, and I wouldn't give them up for the world. I just love having them around. And, I have to say, I think that my dogs are some of the sweetest dogs a person could ask for. Especially the two big dogs. They are litter-mates, so they have never really been apart. But their temperament is just the greatest - they are so friendly, and they really honestly want nothing more than to please us. Their breed (Hungarian Pointer, or Vizsla) is by nature very very hyper, but they are great with kids, and are so friendly and gentle, and I just couldn't say enough good things about them. So when I saw that the hospital has a Pet Therapy program, I can't help but think that my dogs would be perfect for it. They will need a fair amount of training, and they have to pass a few tests (on training) and then obviously be well-groomed and current on shots and stuff (which they are anyways). After all that they can go to the hospital and share their love with sick people there. I think the next testing is offered in November in Des Moines, so I am going to start working with them. I will work harder with one of them (Taj) for now, because at this point he is slightly more calm and predictable than his brother (Topper). I also want to work with the little dog (Bella, who is a "Morkie" - half Yorkie, half Maltese), but she is younger so I don't know that she's ready for this kind of a thing yet. I am really excited, and think that this could be a great experience and a lot of fun!

The Adoption Update...

is, very uninterestingly, that there still isn't any update to report. We are still plugging away at our paperwork (slowly). We are still talking about hiring a lawyer, and the details of that. We have, however, had some fun recently shopping for kid's clothes. Since we don't know the age or gender of our child, we get to have extra fun and buy anything we like :) We have kept the purchases to "3T" and younger (for those who don't know, that means clothes that are supposed to fit 3-year-old "toddlers"). Our push to shop recently, by the way, is that there have been some good seasonal sales, and I have some fear that when this process gets moving, it will get really moving, and I would like to have whatever head start I can. Other than that, no news. I felt the need to update since one of the purposes of this blog is to keep family and friends in the loop as to what is going on with our adoption... The next time I post regarding the adoption, I will have something more interesting to say than "nothing" - I promise! Thanks for those who have sent well-wishes and who are thinking about us and praying for us during this time - it really means a lot and has been very encouraging!

Christ the Lord is Risen Today!

Yesterday was the day that we set aside time to specifically remember Christ's resurrection from the grave. What an exciting thought! Something that really stuck out at me from the service we attended yesterday was that Christ chose to go to the cross. He wasn't manipulated or tricked, and was in fact all-knowing, so when He made His way toward Jerusalem, He knew that what was ahead of Him would not be pleasant for Him, but was absolutely necessary and was actually the whole reason He came to live among us here on earth in the first place. He knew what He had to do - what His calling was from God the Father, and he willingly and wholeheartedly went to the place where He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what awaited Him there. It certainly was an act of selfless and unadulterated love for us that He was willing to do what He did, and suffer as He did as a result of no fault of His own. I love to celebrate and meditate on the love of Jesus Christ, directed toward me, during the very special Easter holiday.

Another reason yesterday was so great was that we actually attended church at our old church in I-town. We still miss everyone there a lot, and just love it when we are able to see all of them. We got to chat with some of our "forever" friends, and see all the kids shooting up like weeds. It has been several months since we have seen many of them.

May I encourage you that if you don't know what I'm talking about above - you can't get excited about Easter because you don't understand what's the big deal, please contact me at the email address listed at the very bottom of the page. I would love to share with you my excitement and thankfulness for this special day, and all it means to me as a free and priceless gift from my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

And, I hope that no matter what you did yesterday (and Friday) to remember and celebrate what Jesus did for you, it was meaningful and enjoyable for you and your family and friends.

Over Too Soon

We are now home from our vacation in Florida, and I can honestly say that it went too fast (as always). For the better part of the week we: took our time, got up when we wanted, were beach bums, hung out with the fam, etc. Most of the time we basically stayed on the beach (besides Tuesday at Sea World for Narasimha and me). This week was super windy it seemed like, so that made it feel a little chillier, but still, I can't complain when my standard for comparison is Iowa winter (and a relatively bad one at that). Dad has a surfboard, and he and my brother tried that out a few times. A few years ago we bought a skim board, which has been a lot of fun (this year we had to buy a new one because we broke the other one). Basically to use a skim board, you wait for the very shallow water that results when the tide comes in on the beach and goes back out to sea, and then you throw the board on that ¼ inch or so deep water, and then chase the board and jump on. It's a lot tougher than it sounds - you have to get your feet on perfectly, throw it down onto the water consistently, then keep your center of gravity just right, and adjust your balance for differences in water movement and depth. Even then sometimes you wipe out, which is pretty funny to watch but it can hurt a bit (or a lot) to fall hard on wet sand (think sand paper or rough concrete). The first year we had the board we all went home with scrapes and bruises - now we are much more tentative and careful, and some of us are maybe even a little better at using it :) On the beach we also like to boogie board, play volleyball, throw the football, kick the soccer ball, play frisbee, go for (sometimes long) walks, and lay out in the sun to tan and sleep or read. You get the point - a whole lot of nothing much :)

The beach from the balcony of our condo, and one b-e-a-utiful day :)

Our beach camp from the balcony on our condo - my mom and sisters are on the lawn chairs on the left side, and my dad and brother are the ones in the shallow water (skim boarding).


My mom, 2 sisters and me, laying out.

My dad, getting his surf on :)

My dad showing off his groovy board

Narasimha and my brother playing soccer on the beach.

Narasimha on the skim board - I don't even think he fell once (he must not have been trying hard enough :)

Me, getting ready...

Me - pretty sure I "biffed it" on that one.

My sister, being the graceful lady she is :) My dad says you get extra points if your knees go down, and even more if there's blood for your effort :) I don't think she got either of those on this one.

Narasimha and me, our last 5 minutes on the beach in '08

Sea World

We decided to go to Sea World on Tuesday, and we had a lot of fun. We "did" Disney a few years ago when we were here, and of course that was a good time, but we felt that Sea World had more for the adult audience. Basically I felt like the drawing force of Sea World was the shows, and then there were 2 roller coasters (and a few others that were kid-friendly) and some animal observation things to do. We ended up going to 5 of the shows - 2 in the whale (Shamu) pool, one in the dolphin pool, one on a stage with human acrobats, and then one in the open air where 3 guys played pots and pans like a drumline. They were all pretty cool - I would watch any of them again happily. We also didn't get to see a few others that sounded cool on the program we had because we ran out of time. I felt like the whole park was also do-able in one day - quite unlike Disney with all the lines and everything. So, I would definitely go back - especially if we didn't have kids, or had very small kids that couldn't really do rides very well. There was lots to do besides the rides. All things considered it was a nice and relaxing vacation day.

The dolphin show - look carefully to see the dolphin in the air. I was surprised to see how high they could jump!

One of the trainers doing "Superman" with the dolphin - look under the water through the glass in the middle of the picture.


I don't know how big I thought dolphins were (next to humans) but this one looked pretty big to me.

Shamu doing his opening lap with jumps during the "Believe" show.

I bet the trainers get pretty close to these animals - that would be amazing to be up close and personal like that.

Wow...

Showing off :)

Surfing on the whale - quite a ride I'm sure.

The trainer goes under the water with the whale, and you can't really see them, and then all of the sudden they shoot out of the water together like it's no big deal.

The same idea as the picture above, but the whale goes faster and the trainer is actually thrown up farther than the whale, and in this picture you can see the black circle above the whale's nose is the trainer beginning his dive back into the water, after being thrown up - very cool.

The first part of the acrobat show - these girls stayed in that shell and did several acrobatic tricks together.