Cooking Classes

Our cooking classes were a success! We were thrilled with how well they went. We had twelve kids in each class! How awesome is God?! On Wednesday night we only had 5 in each. He is so amazingly good to us! I think all the kids had a good time. We haven't heard otherwise. We had two boys who were recently adopted from China and that was neat for us. We are blessed with the most amazing friends! Thank you to all who came and helped us! You raised $300 to help bring Peter home!!

Abi's class

Andrew's class *Coming up this week: Wading, Walking and Running through Paperwork and more fundraisers!

You Can Cook Cooking Class

Hello all! We will be holding two cooking classes this Thursday, July 26th. The money raised from the class will be used to help bring home their new brother Peter from China. One class will be taught by my daughter Abigail who is 10 and one will be taught by my son Andrew who is 12. I will be supervising/helping the entire time of course! They will be teaching the class to show that your kids can cook the items they will be making that day. (with adult supervision only!) We will also talk about kitchen and cooking safety while making our desserts. Each child will be able to take a small sample of their cooking home with them along with the recipe. Abi's Sugar It Up Class What they will be cooking: Abi's awesome sugar cookies! Many people have exclaimed these are the best sugar cookies they have ever had. The Cost: $10 What to bring: An apron or wear something you do not mind getting a bit dirty How Many Students: 8 What Time: 10 a.m.-12 p.m. Ages: 5 and up Andrew's Messy Cake Madness What they will be cooking: Andrew's Messy Cake. This is an award winning cake that has been handed down for generations! The Cost: $10 What to bring: An apron or wear something you do not mind getting a bit dirty. How many students: 8 What time: 1 p.m.-3 p.m. Ages: 7 & up If your child would like to take both classes, they are welcome to stay through lunch. You will need to provide a lunch for them. Please be aware that each class costs $10, not $10 for both classes. If we have enough interest, we will consider hosting the classes on Friday also.

The Search for Peter

When Eric and Chelsea returned home, they were sent with information about all the orphans. It listed where they were from, their Chinese name, and their disabilities. Almost every child at the camp has a disability. (Peter has a cleft palate) We also had the contact information to talk to some of social workers in China. I emailed them as soon as we were sure about what avenue we were going to take. It seems like it should be a fairly easy process, doesn't it? Well, not always. This was about the 3rd week of August last year. The social workers emailed me back and told me that Peter was not adoptable. WHAT?! Um, that was not what Eric and Chelsea were told. We kept insisting on more information (my heart still hurts because I'm sure the social workers thought I was crazy!) and found out that Peter's file was with an adoption agency in Spain. What that means is this: Adoption agencies will go into certain orphanages and get the children paper ready. They must have papers to even be considered for adoption by the Chinese government. It is up to the adoption agency if they will release the papers or not. Again, I thought this was fairly easy. I would call the agency in Spain, explain the situation, they would love us and just give us Peter! WRONG! I did get in touch with them and they were on board with us adopting Peter but they wanted us to have an agency here. Ok...we can do that. So I started calling every agency I could find. I called several and just did not feel comfortable with any of them. Some were scared of our case and some did not have the passion for our case. I called my last name on the list. (and this was after searching and searching on the internet)JACKPOT!!! Lifeline was an answer to our prayers! (and still are!) I spoke with Lisa and she had such a passion for helping us. Not only did she have a passion for our case, but she had a passion for the Lord! I was thrilled! I then called the agency in Spain and informed them we had an agency. Lifeline had said what needed to happen is that the Spanish agency would need to put Peter's file back on the shared list so they could get his files or the Spanish agency could give the file directly to them. I corresponded many times with the Spanish agency and they kept repeating they wanted to talk to our agency. Lifeline said something didn't sound right with that. Finally, the Spanish agency outright asked us who was going to reimburse them for the expenses they had put into Peter so far. We asked how much and it was doable. I let our agency know and we were willing to pay it. Anything to get our boy home! Lifeline asked us to hold on while they checked on some things. That was a very frustrating 48 hours! We received an email in 48 hours stating to stop all contact with the Spanish agency. They were in violation of the CCCWA (the Chinese equivalent of our CPS is the best way to describe them) governing rules. We could go to jail if we gave them any money. Thank you Lord that Lifeline caught this! At this time, we had no idea what was going to happen. The agency in Spain was not happy with us and we were not sure they would ever hand over Peter's file. We again contacted some of our contacts in China and they did some visiting to some people for us. We found out from them that the orphanage was thrilled that we wanted to adopt Peter!(the family who ran the orphanage sent their son to camp with their orphans so he knew Eric and Chelsea) This was good news! They told our contacts they would ask for Peter's file to be released. Our agency heard from their contacts that his file would also be released to the shared list (the list of adoptable children) around October. We were very excited to hear this. We officially applied with Lifeline, were matched with our case worker Logan, (LOVE HER!!) started our education that was needed and started to prepare for our homestudy. October rolled around, nothing. December, January..nothing. But Lifeline told us to keep praying because He had a big plan for our family Then on February 12th we received this email: Hi Eric and Aimee, I am so excited to send this to you. Attached you will find Peter’s file. Take your time to review his file. I will touch base with you this afternoon to talk about next steps. Praying for you! YES!!!!

The Decision

Bring Me Hope camps are unique. They bring in orphans from all over China and pair them with a "family" for a week. The family consists of an American, a Chinese translator, (normally a college student in China) and 1-2 orphans. The purpose is to show the love of Christ to the orphans and the translators, using only His Words when asked. So it's all about walking the walk. The first week they were there their kids were fairly young.But oh my were they cute! Here they are:

Every picture they sent and every story they shared just grabbed me. Oh how I feel in love with the little boy that Eric had! The second week the kids were older.

These children grabbed my attention for a different reason. In China, orphans cannot be adopted after the age of 14. So many of these kids were close to that age. My heart broke upon hearing this. These beautiful precious gifts from God have a huge chance of never having a forever family. As Eric and I talked (before telling the kids) we tossed around the pros and cons of all the children there. We have always said we wanted to adopt an older child. There were two main reasons for this. 1) They do not have as high of chance of being adopted 2) Our kids are now older and we really do not want to start over with a much younger child. We prayed and prayed because we wanted it to be God's decision, not ours. One morning while doing the laundry, Eric came into the laundry room and said he felt certain that God was calling us to adopt 2nd Peter from week 2. (Both of his boys were Peter's. 2nd Peter is Darth Vadar in the picture) I was thrilled! When Eric started to send pictures from China, I felt a connection with this sweet boy. Eric loved all his kids from the weeks but he had a heart connection with 2nd Peter. When we told the kids we had something to tell them, they knew immediately! When we went and told them who, they immediately guessed who! That is so God! Since we had all Peter's information, we thought this would be fairly easy. But God had a different plan (sound familiar?) for this journey. So the search began........

Our Back Story

All adoptions must start somewhere and isn't it just more fun to know how this came about? Eric and I have always wanted five children. We love the idea of a big family and were so excited to start our family. Life didn't go exactly the way we planned but it went exactly the way God had planned it. We had Chelsea when we were married (for those that don't know Eric was previously married) and Andrew followed in 1999. We found out we were pregnant when Andrew was 10 months old. God had a different plan and Hannah returned to Heaven on January 15, 2001. We were stunned to find out we were expecting again in May of 2002 but Abi made her early debut in March of 2002. My Dr. suggested that it was not in our best interest to have any more biological children. We were very sad but we, too, felt this was the best decision for our family. But we knew God was not done...... In 2003, we moved into a new home. God put a precious family into our lives and we have been so blessed to share life with them. At that time, Debbie (single mom) was working nights so D and Taisha spent many evenings with us. Even when Debbie was home, we were all together often. D became the brother Andrew always wanted. We have enjoyed many meals, game nights, movie nights, and other things over the years. Taisha graduated this year (We were so sad to miss her graduation!) and D is a Jr. While they are in no means, "grown" or out of lives, God began stirring again..... In December 2010, our oldest daughter Chelsea became a believer! In January of 2011, she made the decision to be homeschooled. In February, a speaker from Bring Me Hope spoke to our home school co-op teens and Chelsea knew God was calling her to work at a Bring Me Hope camp in China. And she knew God was calling her dad to go with her! Eric was thrilled because he had been praying for two years that Chelsea would desire to go on a mission trip with him. This was even better because it was her idea. So the planning began, along with the praying.God moved mountains and provided the $9,000 that Eric and Chelsea needed to get to China. It was overwhelming how He answered! Before they left, we committed as a family to pray how God would use our family after this trip. We knew this trip would change them but we were not sure exactly how it would change them. The trip was life changing for them and for us....... When Eric returned, he was greatly moved by what one of his translators shared with him. He asked Jane why she decided to help at Bring me Hope. When she became a Believer she started reading the Bible. She read James 1:27 ("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.") and knew she had to do something. He was struck by how she didn't just pray, she did. He knew that was what our family was called to do. We needed to do. (Chelsea wanted to bring every orphan home!) We started to pray as a couple about adoption and knew that was what we needed to do. We then started praying once that decision was made about the who. Once God made that clear, we shared with the kids about the next adventure God was calling us into........ Stay Tuned!!!!

It's here!!

We finally have our new blog up! We will be posting our story soon so stay tuned! And yes, it will be very soon! :-)