Update: Puzzle Progress Report & Home Study

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A lil update for you:

Puzzle Progress Report: 91%!

I know this is long overdue… but wanted to do a puzzle progress report. I’m sure people have been waiting to see what it looks like, and so here you go…

All in all, we got our puzzle to 86% right before the art auction.  That’s huge.
We also decided that we wanted to honor all the artists that gave towards the auction, so we’ve added 20 pieces with each of their names.

So, that puts us at 455 pieces of our 500 piece puzzle.  That would be 91% 🙂

JUST 45 PIECES LEFT.

IF YOU’D LIKE TO HELP US FINISH IT OFF, AND PURCHASE A PIECE(S), CHECK OUT OUR POST HERE.*
We are planning to finish up this puzzle over Thanksgiving weekend, as a way to remind us and our family how thankful we are for the community God has placed us in and for his great hand of provision in this season.  So, stay tuned for the finished puzzle and a more thorough explanation.

WE TRULY HAVE BEEN BLOWN AWAY THIS YEAR. THANKS FOR HELPING US BRING OUR LITTLE ONE HOME.

*We have had a few unexpected expenses come up (like an extra $2000 for having to change our home study and $1800 for our psychological exam required by SKorea)- not huge, but even finishing off this puzzle would be a great help.

 

Home Study Update:

We have been working hard to get all of our paperwork and physicals finished.  We have also had two out of three of our interviews, so we are just about there!  I’ll be honest, I was hoping the home study process would be a little bit more warm and fuzzy, but it’s been a lot of questions.  Our last two interviews were filled with our caseworker probing us and asking about any “curiosities” that may come up.

Questions like: Have you ever had anxiety?  Do you still struggle with anxiety?  How does this affect you? Have you ever gone to a counselor? Do you two ever disagree about discipline? Tell me about that. How do you feel about…(insert every awkward and intrusive question you can think of here).  Tell me about that. Haha.

(Note: I used to live somewhere where no one spoke my language, in a totally different culture. We went through a lot of culture shock, near burnout, and a time of illness. Plus, when we came back stateside our world was turned upside down (i.e. reverse culture shock and debrie like: how do I drive a car? how do i greet people? how do i make an appointment again? jobs?) Truly our time overseas was amazing and all, but there were definitely things to process through.)

All that said, I had to keep reminding myself that the agency, caseworker, etc. really do want us to adopt.  They just have to check for details to make sure that these sweet children who have already been through so much don’t wind up in a bad situation. There were totally no red flags. Our caseworker was very reassuring and encouraging- so that was helpful.  In fact, we spent a good amount of time after the interview talking about the best places to find Korean food in Madison. Yum!!

So, now our caseworker is writing up our home study. We’ll have one more meeting with her to wrap things up, a psychological exam, and then we should be able to submit everything to the agency in South Korea.

Then we wait. In the ideal world, we would have a referral in 2-3 months and pick up our child by Christmas of next year. (but it could be as late as the middle of 2018- as everything is always flexible with adoption).

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Taking a Missions Course

Kim and I signed up for the Perspectives course for next January. The Perspectives course is a missions 101 type class. We’ve heard great things about it from various people over the years, and always thought “hmm, maybe one day. . .” Well, you know us- we never wait for anything- so we signed up.

You might think it rather odd that former missionaries are signing up for a missions class. What’s the motivation? We’ve been off the mission field for two and a half years now. Our experience was pretty intense and it’s been healthy to step away for this amount of time. It’s taken us a while to re-acclimate to American culture, find a church, buy a house, and just now we’re finally sort of at the point where we want to pursue ministry opportunities again. Man, it’s taken us a while! Not that we’re signing some sort of dotted line with a new missions org or anything. But I see this as a decisive first step back into a much larger world- a world we used to know so well.

Something our pastor said a couple weeks ago really hit home to me. We were talking about giftings and he said he will always be a pastor. It doesn’t matter what he does- he could be flipping burgers at a fast food joint, and he’d still be a pastor. It’s just who he is. That hit me like a lightening bolt. I feel and have felt the same way about missions. I feel that no matter what I do I’ll always be a missionary. It’s just who I am now. It’s a part of me. I may not be overseas right now and I may be working in a tech office, but it doesn’t change who I am. Something inside me just lights up when I think about sharing Jesus with someone who has never had the opportunity to hear about it. To me there’s nothing more important.

So we’re taking a missions course. . . and slowly, ever so slowly coming around to the idea of getting involved again. We’re not sure even what it looks like yet or when. Could be months. Could be years. But we’re willing to follow whatever path God has for us.

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