My Husband

So, it's not Lud's birthday or our anniversary, but I'm feeling like complimenting my husband today. Why do it in a public forum? Well, maybe I think other people should hear what's so great about him too. :)

First of all, if anybody knows Lud and me, they know that we're pretty much opposites.  However, our core values and God are our common ground and that is what is important in our marriage. He makes me laugh, we love traveling anywhere and everywhere together, and he always builds me up when I'm criticizing myself.  From the beginning of our relationship I could tell he'd be a great dad from the way he interacted with his nieces and nephews and how he was able to talk to and counsel teenagers. Enough about our marriage - God was our matchmaker so we just try to love and support each other.

Which leads me to Lud's personality, which some people "get" and some people don't. When you first meet Lud, you probably won't know he's a minister. However, very soon in your conversation with him, you will know that he loves God. It beams from him. Ha! But, that doesn't mean he's not going to joke around and mess with you! Take it from the person who he messes with the most(me!), Lud does not mess with you unless he's trying to get to know you better or if he sees you as a friend. Therefore, all people will be most likely messed with! Some people don't "get" that and get offended. (Cough, cough...LD) Just because he's a minister has not and will not change that, because it's the personality God gave him. He's not judging the person or criticizing the person he's messing with, he's trying to get to know that person better. Part of Lud's ministry is that he can talk to unbelievers, beam God's love, and connect with them.  I can't tell you how many times we've been at a wedding or gathering of friends, and I see Lud having this deep, personal conversation with someone because God just opens up people who are struggling to Lud.

Finally that leads me to his job, which is also a ministry of God. Lud seeks God in everything he does at the Wesley. He may not sound like a minister to some, but that's a part of his ministry. If you could automatically peg him as a minister, that would mean he was acting "holier than thou" and that is not his personality. He is hanging out with college students, getting to know them and their hearts, and helping guide their hearts to God's love. He's not going to act like he is a stuffy minister who wears suits and speaks philosophically every minute of the day. I think that's how he reaches the unreached - it's by acting like a human with the same problems so that they see that they don't have to be perfect to be a Christian. I wish I could talk to people about God the way he does. *oh my goodness, I don't have time, but this paragraph leads to his love of spreading God's love around the world! Missions is his very true calling!

So, I guess that's enough about my husband. I love him and I love what he's dedicated to do for God's kingdom. When I married him, I knew we'd be on an exciting adventure trying to keep on the narrow road God designed just for us.

Singles Friday!

Ok, so apparently I cannot juggle work, grad school, and a blog. I keep having good intentions, but other things get in the way. Ha! I guess I'll just blog as I would like to. That leads me to why I'm linking up to Singles Friday at Kelly's Korner! I love my sister and she is young, cute, and single, so I thought should definitely take the time to write a post about her.

My sissy, Liz, and Me

(No, we're not twins, although we get asked that all the time!)

     Liz is 23 years old and lives in Jackson, Mississippi.  She graduated from Millsaps College in 2011 with a major in Marketing. She loves working for the Mangia Bene Restaurant Management Group as their Marketing, Promotions, and Event Planning Manager and at their sister company, Dollars and Sense Creative Consulting, doing marketing consulting. *If you're ever in Jackson you should try one of their restaurants - Bravo!, Sal & Mookie's, or Broad Street Bakery! They are all so good!

      Although Liz has a ton of fun planning and attending the special events for the restaurants, she also relishes a quiet night at home cooking dinner and watching an episode of Downton Abbey or her guilty pleasure, The Bachelor. She loves traveling, eating good food, going to see movies, reading novels, and especially all things Disney! Liz enjoys all kinds of music ranging from jazz and r&b to Broadway musicals. 

     What I love most about my sissy is her love and loyalty to our family and her friends.  When our family is together, we have so much fun being loud, laughing, and talking about life. She loves God and serving those in need in the Jackson community. While she's enjoying her single life right now, she really looks forward to the day when she finds the special person to love. 

     Isn't she cute! Leave a comment below if you want her contact information. :) 

South Asia Trip: Day 7

Here's Day 7:

Today we woke up very tired and trudged to class. We had yet a different teacher today who was very lively and friendly. While she did try to speak a lot of her language to us, she was very understanding of our limited knowledge and tried her best to help us. Instead of repeating every word over and over again, we only read each section once and she let us choose different ways to do each section. We concentrated on the tones a lot since we find that the hardest. She also gave us information on teas, and we discussed differences between America and here.

After school we went to the cafeteria to eat. This was my weak/low day and nothing looked good to eat. We sat by four students who did not speak very much English. They were very kind and shared their watermelon with us. We did communicate a few things like Jackie Chan, who had a boyfriend and girlfriend, and that one guy was very muscular. Ha! Some things you can just use universal sign language. Also, a brother of the faith sat with us. He had even more limited English, but he knew how to say, “Jesus loves you!”

We got some different types of ice cream treats on our way back, and Lud and I managed to get it all over us. They were very tasty though! We read through the next chapter of John and then fell into bed for a nap. This afternoon, Lud and Evan went to play badminton with Johnny and his friends, but the girls were all busy so Elena, Kayla, and I sat around talking. This night was Lud’s and my anniversary so we cleaned up and went a Western restaurant called Rio. We eat steak, cheesy potatoes, calamari, and seafood pasta. All of it tasted wonderful! (I think we both needed a different kind of food than we had been having.) When they found out it was our anniversary, they gave us a free scoop of ice cream and took our picture to put on the restaurant website. After dinner, we walked around the shopping district we were in and then headed back to the apartments. We had a wonderful anniversary!

The other half of the group made it back around the same time, and we shared about our nights. They had been to a barbeque restaurant where you cook your food on a grill top in front of you. Then they rode the large electronic animals around a park. Most of the time kids ride these so they received plenty of stares!

South Asia Trip: Day 6

Here's Day 6:

On Tuesday, we woke up early to go to class. We journeyed up the hill and down to our classroom across the street. This day would bring us a new teacher. She came in and from the very first moment spoke every word in Chinese and asked us to speak in Chinese. During our lesson she read each sound or word and then we repeated. Then, she repeated each section 3 times. Talk about repetition! She also made each person in the class repeat each section on his or her own. This really intimidated us! By the end of the class I felt like I had learned a lot, but it was still a very impersonal, bland lesson. We hoped the next teacher on Wednesday would be better.

After our class, we ventured to the cafeteria and met up with the girls who helped us on Monday. They were so sweet and wanted to make sure we had their numbers in case we needed anything. That is what I find so welcoming and comforting about being here – all the students we meet are so concerned about our well-being and comfort. They go above and beyond to be helpful to us. God has definitely blessed us in that specific way.

Keeping with our new routine, we came back and had our bible study. We specifically prayed to God that he would help us not find class so intimidating in the future and that we would meet new students. We took a nap, and then went outside to the basketball courts. We kind of just hung out and met an old man who collected bottles. He tried to talk to us, and we failed miserably! However, we did tell him “Jesus loves you.” in Chinese. We also tried to talk to a few more students, but they were not as fluent in English as the English majors normally are. Later in the afternoon, we met up with Vivian and taught her Phase 10. She was very good! She helped us take the bus to get some famous rice noodles to eat. Lud recognized the area as a place where he had some really good steak one time. He led us on a wild goose chase trying to find this restaurant, but we never found it. Ha! Fortunately, Vivian was very helpful and understanding, and we ended up eating some really good rice noodles.

After dinner we ventured to a sweet shop where I had some amazing Oreo gelato and other people got pastries. We also visited Wal-Mart (How many times can we go there in a week?) to pick up some sunscreen since it has been so sunny. This area of town has beautiful LED lit trees and buildings that are very cool. We got a cab and made our way back to the university. We stayed up a little while talking and went to bed.

More South Asia Trip

So, I have been super busy this summer! Since we got back from South Asia we have enjoyed attending a friend's sweet wedding, going to the beach with my family, helping my parents pack to move, and now we're visiting Lud's brother in Texas. Plus I'm taking a class in July! Whew! Anyway, so that's why I haven't updated, but I really want to share our story so I'm going to keep posting my journal.

Here's Day 4:

On Sunday we slept in late again. We had our bible study and since we had no plans with anyone we went to eat lunch at the restaurant where Lud kind of knows the owner. She remembers Lud from past trips and helps him when he is ordering. It was raining so we came back to the apartments and rested/watched a movie the rest of the afternoon.

At dinnertime, Nemo and Jerbon came to help us find some rice noodles. We had a very interesting conversation and felt our father’s presence there. Nemo and Jerbon had friends from Kunming still in town so they went back to hang out with them. I thought it was very sweet they interrupted their evening to help us. I told Lud that they probably thought we would starve without them! We played another game of cards and went to bed.

AND

Day 5:

Monday was our first day of class, so we woke up early and hiked over the hill to our classroom. Natalie arrived as our teacher and we immediately began sounding out letters. There are some letters in the Chinese language that sound the same to us! And they especially do not sound like the letters we have! She also taught us the four tones they use in Chinese to make words sound different. It is so hard to hear the differences! We finished the lesson in our book fairly quickly during the 3 hours and after the book lesson, Natalie offered to teach us words we wanted to know. She taught us many food words and how to ask for them.

After class, we piled in her car to go to the cafeteria. She helped communicate with the cafeteria ladies that we needed meal cards. However, we just got one meal card for all of us and found that to be very hard when picking out our meals because we all needed to use it at the same time.

We ran into Vivian and Oscar who were both headed back to their dorms, so we sat by ourselves and tried to make eye contact with some other students to see if they would talk to us. Nobody came up to us, but we did get some girls to help us communicate with the cafeteria ladies that we wanted four more cards. It was not easy at first, because she was like “I already gave y’all a card!”, but after a few minutes she understood.

We went back to our room and had our bible study. We really prayed that God would use this Chinese class to help us communicate. Exhausted from our class, we took a little nap and then Nemo and Jerbon joined us to throw around a Frisbee. Even though they don’t really have Frisbees here, both of them were really good throwers! Because the sun was out, we got hot pretty quick, and Jerbon decided we should go finish our Phase 10 game. There are tables and benches in the shade all over campus, so we played the rest of our game outside in the shade. It felt wonderful out there! Although I got better this time, I still did not make it to Phase 10. Kayla won! We had a great time, and then Nemo and Jerbon had to leave to go out to eat with their friends.

Luckily, we had made plans with Vivian and Christina for dinner. They also brought along a sweet girl named Lilia. They had appointments later so we ate near the school. We actually ate a restaurant we had not eaten at before, and it was so good! We had some barbequed mint beef, awesome spring rolls, spicy potatoes, sour pork, and boiled potatoes and corn. We made plans to go to a lake on Saturday with them.

Oh….Did I mention we had been without electricity this whole day? Well, when we got back every other building’s electricity was turned back on except for ours. So, we went to another department’s end of the year performance for a little while. It was funny because the auditorium was super crowded, and the program attendee made some girls get out of their seats on the second row for us! We were so embarrassed. The performance was pretty good with a skit/dance from High School Musical, a short ancient Greek play that we had no idea what was going on, and some Chinese pop songs with interesting choreography. We left before it was over, hoping that our electricity would be back on. Everyone else’s electricity in the building but ours was back on, so we went to inquire our neighbors about it. Kayla and I bothered a poor boy who looked like he was ready for bed, and he told us we needed to pay our bill! We tried to tell him that we were just visiting. Luckily, he kind of understood and got some other students to call our teacher. She said that it was too late for that night, so we might just want to stay with someone. Ha! We just decided to sit on the porch until we were tired and then went to bed. Thank God (really!) that the electricity was turned on later on in the night so we could take showers and dry our hair the next day.

South Asia Trip: Day 3

Whoohoo! Leaving for the beach in a few days... so excited!

Here's Day 3:

On Saturday we woke up slow again and had our bible study in the morning. We are studying John and read John 2. We recounted Jesus’s first public miracle where he turns water into wine at a wedding. His mother, Mary, is actually the person who asked him to help with the wine shortage, and Jesus told her it wasn’t his time. She didn’t listen to him and told the servants to do whatever he said. Lud brought up the point that Mary obviously believed that Jesus could perform miracles and that more than likely she had seen him perform miracles as he was growing up. All we have to do is believe God can perform miracles and He really will perform them. We also thanked Him for setting up ways for us to meet the people He wants us to.

We decided that the girls would go eat with the girls Kayla had numbers for and the guys would go eat with Lud’s friend, Johnny. The girls we met up with were Christina, Vivian, Jane, and Wisteria. They were all so sweet and friendly. They were so willing to show us around Yuxi and took us to a restaurant they thought we’d like. We ate french fries with ketchup (it tastes different here), fruit salad, fried pea squares, and drank watermelon juice (which was really good!). Vivian and Christina took charge by carefully ordering us dishes that were not too spicy. I ate a kind of chicken curry with rice that was really good. We talked with them about life at the university and with two of them who are Christians we talked about when that happened and what it means for them here. We took a bus back to campus and they showed us the library.

When we arrived back from our outing, Lud and Evan were coming back from playing ping pong. Nemo and Jerbon arrived to take us to a park where there are carnival rides. We rode the bus and walked there. On the way we saw a beautiful sweets shop that we bought a few treats at. I had what kind of looked like a cinnamon twists. It was a very light, flaky pastry with sugar sprinkled on the outside. So good! When we got to the park we watched these elderly people play a one-stringed instrument and sing songs. It was a different sound than we hear in America! Then we watched more elder people do kind of a line dance but in a circle. I don’t think I’d ever get the hang of it, because they didn’t seem to be moving in any certain rhythm. We also all played bumper cars. It was really fun because it lasted longer than normal carnival rides in America. My car was pretty powerful too! We walked around this huge park for a while and then headed to dinner. At dinner we ate some roasted duck and had some steamed dumplings. The dumplings were very good! After dinner we walked back and tried to watch the Avengers, but the quality of the sound was not good. So, we taught Nemo and Jerbon how to play Phase 10 instead. They were very good at the game! I was the only person who got stuck on Phase 3 for like 5 rounds. Very frustrating for me!

As you can see, we had a very busy day with our local friends. Lots of walking and new foods! I am really enjoying my time here. We are also enjoying these free days before we start class on Monday.

South Asia Trip: Day 2

Sorry, went to a friend's wedding this weekend, so I haven't had time to keep posting our trip journal!

Here's Day 2:

Today we decided to take it slow in the morning in order to get as much sleep as possible. We woke up and had our bible study. We talked about our insecurities and how God should be the one to shine through us, so ultimately we should just set aside insecurities about ourselves. He will use us if we are willing. That’s the most important part about serving here. God will orchestrate everything if we let go control.

We ate a really good lunch and then met up with Lud’s friend Nemo, who was going to help us find phones. He had to meet up with a professor, so he handed us over to his friend Oscar. Oscar is timid, kind, and loved getting to practice his English with us. For the first time, we got a public transportation bus, and he led us to the main shopping district. There were like 30 different phone booths set up in this part town and we started shopping. We tried to express that we just wanted a really cheap phone, but none of the vendors really wanted to show us any. Finally, we found this nice man with a wife and little baby girl who was happy to sell us his cheapest phones. He was really friendly offering Lud a cigarette (which Lud of course declined politely) and handing me his baby to take a picture with her. I wish he could have texted me the picture because I would like to have it. We walked around the rest of the busy shopping district and found some American movies that we bought to watch while we’re here. Apparently it was Children’s Day in the country so the shopping district was crazy busy full of parents buying their children gifts.

By the time we made it back to the university it was time to eat. Oscar helped us order at the restaurant and we talked about differences between Americans and his country’s people. After dinner he invited us to an end of the year party, which ended up being kind of like a Senior Follies. There were at least 30 acts and it lasted 3 hours! There was mixture of dancing, singing, and skits. I found it very interesting how much American music is a part of their culture, but they also had traditional and modern music of their country too. Jetlag hit me during the middle of the party and I headed back to the room with Elena. After the party Lud, Evan, and Kayla were walking and started talking to a couple of girls. One of the girls said that she had met Lud before in the cafeteria. She said that he said a statement about Jesus and that it had really stuck with her. In fact, during a rough time in her life, it led to her to believe in Jesus. How amazing is it that they happened to run into her when there were hundreds of students present at this party?! Lud says it over and over that God really shows himself here. He definitely orchestrated that meet up and the girl becoming a Christian. Hopefully we are going to meet up with her today.

We're Back!

Well, we're back from our month long trip to South Asia. We had a wonderful trip spent making wonderful friends! God really shows himself on trips like this one. I kept a journal while we were there and will post each day separately. I hope that God's actions are evident to you in each post!

South Asia: Day 1

We made it to our destination! First, early this morning, we landed in a large city before the sun rose and made it through customs. We found our next gate and all the girls freshened up. Let the staring begin! This airport is where we started being stared at because we look different than everyone else. In this country it is not rude or mean to stare, so we are just smiling back. J Finally, we got on our last flight. When we landed at our last flying destination we still had to ride a van to the university we’re staying at. Ha! Unfortunately, the ladies that Lud had been communicating with had not talked to each other, and they seemed to overlook the fact that we were arriving today. So, nobody was there to pick us up. Of course, with the numerous taxi drivers stalking the airport it didn’t take long to find a taxi driver who knew how to get to the area where we were going. We hopped in the van praying that we would get to our destination safely!

This drive was such an eye opener to the hugeness of this country! As I sat there with swollen ankles and exhausted, droopy eyes, I couldn’t help but marvel in what surrounded me. We passed hundreds (I mean it!) of very tall buildings being built. And from what I could tell they were apartment buildings. (Like for the millions of people living in this area who need a place to live!) We also passed what I would say were thousands of greenhouses filled with crops which were manned by little farmers in their round hats shading their faces and a hoe in their hands. Y’all, it was amazing to see how big the operation of feeding these millions of people is. They have to cover almost every square inch of the area with high rises for the people to live in and growing food to feed the people that live there! The only empty ground space was the mountains surrounding the cities or was covered with baby tree saplings. The only reason for the saplings I came up with was oxygen for these millions of people? Also, the highways are surrounded by lush, green foliage and flowering vines.

So, after about an hour and half we see the exit for the city where the university is. Our driver took it and our adventure began! You see, he had no idea where the university was. He stopped to ask 3 different people how to get there. He drove us past the city almost to another city! During this process, he stopped in the middle of a busy street, grabbed his cigarettes, and proceeded to take a smoke break. We had no idea what to do, but sit there. Lud and Kayla had been here before, but didn’t really know how to direct a non-English speaking driver there. Plus, he had turned us around so many times they had no idea where in the city we were! Finally, after a five minute smoke break, he flagged down another taxi driver and asked him to let our van follow him to the university. We had to follow him to drop off his passenger first and then we finally started driving in some familiar territory for Lud and Kayla. Let’s just say we were relieved to get there, and prayed really hard that he would find his way back home!

Here we were, finally at the university, and Lud couldn’t get in touch with the woman we were supposed to be meeting. We stood there getting to know some Thai foreign exchange students, and about 20 minutes later got the keys to our apartment. (The apartment is another post!) We thought we’d be able to take shower to clean up, but our contact wanted to meet up with us right away. So our Thai friends took us to lunch and then walked us to the office of our contact. Notice how I mentioned the mountains before? Well, the university sits on a big hill and the office was on the other side of the hill. After so much heavy breathing, we made it to the office, found out our schedule for our class, and the lady tried to help us get meal passes. (The cafeteria office was closed.) She is a very entertaining lady who loves her country, so Lud loves to mess with her! He asked her how many Olympic medals her country would win this summer, she responded with “A whole lot!”, and Lud responded, “At least one less than America!” She laughed and laughed, but you could tell she didn’t believe him!

After our briefing, we were determined to stay awake in order to get on the right time. So, we ventured to Wal-Mart. Let’s just say Wal-Mart is a little different here than at home! None of the red meat or eggs are refrigerated, there are thousands of spices, big thorny fruits, large fish in aquarium tanks waiting to be bought and eaten, seaweed and hot pot flavored Pringles, hundreds of types of teas, and numerous other products that are not found in America! We bought a few essentials we need for the apartments and head back to campus. By this time we were absolutely exhausted! But, we were still determined not to sleep until nighttime. Lud called up his buddy from previous trips and we met up with him and his fiancé for dinner. Their American names are Nemo and Jerbon, and they really know how to order good food. One of their friends joined us and we feasted on numerous dishes such as duck eggs, tomatoes and eggs, spicy potatoes, spicy beef and peppers, corn and peppers, a whole fish with a red sauce on top, and springs rolls. All of these dishes can be eaten on top of or with white rice and swallowed down with hot tea. (No cold drinks are served at restaurants with your dinner.) We really enjoyed our time with them, but by the time dinner was over we all felt like we might pass out.

After two days of travel, we finally took showers and went to bed.

Leaving on a Jet Plane....

Tomorrow, Lud and I will get on an airplane with 3 others headed for South Asia to live on a college campus for 4 weeks. We are very excited about this trip! Our Father has blessed this trip in numerous ways already and we can't wait to see what He has planned for us. We will be taking an Introduction to Mandarin class and hanging out with college students. It is a great opportunity to get to know them and share our culture with them. There are several friends that Lud has made on his past trips, and he can't wait to be with them again. This will be my first trip to Asia, so I am looking forward to experiencing everything Lud has come home sharing about. I don't think I'll be able to update the blog while I'm there, but I will email weekly updates to friends and family.

Please be in prayer for us. Join us in asking our Father to prepare the hearts of the people we will meet. Pray for us to meet "people of peace" who are open to getting to know us and our hearts. Like Lud always says, please don't just pray that we will be safe or have fun. Having fun is guaranteed when we're filled with His joy, and He will keep us safe. The sole purpose of this trip is to reach the unfulfilled hearts in this other country. Pray that they are open and willing.

Thank you so much for your prayer and support!

*If you're our close friend, you know where our exact location will be. We prefer not to disclose it on the internet.

Rafiki

I mentioned in my last post that I traveled to Ghana last year. Our primary purpose in going was to love on and serve the orphans at Rafiki Satellite Village. The Methodist Church of Ghana provides some funds for the orphanage and a pastor serves as the director of Rafiki. The orphanage currently is the home to 23 precious children. They live in houses with house mothers, receive three good meals a day, attend school right on campus, and most importantly are taught about God through bible studies and worship services. The school also serves children from the local village down the road. I had the privilege of teaching some first graders while we were there, and I had so much fun! I developed a slow, slightly English accent while teaching in order to bridge the language barrier and they taught me a few words in their native language. I can't tell you how much these children radiate the love of Jesus! For the past year our friends, Katie and Clint, have been living at Rafiki helping them develop a sponsorship program for the children. Rafiki really does not have enough funding to keep all the children cared for in the right way. They are also hoping to serve more children at the orphanage and build more classrooms for the students as they get older. (Right now they have kindergarten through second grade.) They can't do that without some help.
We currently sponsor a boy named Kojo. He is athletic, funny, and mischievous! I got to meet him and spend time with him while at Rafiki. It was so wonderful getting to know the child we sponsor. We also get to communicate with him through notes on the website. We love getting to know him better through these notes! My favorite line he's said is "If you don't come to Ghana soon, I will flush your head down the toilet!" It's a joke among the kids at Rafiki that they will flush your head down the toilet when you're in trouble. Hopefully we will be returning to Ghana sooner than later!

Kojo (in front)

I'll leave you with a few pictures of these wonderful children. If you would like to help out Rafiki or get to know the children and mission better, visit www.rafikifriends.org.

The Ludlams

My name is Darrington Ludlam and I am married to Stephen Ludlam (aka Lud). We live in Mississippi Delta where I am an elementary school teacher, and Lud is a college campus minister. We have two dogs named Oby and Copper and a few too many kittens. We have recently felt the call to adopt from Ghana and decided to begin documenting this journey in the blog world. Along the way, I hope to talk about books, movies, our families, our ministries, and much more! I am a lover of reading, watching HGTV, and reading adoption blogs. As a couple, we love to travel, eat, and hang out with our friends. I look forward to all the memories we document on this blog!

Our Call to Adoption Part 2

So, I had wonderful intentions of immediately sitting down to write this, but the past week has been crazy!

Well, in my previous post (Our Call to Adoption Part 1) I ended with Lud and I praying about adopting. Now, 6 months later we are finally ready to start sharing what we've decided to do.

We really feel that God has called us to adopt internationally. A few months ago, I began researching international adoption agencies. We found an agency we really loved (they do mission trips, orphan care, and birth mother education/care in addition to adoption). We filled out a pre-application and according to age and marriage parameters, we qualified for Ethiopia and Bulgaria. For some reason we did not feel a strong pull towards either. Then, a few weeks later the agency announced a pilot program in Ghana. I cannot explain the feeling in my heart.....it was like it jumped out of my chest. ***Rewind to last summer, when I went on a trip with the Wesley Foundation to Rafiki Village, an orphanage, in Ghana. I fell in love with the children there! It is a wonderful, warm, and welcoming country.*** So, I immediately contacted the agency to find out what a pilot program is. A pilot program is like a trial run of a few adoptions for the agency to get a feel for the way the adoption process will work in that country and to give families in the program in the future a time frame of how long the adoption process takes in that country. Only families who have completed an adoption with this agency before could apply and they were only accepting 3 families into the infant pilot program. Obviously we did not fall into that category!

Now, to some this may have seemed like a deterrent or an answer from God telling us that this was a closed door. However, to us, it felt like this pilot program would allow us to watch the adoption process unfold for the pilot families and it would give us time to save up some money. Also, I am working on my Masters in Elementary Education degree while working full-time and hope to be done with that in mid-2013. We hope that the pilot adoptions will be completed with those sweet babies at home by the end of this year. If everything works out the way we are praying, then we would officially begin applying for the program in early 2013. *Talk about God's perfect timing!*

So, where does that leave us in the adoption process? We are waiting before we even begin waiting for a precious baby from Ghana! We hope you will join us in praying for the families in the pilot program. We are praying that God provides funds for them and a clear path to their children. Also, please pray for us as we prepare our hearts for this journey.

Now I'm Ready!

To be honest, I started this blog and then could not get into it the way I thought I would. I have so much I want to talk about and share, but I didn't want to do it on the blog design I had. So, that led me to Lauren at Traded Dreams. She does great designs and is so easy to work with! She and her husband are adopting from Ghana right now. They are raising money through her blog designing and other fun fundraisers.

Thanks, Lauren! Now I'm ready to blog!

Our Call to Adoption Part 1

After Lud and I were married we knew we had several years until we wanted to start a family. We also knew our family would hopefully include adopted and biological children. My dad was adopted as an infant, and my grandparents are the most loving, wonderful parents any child could ask for. I've always been inspired to adopt by the fact that for us there was never a difference between my mom's biological parents and my dad's adopted parents. They were my grandparents. Period.

Last year I began reading a few blogs, and on one blog I saw the story of a family's adoption. Every since then I have followed many families' adoption journeys. Even though I felt a strong tug towards adoption, I continued to feel that we would adopt eventually, but not right now. However, one morning in November everything changed. I was getting ready for school when I truly felt I heard God's voice calling us to adopt. And not in the far away future! I heard God telling me to begin the journey NOW. I asked God "Now?!? Right now, when we're not planning on having kids, I'm pursuing my masters, and we have nothing saved for it?!?" Then I heard the words, "Have faith. It's a faith journey."

Wow! I was so scared and yet felt a jittery, genuine excitement I had not had in a very long time. Lud was still asleep and I was running late for school so I didn't tell him right then. I thought about it alllllll day long at school. I had no idea how Lud would take it. I got home and could barely contain myself, but I waited until supper to tell him. I think I caught him a little off-guard! Lud also wants to adopt, but didn't know if right now was the right time. However, he does want to be faithful to God's call. So, we began praying for God to give Lud the same conviction that we should start the adoption process.

To be continued......

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog! As an elementary school teacher needing to grade some papers, I don't have much time to update today. Look forward to my post on our thoughts and journey to adoption in the near future!

About Us

Coming Soon!