How it all started for Greg

So this is how this whole adoption thing started for Greg. June's took a different route to get to the same place but that is pretty much how we have always worked.



About 4 years ago our church, Rocky Mountain Christian Church, was doing a financial series. The church sent out thousands of copies of a book called "Treasure Principle" by Randy Alcorn. It was short, so I read it (length is a major consideration when read as slowly as I do). It was amazing stuff. I recommend that anyone and everyone read it but the summary is this: "Where your heart is, there your treasure will be also." Mathew 6:21 NIV.



So one of the biggest downers for any church goer is the dreaded financial series, but between our pastor's teaching and this book something changed inside both June and I. We started giving 10% of everything, and I mean gross, and I mean everything. The paycheck, bonus, tax return, electric company rebate, escrow overpayment, whatever, we tithed 10%. It was a bit painful at first but we go used to it and we did not miss the money.



About 3 months later June's sister as well as my friend Rob (coincidence that we were getting this from two very different places) told us about some dude named Dave Ramsey. Since we were in about 6 figures worthof debt (not including our primary house, I was all ears). We bought his book "Total Money Makeover" and read it cover to cover (yes, it is much longer that the Alcorn book). I also started listening to his show everyday. It was common sense but I needed it hammered into me. We started the 'baby steps', and it was going to be a long road.



To make a long story short, we gave our financial lives to God. He gave us back discipline to do the right thing. We sold our house in Texas, we paid off all unsecured debts, and that was in the first year. In the second year I changed jobs and got a significant raise. We were able to pay off our last debt, a car, in 4 months. We were finally out of debt. From that clear vantage point I started taking a close look at how blessed we are. That is really hard to do when you are under a pile of debt. When you get on top of that pile you can see just how blessed we as a nation are and how we are blessed as individuals.



I literally started to wonder why we were blessed. It certainly was not exceptional decision making or lack of sin. It was not that God loved us more and someone else less. I have always been afraid to ask God cause I might 'awaken' him to the fact we have it so good and then have it taken away (I wish I was kidding). I was bold enough to ask what he wanted. We were giving to church, we sponsor two children through Compassion International, we do the childrens programs at church; it was not everything he wanted from us. "To whom much is given, much will be expected."



About a year ago I was trying to talk June into having another baby. Her response was,"You better pray for old testament marriages cause you are not getting another baby out of this body!" Then the election came up, and with it, tons of political information. Once piece of information I simply could not get over is that we currently abort 1.3 million babies a year in this country. Call it a 'choice', call it a 'terminated pregnancy', call it women's rights, call it whatever you want but that is 1.3 million human babies that, through no decision of their own, have their lives terminated before they are even born. When you seperate yourself from all the noise and scientific arguments you realize that this is one of the most horrible crimes against humanity in the history of man, and we the federal government subzidizes it with our tax dollars. The conviction for adoption was laid.



We looked at domestic adoption. There are a lot of rules, rules which open the adoptive parents up to many opportunities to lose the child they are matched with. We knew we were simply not able to emotially handle that at this point in our lives. Getting attached to a child and then having it taken away was just not where we were at, this time. Maybe in the future we will adopt domestically, I hope we do. But it was not the plan this time around. Unfortunately under President Clinton and now President Obama, the US is able to take tax dollars from federal coffers and financially support abortion efforts in foreign countries. Wow. So our conviction on that front is no longer limited to our own borders.



So entre Amelia. She is a 15 month old baby girl from Ethiopia and daughter to Dave and Lory Howlett. June held her one time and came home with the decision that we were adopting from Ethiopia, this time. I held her myself for the first time last night, June made a wise decision. After reading the statistics on global adoption need we realized just how dire the situation is. There are approximately 1 million orphaned children in Ethiopia. These children do not have the safety net that children born in America have. being an orphan there is often a death sentence. So that is where we decided to start.



So we are now fighting through red tape at every turn but are now about 1/3 of the way through the process. We have a long way to go and this part of the journey is not very fun, but we eager await, with great expectation what God has in store. I, Greg, needed to step out in faith and give my treasure to God so he could change my heart. There is more to this story and Rush Hour plays a huge part, but I will save that for another post

"It's all about us"

Really it isn't. In fact, we did not set up a blog for a long time for fear it would seem that we were braggarts, or too self-absorbed, or just all around too high on us. So let's get this on the table now, this blog is about a journey that God (and yes I meant the Judeo-Christian God who is presented as a Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) has our family on.

I would have thought this was nonsense even 6 years ago. "Really, you think God has You on a special mission like the Blues Brothers or something?" Yep, that there is what I am saying now. This blog will attempt to make sense of where we have been; to build altars to remind us of the great events that God has lived out through our lives. Just like the Israelites kept forgetting all the great things that God did for them when they left Egypt and wondered the desert, we forget too. We gripe, we complain, we whine, and we need this to come back to in order to remind us where we have been and where we are going.

Why make it public? So we can share it with our widespread (not necessarily abundant but geographically dispersed) friends and family. So we can share our blessings with others and offer encouragement when things are just plain not working out, or at least not seeming to work-out.

So I hope you are blessed by this. I hope our family is blessed by this. If something makes you happy, tell us. If soemthing makes you mad, tell us. If you think we are boasting, let us know. Please interact with us through this blog and take advantage of this technology so we can share our lives together.