So a few things have happened......

Since the last blog update so much has happened I must sum up. First of all we had to abandon domestic adoption due to our health insurance situation. At that time, pre-existing conditions were still a legal reason for denying health care coverage and when the insurance companies found out we were adopting we were rejected. It seems unfair, but as a business owner, I need to be able to predict my cost and I have to avoid unpredictable situations where costs could go very high. So I understand why they do this. It does not make it any easier to be on this end of the deal, but it is a reality of business, and that is their business. It was also an answered prayer and a way for God to steer us in a different direction

The direction we headed was foster care. The children, while under county custody, are covered by medicaid. We were certified on December 15, 2010 and received two beautiful children on December 17th. I need to leave their names and pictures off of the blog to protect them and their families. But they are both toddlers and have been a blast. I do not know how long we will have them but I can say that we are absolutely loving them as much as we can while we get to be part of their lives.

We received information on Monday that there is also a 5 day old girl who needs a home. Her mother was homeless when she checked into the hospital to have her and the girl is now in the custody of the county. We have a meeting on 2/4 to discuss the situation with the county. I know it sounds crazy that in two months we would grow our family from 4 to 7. I did not know what I was getting into when I became a bio-dad. I did not really know what I was getting into when I became a foster dad. I am sure I do not know what I am doing considering becoming the father of 5.

But here is what I do know. God does not ask us to equip ourselves, figure out everything we have to do and how to do it, and then follow him. Christ said to drop it all and follow him. Sometimes he asks us in fancy ways. Sometimes he asks us in a thought or a whisper, but he does ask and it always aligns with his Word. Our only requirement is that we STEP UP. He takes care of the rest and we are blessed by it. Sometimes it totally sucks, for a while, maybe for a long time (Joseph, Moses, Noah, etc.) But it is always blessed and worth it.

So with an eternal perspective I need to ask for your prayers. If you are reading this you care enough to take the time to figure out what is going on with us, this is it, and we need your prayers. Should we take on another child? Prayers for Jackson, Lily, and the two foster children we already have. Clarity in what we should do now. I still have two open car seats. Should we fill them all? Spiritual, physical, and emotional protection. When you step up Satan redoubles his efforts to shut you down. The comfortable do not have to worry about that attack, they are not doing anything.

Anyway, thanks for your time. God bless you, and please be sure to STEP UP!!!!

The Smalls

Headed Home from Tulsa

These last three days at 'Adoption Camp' has been overwhelming. Here we are, in Tulsa, we have no job, we are relying on friends to take care of our birth children, taking phone interviews for jobs, trying to set up an LLC (talking to a lawyer (Well, Luke Korkowski anyway) and a CPA(She might actually be reputable)), setting up in person interviews for next week back in Denver, learning absolute heart breaking stories of birth mothers and adopted mothers, being convicted by Francis Chan, Crazy Love, and growing in my relationship with Christ and my wife.

Like I said, overwhelming.

But I have an incredible peace, maybe more than ever, that all that we have been through to this point in our lives was preparing us for this phase. So many Christians often feel like they are walking on God's path, but they are on the edge of the 'light'. They are 'doing it' but they know they are holding something back, or going begrudgingly, but that is not where we are.

We are in the middle of the path God has set out for us. I am sure I would not be able to handle moving forward with this without His hand on us. I have full confidence that I will find a job, and that the money will be 'enough'. I have full confidence that God is going to come through in amazing ways and that my happiness does not matter, but my Holiness does. I am sold out for the lives and souls of children. I want to protect and grow them. I want them to know Jesus Christ personally. And I want to be a warrior for God who he trusts to lead his children.

I do not think we will only adopt one. Two? More? I don't know. I do know the Excursion will hold 4 more. But God will show the way. I don't know how we will pay or how we will have enough energy. All I have is the faith that this is what God has been equipping us to do, we will follow him, and it will work out.

Wanna come with us? http://www.crisispregnancyoutreach.org

P.S. I have a job interview in downtown Denver on Monday. Please pray I get the job!!!!

Tulsa, November 20,2009

So much has happened since our last blog I don't know where to start. We are currently in Tulsa, Oklahoma attending our last adoption training through Crisis Pregnancy Outreach. We are staying with an incredible family named the Jacobsons.



They have three birth children and 4 adopted children. They are living proof that God provides when you follow his lead and their example has touched us deeply. Steve and Kelly are mom and dad and their kids are Madeline (Cat), Aaron, Elaina, Jewel, Isaac, Nate, and Zach.



The class is going well and I am blown-away by this ministry. It is about mothers in crisis and they happen to match expecting mothers who cannot keep their children with families who would like to adopt. The services they offer are amazing and I really feel that they are the hands and feet of Christ. I wish every town in America had a CPO!

Weekend in Westcliffe, CO

My sincerest thanks to the Luke and Joy Korkowski for letting us crash at their Westcliffe cabin these past few days. It was a great time for all of our family. June, Jackson, Lily and Greg got to host Mimi and Pawpaw (Jeannette and Carson Stephens) in a beautiful setting.

What will stick with me on this trip was the time I get to spend with Jackson. A coupel of things really came together: 1. Time in nature with him 2. A chance to express how nature reflects God

I have been reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan. I have not read much at this point but I am enjoying the first chapter. He focuses on how nature cries out the glory of God. Jackson and I had some time to hike. The property encompasses part of Arkansas Mountain above Junkins Park. We were climbing some boulders on the side of the mountain and he asked me about pine cones.

"Dad, how does a pine cone work?"

I explained to him how pine cones form when pollen from one tree is transfered to the 'flower' of another and the tree forms a pine cone. I then explained to him how the pine cone will open up when the seeds are mature, and how the seeds have paper-like wings which allow them to be lifted and carried by the wind. If the seeds lands in the right situation then it will grow into a tree and the process will start over. The original pine cone, when the seeds are gone, dies and falls off the tree to give a father and his son the opportunity to talk about God. The simplicity and the genius of design was not lost on my 7 year-old. It should not be lost on us either.

That night we sat out on the deck. The cabin is in the Wet Mountains 15 miles east of Westcliffe. It is absolutely dark out there at night except for the moon and stars. After watching the sun go down over the Sangre De Cristo Mountains, we began to see a spectacular light show. Jackson talked about how he had never seen a shooting star and he wondered what they were. I told him they were just meteors burning up in earth's atmosphere and that they happen all the time. In the Colorado night sky it is very common place to see them.

I then started talking to him about the planets we could see (Venus in this case). Jackson's grandfather Stephens asked him what the order of the planets was, and Jackson was able to tell him first to last. We talked about how the planets orbit the sun perfectly and any slight misalignment would cause a disaster. We could see the outer rim of the Milky Way Galaxy and we talked about how our sun is just one star out of billions in the galaxy. We talked about how our galaxy is just one of billions in the universe. And that man does not even know how man galaxies there are because of our limited technology and the vastness of the universe.

This all led up to me sharing with him that all of the things we were looking at and discussing scream loudly of the amazing glory of our God. That throughout life he will hear people dismiss creation as divine and come up with elaborate explanations of how all of creation is by random chance, but the truth is that man cannot even duplicate a human hair successfully, much less comprehend the workings of the entire universe. We have a creator and he is magnificent. He loves us more than we can comprehend. He created the universe yet desires most to have us praise him and to have relationship with us.

I explained all of this to him as he sat on my lap and we tried to stay warm under the Colorado night sky. I knew there is no other place I would have rather been at that moment; that this was what being a father is all about; that my son listens to me and wants to learn; and that my children are two of the largest blessings you could ever have. I also learned he is too big to sit on my lap anymore :( (that is a big Kid!)

And then a massive shooting star streaked North to South across the sky, turning from hot white to bright green and then fading away...........

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.