Happy Birthday Baby!!

Our sweet precious baby... today is your first birthday and we would have so loved to be able to hold you in our arms. We are so very sorry that we can't come get you yet. That wonderful, miraculous day is coming dear one. God will say it's time and we will go. We are praying that very soon the judge will sign the papers that say we are your mommy and daddy and we can take you home forever. We have everything ready for you.

Please know today that we love you with all of our hearts, and we miss you so much even though we havn't been able to hold you yet. We stare at your pictures and dream of what it will be like when we are finally together as a family. Mommy is making an Indian dish for Thanksgiving today in honor of you-Indian Cutlets. Jay's mommy gave me the recipe. Everyone is going to try it and we will all be thinking of you as we eat and wishing you were here.

When you come home, we will have a birthday party. We will have cake and ice cream, and presents just for you! Please remember daddy and I are praying and longing for that day to come very soon. WE LOVE YOU VERY VERY MUCH!!!!!

Still Waiting

I could never have imagined that we would still be waiting on legals, but here we are... still waiting. I've prayed and prayed and prayed, asked others to pray, fasted, and nothing has changed: except me. I'm realizing that through this, somehow, God is changing me. Would I have chosen this path? NO!! Still, his will remains. I'm having to dig down deep to find my faith, and some days that is very hard; many many tears have slid down my cheeks these last few months. I've cried out to God in both anger and sadness however, I'm convinced that even though I can't see the situation changing he hears me. In the deepest part of my faith on the longest darkest nights I know that he sees me and cares. I found this poem in a book I'm reading titled Hannah's Hope-

Waiting

Desperately, helplessly, longingly, I cried. Quietly,patiently, lovingly, He replied. I pleaded, and I wept for a clue to my fate, And the Master so gently said, "Child you must wait." "Wait? You say wait?" my indignet reply. "Lord, I need answers, I need to know why. Is your hand shortened? Or have you not heard? By faith I have asked, and I'm claiming your word."

"My future, and all to which I can relate hangs in the balance, and you tell me to wait? I'm needing a yes, a go-ahead sign, or even a no, to which I can resign.

"And Lord you have promised that if we believe, we need but to ask, and we shall receive. And Lord I've been asking, and this is my cry: I'm weary of asking: I need a reply!"

Then quietly, softly, I learned of my fate as my Master replied once again, "You must wait." So I slumped in my chair; defeated and taut and grumbled to God; "So I'm waiting, for what?"

He seemed then to kneel and His eyes met with mine and He tenderly said, "I could give you a sign. I could shake the heavens, darken the sun, raise the dead, cause the mountains to run.

"All you see I could give, and pleased you would be. You would have what you want, but you wouldn't know Me. You'd not know the depth of My love for each saint; you'd not know the power that I give to the faint.

You'd not learn to see through clouds of despair; You'd not learn to trust, just by knowing I'm there. You'd not know the joy of resting in Me, When darkness and silence was all you could see.

"You would never experience that fullness of love as the peace of My Spirit descends like a dove. You would not know that I give, and I save, for a start, but you'd not know the depth of the beat of my heart.

The glow of My comfort late in the night; the faith that I give when you walk without sight; the depth that's beyond getting just what you ask from an infinite God who makes what you have last.

"And you never would know, should your pain quickly flee, what it means that My grace is sufficent for thee. Yes, your dreams for that loved one o'ernight could come true, but the loss! if you lost what I'm doing in you.

"So be silent, my child, and in time you will see that the greatest of gifts is to get to know Me. And though oft' may My answers seem terribly late, My most precious answer of all... is still...wait.

-Russell Kelfer