Birthdays- 2 special stories to tell

I just celebrated my birthday this week and I wanted to share 2 stories that 2 of my children did. The first was my daughter, Cate who has been home 1 yr. and 10 months now. On my birthday nite she came to me and gave me a big hug... and started to cry saying to me, " I never had a momma before in Ukraine and I so happy that I have one now." When I went to bed I found a card she had made for me and it expressed those same sentiments.... I too am so happy to be her momma. She was born to a 14 yr old child and had always been in the orphanage from birth.... So she was right but I know she meant more than just that. What a wonderful gift she gave to me.

My other story is about my daughter, Leah also here just 1 yr and 10 months. Last year on her first birthday with us, 9/11-- for a week before her birthday she was out of sorts, not at all her easy going self. We always ask ahead of time of the child, "What do you want for your birthday and what do you want to eat on your birthday?" She would always get silent and really struggle we could tell. Finally, a few days before her birthday I figured it out.... No one had ever celebrated her birthday before. This was her 13th birthday and she was really uncomfortable having things done for her. So I assured her we wanted to celebrate her and the gift she is to us..... with lots of encouragement. Finally she said I would like to eat chicken with bones on it ( we usually eat the boneless type ). So of course we had lots of chicken with bones ...actually Paul bought so much that we ate it all week :) She could not come up with anything she wanted though. At the time we had been praying and collecting medical information on a little boy from Hungary we were very interested in adopting and just waiting to see if our coordinator could get the mandatory 6 week in country stay changed for us. His name was Csaba and a real sweetheart. I had pictures of him all over the house for the kids to see.... She walked over to the computer and took a picture of Csaba and brought it to me and said," I know what I want now for my birthday.... I want you to adopt Csaba." You can imagine me now... of course tears filled my eyes and I looked at Paul and he was the same.... What 13 yr. old would ask for such a gift? I am always amazed by these dear children and their compassionate hearts.

Now on to another subject.... We finally got a response back from the USCIS and they want to have lots more information.... really their intent is to deny us the ability to adopt more special needs children... irregardless of the fact our homestudy and social worker has fully supported and checked out all they were suppose to do.... They did this before when we trying to adopt Luke....Forunately the Lord has had other plans.... We are gathering letters from our doctors, insurance company, school board, and others who know are children and we are planning to show them that their prejudice against special needs and large families is just that. In reality we have the full support from many officials who work or have a part of our children's medical care and oversee our homeschool. It is a battle that is not just ours but is fully the Lord's and we are grateful for all the support they have given us. They also gave us just 30 days to respond while they took months to reply to us about this. More on this later.

We also heard from our coordinator for our Uzbekistan boys that a law was made in Aug. that prefers families not have more than 8 children..... It is not necessarily a stopper for us there but we are praying about how to proceed ... My heart goes to the boys and I need to feel the Lord is in control not a gov't or official as far as adopting them. So it has been a week of preparing our "defense" so to speak to our own gov't as to why we have a heart for special needs children.... Paul was off all week working on collecting and writing for this.... So please pray for this need.