Sunday School Has More Impact On Me?

Today we started Sunday School at church. I am teaching the Junior High group. They are a great group of kids. Today's topic was "Women of Courage". We read the first chapter of Exodus. This is the story where they new king of Egypt does not remember Joesph and is intimidated with all the Hebrews in Egypt. He has ordered all the Hebrew baby boys to be killed. Shiphrah and Puah are the Hebrew midwifes and they fear God and do not kill the babies. When the king asks why there are still Hebrew baby boys they say that the Hebrew women are strong and vigourous and give birth before they get there. The story goes on to tell about a couple who gives birth to a baby boy and keep him hidden for three months. Then the mother puts him in a basket and sends him down the river. His sister keeps watch. Then the baby(Moses) is found by the Pharaoh's daughter and she adopts him. Moses' sister askes the pharoah's daughter if she wants her to find a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby. She says yes, and Moses' birth mother nurses him and then gives him to the pharohs daughter.

In the lesson plan they give questions to ask the kids. The first one was about how Shiphrah and Puah felt each time they saved a baby. I thought about the people in China who find the abandoned babies and take them to the orphange. I wonder how they feel?

The second question was: "I wonder how it feels to know your baby is in great danger?" This question really got to me. I think about my daughter all the time. I think about her birth mother leaving her somewhere and hoping that she would be found and taken care of. I think about our daughter being in a orphange and I hope she is ok. I hope people are being nice to her and taking good care of her. There is nothing I can do though. So I pray. I pray for her birth mother, that she will feel a sense of peace that her baby is ok. I pray for the caretakers and that they are taking good care of our daughter. Most of all I pray for our daughter and that she is ok. I pray she some how knows we are coming soon. I also pray for us to not worry so much and to be comforted that God is in control and soon we will be a family.

The third question was "I wonder what Pharaoh thought when he found out his daughter was adopting a Hebrew child". This one also resonated with me and our adoption. So many people have asked us why we are adopting from China and not from America. They ask why we don't adopt a baby that is more like us. We even have family members that have had a hard time accepting that our daughter will not look like us. David and I don't care though. I imagine the Pharaoh's daughter was the same. She did not care, she saw a baby that needed to be cared for and she took him in. We know our daughter needs us and that is all that matters. I keep saying that at least she will have dark hair like me.

It was so interesting to me how much I was impacted by the lesson today. We talked about having courage and finding courage in scripture and strenght in God. We talked about different scriptures that can give you strenght. My two favorites are Matthew 14:28 and Matthew 6:25. The kids liked these too. I love the Matthew verse about not worring about tomarrow and that God takes care of the grass in the field, don't you think He will take care of you?

Until next time......

Dept of Homeland Security, Again

On Friday (9/7/07), we went back to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to be fingerprinted again, so they can run an FBI background check on us again and issue our I-171 to us again. They are only good for 18 months, so ours is due to expire this month. This was the last of our hoops to jump through (at least for now).

We kept wondering why we needed to be fingerprinted again. Do they change? No. Wouldn't they just keep them on file and they could just run the back ground check again? I guess not. We have heard a few different reasons. Someone told us that it is illegal for them to keep our fingerprints if we don't have a criminal record. The woman at the DHS said they need to make sure that our fingerprints have not changed. She said we could have lost a finger or gotten a scar in the year. She said they need the most current fingerprints. Who knows. It went really quick, we went and had the "biometrics" taken and were out of there just after 8:00.

Now we just wait for our referal and the I-171 to come.