Originally published at ScottHowell.ws. Please leave any comments there.

I know, I know, I’m a little bit late to be talking about Thanksgiving and things that we can be thankful about.  I’m sure that we’ve all gotten our fill of turkey and pumpkin pie and have packed up the fall decorations and have trimmed the Christmas tree already.  But, I would like to go back and recognize some things that we are thankful for, especially at this time during our adoption. 

On November 22nd, NewLife Community Church held a Concert for Adoption.  Scott and I would like to personally thank every person who attended the concert.  I know that it takes a lot of effort to get yourself and other family members out of the house for extra church events like this.  Scott and I were very excited to share our story with you and to have you become a part of our journey.  There were so many hands behind the scenes that made the night possible.  Thank you, thank you, thank you to all the people who brought desserts, served, cleaned up the church afterwards, those who gave sacrificially, those who shared their talents with us, those who told their own adoption stories, and to those who shared the evening with us.  We feel that adoption is truly at the heart of God and we enjoy sharing that excitement with other people!

The second thing that Scott and I are truly thankful for is the staff and leaders at NewLife.  This church has brought us so much closer to God and aided us in attaining a more intimate relationship with Jesus.  I truly respect each of the men on our deacon team and trust my spiritual development to them.  I’ve never met another group of men that were so dedicated to the cause of Christ.  It is a true privilege to be a member of a church that has such a strong leadership team.

Thirdly, we are thankful for the role our friends and family play in our life.  We would not be able to do the things that we are doing each and every day if we did not have the support of our friends and family standing behind us and praying for us.  It’s so nice to see our friends each Wednesday night and to share our joys and struggles with them.  Our family members are always just a phone call away and their love for us is so evident.

There’s so much more that Scott and I recognize in our lives that we have to be thankful for.  Even though you have changed your holiday decorations and started wrapping Christmas presents, I would encourage you to think of the things that you are thankful for in your life and then go and find someone to tell those things to and share in the joyful feeling that it brings both of you.

As far as the paper pregnancy is concerned, we are still in the waiting phase.  The Time Warner Cable guy is supposed to come on Wednesday to set up a home phone line and then we’ll child proof the house and be ready for our fire inspection.  Our CPR training is scheduled for Monday, December 21st.  We are still waiting for our Ohio child abuse report to come back.  The only other paperwork that needs to be done is to get an employment letter from our employers, get a signed copy of our tax returns, and prepare a copy of our personal financial statements.  I suppose I’m in charge of the last two things on the list.    Keep praying with us for each step of this process, the child whose life will change next summer when we bring him/her home, the other couples in NewLife whom God is pricking their hearts for orphan ministry, and the orphanages in the Ukraine who are being hit hard by the flu epidemic.

I thank my God every time I remember you!  Thank you for your goodness and love towards Scott and I.

Originally published at ScottHowell.ws. Please leave any comments there.

Hello, this is Lindsey!  Scott has been sluggish in updating his blog, so I thought that I would give a whirl at it.  I wanted to post an update about where we are at the process of bringing home our child, along with how God is working through the whole process.

We are currently going through the book Experiencing God during our Wednesday night Bible study.  This book keeps revealing to me day after day about how lost I really am.  I am so caught up in trying to make myself happy and content.  I am realizing that there are two ways to live your life: God-centered or me-centered.  Although I want to think of myself as this perfect Christian who has everything together and all the answers, I truly am not.  I continually struggle with making decisions that only have my best interests in mind.  I surrender some parts of my life to Christ, but I hold onto the majority of it.  I really enjoyed this quote from the study:

No one can sum up all God is able to accomplish through one solitary life that is wholly yielded, adjusted, and obedient to Him!

I often wonder why God called Scott and I to such a task as adoption.  I wonder how we actually heard His call amidst the mess that we (I) are.  I also wonder how many other calls that I have missed because I was too focused on myself and the plans that I was trying to make for myself.  I am overly thankful for God’s unconditional love and His grace that He would keep pursuing me after all the times that I have turned my back on Him.  As I walk forward each step of every day, I have to ask myself, who am I yielding my life to: God, or myself?  Who are you yielding your life to right now?  Are you missing out on something that God is calling you to do because you are afraid that obedience will cost too much? 

Scott and I are grateful for the people at NewLife who understood God’s focus on the orphans and who responded to what He was calling them to do.  Through their actions, God was able to work in Scott and I’s lives.  You never know what outcomes your actions are going to have, no matter how small they are.  By being obedient, you could be the stepping stone to other Christian’s obedience.  We are happy to announce that you will have the opportunity to be part of our story next Sunday, November 22nd.  NewLife Community Church Canal Winchester will be hosting a Concert for Adoption at 6:30.  During this concert you will enjoy a host of different musical talents and hear different couples from the church share how adoption has affected their lives and what you can do to help.

On our end of things, we are in the first part of our home study of preparing the paperwork.  We need to gather all of the information before we meet with the social worker.  We have sent in our requests for the child abuse registry reports, driving record histories, and medical statements.  This week we will work on scheduling a class to become CPR certified, scheduling an appointment for the fire marshal to do an inspection, passing out the reference letters for our friends to complete, and getting a letter from our employer regarding our current jobs.  We have an appointment tomorrow to get our fingerprints taken for the US government and we’ll get a second appointment for fingerprints for the home study.  After those things get completed, we’ll meet with the home study provider and go through an interview.  When the social worker has the required information, they will write their report.

I’ve also received some questions about the timeline.  As far as we know right now, we will likely travel to the Ukraine in July to bring home our child.  This could easily change, but it’s our best guess.  After the home study gets approved, the US government will have three months to approve our I-600A.  After the I-600A is approved, then we’ll start filling out our dossier paperwork.  It’s important not to start this paperwork until the I-600A is approved because the dossier paperwork expires in 6 months.  Once the dossier is done, we will send it to CWA and they will review it and have it translated.  The translated dossier will be sent to the Ukraine for the government’s approval.  In the past few months, they have been reviewing the paperwork and sending out a letter of invitation to travel to the prospective adoptive parents within 10 days of receiving the dossier!!  Wow, ten days!!  They will send us a letter with an appointment date usually 30 days out.  We’ll then have a month to schedule our travel and the transition of coming home as parents. 

Speaking of becoming parents, we are starting to make steps towards the change.  There were a couple of times  this past weekend when I’m sure that Scott’s heart skipped a beat.  The first was when we assembled the crib and put the mattress in it.  I’m sure he’s sad to see baby things taking over his computer/game room!  The other thing that jolted us into reality was installing the car seat in our car.  These are the main baby items that we have.  They are required for our home study so that the social worker can ensure how safe they are.  

So, that is where we are at.  Throughout this whole process, I’m just learning to trust God more and more and to lean on His strength and not my own plans.  It has been an enjoyable experience watching other people meet the needs that we have pop up.  We do not consider this adoption solely as a means to expand our family.  We feel like we are being obedient to God’s calling in rescuing a child from a life of loneliness and helplessness, since in reality, that is what Christ did when He died on the cross to save a mess like me and give me life more abundantly.

Originally published at ScottHowell.ws. Please leave any comments there.

As Fall has come, and the summer has passed there has been a lot of interesting changes in our daily Christian walk. Lindsey and I have been very busy with our jobs lately and for awhile it felt like we were getting nothing done for our adoption. The first important steps have been completed for awhile, but there has definitely been some tasks that we have been yielding to make, simply because we have been overwhelmed by some decision making. In order to make this adoption work, we knew upfront that big changes in our life needed to take place. Some of the decisions we had been battling included how our careers would be affected, how we would pay for this adoption, how we would handle the transition next summer with childcare or no childcare, and more. We kept raising question after question, all at the same time leading us to doubt or worry of things that were out of our control. Quite frankly, we were getting out of control and we both were looking in the wrong direction for our answers.

Four weeks ago I remember going for a walk alone on a Sunday evening. I was just a little overwhelmed with all of the decisions that I had to make. I wasn’t happy with certain things going on in my life and I was angry. So after a twenty minute walk around our complex I came back and pulled out my bible and a new workbook we bought as a study guide for our Wednesday night Fellowship group. It had been decided a few weeks prior that after we finished The Truth Project, we would try something else different and use a study guide to aide our discussions each week, along with our Bible reading.

The workbook is called Experiencing God – Knowing and Doing the Will of God. I have never used any sort of workbook, guide, or Bible supplement as I have always had mixed feelings about them. However, I decided that I needed to give this one a chance. I realized that I am unable to hold myself up on my own even without a child. If I am to adopt a child, I need to strengthen my relationship with God. As I started reading the book for the first time, I read things that even at that moment made little sense to me. This wasn’t just a book about the Bible. It was a book that was teaching me how to have a love relationship with God and specifically how it is to be done and very candidly pointing out to me what I’ve been doing wrong.

I’ve realized just four weeks into the series that I do have it all wrong. I have brought so much stress into my life trying to live my life for myself and making all of these decisions on my own. Experiencing God helps you realize that your life is not your own, and all we are to do is be obedient to God and do His Will. It stops you from asking ‘What is God’s will for my life?”, to ask rather “What is God’s Will?”

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that thanks to this study it has helped realign my priorities in life. I can’t get through this life without doing God’s will. Nothing else matters and the only way to do this is to have a loving relationship with Him. It is through only God’s strength that I will get through the trials in life and be able to adopt and care for a child next summer. If interested in this workbook, it focuses on these seven steps on how to experience God for yourself:

1. God is always at work around you.
2. God pursues a continuing love relationship with you that is real and personal.
3. God invites you to become involved with Him in His work.
4. God speaks by the Holy Spirit through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church to reveal Himself, His purposes, and His ways.
5. God’s invitation for you to work with Him always leads you to a crisis of belief that requires faith and action.
6. You must make major adjustments in your life to join God in what He is doing.
7. You come to know God by experience as you obey Him, and He accomplishes His work through you.

If you’re not a Christian these steps might not make much sense, so if you have any questions I’ll be happy to answer them to the best of my ability. Thanks to the change in pace with this study, I’m happy to say that Lindsey and I are back on track with the adoption. We have some issues we are worried about, but we have to have full faith that God will work all the issues out. This week we will be turning the application in to our home study provider and get the process started with the social worker. We’re also busy getting some materials together to turn in our I-600A form (with a big fee, of coarse) to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. I think we’re still on track for next summer. Once we get this paperwork turned in and start the home study we will be opening up a whole new bag of adoption fun. Can’t wait.

Originally published at ScottHowell.ws. Please leave any comments there.

Though I won’t share the entire context here on this blog, Lindsey did receive a reply back from 104.9 the River over the weekend in regards to this email she sent out. The reply didn’t come from David Emerson, but from Todd Stach, the program director of the station. In a nutshell, Todd explains that at The River the DJ’s try to use the songs they play as a “vertical” tool to point people towards Christ, and their actual conversations on air are used more as a “horizontal” tool to positively impact people. He continued to say that things INSIDE the station might have a different meaning OUTSIDE the station. Whatever, that means. Todd never really cleared up for us whether or not they consider themselves a Christian Radio station or just a family safe radio station with some nice uplifting songs mixed in.

As far as the River Positive Thought is concerned, Todd mentioned that it can be based on scripture or not based on scripture. Which honestly, I’ve heard very few examples of scripture being used on air. Just yesterday the positive thought was ‘A kind heart brings smiles” Yup, that’s really preaching Truth and giving listeners a dose of the Holy Spirit. However, with all that said it was interesting to hear the following Positive Thought air on the station today while I headed to work:

God is not a God of disorder but of peace. He wants you to know peace even in the midst of chaos – Lindsey from Columbus

Isn’t that interesting? See, about a week and half ago before Lindsey wrote The River her concerns, she had sent on a few “Positive Thoughts” to the radio station that were actual Bible versus. No explanation was sent to the station other than that. She just wanted to see if the River would actually quote scripture as a Positive Thought of the Day. Besides, having a daily dose of scripture on a Christian radio station makes more sense than knowing that “a kind heart brings smiles’. Well, the verse Lindsey sent the radio station was this:

For God is not a God of disorder but of peace. – I Corinthians 14:33

Wait a minute.. did 104.9 The River just paraphrase Scripture from the Bible and give Lindsey credit rather than where credit is due? Honestly! Why are we disguising God’s Word like this? Though I do appreciate the effort, this just goes to show that The River is becoming another medium that is afraid of offending people by outwardly speaking the Truth. At our Wednesday night bible study we just finished a series by Focus on the Family called The Truth Project. I highly suggest you check it out. Anyway, one of the segments discusses how little by little God is being removed from our school systems and in our government. With this case, it just goes to show that even a Christian radio station is afraid to hold onto its own Christian values in an effort to not offend people who might not want to blatantly hear the Truth.

Why are we so scared of offending people? As Christians we need to stand firm and just lay it out there. We know what we speak is the Truth. Offending people should be the least of our worries. People need to hear it, and if it offends someone so be it. In retrospect, it’s ok though to air half the crap we see on late night cable and television. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

I will say this. I do enjoy listening to The River, and for the time being will continue to do so. But it’s really bothering me that this world has come to such a point where even Christian radio stations are now deciding to focus on this “horizontal” view to point people to Christ. There’s no need to be transparent.

If you really believe what you believe, preach it. Don’t sugar coat it. There’s my positive thought for the day.

Originally published at ScottHowell.ws. Please leave any comments there.

On 104.9 The River you will hear “Positive Thoughts” daily which include quotes from listeners like “Share a fact and you touch a mind. Share a story and you touch a soul.” or “love is a verb, and so is forgiveness”. Some of which make little sense or have no practical Truth in them. Here’s an email Lindsey sent out to the radio station:

Hello David,

I think you are a really cool guy.  I enjoy listening to you on the River and to the songs that the station plays.  Recently I have been a part of the Bible study, The Truth Project which is produced by Focus on the Family.  This study opened my eyes up to how our world, government, family, community, and basically, every aspect of our lives is based on Truth.  The Truth being the Word of God.  I have a whole new outlook on everything that is around me.  Either something is Truth, or it is not.  And the things that are not Truth are worthless and will soon pass away like the wind. Truth will reign forever and everything done with that basis of Truth will never go away.

This new outlook I have on Truth in our world has caused some discontent within me about The River.  I came to this radio station with the expectation of receiving Truth through the words that are spoken.  I’m disappointed that the station has committed to giving the listeners The River Positive Thought everyday, but has not committed to reading the words of Scripture everyday on air.  As I stated earlier, words that are not Truth will pass away like the wind, but Truth will last forever.  So, I think my misconception is whether The River classifies itself as a Christian radio station or as a positive station. I’ve tried looking on the website and listening to the other DJs and I realize that the station doesn’t specifically call itself Christian.  I do not intend for this email to be negative, I think I would just like some clarification so that I can know what to expect.

If, indeed, The River is just a positive station, then I’d like to encourage you to keep on being positive. If The River is a Christian station, then I would like to encourage you to speak the Truth and not to be ashamed of it because those are the words that are going to last forever.

Praying for you and The River,
Lindsey Howell

Bloop, Bloop!