"Joy in the Congo" on 60 Minutes

I never watch 60 minutes, but whenever it goes over, it runs into my recording of The Amazing Race. So here I am, getting ready to watch last weeks episode, and imagine my surprise when (as usual) 60 Mintues runs over into my recording, but up pops a whole segment on an amazing orchestra that is from the DRC!!  It is so amazing, and I can only hope that we get to go there, we get to go see one of their shows!  This is such an amazing story, definitely worth the time to watch the whole thing!

WyldLife

Another HUGE part of my husband and I's lives, besides Adoption/Orphan Awareness is youth ministry, especially Jr. High ministry. That's actually how we met! We were both leaders, I worked for my church, and he worked for WyldLife, which is the Jr. High level of YoungLife. We were both Chaperoning a lock-in, and two days after that, we were dating! We both are still leaders for Wyldlife. We absolutely love getting to hang out with these kids, the the best part is getting to share Christ with them! Yes, I love getting to act crazy, forget how old I really am, laugh, listen to all their stories of who likes who and so on, but knowing that I might be the only person to tell them that Jesus loves them is an incredible feeling! (and also a very scary feeling at times too!) This has also been a wonderful way to pass the time of waiting until we get our referral! I'm just gonna take all that extra love that I've been saving up for our future kids and pass it on to these guys :) 

Spring Weather!

 We have been having awesome weather!

Especially for March!

 We have been spending tons of time outside- the kids are loving it!

I think it's making Josiah a little crazy :)

The only thing that would make it better is having one or two kids from the DRC with us!

Can't wait to add to our family! 

Connecting Hearts Conference

My husband and I got the chance to go to an orphan care conference over the weekend, along with other families from our church. It is so awesome to be able to learn together with other people in your own town and church family, coming together to get as much information as we can hoping to make a difference and also maybe getting to help educate others around us in the future!

Brad and I actually split up for two of the three electives, which was great, all the more info soak up!

One elective I took was about adopting/helping children with HIV. I've heard of this organization before (Project Hopeful), but when I saw that the founder of Project Hopeful and mother of HIV/AIDS adopted children was leading the class, I decided to go get some info. Before this class, I would have said that I would NEVER even consider adopting a children affected by HIV or AIDS, but now that I have more info, it is definitely not a NO anymore. 

There is still so much more that I would like to learn before ever making that kind of decision, but I am so glad that I got the chance to hear her speak and learn a little more about something that I was pretty ignorant about. Here is a commercial her family and organization made hoping to get the word out!

So all in the all, the conference was great! Learned a lot about attachment issues, ways to finance an adoption, what is the church's roll in orphan care, and much more! I look forward to great things coming from our little Central Illinois community and can't to see how God is going to work!

Dossier Completed...CHECK!

Well, today was the BIG day! I made my way to FedEx and sent off a nice little packet made up of 6 months of work! Yes, it took us a little longer than most, but that's ok. God's timing is perfect! 

The G.O.S.P.E.L Explained

I Love Jesus. I know He Loves Me!

I know how Salvation works and I know that what I believe is the Truth.

What I am not good at is explaining it elegantly or in a way that I feel moves people. 

I'm just not good with words.

But here is someone that is, and I think he explains pretty good. 

I saw saw this video a while ago, but forgot to share with everyone on here.

So here you go, enjoy, and please listen closely, because what he's saying is pretty amazing and True!

Immunizations!

Well Today Brad and I went to get our immunizations! I'm very excited because that means we're one step closer....but on the other hand, my arms now feel like jello and that I've been beat up! I'm sure once that feeling goes away, I'll be back to excited! 

AND.... we are just waiting on one paper to get sent to us, and our dossier is complete! YAY! It took 6 months to get everything together, but I'm SURE it will all be worth it in the end! 

Almost There!

Well everyone, I think I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel! Well, at least as far as our dossier goes. We just need one more thing notarized and our fingerprints to come back... hopefully, they don't take too long! I have seen some people's come back very fast and others....well, not so fast.  As soon as that happens, we can send everything in! It feels like this stage of the adoption has taken us forever to get to, but it really has only been 5 months since we started working on our dossier. And when you take a step back and look at the big picture, that's not that long! Well that's our update for now! Hopefully in the next month we'll have more news to share! 

In other news...the Midwest has finally gotten it's first real snow!

Not that I really like snow, I actually don't, but it is January now, and I guess Winter just wouldn't be the same without it!

Merry Christmas From The Kniep's

Hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Because we sure did!

We are so blessed to have so many family members who live around us!

And to top it all off- a family who celebrates the real meaning of Christmas!

JESUS!

*****

We are so excited to see what next year holds for us! 

Can't wait to see who God decides to put in our family! 

We are so close to having all of our paperwork ready to send in...and after that...waiting list! 

Bring on 2012!

Kisses From Katie

I just finished reading this book last week.

I have to say, that next to the Bible, it was one of the best books I have read.

I've read her blog for years, and like many people, I think we had a lot of questions of how she got to where she is today. The book answers answers all the questions, plus gives such  great insight to this girls heart for not only orphans, but for people in general. You can't help but read it and think, "I can do more!" My mind was just racing with ideas of how I could help people, and not just through adoption and other Christian organizations, but people in my very own community. 

If you haven't heard of Katie Davis, or read her blog about the work she is doing in Uganda, here is the link to her blog: http://kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com/

If you want to purchase a book, here is the link to her organization: Amazima.org

Keeping Busy

Luckily for me...I have plenty of things in my life to keep me occupied from not thinking about adoption related stuff all the time! We have two kids, two dogs, two businesses, and one lizard. Yes, that's right, we have one Bearded Dragon named Izzy.

Meet Izzy

You could say he was one of those random purchases where not much thought went into it. 

We actually went to get some new fish for our tank...and there they were, little baby Bearded Dragons just looking up at me asking me to take them home. 

Here he is as a baby...so tiny!

Thanks to Izzy I have one more thing to take care of, which is great because I have been a little down lately about our adoption. It is so frustrating when there are things we could be doing if only we had the funds to do it! But like I said before, I know that God knows when our little one will arrive, and I'm not going to worry about it!

I have to laugh at myself when I'm getting out all our lizard supplies...calcium and vitamin powder, which I have to "dust" the live crickets in before I feed them to Izzy. (That definitely took some getting use to). And then let's not forget about the cricket food- I have to buy about 50 or so crickets, which last a few days, but they have to have food to stay alive that long. I NEVER thought I would be a mother of 2, dusting crickets in calcium powder and feeding them to a lizard...Yes, I'm strange :)

But Izzy has made a great addition to our family. We love him, the kids especially!

I think we'll keep him :)

Asleep In The Light

Keith Green has to be one of my favorite Christian Artists of all time. Yes, I admit, I still love to listen to 70's and 80's music, actually that's probably most of what I listen to. And to top it off, I love to listen to it on my record player...I think I was born in the wrong era!

This song, Asleep in the Light, still brings me to tears every time I listen to it. The words are so convicting, I can't help but listen to it, and immediately pray that God can use me to share Christ with others. I just finished listening to one his records for the um-teenth time this week- so I thought I would share it with you all!

New Schedules...

Sorry for the lack of posting lately...Our lives are crazy! So much has changed for us in the past couple months. I'm hoping we get use to the new routine soon! Some new things in our lives are....

*Josiah is going to school two mornings a week
*We opened a new business here in Morton (mortonrentals.com)
*We are working with Wyldlife again (Jr. high youth group)
*I work at church on Wednesday nights with 2 and 3 year olds.
*Josiah will be starting hockey in a few weeks

And I'm sure there are other random things here and there, but those are the newest additions.

As far as our adoption goes...well you can just about imagine how much extra time we have to do paperwork! We are hoping to get our dossier sent out within the month, which would be great so our agency can start translating it into French and ready to send over to the DRC.

One new thing for our adoption is that now people can make a tax-deductable donation to us to help cover some our adoption costs. I just want to make it clear that we are not asking for money, but there has been a few people who have asked about it, so we went ahead and got an agency to partner with us and set up an account for us. All the info is to the left of the screen, or if anyone has any questions, please ask me!!

I really hope I can have some more news about our adoption soon!! I can't wait for our paperwork to get done, so we can get on a wait list as soon as possible!! But I am trying to just trust the Lord, and remember that his timing is perfect!

Sibling Love

 My babies are 4 and 2! I can't believe it!

 Sy tries to kiss his sister....

...She wants nothing to do with it!

Josiah and Novea's Birthday

The best part about the the kid's birthdays being so close is:

Only having 1 cake!!!

I'm sure she covered the cake in spit :) 

It was SO hot outside, we were all sweating, but the kids had fun anyway! 

We are so thankful to all of our family who care so much about our kids!

We love you guys! 

Pizza Mania

If anyone knows me well, they know that I am a sucker for children's books, puzzles, games, or anything else they sell at Barnes and Noble or The School House. With all this non-summer like weather we have been having I thought it would be fun to go find some new new stuff to do inside, and of course I found a couple things :) One thing I found is this game and I love it so much I'm actually going to blog about it! It's called Pizza Mania, and it is pre-k age game learning the basics of math. Each kid gets their own pizza crust with four different toppings, and they have to listen to what the chef tells them to do. For example add two peppers, or take away one mushroom and so on. Sy and his friend Olivia LOVED it!! Novea, just wanted to make pizza, and it's great for that too :)

Khaki Kangaroos

I can't believe my little guy is old enough to be playing tball and soccer! I use to take kids I babysat to these programs and I'm taking my own kids! So crazy!

Summer Pictures

Just some pictures from this past week :)

The kids love to help great grandma and grandpa miller plant their garden!

So I just figured out how to post stuff from my phone. Thought I better test it out with a cute picture of Sy!