Entries from February 2008 ↓

I think I am going wrap up this discussion of the kind of culture we want to shape in our home with this post. I’m sure there are parts I’ve missed but I think what I’ve written so far is more than enough to get us started!

“Everything we have is a gift from God. Everything.” (Sweet)

Shaping a Trustee Culture. In a trustee culture, people see themselves as having been entrusted with gifts and resources from God to be used in ways that honor God and further God’s work in the world. IOW, our stuff is not really our stuff, it is a gift from God to be used wisely.

Good stewardship has always been important to us. We’ve written about Teaching Good Money Management and Our Best Money Practices.

Leonard Sweet talks about trusteeship in his book, SoulSalsa …

God owns everything: the cattle, the car, the IRA, the TIAA-CREF. You and I own nothing. Not even ourselves. … We prove our nonownership when we die. You can’t take it with you because it isn’t yours to begin with.

Shaping a trustee culture will require us to be good trustees (or stewards) ourselves. Then we will need to teach Ethan to view himself as a trustee — someone blessed by God to use his God-given resources in ways that honor God.

Well, as I said, this will wrap up a look at the kind of culture we want to shape in our home. Previously, I wrote about shaping a God-centered culture, a learning culture, a high AQ culture, a leadership culture, and a servant culture.

This series has given us an opportunity to be intentional about the kind of culture we want to shape, but now it’s time to put it into to practice with Ethan!

This week has been quite an emotional roller coaster!

On Monday we experienced great relief when we emailed drafts of our final two chapters to our mentor. On Tuesday we were elated when we received the call informing us that our baby was ready for travel.

Wednesday through Friday, though, were spent tying up loose ends before going on parental leave next week and trying to make travel arrangements.

We both hit bottom, emotionally, Friday evening when we seemed to hit a wall with the travel plans – a ticket agent at Northwest made life miserable for Joleen. Fortunately, the second person she worked with was extremely helpful! Many thanks to Cindy, our caseworker at Adoption Horizons, who provided the info and the help we needed at just the right time (in between calls to Northwest).

Even as we look ahead, we are filled with mixed emotions. Mostly, we’re excited about meeting and receiving Ethan. But it will be several days before we meet him, due to the holidays in Korea.

It will also take us a long time to get there – about 25 hours including two layovers. We are grateful the return trip will be much shorter, since  baby Ethan will be in tow! It is scheduled to take about 18 hours (mainly due to much shorter layovers). And we have no idea what that trip will be like!

All of that said, visiting and experiencing the Korean culture, then meeting (and later receiving) our baby, will make the long trip worth it!

Thanks for your prayers, past, present, and future!

Our itinerary is finally coming together. We will fly to Korea on Tuesday (2/5) and will return on Thursday of the following week (2/14).

That’s a day earlier than we were planning to go, but due to the holidays, we were not able to book a flight on 2/6 — we either had to go 2/5 or wait till 2/9. We decided to move it up a day!

It has taken us a few days to get our travel arrangements together, but we finally purchased our plane tickets through Northwest Airlines, using their using their adoption fares. Actually, the rate really wasn’t any better than what we could have gotten online (a good site that searches a number of flight search sites at once is kayak.com). But because we needed to to customize our flight arrangements (i.e. return with a baby), we needed to call the airline directly.

Unfortunately, our lodging is still up in the air, though. We hope to find out on Monday if our request to stay at the “guest house” (available for families adopting children) has been granted. If it’s not available, we’ll need to make other last-minute (and more expensive) arrangements.

Part of our challenge this week has been coordinating our visit with Rev. Jun, with whom we will be working on our cross-cultural experience. But we believe we have that schedule pretty well completed as well.

We are scheduled to arrive in Seoul, Korea on Wednesday night (Korea time). We will have Thursday through Saturday on our own — seeing the sites, experiencing the Lunar New Year holidays. On Sunday, we will worship with Rev. Jun and Flame Methodist Church. We expect to meet our son on Monday and spend a few hours with him at his foster family’s home.

Tuesday and Wednesday will be devoted mostly to our cross-cultural experience, and possibly hitting some shops that were closed during the holidays. Then, we will return on Thursday with our baby in our arms.

Well, that’s the plan. It certainly looks to be an adventurous time!