Follow Jesus. Lead the church. Change the world.
I recently wrote about Andy Stanley’s book, Choosing to Cheat (see “Choosing to Cheat” 1.0) (this book was republished in 2011 as When Work and Family Collide: Keeping Your Job from Cheating Your Family). As I said, I want to share some personal reflections on how Joleen and I plan to cheat strategically so that … Read more
Today, we experienced our first Sunday worship gathering together as a family. First of all, Randy and I never get to worship together on Sundays, so what a treat it was for the two of us, let alone the three of us! We attended Faith UMC. The 11:00 am service worked well with Ethan getting … Read more
Awhile back, I read Choosing to Cheat: Who Wins When Family and Work Collide? by Andy Stanley (this book was republished in 2011 as When Work and Family Collide: Keeping Your Job from Cheating Your Family). The book is must-reading for anyone who is busy AND has a family! Incidentally, I try to read everything … Read more
Ethan’s absence was especially felt last Christmas. Christmas is such a special time for children, and because the time of our going to get Ethan was so close, we decided that in order for us (Randy and I) to survive the holiday, we would celebrate Christmas when Ethan was home with us. So, we left … Read more
While our story, our journey, as a family is just getting started with Ethan, we thought you might like to know what the rest of the legal process entails for us. Over the next few months, our caseworker from Adoption Horizons will make three post-placement visits (our first one is scheduled in about two weeks). … Read more
I started to call this post A Rough Day. Much of the day was committed to Ethan’s first doctor visit since leaving Korea (he had just seen a doctor before being released to us on February 12). We wanted to get his medical record started here (in fact, we made today’s appointment before going to … Read more
While we were in Korea, we reported on our experiences with The Holy Flames Methodist Church (a congregation of around 2,000 people) and Kwanglim Methodist Church (which, we’re told is the largest Methodist Church in the world with a congregation of at least 70,000 people, although we’ve seen higher numbers online, too). If you missed … Read more
If bringing a child into our family and dealing with the adjustment issues that go along with an international adoption from Korea were not enough, it’s time for both of us to resume our work on our dissertations on Tuesday (God willing!). As some of you may recall, we had just submitted a rough draft … Read more
Ethan’s big challenge right now is having to train two new, sometimes clueless, parents! 😆 Think about it, Ethan had invested six months (of his 8-month-old life) in training a foster mother (an experienced mother of three grown children) to read his signals and meet his needs. Now he has to start all over with … Read more
One of the things I was fascinated by while we were in Korea was the special mirrors that were on many of the vehicles, mirrors I’d never seen before (see photos below). And there’s a good reason for these mirrors — in the second largest metropolitan area in the world (with nearly 4 times as … Read more