Happy Birthday Luana................She turned 9 years old today!

Donei with his friend Clayton

We are down to our last week here at CLM............Our final court hearing is scheduled for next Monday the 23rd and we will have to be in Curitiba (4 hours away) on the 24th. Going to Curitiba next week will begin our slow journey home. We will have to stay in Curitiba for 7 days until we leave for Rio on the 31st. In Rio we have to receive Donie's visa from the consulate which is scheduled on Sept. 1st to get things going and then we will pick it up on Sept 3rd. We leave for home on Sept 5th and will be arriving in Cleveland on Sept 6th @ 930am.
Wow! Hard to fathom what the next few weeks will look like.

Today is little Luana's birthday.............:(


Here at CLM because there are so many birthdays with all these kids, missionaries, etc.....they usually group several birthdays together and always celebrate on Sundays big dinner day (they prepare meat on Sundays).
So on Saturday Mary Cochran and I spent the afternoon in the kitchen preparing a very large cake made from scratch! We had to bake 4 (four) 9X13 pans to make the cake large enough to serve over 50 people.
The birthday was for not only Luana but for Lindsay Cochran also.
We had a good time making the cake and Mike Cochran added such a beautiful touch with his creative decorating help! That man has so many talents we still continue to see come out!!!!!
Sunday was I admit an emotional day for me as we celebrated Luana's birthday. I was hoping to celebrate her birthday as being part of our family this year................I was holding it together pretty good until Mary Cochran was asked to pray for the girls...........of course Mary & I both are very emotional and Mary started to break down which caused me to break down.............Mary loves Luana so much and she wants to see Luana in our family just as much as we do........that way like Donei~ she will always be in their lives. I came back to the house to lay down for awhile because now I have a "crying headache" .......I had a lot of those this last year! :))
Awhile longer Steve walks in with Luana and she comes into the bedroom and gets in bed with me and we cuddled for at least 45min............It felt so good holding her in my arms.........

Things are going beautifully with Donei and its just amazing how much we have bonded as a family~ He is so much like his Dad its not even funny! Same sense of humor (sorry to some who are rolling their eyes!) :))
A lot of the same "likes" in life. God has truly blessed US with a wonderful son.
I was writing in my journal the other day and reflecting about our journey that started over a year ago~
When I lay all the facts out about everything is sure doesn't measure up with what you would "think" things should be like~ That is the beauty of what God's plans look like so many times~ My loosing you?
For instance~ We visited CLM last year for two weeks. I really didn't have much one on one with Donei at all, Donei and Steve spent more time together working around CLM. It was that very thing that blessed me and started my love for Donei. I watched them interact together, work alongside together, I had pictured them THEN as father and son. That blessed me to watch that~ So we leave CLM in April 2009 with NO contact with Donei (or Luana) for over a year................We only lived through Mike and Mary for emails, pictures, stories, etc......we sent gifts and letters again through Mike and Mary........yet we longed for these kids, cried (mostly me!) for these kids, worked hard to prepare for these kids. So how would anyone be able to feel so in love with a child they really only knew for 2 weeks?
I am in awe at what the Lord has done in our lives! We will never be the same! Why am I so amazed at what God has done in my family? I know he is the Lord of ALL creation and he is in the "Heart Business," yet I stand amazed at how he has brought our family together. GOD has been preparing our hearts for over a year~ Preparing our hearts for becoming a family, He united our hearts as a mother/son as a father/son and sisters/brother and as ONE FAMILY~
When I was writing all this in my journal I even stopped to ask myself~ Do you really love him as much as your daughters or am I just living in a fairy tale? I made myself stop and just feel my heart................I said, "Alyssa" and I felt my love for Alyssa in my heart..........I said, "Stephanie" and again I felt my love for Stephanie in my heart......I then said, "Donei" and my heart felt exactly the same feeling.................He is my son!
I believe every time I cried and prayed for him these last 15 months since I last saw him, that God was taking my tears and pouring them back into my heart to fill my heart with love for him. It is only from God~ who can duplicate this supernatural kind of love~
Yes, we are in the honeymoon stage of life right now (as people need to remind us of this all the time.......why?) but you know what~ I am going to praise God for where we are now and enjoy every moment!

My boy loves driving the tractor around the farm......we keep joking about how instead of a car for his 16th birthday we're gonna buy him a tractor!

 

 

Maria Joanna (18years old) with Steve. Maria has been washing our clothes for us while at CLM.