Prayer Requests for Travel

As we are gearing up to leave, many things have been on our hearts and minds as we contemplate going to Africa. I'm going to list the prayer requests below, in no particular order of importance :)

1. That all of our documents will be at the Embassy for our appointment at 2pm on July 1st.

2. For our health while we are away. Because we've immunized against EVERY possible thing that we can, basically our biggest risk at this point is food borne illness. Think drinking the water in Cozumel, but 10 times worse and that is what we're talking about. Ick!

3. For us to be aware of every opportunity that the Lord sets before us. We don't want to miss out on a single thing that He wants to show us or teach us.

4. For our transition with Joshua and Josiah to go well. There is always the potential risk of attachment issues. We've prayed against these issues, but know that it is a possibility that we have to be aware of. We just ask that you would pray and ask the Lord to bind our hearts together. Please specifically pray for Jessica and Christopher's transition with their new brothers. As exciting as this is, this is still a HUGE change for them.

5. For our meeting with the twins' Ethiopian family to go well. For the Lord to grant them peace over the decision that they've made and that our meeting will be a blessing to them.

5. For no lost luggage!!

That's all for now - thanks for being faithful to pray for us :)

-Heather

Final Countdown

Remember that song? It's the FINAL COUNTDOWN to our departure Friday morning. As I sit here typing this, I keep reminding myself that we only 3 full days left until we fly across the world to pick up our sons.

God is so unbelievably amazing! When I read back through our blog, I'm reminded over and over and over again how faithful He has been. When we're walking with the Lord and asking Him to guide our steps, it will be harder to walk in the wrong direction. God gives us the free choice to choose Him or another. However, when we choose Him, he requires that we give Him our All. Not 1% or 99%, but 100% of who we are must be completely abandoned to Him.

This journey is not about us or who we are or even about Joshua and Josiah. What is is about, is God. 100%, totally about the Lord. Our family is simply the tool that He is using to do His work and it has been an absolute joy to be a participant in something so amazing. I love how God does the most truly amazing stuff to show us exactly who He is :)

I'll post prayer requests tomorrow.

-Heather

Reckless Faith...

Global Food Crisis

We here in America are so blessed. As many news stations and media outlets are reporting, the food crisis is reaching new heights. I received an email this afternoon from Compassion International, asking for sponsors to commit to a day of fasting and prayer on June 25, 2008.

The statistics on the food crisis is staggering. The price for rice, beans, corn and other food staples has risen exponentially in recent months, creating extreme hardship and suffering. The higher prices are forcing people who survive on just $1 a day to spend upwards of 80 percent of their budgets just on food. As a result, many people, including millions of children, are going hungry. The longer food prices rise, the more people will be plunged into hunger and poverty. Families earning less than $2 a day cannot afford to keep up with these rising prices. There is just no margin. The impact is truly devastating and the need is so great.

Please pray with us for an end to the suffering of millions across the world who are, literally, starving to death.

For more information, please visit Compassion International at http://www.compassion.com/ and click on the information for "Global Food Crisis".

Birth Certificates

We have birth certificates for Joshua and Josiah!! Their Ethiopian birth certificates have April 16,2007 listed as their "official" birthday. I particularly love the month of April, because so many of my family members have birthdays in April. Let's see, the Johnson family now has birthdays on April 12, April 16 (Joshua and Josiah), April 18 (Mom), April 20, April 24 (Dad), April 25 , April 26 (Granddad) and NOW we have 2 new members with an April birthday. April is going to be an even busier month...

H

Video

We received new measurements today. The twins are 23 pounds and 28.5 inches tall.

I'm including a video that CWA sent to us today from a worker's recent trip to the care center in Addis Ababa. Enjoy watching the boys laughing and smiling. It's such a blessing to see them happy and carefree. Their caretakers seem to be really sweet and it blesses us to see them interracting with the twins.

Enjoy the video and PLEASE excuse the dreaded pink pants. Oh the pink!!

Much love,Heather

July 1st!!!!

Great news!! Yesterday afternoon, we received an email from Sue letting us know that we have a confirmed embassy date of Tuesday, July 1st at 2pm. YAY!!!!

We leave Austin at 6:30am on Friday, June 27th and arrive in Addis on Saturday, June 28th at 9:05pm. Our trip will look like this: Austin to Newark, Newark to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Addis Ababa. We have a 6 hour layover in Newark, which won't be any fun. However, we're going to be on our way and I doubt that a long layover in New Jersey will distract us from our joy. The great thing is that our flight leaves Newark at 5:15, which will allow us the opportunity to sleep during the nighttime flight. We're hoping that will help tremendously with the jet-lag:)

We have received plenty of balls to take with us to Addis. One of Jessica's friends is involved in Vacation Bible School this summer and their outreach this summer is...get this: "Gospel" soccer balls! So, they will be giving us a large number of soccer balls painted with the colors of salvation on it. We have another friend that owns a sporting goods store and he's donating an assortment of balls for us to take. We're so excited to deliver these to the children in Ethiopia.

That's all for now-we just wanted to share our good news with everyone!

DONATIONS NEEDED for the orphanages!!

I'm currently in the process of shopping like a mad woman! I'm trying to get together everything that we'll need in the way of OTC medicines, like Children's Advil, Tylenol and Motrin, Benadryl and various cough and cold medicines that the boys might need.

As we are getting closer to going, we've asked friends from our LINK class (Sunday School) to help us get together clothing donations (gently used) to take to the orphanages in Ethiopia. We're trying to fill up 4 large suitcases so we can bless them in a big way :) We're also trying to get donations together for soccer balls, kickballs, etc., but deflated in the packaging (which is how they come to the sporting goods stores anyway) so that we can fit as many as possible into the suitcases. We'd also like to take some frisbees.

If you feel like helping us in this effort, please contact your local sporting goods stores and ask them if they will donate deflated, brand new balls and frisbees for us to donate to the children in Ethiopia. If you are able to secure some balls and frisbees, please email me as soon as possible so that we don't get too many and have to leave some behind.

Another idea-pages and pages of small stickers for the little girls. Many Christian bookstores and scrapbooking stores have large "books" filled with tear out pages of stickers that will allow us to hand out a page of stickers to children that we see in the streets. I'd love to bless them in some small way! If you think about it, it would be wonderful if we can get Lifeway or Family Christian Bookstore to donate pages of stickers for us to take . My heart's desire is that we can take stickers with scripture on them!!

One story to share...a good friend of mine had the same court date as us, the first time around-April 23rd. It was imperative that they pass court as soon as possible, as one of her children she's adopting from Ethiopia has tuberculosis and needed to get to the US as soon as she possibly could. Well, they passed on the first try, Praise the Lord! However, they traveled on May 22nd for a May 27th court date. When they went to get her daughter's Birth Certificate and Visa, the Embassy refused to give it because of the daughter's TB infection. They have been in limbo for over a week, searching the heart of the Lord, asking for direction on what actions they should take. They are currently waiting to hear whether or not all of them will be able to come home to the US together or if their newly adopted daughter will be forced to stay behind in Ethiopia with one of the parents. Can you imagine the devastation that little girl and family must be feeling right now? To have experienced so much tragedy in her little lifetime and then see a light at the end of the tunnel, only to have something like this happen, must be very scary for her.

Feel free to send me a private email with any thoughts you might have: hflippen@austin.rr.com

Much love to all :)

Heather