New Attitude Photos

I've posted a few photos that I took from New Attitude over at our photo blog. Check it out if you're interested. I'll post more about the weekend later.

New Attitude

Today, Tricia and I are leaving for Louisville, KY to attend the New Attitude conference. New Attitude is a conference that was originally designed for singles (and this year they opened it up to young married couples as well). YEAH! They still consider us young!

The topic of this year's conference is discernment, and speakers include Josh Harris, C.J. Mahaney, Mark Dever, Al Mohler and John Piper. We're really looking forward to spending the weekend with 3,000 other people at this conference.

One of the drives of this conference is helping young people to embrace "Humble Orthodoxy." In other words, a desire to have "a commitment to believing, living, and representing the truth with humility" (Got that from Bob Kauflin's blog. Not sure where he got it. Probably from Josh or someone like that.)

See you on Wednesday.

Prayers for this week...

Hi Everyone,

There really hasn't been much happening on the Adoption front lately.  There is a reason, which I will explain here.

For the past 7 years, we've attended what we think is the best church on the planet, CrossWay.  Well, CrossWay is planning on planting a church in Milwaukee in the next 9 months to a year, and Tricia and I are considering going.  This would mean a move for us, since our desire is to be physically close to our church.  As you can probably imagine, this may have an impact on the adoption process.  We're trying to figure that out right now.

I think it's a situation of this:  should we decide to go on the plant, we feel we should decide before long.  We don't want to be in a position of adopting a child, and then moving to Milwaukee right away.  I think we'd rather move first, then start the home-studies, etc.

So, at this point, there is no movement on the Adoption, and there may not be for a few weeks till we figure out this whole Milwaukee thing.

In light of that, would you please pray for us for:

• Wisdom.  We want to do the right thing and make the right decisions for the right reasons.
• Patience.  I think we're realizing that the questions are a lot easier to ask than they are to answer.
• Clarity. 
  

Thanks for reading.  (And for praying)

Adoptive Dad's

This is a resource site for guys connected to adoption or foster care at any level. Whether you're an adoptive or foster dad yourself, or have siblings, in-laws, friends, or even children thinking about/investigating/diving head–first into adoption or foster care, this site's for you. Welcome!

I'm still evaluating this, but here's the link.  If you have any comments, please let me know.

http://adoptivedads.org/

Moore Than a Birthday

Five years ago today my oldest son, Benjamin, was born. Five years ago on June 19th my middle son, Timothy, was born. I missed both days. I didn't send out any "It's a Boy" notices. I didn't deliver flowers to my wife. I don't even know what I was doing on those days in May and June of 2001, except probably writing away on my dissertation. It's not that I was a deadbeat dad five years ago. I just wasn't a dad. I missed my sons' births because I didn't know they were born.

Read More: http://henryinstitute.org/commentary_read.php?cid=236

Friday's Meeting

I just wanted to provide a quick update on the meeting we had on Friday.  We met with the Special Needs Adoption coordinator for the state of Wisconsin for about an hour on Friday.  It was primarily a "get to know you" type of thing, so not too much pressure.  She asked us some questions about why we are pursuing this, etc. 

The worker walked in, and said "I love the color of your Kitchen.  If it were up to me, I'd approve you right now."  That really set the tone of the meeting.  She said that she was impressed by how much we'd done our homework, and already invested in the process. 

Cool.

So from here, we should get an application in the mail in a few weeks, then fill it out, send it back in, they'll review it and if all goes well, we'll have a caseworker assigned to us by June.

Prayer Requests

• That we'd remain faith-filled in this process.
• That all glory and honor for "success" would be God's.
• That Tricia and I would be discerning, and seek God's will for other decisions that need to be made regarding our lives (both in light of the adoption and not.)

Thanks for reading!

A bad experience...

After we sent out our big e-mail a few weeks back, a friend responded with some encouragement and some warning for us.  I asked his permission to share this.  I've edited some of it for length.

We looked into this ourselves & were considering it fairly last year. We found that the social worker doing the home study, even though it was through a "religious" organization was really put off by us being forthright with our Christianity. It's fine to be a Christian as long as it doesn't affect the rest of your life, especially child rearing. There's a lot of psychologizing and they really buy into it in a major way.

We found that our interest in seeking help through the church first was a negative thing in their eyes as they wanted to hear that we would run to a psychologist for treatment and have a child on psychotropic drugs long-term. They were so concerned about our gospel focus that they wanted to have us go through a psychological eval. After all, no one who would go to the church instead of turning to a psychologist (the priests of the humanist religion) could possibly be fit to parent.  The interesting thing was that they were amazed at how well behaved Ruth was and how much she loved her mom & dad, which should have been a clue to them.

If they catch wind that you don't buy into their religion (psychology) they will not give a favorable home study. Even with regular adoption though they really probe on the spanking issue & if they find out you spank they say you're an abuser and won't write a favorable study until you go through brainwashing to learn more appropriate (self-esteem building) parenting methods. We were actually told that there is absolutely no instance in which it is ever appropriate to spank a child as it was tantamount to abuse. So, the best thing I can say from our experience is be as shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.

 
I'll post more of his thoughts later.  They're intriguing...

This is not the kind of news we like to hear...

Adoption Scam Leaves Wis. Family Heartbroken

Lauren Leamanczyk

 

CAMPBELLSPORT - A Campbellsport family is heartbroken after becoming victims of an international adoption agency.

Mark and Heather Demmon decided about two years ago to share their home with a needy child. They found two little girls from Guatemala named Flor and Linda.

The adoption agency with the girls' case was Minnesota-based Reaching Arms International. They started the process last June. Now, nearly a year later, the Demmons are out $30,000 and they still have no child. The couple told their story to TODAY'S TMJ4 reporter Lauren Leamanczyk.
 

Read the rest of the story here...