Our adoption journey...

If you watched our last post (the smile box video) you heard the great news.... 11/1/11 was our Gotcha Day!  We  have been blessed to be able to raise this sweet little girl from the time she was just a week old.    There were times when it wasn't easy, but as with all of our children there are days both good and bad!   Thankfully God is gracious and never gives us more than we can handle!

  And wonderfully God's grace is sufficient for all! 

  I want to share a few photos and stories with you....the day we took her home from the hospital one of our children, having just had a foster placement abruptly end, said they would help care for this child but could not commit to LOVING her.After about 6 weeks the child said "Mom, I am starting to fall in love with her".  This was true of all of our hearts, you love knowing that it may hurt if the child is reunified or placed elsewhere. We pondered the truth, that really each of our children is not our own but God's whom HE loves and desires the best for even more than we do!   (Jer 29:11)    

As sweet as that is, the journey of fostering has reminded us so often of God's love for us, no matter what.  He loves us no matter where we are.  He is always there waiting for us whatever choices we or others make.   He calls us to love even if its not easy!  That is a hard thing to allow your children to learn~ our instinct is to protect them from hurt, but in doing so we often prevent them from the deeper love that God desires to pour out!

 We are reminded that all of us have been adopted, into Christ's family! (Rom 8:15)  We are his children whom he loves very much!  People have asked us how can you love a child that isn't your "own" (meaning biological)  well since this is our first adoption, our other 5 children are biological, so I didn't know.  God has poured such peace (I Tim 1:14) over my heart this week and we prayed during this journey that God would grow children he desired to be in our family in our hearts (instead of my womb) and we truly feel that  this little one is loved just as much as all of our other children.
When asked if we were willing to adopt her at one of the meetings last year, one of our children with great concern worried it would be too expensive.  The child firmly stated that all the money the children had been saving to purchase a wii should be spent on Grace instead!  WOW what a blessing to know the children love this little one so much they are willing to put aside their own desires!  She has a special place in each of our hearts.  As thrilled as we are to know she is now ours, we know that her biological family misses her and loves her and we pray that God will pour out his compassion on them.  We are so thankful for her mom's gift of life for this precious child. The whole family (including both sets of grandparents) were able to be in court and witness the welcoming of this child into our forever family!

 Each of the children have grown to love her and are wonderful big brothers and sisters! They each got a sibling bracelet to commemorate this special day of welcoming their little sister :)

We were honored to have our adoption on the first day of November, 

National adoption month,

   we were even more honored to have good friends the Quittshcreibers join us as they celebrated their one year anniversary that day of being in a Russian court for the adoption of 2 of their children!   A special day indeed!

 Grandma K "Gigi" was a huge help being here for this busy weekend!

 And Grandpa K "Papa" too!  What a blessing to have them be a part of this special day!

 Grandpa and Grandma Q (who were foster parents while Steve was growing up) were here too (it worked out great that they are staying in the area so they could be here!)  God is so good to work out even those details!

 Sisters are special, as her 2 older sisters help love, train, and care for her she is very blessed to have such wonderful role models to look up too! 

We are so thrilled that we are able to officially welcome the "little sister" into our family!!!

Thanks for all your prayers and support through the last 2 years!   If you have any questions on fostering or adoption we would LOVE to talk to you!  please pass this information onto anyone who maybe interested along with our email moquak@gmail.com and we look forward to helping the 140,000,000 orphans of of the world find forever families too! (James 1:27)

As the starfish story goes ~ we can't take care of all of them by ourselves ~ but we can take care of this one, with God's love and pray others will answer his call too!  

Steve and Amy Q and family

www.quakflock.blogspot.com

Blessing others - DAY 3

One of the things we have learned is that when you intend to bless someone.... you are often the one who is blessed! That's exactly what happened to us today.

We are enjoying the amazing "hills" here well, most of us, the baby is not so fond of them and seems to feel better by emptying her stomach on the curves - poor thing! Actually poor siblings sitting next to her!
This tunnel was a hand picked tunnel -- (made by picking away at the rock!) pretty amazing to realize how hard it was to get around years ago and how much we take our modern roads, tunnels etc for granted! We are in coal country and have learned a lot about the hard life so many here have lived. The towns here are dying as the mining has changed over the years. So sad to see towns so vacant and falling apart.

Wednesday Project:
#1 Paint bedroom at home of the C's

• WORKERS: Q family and Mr and Mrs C
• STATUS: completed!
  

We were blessed to help an elderly couple today paint two rooms in their home. As we worked the children were thrilled that Mamaw (Mrs. C ) kept offering kool-aid and cartoons! They were great painters too. We got both rooms primed then painted (bright cheery colors i might add!) in less that 5 hours!


#2 Paint family room at home

• WORKERS: Q family and Mr and Mrs C
• STATUS: completed, with the exception of some trim which needed to be painted white yet - Mr C will finish that another day
  

The kids enjoyed helping but didn't mind when they got to take tv breaks -- a very special treat as we don't often watch them. Here they are showing off their work -- though this room was almost entirely painted by Mr C. He was such a hard worker! We could hardly keep up with him. What a lesson in hard work -- he has breathing issues (from years of working in the mines) but he wouldn't sit down and take a break! Perseverance we saw demonstrated before our very eyes today!
this is an old tool used long ago in the mines - Eugene or "Huber" as Mr. C called him :) worked hard to "dig" down with it, he did well too!
Here is the work crew. Mrs C loved having some girls in the house. We made some news friends today. We were there to bless them but their hearts and kindness blessed us!
Lord may we be thankful for what you have blessed us with, family, health and so many earthly possessions. May our eyes not get stuck down looking at all our stuff but may we look up to you and give you praise and honor and glory for the things of heaven which really mater! AMEN