Get behind me, Satan!

It is so abundantly clear that our appointment with Global Orphan Project and orphan care, in general, was a divine plan. The more we try to love people and the closer we are to Him, the more vicious the attacks from the enemy become.

My family has been under spiritual attack for over a week now. I won't get into all the details.
I will tell you, though, that when we see the events as what they truly are, it almost makes you laugh at Satan's attempts to rule. There have been a good amount of tears shed and some ugly words shouted. There has been a degree of persecution that was initially very hurtful.

John 15:18-25 talks about the world's hatred toward Jesus and His followers. I love verse 25: "But this happened that the word might be fulfilled which is written in the law...."

I believe God makes all things good and He will prevail in my family's sufferings. I am choosing this morning to meditate on the holiness of our Creator and Sustainer.

Psalms 148 (this is the chapter I want to memorize---Thank you, David Platt)
PRAISE THE LORD!
Praise the Lord from the heavens; Praise Him in the heights!
Praise Him, all His angels; Praise Him, all His hosts!
Praise Him, sun and moon; Praise Him, all you stars of light!
Praise Him, you heavens of heavens, and you waters above the heavens!

Let them PRAISE THE NAME OF THE LORD,
For He commanded and they were created.
He also established them forever and ever; He made a decree which shall not pass away.

Praise the Lord from the earth
You great sea creatures and all the depths; Fire and hail, snow and clouds;
Stormy wind, fulfilling His word;
Mountains and all hills; Fruitful trees and all cedars;
Beasts and all cattle; Creeping things and flying fowl;
Kings of the earth and all peoples; Princes and all judges of the earth;
Both young men and maidens; Old men and children.

Let them PRAISE THE NAME OF THE LORD,
For His name alone is exalted; His glory is above the earth and heaven.
And He has exalted the horn of His people, the praise of all His saints-
Of the children of Israel, a people dear to Him.

PRAISE THE LORD!

The face of an angel

I saw a picture today of the 3 children I posted about last week. I'm not sure who their forever family is, but they will be so lucky. These children are beautiful. God has been preparing my heart for this adoption, because when I look at them, I love them. I can see how possible it is to love someone who did not physically grow inside you and get all their DNA from you. The little boy reminds me of Evan and the little girls of Claire and Sophie. They are barely younger than our 3----it's almost like a parallel universe or something. If there were no privacy laws, I would post their beautiful faces on my blog.

I'm excited to hear that 5 families are interested in adopting these children. I know I won't forget them soon.

Come run for the children!

Just in case you have missed our repeated announcements on facebook, email, etc:

5K Race and 1 Mile Fun Run/Walk at the Elms Resort and Spa on Saturday, May 15 at 9:00AM.
$25 before May 1 and $30 after. 100% of the money-every single penny-goes directly to the building of our home(s). Check out the Global Orphan web site and see how their overhead costs are funded by private investors, so that YOUR MONEY is available only to the children who need it! 100%!

Let me know if you need registration forms. We are getting our pre-order sent in for t-shirts this week~

Look forward to seeing you all out there! I plan on beating you all anyway (NOT!). :)

For the kids,
Wendy


One more thing:

I re-learned in small group this weekend a great piece of God's word:

Your heart will always be where your treasure is. Luke 12:34

Where's your treasure? On Earth? In Heaven? In STUFF?

Look what we did

Jason had a cool idea for our blog tonight. Check out the youtube video we created......pretty neat. Now, go ahead and do some google searching for yourself and get the ball rolling!

Stuck in my head

I've got a song stuck in my head.

"You will be safe in His arms, You will be safe in His arms...
The Hands that hold the world are holding your heart.
This is a promise He made,
He will be with you always.
When everything is falling apart,
You will be safe in His arms."

That's for you, you 3 precious souls created in His image. I'm sending my love to Jesus, the orphan, today. What a beautiful creature He is~stained and dirty clothes, malnourished bellies and all.

Speechless

All I can say is that the orphan crisis leaves me just mad some days. I'm not sure what makes me more angry:

~The fact that there are not enough willing souls to give up their life for these helpless children,

OR

~The complete lack of facts that 99% of people actually know about why children become orphans.

It makes me angry that people want to believe that the blood is not on their hands, so to speak, because the people of Africa (or elsewhere, even in the US) bring their demise unto themselves (at least, that's what so many would have you to believe).

DON'T miss this:

Proverbs 31:8-9

Open your mouth for the speechless, In the cause of all who are appointed to die. Open your mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.

I'm refusing to be quiet and guard against the reality of their world. I'm refusing to ignore it. I'm refusing to pretend that it doesn't exist. I'm refusing to say "This problem is bigger than my influence." I'm refusing to do nothing.

Today we were contacted about the opportunity to adopt a set of siblings from Ethiopia who lost their father to disease not long ago, and lost their mother to murder very recently. The agency who contacted us is not our international agency, so there is little chance these children could become our's. I'm praying on my knees for them tonight. I'm praying that their forever family finds them soon. Please pray with me.

Pray for the tiny 3-year-old boy, and the 2-and 1-year-old girls. These babies just joined the ranks of the 147 million others in the world without an anchor. They are already malnourished, and now abandoned. I don't want to hear about how hard your life is today. It's a bad day to tell me about it.

Hoping for good news, knowing it will come to these precious children one day.

Luke 6:21-

Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be filled, Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you and revile you, and cast our your name as evil, for the Son of Man's sake.

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! For indeed your reward is great in heaven, for in like manner their fathers did to the prophets.

A-M-E-N

Easter smiles

Our children got to experience their

first Easter-Egg hunt at our friends' house.

Sophie is the furthest on the left, next to Evan.

After Evan is our friend Avery and our very own Claire.

Thank you, Joey and Deana, for a great time!

We are at Mama Evelyn's house in this picture. The picture, itself, doesn't have much significance, except that I like it. My girls look so old!

Here is a look at a few of the precious moments on our Easter Sunday. This picture cracks us up.......Claire always has to throw in a goofy face for the camera. She still looks beautiful, though. Evan got to get another wear out of his wedding suit and Sophie is wearing the exact same dress this year as last! That's the way, Sophie, to save Mommy and Daddy a few bucks!

Rust Line-Up

Jason called for a "line up" tonight. When we try to get every child's attention at our house, it always ends in a "line up." It is adorable, but we have to bite our lips, so we don't burst out laughing. The kids take it very seriously and we don't want to shake that! It will be really cute when we have 2 more kids to add to the Rust line-up. (Notice Claire in her fairy costume over her jammies---I really should throw that thing in the washer soon. Gonna have to peel it off her in her sleep one of these nights.) This lining-up business works well when we are outside and it's time to come inside, too. We always have to have a head count to make sure we have all the rug-rats before we close shop. It's a big job keeping track of these kids. When they out-number you, there has to be some serious strategy involved. Zone defense is the word at our house......until next time, I'll leave you with one of my favorite scriptures:

Psalms127:3-5

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.

Amen

A thought for those wondering if they should adopt

In a very strange, round-a-bout way, we have become friends with a girl, Heidi Weimer, who has adopted twice from Ethiopia. Her family has a great story that is worth your time. I highly recommend reading their blog. She seems to be able to put her thoughts into words better than I can. I love her answer when people ask, "Do you think all Christians are supposed to adopt?" Here's what she says:

http://blessingsfromethiopia.blogspot.com/2010/02/question-i-get-asked-whole-heck-of-lot.html

Kind of convicting, huh?

A little rice goes a long way

Habakkuk 3:17-18 Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.

At the Rust house, we are attempting to gain a little perspective into the lives of the people who we are praying for daily. The suffering people of Uganda and Ethiopia sometimes have nothing to eat, and when they do, it can be a small amount of rice or other inexpensive food. I don't know about you, but rice always leaves me feeling hungry about an hour after I eat it.

Our family decided to try eating that way one night a week to remember and honor those people. We had our first rice night yesterday evening and we were SHOCKED to see that all 3 children ate the rice! Evan, our oldest, has never touched rice, so it was hilarious to see him gobble up the entire plate of rice and ask for more. Jason kept kicking me under the table to make sure I was noticing this unbelievable event.

This evening was full of conversations about how the mommies and daddies must feel when they have to tell their children that there is no more. Evan told me he thinks that makes those mommies sad, and I agreed! We attempt to remain respectful, and not in a state of sorrow for these people. They don't want our pity~I'm sure. We prayed more earnestly, I believe, for those people last night. I know I thought about them the entire time I fixed the 6 cups of rice on my nice stove. And I thought about them when I washed my dishes in the nice sink with running water. And I thought about them when I tucked my children into their warm bed. I was surprised how such a simple thing changed my perspective.

A few check marks

I love Claire's style. She is always on the cutting-

edge of fashion! (Takes after her dad!) She's posing

with our Immigrations paperwork.

We've been able to add a few check marks to our adoption "to-do" list lately. The following pictures show us holding some important paperwork before sending them on their way to our adoption agency. Please note: They are not the best pictures of everyone. For some reason, almost all the pictures we've taken like this have a grumpy child in them. It's kind of funny that they think these grumpy faces upset us~~~in fact, they give us more laughter than anything else!

Here is a picture of Sophie being grumpy

the morning we sent off our draft dossier to

CWA. We are now waiting for them to proofread

and edit. After that step, off to Ethiopia it goes!!!

(.......and the wait begins......)

(Sorry for the poor lighting.) Here's Evan's pouty face with our USCIS I-600A application (advanced processing for orphan petition).

One thing more:

I would like to reiterate our stand on all this "hard" paperwork. These are children we are fighting for~~~someone's precious babies (God's children, nonetheless!). If you've ever heard that the adoption paperwork was hard or you've thought to yourself "That's too much work for me," imagine what these mothers and fathers have had to do to give these babies a chance at life. Can you imagine for a moment what they must feel the moment those children leave their embrace for the LAST TIME????? The Rust family work is nothing compared to those honorable birth parents. We are thrilled to be part of God's plan to bring these children home. I would hope someone would work "hard" on all the paperwork to take care of my children if they would ever be abandoned due to death or illness or poverty.

Point: These children are WORTH IT!

On the lighter side

Claire is a girl who knows how to keep it light around our house. She keeps us laughing around the clock, even sometimes up until late into the night. These days, her favorite thing to do is to don her princess fairy costume on top of her clothes and go on with life as if this is what everyone does. We had to make a trip into Michaels (the craft/hobby store) a couple weeks ago, and Claire had put on her fairy outfit, complete with the princess heals and all. You should have seen the looks on the people's faces. What joy she brings to so many people, especially her mom and dad.

Claire playing tic-tac-toe with Evan and beating him!!!!

Elvis wouldn't know what life was without a rug-rat crawling over him!

She gets creative, too~~~cowgirl princess fairy. Beat that! :)