Apple Orchard Day

Giveaways!

One of the awesome adoption blogs that I love to follow is Ni Hao Y'all. This Christmas season? It may just be even more awesome. Stephanie has put together the "30 Days of Giveaways" where each day, starting THIS Thursday, November 11th, there is a giveaway of some amazing items! Be sure to remember to check in each day, starting this Thursday for your chance to win! :)
*Update: the 30 Days of Giveaways have begun--go check them out!

Also, TODAY, November 9th, is the last day to enter for the Wild Olive and Women of Faith Giveaway! If you've never heard of Wild Olive tees, you're seriously missing out. They are so cute, ultra fashionable, and have such a great message on each one. Go to their website and check them out HERE. And don't forget to enter today for your chance to win some amazing prize packages from Wild Olive and Women of Faith!

Orphan Sunday

This Sunday, November 7th is Orphan Sunday. Across the country, churches have prepared special services for today regarding the plight of the orphan. People are drawing attention to the need for orphan care and adoption. Raising awareness for a need that is greater than ever and praying that eyes will be opened to see the need and act in response.Here's why: Did you know that there are over 140 million orphans around the world? 140,000,000. That's 48.3 million orphans in Sub-Saharan Africa, 73.7 million in Asia, 10.7 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, along with many, many more throughout the rest of the world.

These aren't just statistics; each one "number" encompassed in these huge and overwhelming figures is a real child! A child who does not have parents and is likely growing up in an orphanage. Many of you have seen your own precious children go from being "just a number" in these statistics to being your beautiful little princess or your perfect little prince.


I came face-to-face with the miracle of adoption when my little sisters, Sarah and Chayah, came home from China. They were orphans, but they're not anymore.
How many more children though remain as orphans right now, in this moment? As you read this, there are over 140 million children throughout the world who have been orphaned. We can't just forget about them, pretend it's not real, or tell ourselves that someone else will step up. We have to act.
Once our eyes are opened, we can't pretend we don't know what to do. God, who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls, knows that we know, and holds us responsible to act.
Proverbs 24:12


Below is a new video I made about the 140 million orphans..

for the other videos I have made, please go to the My Videos page

Cry of the Orphan also has just released a new video on orphan care specifically for Orphan Sunday featuring Steven Curtis and MaryBeth Chapman, Francis and Lisa Chan, Mark Schultz, and many others. It is a beautiful video and I encourage everyone to take the opportunity to watch it! It will be available online HERE until November 14th. Or visit HERE to learn more information on Cry of the Orphan's website.

Source for statistics: http://cryoftheorphan.org/Learnabouttheissue.aspx

Little Artists

For Grandparents Day, Sarah and Chayah's class made special pictures with a photo of themselves and a note describing what the picture was of. This is Chayah's adorable picture!

And here is Sarah's beautiful picture! They are both such amazing little artists :)

Beautiful Girls and Cute Dolls

Sarah wants to say, "I like my doll best! My doll was so needing full and I wanted one. Thank you for one! I am thankful. I like everything the best about my doll! I am thankful sooo much that I'm gonna get a pillow pet too so so so so! Sooooo oh oh oh oh we will take our toys, A*merican Girls, to school! "

Chayah says, "I love my doll! She is pretty. Thank you that you gave us the doll! You are so kind to us. You're pretty! I love my doll sooooooo much that I'm gonna bring her for my show-and-tell tomorrow! I take her wherever I go. This is her first time going to a Christian school and that she love me! The end!"

Two very happy little girls

There is an amazing story behind these A*merican G*irl Dolls!! A few months ago, Sarah and Chayah were playing with some good friends at their house and their girls told our girls about how they were getting AG dolls and showed them the ones they were getting. Since then, Sarah and Chayah have loved them. On top of that, Chayah has recently decided that J*on and K*ate plus 8 re-runs are her favorite things to watch on TV..one of the episodes that she kept seeing was where the twins get AG dolls. Needless to say, this led to even more desire on the girls' parts for AG dolls. Then--just several weeks after all of this, we were at church one night and the sweetest lady just "happened" to come up and ask the girls if, by any chance, they had AG dolls!! She said that her daughter had grown out of her dolls and was willing to give them to Sarah and Chayah! What an amazing answer to prayer!!! This just amazes me! It's just one more thing that shows how awesomely God cares for His children! He cares for even the desires of our hearts--even the desire of the hearts of six and eight year old little girls for special dolls! How amazing is that?! Sarah and Chayah absolutely adore their dolls and have had such a fun time playing with them all evening since they got them earlier today! It was hard getting them to put them down this evening for bed time! Sarah's is beautiful "Mya" and Chayah's is beautiful "Sonali" (Chayah had her heart set on the name "Kate" though, so I'm fairly sure she will be called "Kate").. A huge THANK YOU to our friend for the dolls- they are beautiful and such a blessing!!!! And what an awesome reminder of how God answers our prayers! I'm still in awe! :)

She broke it.

Sarah Lu will be spending at least the next several weeks walking around with this..

Chayah's old walker has turned out to be so incredibly useful.. especially since they couldn't find crutches little enough for Sarah to be safe using. So walker it is! Which makes Sarah incredibly excited.. she wanted to use it soo bad when Chayah needed it after her surgery and was in her cast last year. Now, Sarah's pretty happy that it's her turn to need the walker.

The other day I mentioned how Sarah hurt her ankle on the stairs when we were at the SCC concert. Well, it kept hurting her. A lot. And she couldn't walk or put any pressure on it, so it was no school and off to the doctor the next morning for Sarah. And what we found out after x-rays? She broke it. Or fractured a bone in her ankle, to be exact.

So for the next several weeks, Sarah will be sporting this cast! She got to pick out the colors herself and picked not one, or two, but three colors! Green, of course, since she has decided it is her new favorite color (although her favorite definitely was purple until just a few weeks ago..). Then white and red, of course, just like a candy cane! Her doctor took the time to wrap it up with all three colors of her choice (after having found every color they had in stock) and made it "pretty" for her. She's pretty proud of it, too!

How she broke is something I've tried to find out, but from what I know, she had been playing on the stairs and then started to fall. She caught herself and kept herself from falling, but she landed on her ankle sideways- fracturing a little ankle bone.

Sarah is doing so well with her new cast though and is getting around great! At school, she can't go out for recess, so her teacher is keeping one friend (a different one each time) from her class to stay in the room with her to play during recess instead..which I'm guessing will be the new fun activity that everyone in first grade will want to be chosen for :)

Sarah is definitely a little trooper and is handling it all so incredibly well! When she found out at the doctor's office that it was broken and then came home and told me, she had the hugest smile on her face and started laughing!! Not too sure I'd be laughing if I broke my ankle, but I'm glad she thinks it's fun and is pretty entertained with the fact that she gets to use the walker now!