Our 1st visit with Meggie!

As a family we were able to spend the day with Meggie. I (Brenna) picked Meggie up @ 8:45 this morning. It's odd that everytime I go to see her or pick her up I get butterflies in my belly. When I left I started delegating chores around the house because I want her to come "home" to a clean house. How "Mom" of me!

Anyway, she didn't hesitate today! You see yesterday, Micah and I had the opportunity to spend a few hours with Meggie alone and she wasn't too hip on the idea at first. But we decorated gingerbread boys and ate way too much icing. She warmed up after some time and was excited that we were going to make cakes with the Easy Bake Oven today.

She immediately went to get her coat on today and asked if we were still going to make cake? How smart? On the way to the house she asked where Micah was. I'm sooo glad that she feels a connection with Micah because this process would be impossible without that. We talked all 10 miles to the house.

Today we were a flurry of action. We kept busy with watercoloring, Easy Bake Oven cakes & decorating the rest of the cookies, we played Hide & Seek, Joe played tag for awhile with the kids and we ate lunch. We also made a memory photo book for her. She asked if I had a picture of Micah and so, I gave her pic of everyone. We made spots for her host family and she took it home to show them.

When we said it was time to go she didn't want to goright then, she wanted to play somemore. Hooray for us. That's huge!!! She may not feel that way tomorrow but she did today and I am sooo excited.

We will see her tomorrow before the New Year's Eve festivities begin and then again on Saturday. I just can't spend too much time with her!

All about this post

Our names are Joe and Brenna Friend. We have 3 children ages 14, 12 ,10 and they are boy, girl, boy. I am a minster in Lebanon Mo and my wife subs at the school. After we had our youngest son Ethan, we were told we couldn't have anymore children. Which, I was OK with, three was plenty. We had talked about adoption but after Ethan learned how to tie his own shoes I felt this huge sense of freedom. No more diapers, no more shoe tying, he knows how to brush his teeth and get dressed on his own, WOW, what freedom I felt. It was a time of celebration!!! After that I knew I didn't want to have anymore children.
God has a way of preparing you for something and then opening the door and releasing the giants. He knows we can do it, but we don't always know, we just have to trust in him.
So I thought I was done with kids, and then it happened, we met her. Her name is Meggie, she is 9. She has blond hair and big brown eyes. How did we meet her? We met her when a godly couple in our church brought her over from Latvia in a hosting program.
My first thought, "Where in the world is Latvia?" I love google earth, it is so cool. I typed it in and zoom, there it was, Latvia. It is in Europe plain as day. I don't know why I never saw it before. All I know is that I will never forget where it is again.
Before she came we prayed everyday that she would be adopted by a godly family. I was so excited to meet her and see what God was going to do. But before we even met her Brenna (my wife) said that she felt the Holy Spirit impress upon her that we should adopt Meggie. WHAT? How could that be? I had been praying everyday for her too and I never got that message. After she told me I explained to her that it is impossible for us to adopt. You see I am the "bill" payer in our family and I new that we didn't even have extra money for Ice Cream let alone another mouth to be eating it.
How much does it cost I asked? "$30,131," she replied. After I got my breath back, my mind was made up for sure. Brenna would ask me to just be open and to see what will happen. Well, to make a long story short, I was open, and became totally convinced that my wife my listens to God better than me! So now we are stepping out on faith and seeing if God will do the impossible. We have zero $, and we need $alot! I guess when he pulls this off it will have His signature all over it! I love His signature.
So How will we get the money? I have some ideas?