I have had several times recently that I wanted to post an blog entry, but I have had this rule that I wouldn’t post without some pics. Well, I’m ditching that ideal because it has kept me from blogging. One day again I will have pics. 🙂

So, there have been a lot of changes with the Hewitt Fam besides just our move to Dallas. In January, Jeff and I took a class at our church called “If You Were Mine”. It is within the church’s Adoption & Foster Care ministry called Tapestry. The curriculum is from Hope For Orphans, which is an orphan care ministry under the Family Life (Campus Crusade for Christ) umbrella. The class and curriculum were phenominal! I highly reccomend it for anyone considering adoption or foster care.

Jeff and I have always said “we might adopt one day”, but had never gotten much further than that. When our church announced the class, we both had interest in attending so we could really dig in and see if the Lord had adoption in our future. At this point Jeff and I both feel that the Lord is calling us to adopt, but we don’t have complete clarity at what that will look like or when that will be. Since this is currently the longest that I have been not pregnant since getting married, it seems time for us to be pursuing another child. Jeff pointed out to me however that, in his words, “at some point we have to break the cycle, you know.” 🙂 Sweet husband! With all of the craziness that has been going on right now, we have agreed to get moved in to and settled in our new house and then look for further clarity on the Lord’s time for us to grow our family.

We feel that the Lord is calling us to international adoption and are praying for a way to potentially adopt a boy from Burma. This seems virtually impossible on the surface, but we are pursuing some avenues to see if there could be a way. The Burmese government does not allow intercountry adoption, so the child would have to have already left the country. My sister sees orphans all the time in Mae Sot, Thailand, but they are what is known as stateless. They have Burmese heritage, but are born in Thailand. Thailand does not give them citizenship and neither does Burma. Because of this, there is not a government to work through to get the children. Thailand is super strict with adoptions anyway and prefers to not adopt to families that already have more than one child. All of this to say that I am not quite sure where the Lord is taking us with this.

In the meantime, Jeff and I decided to get involved with a ministy here in Dallas to Karen Refugees. There are 135 recognized “people groups” in Burma. One of those people groups are the Karen (pronounced Cor-in). The US allows around 70,000 people to be resettled into the country each year. There are numerous criteria to qualify people, and one of them is for persecution due to race or religion. There are several groups from Burma that are allowed to apply for resettlement under this criteria. Once a person is brought to the US, they are given around $400 per month for 3 months, and that’s it. Most of the people know very little, if any English. Some of them have been living in refugee camps at the border of Thailand for a long time, and some of them have been running for their lives in the bush from the Burmese military. They have never seen appliances and have no idea what to do with them.

Jeff and I have gotten involved with a ministry here that works with these refugees from Burma. Since getting to know some of the families, we met a family that the father makes $7/hour and supports 6 people. Can you even imagine? They need help with so many things. They can get food stamps, but don’t even know about them. Even when they find out, they don’t know how to read English, much less fill out government paperwork. They need help on so many levels, but they are the sweetest people. My sister has always said that, and I just thought “Sweet Ash. She just has the gift of mercy.” (Which she does, by the way.) But it is SO true. They are such a sweet people.

So, that’s where we are right now. I don’t know if our child is in Burma or Thailand, or if the Lord just pushed us that direction to lead us into this refugee ministry. Maybe our little man is in Ethiopia or even America. Right now we don’t know, but we trust the Lord will unfold His plan in His sovereign timing.

AFTERWORD – I actually started this post because I had a realization that I have been surfing the Internet for about an hour hoping to get some clue about what we are supposed to be doing next with adoption and ministry and such. I have somehow been looking for God’s will on the Internet. A little sick, huh? 🙂