Hi there!

We haven't been blogging for a while now because there really are no updates to be shared, other than we're still waiting to be matched!

All our paperwork is completed and handed in. We've been informed that we're on the active list, and have been for over a year now. We are trying to maintain an appearance of patience as we await a call that alerts us to a match.

In the meantime, we are working on several more fundraising projects,since the costs associated with an adoption can total $30,000-$40,000.

First, we are working on a bottle drive. Posters will be going up around the area - in Lyndon's workplaces, and our community. If you wish to help us out by donating your recyclables, please contact us by commenting and we can arrange the details, or look for the posters and follow the directions there.

Secondly, we are planning a bake sale for the near future, hopefully in the month of August, but we need to finalize some details.

We want to thank all of you for your support and kind words. It means a lot to have people ask about how our adoption is going. We've been blessed to hear about how many of you pray for our adoption, and we ask that you continue to do so.

For those of you who are visiting our blog for the first time, and would like to know the history behind our adoption, please click here.

God bless!

Lyndon & Lucy

Latest news....

Well, I bet everyone thinks that we've forgotten about this blog! We haven't!

But the lack of updating is similar to our adoption journey. We do a lot in a very short time and then spend an lot of time waiting.

We received an email from our agency stating that our profile has been shown several times in the last few months, which means that we're hopefully getting closer to being matched. Please continue to pray for the agencies, officials, and birth families as we await our child.

In the meantime, we're staying busy with our current life. Lucy is providing child care to 4 kids and Lyndon continues to work while completing his nursing degree. Life is busy, but God is good.

We've been challenged to focus on the hope that we have as Christians. The hope of eternal life. The joy that is inexplicably giving us strength even in the hardest of times. God bless!

Bake/Garage Sale Fundraiser

I feel as though my nightmares shall be filled with pies, lemon loaves, and banana bread. And dishes. Over the past month I have been busy organizing garage sale items and all the glorious mess that comes with that! Feels so good to have less clutter in our home now. We were blessed to have the church family pitch in and donate time and talent towards our bake/garage sale, which ended up being more successful than we could have imagined in our wildest dreams! 

We opened the doors at 8:30 on Friday morning, and started carrying all the tables outside for our sale. Not too many minutes had passed before I realized that this sale was starting out with much more of a bang than I had anticipated. So, I went and recruited more help. By 11:30 I knew we would run out of baked goods long before the day was over, so I shifted gears and headed for an apron and a hot, hot kitchen. My two sisters and I baked extra cinnamon buns, lemon loaves, pies, cookies, banana bread, Texas sheet cake, and butterhorns, while Lyndon and my bro took care of the customers for the day. In another home, not too many miles from our house, a dear friend was also doing more spontaneous baking... she baked between 30 and 40 extra pans of cinnamon rolls! God bless your soul, my friend! Never have I been so weary, yet so deliriously happy at the same time! Our efforts paid off! At the end of day two of our sale, all that was left over was 24 cookies, 12 muffins, 1 loaf of banana bread, and 2 loaves of whole wheat bread. I have never before seen food disappear so fast, almost faster than I could pull it out of the oven!

Thanks to dear friends who were so very generous with helping out with baking and/or donating items to the garage sale, we raised $2,428 towards the adoption of our baby! We are deeply grateful and humbled at how God's hand of blessing was over us this past weekend!

 The rain is gently washing the earth of its filth. The birds, they are singing praises to God, enjoying the puddles beside the road. My heart, so alive. So conscious that "every good and perfect gift is from Above". If only I were more of a writer. I feel I cannot do justice to all the emotions in my heart that deserve to be put into writing. But I will try. 
 This month has been a different one. Hard stuff. Times of reflecting. Times of quiet surrender. Times of prayer. Times of great rejoicing! Reality is: if it were not for God, we would spin in circles, not knowing how to deal with it all. BUT, because we know Him, we are safe. We trust. We keep walking.
 A month ago we were in MB with Lyndon's family. This was the first time we saw his mom since her diagnosis of Gastric Cancer, so you can imagine it was hard. And yet, it was wonderful to get together with the family and encourage each other. We don't know what the future looks like for the rest of her journey here on earth, but we do know that life on earth is but the beginning of eternity. Death is but a transition into the land where there is no more sin, no more pain, and no more tears, for those who have been forgiven by God. Lyndon's mom told us that although she would love to stay and be with her family longer, she does look forward to seeing her Saviour! She also testifies that amidst the hard times, she has felt totally at peace, and that God's strength continues to sustain her in ways she has never experienced before. I pray God will be gracious to her, and keep her from excruciating pain. 

  In the midst of hard questions, we have also experienced lots of joy! May 12-13 we were at Canada's first "Together For Adoption Conference". We learned so much about the joys and hardships that can come with adoption. Some highlights that really stuck out to us were: 
 -The brokenness you see in orphans, and the trauma they've been through,  is a perfect picture of what I was like before God adopted me. Precious thought that the brokenness he sees in my life does not scare Him away, but rather He loves me all the more. And He pursues me. He wants to mend my hurts. He wants to give me purpose in life. He tells me "I belong".
 -There are 134 million orphans in the world. There are 2.4 billion Christians. If I got my stats right, then only 1 family out of 4 churches around the world would need to adopt one child, and we would have no orphans left.  
 -There are over 2500 verses in the Bible about caring for orphans and/or widows. Not that I believe God is calling every person to adopt, but I firmly believe He calls everyone to support and love orphans.


 As far as our adoption journey, I have news for you!! Feb 3 we were placed on a waiting list with our adoption agency, due to them having maxed out on Canadian parents they can work with at one time. We were told that we would "hopefully" be placed on an active list in 4-6 months. Well, just shy of 4 months, we are now officially on the active list! The birth moms will get to see our profile now, and we just wait and see how long it takes to be chosen! The average wait time is still 9-18 months, but there is a small possibility that it could happen sooner than that. I have gone into a frenzy with all that needs to be done. Just about finished organizing our entire house now. Also working with getting ready for a huge garage/bake sale for a fundraiser. (Did I mention how much I LOVE having a garage sale? Can't wait! Maybe someone will want my junk! Sorry, no sarcasm now!) My to-do list grows every day. 
1) Finish painting nursery
2) Refinish rocker and sew cushions for it.
3) Make baby sling
4) Order diaper bag
5) Buy all most baby supplies...where to start? "Overwhelming" can be the word of the day at any given time!
6) Finish painting change table
7) Flooring for nursery
That's only the VERY beginning! I will spare you the rest of the details, for now!


 That's all, folks!




Prayer of the Children: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=I_xj6Ymz9ak

Wait List


So, it's been a while since we've posted. Maybe you've been waiting for an update, and unfortunately we didn't give you one :). Welcome to the world of adoption! A lot of time is spent just waiting. 


Since our last update, we've completed our Tupperware Fundraiser. Thank you to all of you who participated! It was humbling to see how many people participated! Thanks especially to Andrea, our Tupperware Consultant, for your assistance!


Our dossier is at our agency as we speak. They have reviewed it, and we are on a wait list. What this basically means is that when their active list is shortened, we will move onto the active list, at which point birthmoms will be able to view our profile, and hopefully choose us to parent her child. Our latest update from the agency indicated that we could expect to move to the active list in 3-5 months. From that point, it depends on how soon we get chosen.


In the meantime, we've been busy at home with work, purchasing a few things for the nursery, etc.. 


To make our journey just a little more complicated, Lyndon's mom was diagnosed with stomach cancer, and given 8-12 months to live. As we work through this, and anticipate starting a family, our emotions are mixed. Your prayers for our adoption and Lyndon's mom are appreciated!

To all Friends, Far and Near!

We are doing a Canada-wide Tupperware Fundraiser http://tupperware.ca/brochures/fundraiser-2012-flyer-ca.pdf to help with paying for our adoption, and would like to give you all a chance to get your hands on some smashing deals! A lot of the products in this specific "Fundraiser Flyer" cannot be purchased through their normal catalog. Also, the way this Fundraiser works is that we (Lyndon n Lucy) will receive a 40% commission of all orders to put towards our adoption costs. This fundraiser deadline is February 29, 2012.

If you are interested in supporting this cause:

 1) Send us an email including your name, home phone number, and shipping address.

 2) Specify which items you want to order

 3) Add up the total cost + applicable sales tax for your province + $3.95 Shipping/Handling Fee  

 4) State your preferred method of payment. Cash and check are the preferred method of payment, but you can also pay with a Credit card if this is easier for you. All you need to do is email us to let us know that you are paying by Credit card, the amount you are paying, and then hit the PayPal button. It  should guide you through the rest of the process. If you are paying by cash or check, please email us and we will give you more detailed info as to how to get it to us!

 5) If you have friends who might be interested in ordering some of the items in this flyer, please feel free to forward this info to them. 

Thank you for your support,

Lyndon n Lucy

Supporting Couples Working Through Infertility

Through the years that we've dealt with infertility, we have met many responses to our story. We have received an overwhelming amount of support. Many times people have told us that although they don't know what to say or do, they want to let us know that they recognize our unique struggle, and wish to show us support. For all that support, we will be eternally grateful.

However, there have been some comments that we have found to be more painful to deal with. We understand and appreciate that most of these situations resulted from someone sincerely wishing to be supportive, but, from the standpoint of an infertile couple, the statements were difficult for us to process. So, as we move towards building our family through adoption, we thought we would share how couples dealing with infertility may feel when certain comments are made, and some guidelines in relating to them.

These ideas are not entirely unique to us, and we've drawn from several websites to corroborate what we've discovered. 

1. Church is a difficult place for infertile couples. Remember that the husband and wife are the center of the family. Even when there are no children in the home, they are a family. Recognize that homes that are blessed with children will eventually revert back to the husband and wife. Couples dealing with infertility may not have children and therefore may seem to logically have more time to do more in the church, but please appreciate the fact that they have their own hardships to go through.

2. Avoid giving advice. Trust us, infertile couples get advice of all kinds. We've had advice from "try this doctor, my friend's cousin went there, and they got pregnant within two months" to "Rub honey on your gums at night and you WILL get pregnant" to "Oh, now that you've moved, and can RELAX, you'll get pregnant", to "You should have an anointing service in church". As you can tell, advice ranges from outright hilarious to very well meaning.

3. Every couple's story is different. There are a myriad of reasons why couples can't conceive. The treatment that works for one couple may not work for another couple because their cause for infertility, on a biological level, may be completely different. A couple may deal with infertility in different ways emotionally. There are differences in every couple's story regarding how they feel. Please don't assume that you know how a couple feels. There may be similarities between couple's stories, but there are strong differences too. Each couple will go through different amounts of pain at different times. 

4. A couple that has dealt with infertility can have a happy and fulfilled life, and may go through periods of utter contentment in their childless state. We have found this to be true. There have been times where you couldn't have paid us to have kids. We were happy, and fulfilled. In fact, we are thrilled that we were unable to conceive when we first began trying. There are so many rich life experiences we've had that we would have never had, had we had children.

5. A couple has to be ready in their hearts to try a new treatment or alternative to building a family. This ties in with giving advice. Frankly, couples will seek out advice as they are ready to receive it. We found that although we didn't try all possible routes of fertility, we never felt at peace about trying them. There was never any real excitement about treatments such as IVF. We never felt we needed to exercise every possible option to have biological kids. However, if a couple feels that they wish to try IVF, IUI, fertility drugs, or any other treatment, by all means, we support them fully.

6. Infertility is not merely a women's issue. Men struggle with infertility too, and may have a difficult time dealing with the fact that they may never father biological offspring. There are many reasons a couple can't conceive, and in 50% of couples male factor infertility is involved (http://www.sharedjourney.com/articles/fam.html).

7. Infertility is a legitimate reason for grief. Couples that are unable to conceive may grieve things like no biological offspring, no kids to give them cards that say "I love you, Mom!" or ugly mugs that say "World's Best Dad!". They may even grieve the fact that they don't have a kid in the fight when their friends break up a fight between their kids :).

8. Please be sensitive to the fact that although infertile couples wish to be invited to baby showers, and Father's Day and Mother's Day services at church, they may wish not to attend. Be sensitive to the fact that although childless couples wish to hear about your pregnancy, they may have a difficult time dealing with the fact that you got pregnant.

10. When sharing news about other infertile couples that are FINALLY pregnant with couples struggling with infertility just say that they're pregnant. Please don't dwell on how long they've tried, or that they must have finally relaxed, or that this new doc they're with helped them out. Again, see #2.

11. Respect a couple's decision about having children, not having children, pursuing fertility treatments, pursuing adoption, etc. Raising children is a HUGE responsibility, and if a couple chooses not to have children, or to adopt, etc., allow them to make that decision. They are the ones that will raise the children or live without children. 

12. If a couple decides to adopt, please don't say, "Oh, now you're gonna get pregnant! Why, I know someone that tried for years to get pregnant and couldn't, and then just as they were adopting, they found out they were pregnant!" Statistically speaking, less than 10% of infertile couples that adopt fall pregnant.

13. Please do pray for couples. Please tell them you care. Please, if you don't know what to say, say, "I don't know what to say that will make you feel better, but I want you to know that I recognize that you are dealing with a difficult issue in your struggle with fertility, and I'm praying for you." Please ask about a couple's struggle occasionally, while at the same time recognizing that infertility is not the only thing that defines these couples.

14. Invite infertile couples to go with your family to go bowling, mini golfing, out for a meal, or to play games with your family. We may grieve our children, but that is only because we love children. We love hanging out with yours. 

All of these guidelines are not meant to offend or hurt anyone, rather they are meant to be used as a guide in your interaction with those of us who are unable to have biological children. If a certain statement targets you, or you feel hurt by it, we apologize, and please rest assured knowing that any slight was unintentional. We have had people tell us in the past that they wished that they knew how to be properly supportive and that they knew the do's and don'ts of relating to the childless, so here is our version.

We would be very interested in hearing how other couples dealing with infertility feel about the points above. Have you found things to be different for you? Did we get some of these wrong?

Please comment!