February 19th - The Robinson's and Relaxedness

     It is always exciting when Earl's parents are going to arrive, we don't get to see them all that often even when living in the States and now being England it is a once a year type of thing. This year a bit different with our trip here in February for all of this adoption process. As you would expect they are quite excited about the probabilities of being grand-parents and they showed up at our home away from home earlier than expected. This too is not unprecedented as one time they turned up at our house so early we were not out of bed yet, except for we were sleeping in the living room because it was so hot, and had forgotten to lock the door so my dad simply walked in and said get up what ya still sleeping for? This wasn't near as stark and once they came we hung out all night, chatted and watched a bit of television together. The Friday would be our first of two trips to Kouts to meet with our adoption specialist.

Cliff and Della along with Mandy Sue

     It was really great going back to Kouts after not being there for a few years, and meeting with our specialist brought an even clearer picture of the process into our minds. Working with the agency has been gold, they are wonderful people who really care for all the parties involved and we can feel that care from everyone of them. Our meeting went well and after 3 hours of digging into our lives we decided to descend upon the new Birky's Coffee Shop, it was their grand-opening so there was free coffee and other treats. We caught up with some friends (Jayson, Sandi, Jay and others) that we have not seen for a couple of years and enjoyed a nice lunch together. The meetings that we are having are really helpful, we can see why the home-study is so important, imagine if all parents had to go through that type of background check before having children, that would be interesting. Speaking of back-ground checks we found out that we have to do yet another one, this time for Elkhart County, we have not been in trouble with the law so it will be fine just the idea of yet one more check, the fingerprinting in two countries and now 4 separate checks on our background, luckily we're squeaky clean.
     Friday night came and we were off to one of our favorite pastimes in Indiana, high school basketball. On this occasion it was Goshen vs. Westview, and both the JV and Varsity games were close, we don't know any of the players but it was still great to be back in a gym on a Friday night, there will be plenty more of that to come on this trip no doubt. On the Saturday we decided to stay close to home and see what Goshen had to offer, and for a little city it has much to see and do. The Farmer's Market was open in the morning so meandering around there, getting a bit of tasty food to eat, some rich flavoured coffee, and the relaxedness (word?) of a Saturday morning without much happening was great. We knew there would be some relaxation with this trip but how much was an unknown, the times have been hit and miss but we don't feel overtaxed or over hurried which is encouraging. During the remainder of the time that they were with us we did a bit of shopping, played hand and foot along with Sequence. We were at Family Center on Sunday morning which Earl was really glad to get through leading worship as the cold he has had settled on Saturday and made his voice rough along with having plugged ears, that doesn't help when you're trying to sing.
     We both have said that if we were here attempting to do the adoption process while simply visiting or if we had another agenda that this would be too much. As you know though we are here for the adoption focus so it is OK, this next week we have a book to read, an online course to take and found out that we need to create a family profile, which is sort of like a scrapbook of us, that ought to be interesting as we don't have many materials to work with. We don't have other meetings at this point next week so there should be time in the diary for all of those things. This is a time that we feel we are being led by the Spirit, I as in Earl has been able to listen to a good amount of music while here and one of the songs that has really been speaking to me is the song Fall Afresh off of the Loft Sessions by Bethel, check it out here with this link, write again soon:)