An easy post

There are two posts in the works, but this one is easy to get out there while I finish unpacking, and getting caught up on random paperwork and prepping for this next school year.

Nineteen years! As I live longer myself, and know more people, I know that every single one of us has been given different sorts of challenges and struggles in our lives. (I say "given" intentionally, because I know that God uses those points of difficulty and weakness to show himself to us more clearly than we would ever see or know him if everything was "easy.") I am grateful every day for the fact that God has chosen to give me and Matt the marriage that we have. Every year is better than the last, and with the challenges that he HAS given us, it is a joy to walk through them hand in hand with this wonderful husband!! Eleven years ago God got a hold of Matt, and watching him explode to life and not stop growing in that is a gift that I do not take for granted!

And look at that: I told the kids I had my standards set pretty low this year. In past years I've tried to have us dress in coordinating colors, etc, etc. This year my request was simple - I hoped we'd get everyone in the photo. I don't care what you're wearing (clothes would be nice), or if you smile or look at the camera - just everyone in the picture [ahem, Mira, that means no hospital stay, and ahem, Reuben, no sneaking off for cupcakes before the photo is snapped!] and I got my request and then some! Our friend/photographer even managed to get Owen to take off his sunglasses and most of the kids to look AND smile. Wow.

A few more of the Eyes of God

Now that I'm at a computer and have camera photos downloaded, here are a few more of the cave that we went in. Bobbi lived within ten minutes of this incredible place for most of her life, but had never been there. (It's not very accessible to someone who can't walk!)

The two-person carry over some of the steeper parts.

See the guy rock climbing?? This cave is HUGE!!!

And there are the eyes. Nearly symmetrical, and completely a natural formation.

For scale - a photo with people in it.

This is the other end of the cave - you can come in from either side. The crazy thing is that when you're on the top (the road goes right over the top of this!) you have no idea it's here, except for a little sign pointing you down a gravel trail.

We followed our cave visit up with a drive through the area around the caves. Absolutely incredible, and the photos just don't even come close to describing how beautiful and massive these things were!

A close up of the last shot.

(Look for the gazebo at the top of the bluff - this will come in later...)

cute underpass

Having a translator along meant we were able to follow the sign to the "gazebo" and ask directions of an old man when we couldn't tell which narrow car-width trail was the way we were supposed to go. So off we went, bumbling along this mountain trail in our rental car. (Did I mention that Matt paid his $20 to AAA and got himself an international driver's license???)

It was worth it:

There's nothing to stop you from going right out to the edge...

You can see the opening to the Eyes of God on the right hand side of this photo...

And a lizard joined us. :)

Bobbi's teacher

We had the most delightful time visiting with Bobbi's teacher - two hours on Thursday, and then she invited us to her house for tea on Friday, so another two hours. Bobbi wishes she'd talked more, and a number of other things, but overall, it was a very pleasant time, and some of the things that *were* really important to Bobbi to get to talk about we were able to do.

(I'm not really angry at whatever Boriana is saying here!)

(Really fun restaurant, too, built by a local guy who as a hobby makes these very interesting buildings from rock and whole tree trunks. I'll post some photos of another house he's building that we stopped at. In the meantime, here's another shot of the restaurant from the street, which I post mostly in case there are any other families who have adopted from Pleven reading this, because you may recognize this from your drive there from Sofia!)

These bathrooms were so cute! The doors are so short! (Not sure if any of you have had experience with "squatty potties" before??? Besides Dondi...)

Pretty courtyard where we ate. Not nearly as many mosquitoes as there are back in MN, where we joke that they're our state bird!

It looks like a castle on the outside!

When we went to her home, we parked around the corner, and Bobbi got to use her walker to walk herself down to her teacher's house. This is the first time I've been inside someone's house when I've been in Bulgaria. Her house is small (she inherited it from her grandparents), but it's fresh and tidy and comfortable and inviting.

One last hug goodbye - SO hard for Bobbi to leave, but it was so good to give her a chance to get back here.

The Eyes of God

Can you believe this is in Lukovit??

I have more photos on my other camera, because this doesn't do justice to the incredible scale of the cave we were in. 

We're a few minutes from leaving to go to Bobbi's old home to visit the kids and staff that she spent so much of her life with.

A simple request

I'm very much looking forward to sharing some photos, but I've been taking most of them on my camera and not my phone, and haven't downloaded yet.

In the meantime, would those of you who pray join us in asking for sleep for Bobbi?? She's in surprisingly good spirits, but had not had any really good stretches of sleep since the night before we left Minnesota. It's 3am local time here, and she hasn't been able to fall asleep at all tonight.

Thank you

We're really here!

Hardly seems real, but we're really here in Bulgaria! We stayed last night in the hotel we always stay at in Sofia is and later this morning will rent a car and Matt will drive us to the town Bobbi grew up in!!

This means war

[I began writing this over two months ago at the beginning of May. There are many drafts of this sort waiting to be finished to a degree that they're worth sharing. This one still falls short of what I had envisioned, but I'm hoping captures enough to fall into the "worth sharing" category, and, with the passage of time, it is now relevant in a timely fashion that it wasn't when I began writing it, as you shall see...]

I read an article a few weeks ago about the "little word" that will fell Satan (think Martin Luther and his Mighty Fortress). The argument, and strongly so, in the article is that the single most effective tool we have at our disposal against the attacks of our enemy is to call him out for what he is: a liar. Think back to the first interaction with Eve: Did God really say that you should not eat of any tree in the garden?...You will not surely die. What a different world we would be in if the response at that point had simply been, "Liar!!"

Adoption is war. Not prospective parents against beauracracy, or limited funds against looming deadlines, not parents against children, but at the front lines it is a war of Truth against the lies of the enemy. Children who are orphans, and I think particularly those who are orphaned through abandonment are bombarded every day, with very little buffer, with deep, debilitating lies of the enemy.

You are unlovable.

You are garbage.

Nobody really wants you.

You are just a burden.

You are worthless.

You are nothing.

If you were dead, who would even care? No one.

No one. 

Nothing. Trash. Unlovable.

If you add a disability into the mix, the spread of possibilities for the lies just broadens.

Adoption breaks into the trap of those lies with something totally different, and without even needing to say it explicitly, it shouts out, "Lies!"

We love you.

You are precious.

We want you.

We are willing to sacrifice for you - our time, our money, (our sanity???!).

Your life matters to us.

We care.

We love you. 

A few weeks ago our son Owen was able to join a group of people from our church on a week long trip to an orphanage in Jamaica that a past member of our church started about 20 years ago. I just read our pastor's reflections on the trip on one of his blog posts, and it was significant to me that what he found to be the most important thing they did on their trip was the ways they were able to reinforce the truth of God's love to these kids. This home, founded by a believer, and established on principles that make the communication of God's love a central part of their philosophy of caring for these kids, has made a huge positive impact on the lives of the children that have grown up and are growing up in that home.

We (Matt, Bobbi, and myself) are less than 48 hours away from our own international trip back into a different culture. We've been planning for two years to get Bobbi back to see some of the people that she knew while she was growing up, and this is it. We are excited (very excited!) but also know that we're entering a battle zone where we're going to be coming face to face with the lies. As I've done in the past, I'm asking those of you who know God to join with us in covering our trip with prayer, that our hearts and minds would be saturated with Truth as we spend our upcoming days in places that we've been before, but this time with a new identity, particularly for Bobbi: beloved. daughter.

Thank you!!