Life Options

This past weekend we had a conference called Life Options. This conference is just for Juniors and Seniors and is gives very helpful, practical wisdom on how to understand and discern God's will, how to think through stewardship of your life, and offers potential short-term ministry opportunities. I love the content and feel it's information you need and can use the rest of your life. For us as staff, we call it our shot in the arm. It's a reminder to me of why I do what I do and that I wouldn't want to do anything else. The exciting thing is we usually have a small number attend, maybe 8-12 students, but this year we had 49 students come! It was incredible! And it was so much fun to have that many students there.

And here's the group!


For adoption, we're continuing to make steps forward. We've been on the list for Korea, and they've added us to the list for Ethiopia (they recommended we wait on the dossier until a child would possibly become available). So now we continue waiting for a referral. When we get a referral, we'd check out that child and then decide if that's our kid! Then if we accept that referral, we wait another 3-4 months until we go pick him/her up. So the referrals can come at any time now! Our social worker has officially completed and written up our home study. There's some grants we want to apply for and will need that completed home study to do it. There's another form we need mail in - requesting permission from the government to bring in a child - so we're ready to send that this week. We'll continue to keep you posted!

Full House (and lots of pictures!)

I am SO grateful for the amazing house the Lord blessed us with. It's been so great to be able to have people over, even large groups of people over, and have the room (if a bit tight) to do it. So here's some pictures of what we've been up to in the last couple weeks.

We had our AIA leaders over for dinner. Here's the boys, Josh, Dan, Bryan, and Aaron.

The Women's soccer team here is amazing; they were 6th in the country last year. We have about 5 girls from the team that come to AIA. I wanted to take steps to serve them and get to know them. So, as they were heading into playoffs, I hosted a team dinner for them, all 28 of them. It was really fun! We set up 3 tables and managed to get everyone in. The first group of 10 girls showed up after practice, and I greeted them as they came in. When I turned around from the front door, they were all in a tight line in from of the counter ready to eat! I was a little nervous because I wasn't quite ready, but they waited patiently and managed to go through about 5 pounds of spaghetti (I had no idea how much they'd eat and bought 9 pounds :) ). Here's a picture of many of them; some had already gone home. But the team is still in it and has more playoff games this weekend!

One of our AIA leaders, Dan (pictured above as well), came dressed up ready to serve the women. Here he is (in an apron Aaron made in home-ec in junior high) with the remainder of the sauce. The roaster was FULL before... I'd say we went through about half the sauce. It was a good learning experience to know what I'd need to feed this many people. My plan going in was to just cook a whole bunch and see how we ended up! :)

We're doing an outreach strategy on campus called Christmas Study Breaks where women invite friends into their dorms/homes and have a little Christmas story and share about Jesus as well. So we had a "sample" so they could see what it is and sign up to host one. We had over 50 people! A few women from my church came and about 45-50 students. As we were about to start and most everyone was downstairs, I wandered to the front room and saw all the coats and shoes piled and just had to get a picture. It was great to have so many women there!

Here's a 3-picture view of everyone downstairs...
The left side of the room.

The center of the room.

And the right side of the room.

So here's some of what we've been up to recently. It's been busy but really fun!

As for adoption, we're waiting to get our instructions for the paperwork required for Ethiopia so we can get put on the list for that country. We're starting the waiting, and we're excited - so hopefully we'll be able to be patient.

We hope you're all doing well. Much love, the Joneses