A new direction.

A lot has happened since my last post, and a lot is going to happen in the next couple of days. I sit here on a normal Wednesday morning at home with Grace, playing, singing and reading her books.... knowing that in 2 days our lives will be turned upside down. Not for the bad, just an extremely different lifestyle than what we are used to right now.

First, let's catch us up on what is happening just with the three of us. Gracie is now 19 months old, has a very strong will, still loves to cuddle and is learning new words daily. I cannot express how much I love this little girl, and how much joy she brings to our life. She is just starting to put 3 words together, like "up please mommy" or "no no daddy" and so on. She is obsessed with her toothbrush at vitamins, ( I guess there can be worse things:) She loves to dance, play with play dough and try to help mom cook (which just means she is needy at the time I attempt to make dinner) Our cameras are both out of batteries, so no pictures right now, but they will be soon... especially to chronicle what is about to happen. In case you didn't know, we found out in November that I am expecting baby number 2 in July! We are ecstatic and scared at the same time. The due date is 10 days after Gracie's 2nd Birthday, and we do not know what we are having yet!

Now, what is about to happen...

This Friday we are going to start fostering twin 12 year old girls that are refugees from Bhutan. It is permanent foster care, being that neither one of their parents are around, so if all goes well, we will have them until they are at least 19. When I say refugees from Bhutan, that is a loose term, they have actually never even been there, they were born and lived the first 11 years of their life in a UN Refugee camp located in Nepal. Technically, they are not citizens of Bhutan or Nepal... they belong to nowhere and really to no one:( There are 5 sisters total in their family, they are all in the bay area, the oldest living down the road in Boulder Creek, the other 2 in El Sobrante area. They have lived in California for about a year now with a Nepali family in the Hayward area. The family babysat them with the TV, only spoke in their native language and did not get them involved into any activities. Bottom line, they are being moved to us because they did not get any attention or help in that house...

I know very little about them except for the following.... Their names are Ganga and Jamuna and were born into a very physical and mentally abusive family. The have had only a year of education, and that was this past year, yet they do not know very much english (none when they first arrived) , so to be put in an english only school, with no english skills... well, you just don't learn very much. Not to mention that they have never been in a classroom, or any structured place, so they had no idea what was happening or even how to behave in a classroom.

English is a 3 out of 10 their social worker says... so we got some work to do!!! Being in a English only home will help them for sure...

They are 12, but have really had no childhood, so they are very much loving all things pink and flowers and Disney princess, much like Gracie:) From what I am told, they are very outgoing girls with little trust of any adults, they respond well to nurture and love, but have not been given very much. No education does not just mean that they have never been to school, they have lived so sheltered in their camp that they do not know the basic things like we would assume they would like time frames, what a mountain, river or ocean is. What is a proper way to use a fork, or how to read and write in their own language.... The social worker said to assume they know nothing when you are helping them with their homework... How can they even have homework when they can't understand the language or culture they are living in?!?!

So, suffice to say that we are going to be very busy the next couple years. They are in 6th grade and our goal is to have them be able to read, write and speak English by the time they enter high school so they have some chance to graduate, but who knows what will happen once they get here!! We really cannot have any expectations about them, because it is such a crap shoot on what they are actually going to be like.

So you are probably asking... "Amanda, what the heck are you thinking taking on these girls when you are going to have 2 little ones yourself?" and that is a very, very good questions. Bottom line is that there are some things in life that are presented to you that you just know with every bone in your body that it is from the Holy Spirit. This was undeniably that. When we both heard that Catholic Charities was going to present us with the possibility to take on twins, we were both like"NO WAY! our lives are going to be crazy enough without them!" We met with their social worker expecting to tell her no, and after she told us about them, we both felt something come over us and decided to tell her that we would think about it. When I say "thinking" about it, what we meant is that we both needed to pray A LOT about this.... and we did, and did some more. We both knew that we needed to say yes, but didn't want to to say yes!! So don't think that we are this couple that is so great that we had no questions about helping these girls, that we were totally up for the sacrifice and was gung ho about changing our life.... Sorry to burst your bubble, but we were VERY HESITANT! After a lot of prayer, conversing with other people and more prayer, we knew without a shadow of a doubt that the only answer we would be comfortable giving was yes. We have been at peace about it ever since and are not looking back... what would be the point? We know that if things go horribly wrong we could as a worst case scenario give them to another family. Prayerfully that wont happen. Grace and our new child is our first priority, and once their safety is jeopardized... game over!!!

The only thing that we ask for from our friends and family is to please hold our family up in your prayers and invite us over for dinner so you can meet our new family!

I promise to update you more on our journey, tune in weekly!