Thursday, July 21, 2011

Janurary to July - for Posterity's sake

It has definitely been an interesting 7 months without a doubt. I believe it was the first Sunday in February, Tamala and I had just "planted a special seed" in what our church calls Seed Faith Sunday. We left church, went home and ate lunch and decided to go drive around and look at properties in the country and dream that afternoon. We were driving south of the KC metro area when Tamala checked her Facebook page on my "smart phone". She said there was a message from someone we used to attend church with asking if we could call her, she had something very important and urgent to ask us. Now it had been approximately 4 years since she'd just walked out of our lives without any explanation or anything. She just disappeared! So I called the phone number she gave us and had her on speaker phone so Tamala could hear.

Our friend informed us that her 19 year old daughter had just told her she was pregnant. Mother asked her if she wanted to keep the baby or give it up for adoption. She wanted to give it up for adoption. So she proceeded to ask Tamala and I at this point of the conversation if we hadn't already adopted, would we be interested in talking to her and Sarah about adopting this baby. I pulled the car over at this moment!

We talked some more with her and asked her many questions. We decided that we would meet that same evening at our apartment in Lenexa. Both Mother and daughter showed up around 7pm I think and we begin talking. The daughter asked us many questions and we asked her a few "hard and straight to the point" questions ourselves. They left our home after we prayed with them. On the way home, daughter told her mother that she didn't want to interview any more families because she believed that she wanted Tamala & I to adopt the baby. The next evening the daughter called us & finally asked us if we'd adopt her baby. We told her yes. She told us her due date was around September 1st.

Long story short - we recommended to the expectant mother that she enroll in The Lighthouse program which is a ministry for unwed, pregnant girls. She agreed and finally enrolled sometime in early March I think. By the beginning of April she left the program at The Lighthouse and vanished!

April 13th, a Wednesday, I was terminated from by employment at Scout Logistics. This had been building within me for about a year because I didn't agree with the manner in which the owners of the company were conducting business. The proverbial straw the broke the camel's back was that I'd taken a day off and scheduled numerous doctor visits, etc. When I went to the Pharmacy to get my new scripts filled and some old one re-filled, my Pharmacist told me he wouldn't be able to fill them because our insurance had been cancelled. CANCELLED?! So left without my meds. I found out the next morning at the office that the insurance had been cancelled for lack of payment! I was FURIOUS! They hold money out of my paychecks to pay insurance premiums and they were so inept at paying their bills, they'd allowed our health insurance to be cancelled. I told the owners on a Friday morning meeting just what I thought about all that. They asked me if I wanted to work there any more and I told them "No, not if you cannot pay bills on time". They let me go the next Wednesday.

So, now I'm updating my resume and hitting the internet with everything I've got. I accepted a Logistics Broker position with RWI TRansportation LLC who had a small office in downtown KC, MO. I started on Monday, May 16th and was terminated at the end of my 2nd week, May 27th. I told Tamala that it was "crystal clear" to me that this was completely a spiritual battle. I told her it was the light I took with me to the office that made the co-workers so uncomfortable with their sin they simply couldn't take it. So the manager cut me loose. God had other things in mind.

I began to ponder opening up my own business in the next couple of days and the decided to go ahead and started the processes. June 1st was listed as our beginning date. I finally partnered with a Virtual Services Company- Arise. I began a training program with AT&T (one of their customers) on Monday July 11th. The program would last about 7 weeks.

It was around the 1st part of June that we tried contacting Gail because no one had been in touch with us. Sarah was still gone! We didn't know what to think!

Fast forward to this last Friday July 15th. Our friend called us about 10:30 pm and said her daughter has re-surfaced. She's staying with a friend in Topeka, KS and she's wanting to talk with us. She gave us her daughter's number and said she was waiting on us to call. So we call her and it's about 11pm at this point. She told us that she'd left The Lighthouse and went back to the baby's Daddy and wanted to work things out with him and see if they couldn't raise this baby. She told us she finally came to the conclusion a couple weeks ago that this daddy didn't want any part of raising this baby. She asked if we were still interested in adopting the baby and we assured her that we were. We told her that since we hadn't heard from anyone for so long we hadn't done anything regarding getting ready to adopt. About her is when she dropped the bomb. She said that the baby had already "dropped" and so had her belly. Her baby doctor said during her last recent visit that she was already dialated to a 3 and that this baby would probably be here in two to three weeks!

The next morning, Saturday, we get up and begin our day. I had a seminar to conduct at the church for people that were interested in starting their own business. We left around 11:30 or so; came home and ate lunch. It was around 2:30 I finally got around to sending Adoption and Beyond an email asking for a meeting in order to get started with the home study. To my surprise, they called me with 10 minutes. She asked if we were free that afternoon and I told her yes, so we scheduled a meeting for 3:30pm. I had to call Tamala who had gone grocery shopping to wrap up what she was doing and come on home because we had a meeting to go to.

The meeting went well. The agency worker sent a notebook full of assignments home with us and we left. We watched three required videos that evening and began the paperwork.

One of Tamala's long time friends was in town with her baby daughter and she needed a place to stay. They came to stay with us afte they'd visited her Dad in the hospital who was in Stage 4 lung cancer. So we were getting caught up with all one another's families. Her husband was currently deployed on military exercises and had been gone about two months already and still had two months to go. Well of course we told her all about the whole baby adopting story and how quickly everything has to move at this point. We finished visiting and all went to bed.

Early Sunday morning before church, I was back in the office tending to some details when Tamala told me that her friend wanted to talk with us. So we went into the living room and she said that she'd shared our story with her husband the night before on the phone and he said "Well let's just help them." So she hands us a check for $1200.00!!! Tamala and I are at a complete loss for words. She tell that "thank you" just doesn't seem quite enough. She assures us that she and her husband are happy to be a part of our family process.

We headed off to church in a daze. We shared what had just happened with many other workers/volunteers in our church during a morning meeting and they rejoiced with us!

Now I'd been in a training program with Arise all last week and Monday and Tuesday of this week. It was during the training, which was going agonizingly slow, that I began thinking that this was going to go on for another six weeks or better. It could be another two weeks after that before the revenue stream begins back to us. I determined that wasn't going to work because we have an immediate need for cash. So during our first break from training, I called the McDonalds store right up the street and asked if they were hiring. They are hiring for all shift and starting pay is $7.25/hour. About an hour and a half later, Greg Orscheln, my former employer called me. We'd had a couple of previous conversations within the last month and had caught up on all the information between us. Greg told me that he and his wife, Susan, were back in KC for the summer and they'd be leaving again in the fall in their motorhome. They've become "snow birds". He also told me that he has been helping his brother in law start up a internet business in Tonganoxie. That is when Greg said "Kevin, I've got an opportunity up here and I could sure use your help!" I told him this was a divine providential call because I had an immediate need for cash due to the adoption. His response was "Well I have some of that right over here on 77th Street!" They only live a few blocks from where we live.

One of the main reasons I decided to blog again was that I want this baby to know whe God was working on his behalf and getting him setup before he was even born!

Auntie Cheryl and Uncle Bo (Tamala's sister & her husband) talked with Tamala a coule of night ago and said their sending us some money. It should arrive by Saturday I figured.

It is now Thursday afternoon and the paperwork is completed. I made a trip to the adoption agency and turned it all in along with a check for $1400.00! I had already paid them $200.00 online yesterday as an application fee.

So there you go, six months and three weeks worth of life! More to come.....

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