The Paul Family: Summer is here!

I have really been enjoying my summer. In June I spent quite a bit of time spring cleaning and we had a garage sale. In July we left for our vacation up the coast. Pictures will follow. For the rest of the summer it seems like things will get a little busier. My mom is having surgery in early August. I will be helping out with volleyball camp like usual and school inservice starts around the 21st or so. I am not ready to start back at school yet.

A note about our adoption, we passed our 2 year LID anniversary in April. this means that our paperwork has officially been in China for a little over 2 years. Our dossier has also made it through the review room which means somebody went through our documents and they were okay. You can pray for us that God would give us direction about our adoption as we wait. The current wait time is about 40 months but it grows every month. We are considering some other options as we wait. There is the waiting children program in China which specifically is adopting children with minor medical conditions. We have been thinking about fost/adopt too. We have given ourselves until December to see if there is any speed up in the referral process before we dive into any other options. In the meantime we are trying to educate ourselves about these alternatives.

I have really distracted with our aoption issues so on Sunday it was very convicting to be reminded about the centrality of the cross in the life of Christ and how it needs to be the center in our life. The speaker was a pastor named Will Thomas (I think) and as he preached in Mark 8:29-34. He basically reminded us that as believers we shouldn't be shocked about hardship or suffering because this world is not our home. Peter and the apostles thought that Jesus was there to deliver them from the Romans and they didn't understand it when he talked to them about dying. Jesus' plan and the apostles plan were different. So as a believer when I encounter hardship or suffering it's really just par for the course. The question I should ask is am I following God's plan, or am I getting upset beccause God's not following my plan. I think too often it has been the later of the two. If you want to check out the sermon it should eventually be uploaded on the mainstream website: http://www.gracechurch.org/ministries/audiodownloads.asp?ministry_id=28.

Here are some pictures of our trip. There are some more posted on FB.