Our Adoption Agency Celebrates 40 years of Finding Forever Families
In 1996, Karana and I began feeling led to pursue adoption. We wanted more children but were pretty sure doing it the old-fashioned way wasn’t a good idea due to health concerns. When we began praying about it, the Lord answered our prayer very clearly through a FamilyLife Today broadcast with Jorie Kinkead about international adoption in which Dennis Rainey, in his usual fashion, challenged the listeners to consider whether there was room in our homes for another child. We felt that call very clearly.
We began looking for an agency to help us and spoke to several. When we spoke to the folks at Dillon International in Tulsa we very quickly knew that we had found the right ones. Their heart of service and of love for our Lord Jesus came through loud and clear. They walked and prayed us through the journey of adopting our son and then, 2 years later, our daughter from Korea. We not only got the help we needed, we found some new lifelong friends.
2012 marks the 40th year of Dillon International serving the needs of adoptive families before, during and after their adoption. As November is National Adoption Awareness Month, it seemed like a good time to share. Soon, we hope to take a trip with these wonderful folks back to Korea with our 3 youngest children (the oldest 2 have already been) to visit our adopted kids’ homeland and possibly meet their birth parents. You can be praying about that as it is quite expensive to travel internationally.
Thank you Lord for Jerry and Deniese Dillon, their vision to serve you through adoption and all of the wonderful team that you have assembled to help make that vision a reality! We have been blessed.
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Book Review: A Praying Life by Paul Miller
A Praying Life by Paul E. Miller
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
In a simple and yet powerful way, Paul Miller shares the fruit of hard-won maturity in prayer. This isn’t yet another book on prayer methods, though he shares his, but more about helping us think rightly about prayer. Solid Biblically and easy to read.
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Ten Questions to Ask Yourself at the Start of the New Year
Don Whitney has provided us some very helpful questions as you think about 2010. The original can be viewed here: http://biblicalspirituality.org/newyear.html
The beginning of a new year is an ideal time to stop, look up, and get our bearings. To that end, here are some questions to ask prayerfully in the presence of God.
1. What’s one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?
2. What’s the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year?
3. What’s the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year?
4. In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it?
5. What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?
6. What is the most helpful new way you could strengthen your church?
7. For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year?
8. What’s the most important way you will, by God’s grace, try to make this year different from last year?
9. What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?
10. What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in ten years? In eternity?
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Lessons in Suffering
If you’ve been following the heartbreaking journey of Jake and Rebecca Mutz (Dennis and Barbara Rainey’s daughter and son-in-law), you may know that they recently lost their second child. Rebecca has been keeping a blog called What’s Cooking? through the process and it has much to teach us about faith in the midst of suffering and how best to minister those who are going through suffering. Articles like this one can be so helpful in learning how to help when you don’t know what to say.
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Book Review: Valley of Vision
The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions by Arthur G. Bennett
My review
Devastatingly humbling book of prayers from Puritans that will take you deeper in your faith, help you see yourself more accurately and put all your faith in an exceedingly glorious God.
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I love mornings
I know that there are morning people and night people, and that I fall into the former category. But I’ve found it so important to build each day on a firm foundation. There is simply a palpable difference between the days where I lay a foundation of praise and quiet reflection to start the day and those in which I just launch off into the storms without first settling my heart.
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