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.

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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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?

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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The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord!

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
“ For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
“ Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
Ro 11:33-36

Continue to pray for this family. Thanks.

Daughter of Christian music star killed by car

Wed May 21, 11:50 PM EDT

The 5-year-old daughter of Grammy-winning Christian music star Steven Curtis Chapman was struck and killed Wednesday by a sport utility vehicle driven by her brother, authorities said.

The girl, Maria, was hit in the driveway of the family’s home Wednesday afternoon by a Toyota Land Cruiser driven by her teenage brother, said Laura McPherson, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Highway Patrol.

The brother, whose name and exact age weren’t available, apparently did not see the girl, McPherson said. No charges are expected.

“It looks like a tragic accident,” she said.

Several family members witnessed the accident, which happened in Williamson County just south of Nashville. The girl died later at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, hospital spokeswoman Laurie Holloway said.

A publicist for Chapman’s charity organization said the family was expected to release a statement later Wednesday night.

Chapman, who is originally from Paducah, Ky., and his wife have promoted international adoption and have three daughters from China, including Maria. They have three biological children.

The singer’s Web site says the couple was persuaded by their oldest daughter to adopt a girl from China. The experience led the family to adopt two more children and create Shaohannah’s Hope, a foundation and ministry to financially assist thousands of couples in adoption.

The Chapmans did missionary work at Chinese orphanages in 2006 and 2007, according to the Web site.

“After our first trip to China, my wife and I knew our lives were changing — our eyes and hearts were opening to how big God really is, and we have wanted to experience more of that,” Chapman says on the Web site.

“We’ve really wondered whether or not we should just go to China and stay there. But I don’t think so. I believe God is saying, ‘I want you to go, get your heart broken, your eyes opened, and then take this story back to the church in America and around the world.’”

The 45-year-old singer also has released a book about being a father entitled “Cinderella: The Love of Daddy and his Princess.” He has won five Grammy awards and 51 Dove awards from the Gospel Music Association.

“It was the early church father Ambrose who used a wonderful illustration concerning believers’ prayers. He said we are like little children who run into the garden to gather flowers to please their father—but we are so ignorant and childish that we pluck as many weeds as flowers, and some of them are very noxious.We carry this strange mixture in our hands, thinking that it is acceptable to him. The mother meets the child at the door and says, “Little one, you don’t know what you have gathered.” She unbinds the mixture and takes from it all the weeds, leaving only the sweet flowers; and then she takes other flowers, sweeter than those the child plucked—and inserts them instead of the weeds. Then she puts the perfect posy in the child’s hand, and he runs with it to his father.Jesus Christ in more than otherly tenderness, thus deals with our supplications. If we could see one of our prayers after Christ Jesus has amended it—we would hardly recognize it! Jesus has such skill that even our good flowers grow fairer in His hand. We clumsily tie them into a bundle—but He arranges them into a lovely bouquet, where each beauty enhances the charm of its neighbor.If I could see my prayer after the Lord has prayed it, I would discover so much missing and so much there that was none of mine—that I am sure its fullest acceptance with God would not cause me a moment’s pride. It would rather make me lush with grateful humility before Him, whose boundless sweetness lent to me, and my poor prayer—a sweetness not my own.”

So, just be faithful to offer your best and trust in the good hand of the Master to make it acceptable to the Father. We so much need your prayers.