Home again!

Sitting by my kitchen counter enjoying a good cup of tea. My big dog Svea wants to go out and get muddy, my cat finally laid down after a good wrestle with Svea, and I'm just enjoying being home in my house again after 10 days gone. Lots of things has happened. The trip was good but it didn't turn out as I expected. God has once more showed me his way in life.

I went to California with my bosses and a co rider to show 4 of our horses in the American Nationals for Welsh Cobs. It started out with lots of laughter and fun. Showing horses went well and everyone was happy. Unfortunately it all changed when I won Ridden Welsh Classic which is THE class and my co rider took second. My co rider got angry and stopped talking to me. After a couple of days of really weird situations he finally lashed out at me and told me all kinds of lies.

I first of all was in shock over his accusations since I hadn't done anything wrong and then I got both mad and sad. After sharing what happened to the love of my life and greatest supporter we decided to pray about it all. And God showed me over and over about forgiving our enemies. I was reading a book on our 2 day long trip home which I can highly recommend called" An echo in the darkness" by Francine Rivers. The book spoke to my heart since it is about a girl that gets sent to the lions, survives and then return to serve and love the woman who sent her there in the first place. God is in control and his will is for us to love not condemn.

It is not easy and I'm not there yet but I know my desire is to serve my Lord and Savior and sometimes he makes us walk an extra mile. What that is is still to be reveled to me.

Other than that God has shown us in many ways in the last couple of months that he is in control and that he will make it possible for us to bring our kiddos home. Our homestudy is in Ukranie:) We found a renter for our trailer. And God blessed our concert amazingly. Our big prayer request now is for Scotts bike to be sold.

In two weeks I will go on another trip. THis time I'm heading home:) My little little sis is getting married. She found her prince and now they are starting the journey of their lives. I am super excited for them and to get to see lots of good friends and spend some quality time face to face with mi familia. Can't wait!

Hope that life is treating you well out there!

Lots of love,

D

Apologize!

I am so sorry it has taken this long before I posted another update. Lots of reasons of course and mostly because life has been really busy. I do have news about the adoption and one big one is that we now have done 4 out of 5 interviews for our homestudy. It was not as bad as we had anticipated. Since we are pretty used to being transparent it wasn't to big of a deal. Lots of questions and some of them hard to answer and some of them required to dig up some old long lost memories but all in all not bad. The social workers comment was that we where a pretty normal couple, which we took as a good thing.
The other news about the adoption is that we now are working with a facilitator in Ukraine and his helper in Texas. They will guide us through this process and take care of us when we are there. We believe we have a better idea of how this will all work but I bet we will learn more as we go. One thing we do know is that we won't go to Ukraine until spring since we have to be on a waiting list for 6 months after all our papers are done here in the states and sent over. This is because we want kids less than 6 years old. We are ok with that since that will give us more time to raise the money we need to bring with us.
we are going to do a couple of different fundraisers this summer. One worship concert in the park here in Durango with our worshipteam from church, a garage sale, a bakesale and maybe a chocolatesale. So please help us pray that they will all work out.
God has also been very good and given me more work. He is over and over showing us that he will provide for us.
Other than the adoption life is full of work and fun stuff. Scott is right now doing his annual training with the Navy in Texas. He got to work on an aircraft today so he was happy when I talked to him earlier. ( A lot of times they don't have to much to do)
My horses are doing fine. The one I have been leasing for the last 6 months is going back to her owner later this week due to hoof problems. Not fun but at least I didn't have to put her down.

It is late and I have to sleep so I promise I will update again soon!
Be blessed my friend!
Daniela

A new life in our barn!

I thought that since I don't have anything to update you guys on about the adoption I will instead give you a glimpse of my daily life.

I work for a couple that owns and breeds a kind of horse called welsh cob. The welsh cob is a pony breed from Wales:) As you can see in my picture they are pretty stout litte ones.

This guy is Starbucks and he is my primary showhorse. A fun ride:)

My owners have 17 horses at the moment for me to work with and train. Alot YES but oh so much fun. There are 6 riding horses, 3 three year olds that I'm breaking to ride, 2 two year olds, 2 yearlings, 3 broodmares and one baby. The baby you see below was born less than a week ago and his name is MHS Durango Express. We'll probably call him Dex. We are also waiting for this years second foal to see the world. Maybe it will be there when I get there in the morning.

One day a week my swedish friend Tiina comes and helps me work all the young ones. Here are some pictures from sitting on two of them. On top is me on Starbound and Tiina on another of my showhorses: Brianna and the second picture is of Tiina on Magnastar.

Maybe you have notised that there are a lot of stars in their names that is because they are almost all sons and daughters to our stallion Megastar
If you want to see all our horses you can go to http://www.welshcobusa.com/ and take a peek.

At last but not least is a picture of the horse I leese. She is also a welsh cob and her name is Atlanta.

This is a little glimps of my life another time I'll show you some more:)

A prayer request!

Hi everyone!
It is pretty late for an old woman like me so this won't be a long post. But I wanted to fill you in on what is happening and ask for some help.
We are now in regular contact with the orphanage in Ukraine. They are looking for possible kids for us. Today we were told that it is hard to find young healty kids for international adoption. (We have asked for up till 4 years old) They asked if we would move our age limit a little. I don't really know what that means at this point but we felt that we need to pray. God knows about our wishes and he loves to see to the details of our wishes and eventhough age might not seem like as detail, it really is. We also felt that if it is our hearts that need to change to be open to older kids God has to help us in that. And we believe he can if that is his will.

Making more phonecalls about the homestudy tomorrow morning and hopefully we can send in the application at the end of this week.

An answer to prayer has been that I now have a few more hours of work over the summer. But I still need some more to help pay for all of this.

So please help us pray that they will find us young healthy kids or that God will change our hearts. And for more jobopportunities and finances.

Thank you all for standing by us on our journey of faith!
Daniela

The door is slowly opening!

Hi everyone!
I know it has been a little while since I shared with you last of what is going on. Not much has happened until this last week. We have just been waiting which seems to be the biggest part of an adoption process. But we stay pretty busy in the meanwhile which is good.

But now to what is happening. I don't know how many of you have heard about the american mom that had adopted a kid from Russia. She thought the kid was a threath to her family so she put him (a 7 year old kid) on a plane with a note in his pocket that he was to return to Russia. Totally crazy in my opinion! This made Russia stop all adoptions to the US until the US agrees to new restrictions. This affected Ukraine too. So last week I got a message saying that the orphanage wants to help us but the door was closed for now....
We didn't know what to think. Was this another door that God was closing on us or just more time of waiting? We shared the situation with our smallgroup and we prayed about it.

Three days later I get another message saying that the person that runs the orphanage wants to give it a try already. The door that we thought was shut is now open and we will walk through it! Thank you LORD!
Now that we know what country for sure that we are working with we will do our homestudy.

It's amazing to be a Gods child and walk in his footsteps. You never know where you will end up and how your life is going to turn out. But one thing is for sure and that is that it is an adventure:-)
Be encouraged my friend and stay close to the source of peace that goes beyond all our understandings, our Heavenly Father!
D

Spring is here!

You know, I have been thinking a lot about spring the last couple of days.
It is a time of lots of hope. Just the fact that it gives hope about warmer and lighter days. About flowers and green grass, warmer water in lakes and oceans. The hope brings joy to my heart and soul. For a moment I can feel a little sting of sadness. Winter is over, spring is already hear and the time flies so pretty soon we will have winter again. But that is just the hopeless part of me. The one that is always looking to far ahead. So I try to stay living in the now.

Spring means new life. Everywhere can you see strands of grass poking through the muddy soil. In the pastures where the cows have been hanging out all winter, you can now see little baby cows running around. They are sooooo cute! Soon we will have new baby horses in the barn and everywhere else we look there will be babies. I have a surprise growing in my flowerbed and buds on my lilac bush. All that stuff makes me happy and it gives me a ton of energy that I didn't know I had!

On Sunday after church we came home, took our books and cups of tea, dug out the lawn chairs and went outside. You have to start working on that tan early:) We enjoyed every minute of it.

On the adoption side of our life there is also new hope. Through a dear friend we have now been put in touch with an orphanage in Ukraine. Don't know to much yet if this is the way God has for us to walk but please help us pray for wisdom and direction. For now it sounds really good and it might be the way for us to be able to adopt a sibling couple. God is faithful and he will guide us!

Lots of love to all of you!
D

Ps. Talking about new life. We will be breeding our German Shephard Svea this week so there will hopefully be little Sveas running around in a couple of months. Maybe you know someone who would like one?

A little lost!

We are a little lost right now. The agency is more or less giving us the advice not to adopt from Moldova. The governmental situation is not the best and they say they will do it but it might be easier to choose another country or do domestic instead.

Our problem is that if Scott gets deployed he probably wouldn't be able attend a court hearing at a specific date in whatever country we adopt from. And many countries are not very flexible when it comes to that. The thing is that the Navy has started something new which puts people on a list if they will be drafted within a year. Scott is not on that list. Can he still get deployed? Yes but not very likely.

So what are we going to do? NOT A CLUE. How do you choose another country when you think God spoke to you or was it just my own thoughts??? Maybe this is God's way of telling us that his plan is different than ours. Or is it a test of our faith in him?
When it comes to other countries we really don't have many options at this point. Bulgaria seems to be the only one. And then of course we could to domestic. Who knows at this point. But please help us pray for direction. We want to do Gods will in this even if it might be complicated.

All we want is to give an orphan parents and a loving home.

Blessings, Nela