The day we went to a wedding in a village

We went to our first village wedding a week or so ago.  Weddings here are a huge undertaking.  Lots of money is spent on food, dowry, cloths, jewelry, ect.  I decided instead of trying to write about it, I would post a photo blog.  So here is the wedding day in pictures:

The girl in the corner is the bride.  Mom got to ride to the village on the back of a motorcycle, while I walked.  This was before I arrived.  For most of the day, the bride sat in this corner as different women came in to see her.  Half way through the day, she turned and faced the wall with her back to all the women.  She told me she was very nervous about the day.  Her eyes were constantly on the verge of tears.

Men cooking lots of tandoori roti(bread that is made in a clay pit type thing).  Hundreds of guests came and ate for the wedding.

Eating buffalo, bread, and rice(so tasty!)  My friends also made me wear this bring lipstick, apparently my make-up was lacking a bit.

The groom arriving on a horse.  He is covered in flowers and surrounded by drums and his family, announcing his coming.

The man with the short beard is our neighbor who invited us to his distant relative's daughter's wedding.

The groom's family and guy friends are wearing the orange scarves.  They meet the bride's family and place flowers around their necks.

Exchanging greetings and flowers.

The groom on his decorated horse.

Everyone eagerly watching the groom's arrival.

Mom and I were given flowers.

The groom.

Our neighbor's son and his cousin.

Some dressed up cuties on the groom's side.

The groom surrounded by women in his family and gifts.

The Mullah(a muslim man educated in Islamic law and theology) performing the Nikah(the wedding ceremony) with the groom.

Mom and me :)

The Mullah performs the Nikah separately with the bride.  She is behind the sheet.

Men in with the groom.

The Mullah recited the Quran in the groom's room.

Men listening to the Mullah reciting the Quran.

There is a huge break here (maybe 2 hours), in which we went to the Ganges river with the family who invited us.  That is a blog post all on it's own.  Ryan and I would both rate that experience as the most fun we have had with an Indian family here.  Such a fun time.  So after playing at the river for a while, we returned as the bride was getting ready to leave.  I think the bride was getting ready during the time we were gone.  

In Indian culture almost all weddings are arranged.  This means that a girl is leaving her family to join a new family that she usually doesn't know.  She has grown up surrounded by her family, many times sleeping in the same room with her sisters and so leaving is a very sad time for her.  The bride here is sobbing as she says good-bye to her family members.  It was so sad.

The groom is standing in the middle with the black outfit on.  He waits as his new bride clings to her family.

After a while, the bride was sobbing so hard one of her relatives picked her up to take her and put her in the car.  

The bride and groom are both in the car, but at this point have still not spoken or seen one another.  They will return to the groom's parent's home, where they will meet for the first time as husband and wife.

The car is packed full of the groom's family.

There they go, my heart broke a little for this young bride and she left everything she has ever known.  She will visit her family in a few days, but everything will change for her.  She will now spend her days as a wife and most of her time with be spent with her new mother-in-law and sisters....

I pray God blesses their marriage and their family and makes them a blessing to those with whom they live.

The day we went to our neighbors house to watch a sacrifice

Last weekend in between having our home study interviews, we were busy visiting our friends as they celebrated one of the biggest holidays in the Muslim world, Eid al Adha.  In India it is called Buckra Eid.(Buckra means Goat).

  During Buckra Eid, animals are sacrificed in rememberance of God providing a sacrifice for Abraham(Ibrahim)'s son.

  During the days leading up to Buckra Eid, the streets of our city where filled with goats and buffalo.  In India(or at least in our state) it is illegal to kill cows so no cows are sacrificed here.  We also heard about camels being sacrificed, but we didn't see any in our area.

  While Rhett was visiting in August we met a family that lives across the street from us, and have begun to spend time with them.  They are so kind and generous and invited us to come over when they sacrificed their buffalo.

  They told us they were going to sacrifice around 9am and so we set our alarms and planned to shower and get ready to be there by 9.  Well, around 7:30am the daughter called and excitedly told us to come at 8am.  We scrambled to get ready as she called every 10 minutes or so telling us to hurry up!  We walked into their courtyard around 9 just seconds after the sacrifice.  R was pretty bummed.  I was a little relieved that I had missed seeing this huge animal sacrificed as the blood ran around my feet.  (Have I mentioned my Mom is here??)  Yeah, I think she was a little relieved as well.  Mom and I went upstairs to watch as the butchers cut up the buffalo, while R stayed downstairs with the men.  The animal is divided into 3 parts:  one for the family, one for friends or relatives, and one for the poor.  By around 10:30am we were eating some of the buffalo.

  I am an East Texas girl and have many close friends who are hunters, however, my Dad was not a hunter and I wasn't really exposed that much to skinning and cleaning of animals.  It was a little overwhelming for me.  Everywhere we went for three days there were buffalo and goats on the sides of the streets being sacrificed and goat skins for sale.

  We did have many good conversations with friends about the meaning of Buckra Eid and we long to understand even more what this sacrifice means for our friends and neighbors.  Many of  wondered if we would sacrifice a goat.  We tried to explain that we don't do Qurbani (sacrifice) because Jesus was and is our ultimate sacrifice.

  One thing I really love about the holidays around here is all the hugging.  In this culture, hugging is not an everyday thing(which makes me pretty sad), but during both the Eid after Ramadan and Buckra Eid everyone greets each other with a hug and greeting.  I love it!

  There are so many more things to say about Buckra Eid and our friends and neighbors, but I will leave you with some pictures....

  Oh, btw R did get to see a total sacrifice the next day.  He even has video if you want to watch....it is extremely graphic.  The head of the family makes the first cut while reciting a blessing, then the butchers finish everything.

WARNING:  These are GRAPHIC!!

Buffalo and goats for sale

Our neighbors courtyard after they had sacrificed the buffalo(see my Mom in the back ground?)

watching from upstairs

All the kids of the family(this house has 3 brothers and their families that all live together)

This is on the street in front of our language nurturers home

There is a tent set up where people can buy a buffalo and have it sacrificed there in the tent

The day we had our home study and our hearts started aching a bit

    We had our home study!  On Saturday the social worker arrived, via Kanpur airport, around one in the afternoon.  We picked him up and headed back to our house to start the weekend.  The first day we went over a few hours of training stuff.  Just general adoption info, attachment/bonding issues, sexual abuse issues, ect.  Then we had the walk through of our house.  I was so nervous about this part.(Just ask Ryan, I was kinda very hard to live with the few days before our homestudy :0) My mom and I had been  in a cleaning, organizing frenzy.  I have no idea what I would have done with out her here, she is amazing.
    We live in a poor area of our city and it took us a long time to find a place to live.  It is small and simple, but works well for us.  We love the location, our neighbors, and our balcony, but I wasn't sure how a social worker from America would view it all.  It turns out all my worrying was for NOTHING!  He did his walk through and drew our basic floor plan and said everything looked great.  That's it, no improvements needed, nothing.  It was a little anti-climatic to be honest, but these days anti-climatic is welcome.
    The next day we had three different interviews.  A long one with both of us which covered every topic imaginable, including; why adopt, how we met, our strengths and weaknesses, our idea of motherhood/fatherhood, discipline, finances, ect.  Then we each had a short separate interview with our social worker.  It all went well and everything is good to go ahead in the process....

  Then there was a major let down that we were not expecting:

    Saturday night we took the social worker to Pizza Hut, because, well Pizza Hut is good.  The four of us were just chatting(Me, Ryan, my Mom, and SW) about when we would return to America for a visit.  We were telling him our plan is to go to the States next Christmas 2013.  My Mom made a comment about us bringing our baby to America then.  A few minutes after that Ryan made another comment to that effect.  Then our social worker said, "That would be awesome if yall were able to do that but realistically with the country you are adopting from, it is currently a THREE YEAR WAIT."  Wait, WHAT???  We were under the impression that it would be a year or year and a half...maybe 2, but THREE!!  My heart fell to the pit of my stomach and my throat started doing that burning thing that happens when you feel like you are going to cry.  I could feel Ryan looking at me and I avoided his gaze, I knew if I looked at him I might lose it right there in Pizza Hut.  So, I took a few breaths and tried to pull my self together.  Three years, three years, three years...it kept playing in my head, it still does.

    So that is where we are, it looks like it will be three years before we get to bring our baby home.  I hate that thought with everything in me.  BUT, we will press on and keep walking towards Baby Hartsfield and pray that God helps us to have patience and pray that God watches over and pours his love on Baby Hartsfield as we wait.

     Most of you are probably asking WHY?  That is a good question and a hard one to understand.  There is a lot that goes into it.  Different countries do adoptions differently and if the country you are adopting from is a Hague or non-Hague country makes a difference(but that is all blah blah).  So, the easy explanation is that the country we are adopting from is a Hague country and they have a lot of rules and regulations and so before a child is able to be adopted from their country an investigation has to be done on that child.  They want to make sure the child is adoptable, hasn't been stolen or traffiked, ect.  So, these are all good things that the govt wants to do, but they just take a really long time.  And, we are wanting to adopt a younger child so that makes the process longer. There are many families wanting to adopt younger children so this puts us in a line waiting to adopt.  Anyways, that is a short version...it is still pretty impossible to understand why three years.

    Please pray for us as we process all of this.  We are more excited than ever to build our family through adoption and feel confident with our agency and the country we have chosen that our child will come from.  However, in our plans for our family we were imagining in three years to have a baby and be working on more...so pray God would give us wisdom in growing our family and pray he would help us to trust Him in all things.  He is the only one who knows how long it will be and we trust his timing, as much as we hate waiting!

  One way that God has really shown Himself as a good and faithful to me is in the fact that the timing of the home study and the timing of my Mom's visit were the same time.  Her love and support have been so encouraging to Ryan and me through all of this.  Not to mention, she is a cleaning machine!  Those of you that know my Mom, know that she might not like to cook, but boy can she clean.  She helped us(okay so maybe WE helped HER) get our house ready and beautiful.  She is also a great shoulder to cry on.  So thankful that God gave her to us and that she could be here right now.  Such perfect timing!

    This is going to be a MUCH longer process that we thought, we are mourning that it will be so long, BUT at the same time we are rejoicing because we are one step closer to baby Hartsfield!!!

Jesus is Beautiful

  A few weeks ago, Ryan and I listened to a sermon online. The sermon was about how Jesus is offensive.  The preacher described how Jesus offends us when we are living against the ways of God.  This offensiveness of Jesus leads us from living out of our own desires to live according to God’s desires.

  Day after day we talk about Jesus with our friends here.  They love to talk about Jesus.  We do this because we love and follow Jesus and believe he is the way to God and to everlasting life.  We struggle to tell stories that Jesus told and stories about Jesus (in Hindi/Urdu), because the story of who Jesus is and what he has done and continues to do shape our lives, they have actually given us new life!

  In light of all of these things, I started asking myself, “How do I view Jesus?”.  Is he offensive to me?   

  Yes, the things Jesus said and did and tells us to do are offensive to the desires I sometimes feel for my life.  For example, the Sermon on the Mount: Mt 5:1-11

The blessed ones are described as:

the poor in spirit

the mourners

the meek 

those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

the merciful

the pure in heart

the peacemakers

the persecuted

Umm, those characteristics don’t exactly describe my everyday life…. If it were left up to me in my own strength and power to be and do these things,  it would be very offensive and depressing actually, but that is what is so beautiful about Jesus.  He is the one!  He accomplished these things for us and because of his love and the Spirit of God we are inspired and empowered to live like him. 

The adjective that I have been overwhelmed with to describe Jesus lately has not been offensive, but instead, beautiful.  For those who follow Jesus and trust in his sacrifice for our shame, he is beautiful.  Overwhelmingly, intoxicatingly beautiful.  He is good news for all people.  The more I learn a new language and learn to share parables and the stories of how Jesus interacts with people, it is coming alive in a new way.  Jesus is totally radical to every culture, because no matter how different cultures and countries may be, Jesus was always speaking of a different kingdom, the kingdom of God.  I long for that kingdom to take root in all cultures.  It is going to be awesome! 

  Jesus is beautiful.  Following him, though not always easy or comfortable in this life, is the most beautiful thing.  

Two VERY important people are coming to visit

Two very exciting things are happening in the next two weeks:

1.  My Mom is coming to visit us for the first time.  Hands down, the hardest thing about living in India is that we are so far away from family and friends.(Ryan says Mexican food is a close second)  To say I am excited to see my Mom after almost a year would be the understatement of the year!!  I can’t wait to show her this new country and culture we call home.  I can’t wait for her to meet our friends, ride a rickshaw, get new cloths, and eat some tasty food.  I can’t wait for India to be a real place for her, not just a country she googles often to check the news to see if we are safe ;)  She arrives October 19^th and will stay a whole month!

2.  Just a week after my Mom arrives another visitor will arrive.  This visitor will be here to do our HOMESTUDY for our ADOPTION!  The thought of if makes my stomach flip a little and my armpits sweat.  He will be here for 3 days accessing if Ryan and I will be good parents and checking out where we live.  We are really excited for this next step and would really, really love your prayers for this time!!  This is just one of the many steps that is bringing us closer to baby Hartsfield …… woo hoo!

The Day My Assumptions Were Wrong

One of our favorite things about Austin, Texas is that it is filled with so many people that celebrate adoption. Along with all the great Mexican food :)

When we moved to India, I wasn't really sure what people here would think about adoption and how they would respond to us pursuing adoption. In the beginning it was pretty rough. Many people we talked to about adoption could not understand why we would adopt a child that wasn't "our own". One lady told me that she would take me to a Durga (the tomb of a saint where people go to pray) because when she had trouble getting pregnant she went to a Durga and then she got pregnant. I didn't have enough language at the time to explain to her that I had not tried to get pregnant and not been able to, but that adoption is our first choice. Or to explain that we don't pray to saints. Another man told me that we are much to young to be adopting right now. Surely, we could go to a doctor and he could help us. Again, misunderstood.

These and a few other conversations had gotten me pretty discouraged and I had decided I just needed to grow some thick skin and not expect anyone to be supportive. I wanted to protect myself from what people thought about me and about us adopting.

Fast forward 3 or 4 months and our adoption stuff is moving forward. A few weeks ago, during language, having kids(and our lack of kids after 3 years of marriage) came up with both of our language nurturers at separate times. Just as a side note, you know how in America it is considered rude or intrusive to ask a couple when they are planning on having kids or why they don't have kids? Well, here in India that is not the case AT ALL, not rude, not intrusive. In fact, pretty much everyone we meet as soon as we meet them asks us why we don't have kids yet. Anyways, we explained to both our language nurturers that we wanted to adopt a baby and we are in the process of getting a baby from a different country that will be our own child. I braced myself for the why, the confusion, the judgement ect...oh my, I was totally wrong. They wanted to know why and what exactly it meant. One of our language nurturers asked if once the kid was 18 they wouldn't be our kid anymore. When we told him "no way." He said this is very good, this is the best way. Our other language nurturer told us that she had secretly always dreamed of adopting a baby and was really excited for us. I was totally surprised and totally overwhelmed with thankfulness that God placed both of these people in our lives that are genuinely excited about our baby. A week later one of our language nurturers wanted to know how long the process of adoption takes and he wanted it to go faster. He also said he wants to help us in any way we need to get our house ready for a home-study. Pretty awesome, and I realized that God really has no desire for me to try to grow tough skin. Actually, Jesus continually had tenderness and compassion. I don't think he was much of an advocate of that whole grow tough skin stuff....

Update on Baby Hartsfield

We got approved by our adoption agency and have been working hard at getting stuff filled out and sent in.  SO.MUCH.PAPERWORK!  So far we have been really pleased with our agency, they are really great at helping us and answering all of our random questions.

Because we are working with an agency that is in America they will send a case worker to our home here in India.  He is planning on coming  in mid October.  Thankfully, there is another family in Sri Lanka who is also in the process and we will get to split the costs of this trip with them and potentially another family.  

We are so excited and nervous about the home study.  I had a little freak out because our apartment only has one bedroom and the home that our case worker comes and approves is the one you have to be living in when you finally get your child.  So, I started panicking that our house would not pass a home study because we don't have a separate room specifically for the baby.  We emailed him and he told us that is fine.  Our living area is really big and we are planning on partitioning a part of it off as the baby's room.   

Even though I was relieved, I have been feeling really bothered by the thought that we don't have a room for our baby.  I had this "American" picture in my head of a cute little baby room...that is a totally different post I should write on expectations and things I think I need. So, yeah it has been a little rough for me wanting a "better, nicer" house.  

In the midst of my "house is no good" crisis, a couple girlfriends came to visit for my birthday. They were awesome.  They reassured/convinced me that my house is actually great and making a home for a baby is not about some cute baby room.  Funny how quickly and dramatically I forgot that.  Girlfriends who can speak truth to you are the greatest!

That's the latest on baby Hartsfield!!  Can't wait for that sweet little thing to be a part of our family.