Johny Apple Seed

Well, surprise, surprise:  We're pregnant!  :)  We knew that maybe someday we'd have another one this way, but we really thought it'd be a few months down the road!  God had better plans!   We're due January 18, 2012, Elijah's 7th birthday!

It's really early and the last thing I read said that the baby is now the size of an apple seed!  So small and such a miracle.  I told the kids...  you were all once tiny apple seeds!  :)

The kids are all pumped!  Elijah told us that the Lord has answered his prayers!  They think eight months is far too long to wait.  Some hope it's a boy, some hope it's a girl...  guess which ones wish which?  :)  Lijah's already talked to my tummy!  We're all thinking about good baby names!  Hannie called that she gets the car seat by the baby!  Exciting times at the Crawford house.

When we were in Armenia, we started to realize that God might not send us back overseas for ministry!?  At least not right away.  And we started praying, What is it You'd have us to do?  Where do you want us?  What have you placed in our hearts that we can use for Your glory.  We kept coming back to:  we love kids!  And:  Kev loves to teach and write.  Well, here we are.  Kev's teaching Bible and we're on our way to a bigger family.  I guess since God's opened those doors, we'll happily walk through them!  Kev's doing something meaningful at work as well as at home!  God has plans!  Of course I'm excited to be doing something meaningful at home, too!  God's tug on my heart for kids started out when I was just a kid myself!  I thought I'd end up teaching preschool (and I still might!) but right now, home is where I get to stay!  Excited to see where God will take us.  Following close to Him!

It's such a fine line between, this is what I want and HE is what I want.  We always want to lean way more heavily to the You-are-all-I-want side.  Can't go wrong with your eyes fixed on Him!  Then the rest will be added, right?  So as we pursue what we think He wants, we keep our eyes open and fixed on Him more than on the plan.

We will continue to pursue adoption and to pray for a bigger house (and possibly a bigger van?)!

And we will rejoice in the blessing of NEW LIFE growing as we wait for more open doors!!

Trusting the Lord is exciting!  A little crazy and wild, too!!

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Came across this last week and LOVED it!  :)
Anyone who works with small children has the same opportunity as a foreign missionary -- to tell someone about Jesus for the first time.


Also came across this this week in the book Crazy Love:
"Having faith often means doing what others see as crazy.  Something is wrong when our lives make sense to unbelievers."  (and sometimes even believers?)
a few pages later...  "This place of trust isn't a comfortable place to be;  in fact, it flies in the face of everything we've been taught about proper planning..."