Happy Dancing !

YES we are doing a happy dance tonight!! Hannah and Jon saw their baby on the ultrasound screen this afternoon, teeney tiney; size of a grain of RICE, but that tiny baby had a heartbeat today which they could watch in the screen! How super of a birthday prsent for Jon could that be ???? Greatly magnified here so you can see how miraculous LIFE truly is, is a photo of a baby six weeks along into his/her little life. As often as I have seen these photos, I never cease to get a little teary eyed at the wonder of God's Handiwork.
Sweet little baby child, a lot of family are really excited in anticipation of welcoming you, and will be praying for you every day!

more praise!!

I shared a while back that I was praying about a little girl named Ginger in Ukraine, a precious almost 6 year old who has Down Syndrome. I was not sure that God had put her on my heart because she was supposed to be our daughter, but HE PUT HER THERE and PUT HER THERE DEEPLY!!! I committed to the Lord to faithfully pray for THE family who was Ginger's Forever Family. LAST NIGHT I received word that YES YES YES, God answered my prayers ( and I am sure the prayers of many others as well) for sweet Ginger. SHE HAS A FAMILY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank You Heavenly Father on behalf of a little girl I will more than likely never meet on this Earth!

Grandbabies, children and caterpillars

We are rejoicing with daughter Hannah and son-in-law Jon that they are expecting a baby !!!!!!!!!!! We are praying that all goes well this time; the miscarriage last fall was so very hard on Hannah, even as a nurse midwife I didn't see many ladies suffer from deep post partum depression after a first tri-mester miscarraige ,but Hannah who is NEVER given to being down over anything ,needed meds to get through that. It messed up her college semester, etc etc. PRAISE GOD she is doing well, a bit surprised that she IS pregnant, but thrilled. She goes for an ultrasound tomorrow and that too is exciting. Two checks of hormone levels indicate that all is well!!!! Praying for Grandbaby #9 who will be Charlie David or Zoe Rose!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And then there is Liberia. Junior and Diamoh wait for us there to become Mommy and Daddy. Yesterday the President of Liberia halted all adoptions.She also ordered the US Embassy to issue no more visas until the Congress writes and passes new adopion law to protect the chldren of Liberia from the corruption and dishonesty which plague many programs in Liberia. It is our prayer that this not move in typical Liberia time table fashion, and that it be implemented SERIOUSLY when it is passed!!!
And caterpillars.That's Liberia too........................caterpillars have descended upon the rubber plantations and the fields across Liberia and threaten crops, economy and more families' futures. I'm praying that God move upon the hearts of those in Liberia who have acted unethically and contributed to this halting of adoptions, that He protect the struggling people of Liberia whose lives depend upon the crops which are endangered right now by these nasty worms and that TO HIS GLORY, He stop this plague rising up in Liberia.
It is troubling to know that our children may be futher delayed by the corruption and halted adoptions AND that they may have even less to eat because of this caterpillar plague, should it be wide spread and vicious.
Yesterday God gave me a verse in Proverbs: Chapter 4, verse 32. The devotion which focused upon it kind of fell off like the outer layers of an onion being peeled away, and the verse stood alone for me to ponder.
"Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life."
I started a blg entry about the verse but my day took some different twists and I didn't blog at all. Here is as far as I got:
When I read this verse this morning in one of my devotional readings, the story around it was "ok", meaningful, good, but the verse stood out so strongly, if that is a proper word, on its own, the devotional message around the verse just kind of melted off and left me with the meat of the matter....ABOVE ALL.........guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life" In what we read, or study, talk about, I'm thinking politics and economics,the future, all those things which affect our lives; we need to 'guard our hearts'. "
When I was interrupted in my writing to do other things, we got the word about Liberia. ALL DAY LONG I surrounded my self with Scriptures but this one was focal to the others. It kept my thoughts from fear, anger, getting ahead of God's timing and HIS PLAN and kept me on God's track of trusting HIM for every single facet of my life, my family life, my prayer life and my outreach life. It brought me back to a phrase of a song I sing often..."My heart will choose to say; LORD BLESSED BE YOUR NAME!"
If you 'll pray with us for Hannah and Baby , pray for the stabilizing of Liberia and the deliverance from the caterpillar plague, know that I too, am praying with you for what you've shared with me!!

prayer request

Please be in prayer with me for LIBERIA today? I have said before that there is much warring going on in the Heavenly realms for the hearts and souls of the orphan children of Liberia, and that war continues today. Adoption can bring out the best and the worst in people, on ALL SIDES OF HOW ADOPTION HAPPENS: people are vulnerable, sometimes gullible, or naive, some are out to make a buck or two extra,some want more than that, and some just want what they want as fast as they can get it. It causes unethical temptations to bubble up, grow, fester and infect postentially the entire process, including those whose adoptions are NOT marred with unethical behavior. Add to that people who operate with a totally different mind set than HURRY UP...microwave popcorn mentality Americans, and poeple who don't approach doing business in the same way that Americans do. Things are "never" ( yes those of you who know me face to face know that I will be the first to say that " ' never' is a lie" ) quite what they seem, are seldom how they have been explained , even more rarely happen as placed on a schedule and the net result is adoptions which are ethical and legal being delayed, stalled, or halted and more costly than they should be....to mention only a few humanly seen side effects. On a spiritual level, war is hard work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The soldiers who are deepest in the fight need our prayers for strength and tenacity, those of us on the "sidelines" or the back lines need prayer to not become complacent, we ALL need to have on the WHOLE ARMOR OF GOD ...........salvation, truth, righteousness, faith, the Holy Spirit and the Gospel so that we keep our focus on trusting God to work in the hearts of the officials involved as well as in the hearts of the adoptive family members, and not on "what I am going to do" .........."and having done all, to stand". Ephesians 6:10-20.
So my prayer request is for every facet of the adoption journeys of a lot of people, and that God be glorified in how we act and react, far beyond dossiers, case histories, visas, Ministries and Embassies and plane trips!!
"For our children, For Your Kingdom, For the sake of every nation, we will choose to be a blessing for life"

Hi/Lo Thursday..courtesy of Brent Riggs' blog

This post is part of "Hi/Lo Thursday" on the Riggs Family Blog. Check our their blog to read everyone else's "Hi/Lo" posts.

NEW UP-To-The-MINUTE PHOTOS!

I have had such a good time just looking and looking and looking at the newest photos of our children.Here are just three but there are lots more all over my desk from downloading and printing into hard copy!
Things in Liberia are on a new loop of the roller coaster this week: MUCH warring is surely going on in the Heavenlies to cause such a brou-ha ha in this country. Please pray with us for the families who are in whatever stage of their adoption process that we may ALL be able to keep going forward and complete our adoptions in a realistically reasonable time frame?? THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
While we have had a busy but really very easy, "good week" this week in this bowl of life I call Smith Soup, right now I am in serious prayer for several marriages which are under HEAVY enemy attack and for several children who are very gravely ill or afflicted. So much to pray about I could easily have no time for anything else today. How grateful I am that our Father hears us wherever we are and we cry out to Him.I don't need to get to a place or a object, don't need any props, tools or gadgets, no special clothing , only my open invitation to come boldly before the Throne of God and to find mercy!! Even when what our human eyes see looks "so bad" We can KNOW that we KNOW THAT WE KNOW ...God is GOOD.......ALL THE TIME!!!!!

untitled

Maybe I am going to ramble a bit, but I am really embarrassed ....for the people who pass for entertainers in this country and based on that "pass" who show up at national events such as Inaugural Kid events and totally make fools of themselves. The actor who played Ray Charles in a movie about that singer's life was a featured entertainer at the KIDS INAUGURAL EVENT on tv tonight. He began his thing by asking the audience to sing "America the Beautiful",which he sadly could not sing without taking breaths in the middle of his words and phrases and which even more sadly, his audience could NOT sing along with him when invited. In contrast to the audience being invited to sing the "popular songs", the silence throughout "America the Beautiful" was pretty close to deafening. I noticed that the children knew all the junk music which preceded and followed his untrained rendition of "Beautiful" , but it got worse. He began his little talk by mentioning that on this same day in 1961 President John Kennedy had "this to say..." "Ask NOT what you can do for your country but what your country can do........................ oops"
Then he pretended he could not see his teleprompter, but knew his quote anyhow, and tried again,saying the quote identically to his first try, but this time completed the whole sentence INCORRECTLY:
"Ask not what you can do for your country but what your country can do for YOU"
Then he stopped and tried AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He never quite got it right and moved on to other things. YES the real quote is "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" Thankfully this man left the stage and didn't come back. The cameras had to stop panning the audience because so many people ...ADULTS...caught the error and let me just say, their faces would not have served them well in a poker game. On a side note, my children have memorized Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have A Dream " speech in its entirty to present for home school group meetings and in our own classroom, with no note cards, no cue cards held by others, no teleprompters, as well as Abraham Lincoln's Inaugural Adresses, the Gettyburg Address speech, Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" as well as whole chapters of Scripture and "The Spider and the Fly" among some selections: BY 9th GRADE. They knew JFK's quote and realized the actor had messed up very quickly.
The next insult to the intelligence of these children, their parents and educators (or maybe it was a challenge, I HOPE NOT,) came when random audience kids were asked "historical quiz questions" such as "Which President had a toy bear named after him?" and of President U.S. Grant: "U S Grant got a speeding ticket. What was he driving? A horse and carriage? A Ferrari? A skate board?????????" Since when does having fun exclude having knowledge or using it?
MY KIDS WERE AGHAST: American born and raised and the more recently transplanted alike. My 12 year old Isaac, who was adopted from Cambodia at age 8 ,4 years ago, speaking no English whatsoever, said "Maybe they asked such easy questions so that no one would get one wrong?" If the sponsors of this "Event" were not cheering on the children and telling them that they are the FUTURE of this country while down-playing their intelligence and totally NOT challenging them, it might not have been so totally sad to me. God bless Amerca???????? How about AMERICA .........BLESS GOD!!!!!

This is the day the Lord has made! I will rejoice and be glad in it!!

Part of my busy week included studying to begin teaching a Sunday School class, something I have not done for a number of years. YES we do home school, but a Sunday School class with OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN as well as some of my own is , well, just different. I found a great curriculum to teach the WHOLE ARMOR OF GOD and then with some online searches and input from a friend, I knew I had WAY more than I could put into a 45 minute class. Today was Kick-off day and it was SUPER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We had so much fun and in the course of that 45 minutes we had learned a new song and in it Ephesians 6:10 and learned verse 11 along with it, because verse 10 was "so easy". We focused on the HELMET OF SALVATION today, and what that helmet protects us from, and how to use it. Sports kids help to make an analogy from ARMOR OF GOD to gear worn by a catcher so simple to work on!! If you put on a catcher's gear but either are not on the team or don't know what the gear is for, it is pretty useless. IF you have not asked for and received SALVATION, you can't wear the helmet, if you have and you don't learn what to do with that helmet, you too are going to have problems. In talking about how God wants us to honor Him in how we live, we sang that old old little song "Be careful little eyes what you see.....for the Father up above is looking down with love...oh be careful little eyes what you see" "be careful little ears what you hear" and "be careful little mouth what you say" and talked about serving God in ways that please Him and show His love in us. In a nutshell. My kids are not often so keen on coloring at home, but coloring a soldier in his ARMOR OF GOD was a big hit with them and the other children as well. Playing "The price is WRONG" a trading game where all the prizes were worth far more than the penny each child was given to choose to trade , or not trade, with, was a fun way to show how God gives US something worth way way more than the sinful lives we give to Him WHEN WE CHOOSE TO MAKE THAT TRADE of our lives for the gift of SALVATION. It was a perfect way to lead my heart into worship and to lead our worship service in preparation for our study of Mark chapter 6.
Can you tell I am excited about my new class????????????? Ya think? How I praise God for the energy HE blesses me with and the projects and situations into which He uses that energy!!
Watch for new photos of Junior (Levi) and Diamoh (Keren Jubilee) soon. I just received a lot of new ones!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just for fun

Why the cats whom I thought might be house cats turned out to be barn kittens after all.........Can you see "Sushi Bar" in the tree??????????? (DO NOT ASK me why Malachi named this cat "Sushi Bar"; I have no idea. His sister is "Daffodil", or "Daffi" for short. She too is in the tree somewhere. The tree is down now but earlier this week, moving kittens to the barn was on my list of to-dos, just like taking down the Christmas tree was..............

Won't you join me in prayer

Maybe you've seen the PRAYING FOR ABBY button on my blog page. The entry below is from Abby's Mom and Dad's blog and its a very serious post. Abby is 4 ,adoped from Guatemla as a baby and was diagnosed this past summer with a very aggressive form of leukemia. I have been praying for this family for quite some time, and now I am asking you who pop in here to SMITHSOUP if you'll pray for Abby with many others who are also holding her up before the Father. Please pray for this medication to DO THE JOB God allowed the scientists to create it for,pray for strength for Abby to withstand the treatments so they can DO THEIR JOB,but mostly for the Riggs family to be totally encompassed around with God's PERFECT PEACE!! God may and could heal Abby here on earth and be glorified, HE may choose to heal her ETERNALLY and He will be glorified. Between now and when ever God heals Abby and or calls Abby home, she has a lot of heavy duty and painful situations to face...hard enough for an adult, but sweet Abby is 4 years old. Her family needs our prayer support while they love on and tend all of their children, who also need our prayers as they go through this hard time with their little sister. PLEASE take a moment to click on ABBY's button to read the whole story. HERE is the blog entry from Abby's Dad:

The Valley Begins Wednesday... Would You Pray For Abby and Let Others Know About Her?


Tomorrow, Abby starts a phase of her treatment where she is least likely to survive.

For the past few days, we have been asking everyone to ask everyone they know to join us in praying for Abby, and for God to be glorified through this troublesome journey. We aren't trying to focus on death, or the negative aspects because we feel hopeless... we just wanted to use the four days leading up to this next phase to communicate how serious this time is, and bring people into the prayer group with us.

One more step forward!

We received copies of Junior and Diamoh's birth certificates today! Sometimes this is a wrench in the gears of an adoption, but THANKFULLY this will not be our "wrench"! It was a problem with our Noah's adoption; the lack of a birth certificate can prevent completion of an adoption or prohibit our government from issuing a visa........adoption complete but permission not granted to bring a child into the USA! Thank You Father for this one more step completed!

Great is Thy Faithfulness, Lord Unto Me

For about a week I have been sensing that our timing for our Liberian trip was "off" and I had a check in my spirit about the proposed schedule. We'd made our plans pretty much based on when Charlie could take time from work and which weeks were blocked out for schools and military plans, as well as the vacation plans of those who have been with the company for longer than Charlie. Late February fit all the criteria from when we started praying over and working on The Plan. Charlie had sent me a list of IMPOSSIBLE TRAVEL DATES and POSSIBLE TRAVEL DATES back in fall. I knew we needed to talk about what I was sensing, but this week was SO busy with Charlie needing to be out of town all week and the boys having basketball all over Oklahoma, I didn't know when we would connect. Thankfully although arriving in two separate vehicles, we did meet up in OKC for the Friday night tournament game and in between cheers for our (YAY!!! Winning ) team, Charlie asked me if it were OK to change th trip schedule because some things in his schedule had changed and we needed to back up a few weeks if possible. The very time that I thought was blocked OUT was now open and the slot we'd been working on as "open" had definitely changed. The check in my spirit lifted completely as I shared what was on my heart. Charlie was relieved because he was concerned that I wouldn't want or be able to work a change. I don't know just why the schedule needed to be changed, but I trust and I know that God moved the pieces around for His best!".....like the rivers of waters, HE turns it wherever HE wishes" Proverbs 21:1 says of God and how "the heart of the king is in the Hand of the Lord" Well this time, the calendar of the Smiths was what was in God's Hand and HE did indeed move it as HE chose!