February 2012 Update

First of all, since I haven't posted with any real regularity in quite a while here on this here blog :), I'm not sure if anyone is actually reading it. ;) Can you leave me a comment if you are, in fact, perusing around here...still interested and all? Thanks.

Secondly, I'm not spending much time on Facebook these days, so make sure you come back regularly for updates on our lives here. Just go ahead and bookmark it or become a 'follower'...because I won't be giving a heads-up on Facebook anymore every time I post. Okey-dokey?

Now that that is done...We just sent out our February update yesterday. I wanted to put it here too, so here you go. If you do not receive these updates via email and would like to, email me at michawn at ebersoleonline dot com to let me know...or leave me a comment here.

Ebersole
NEWSLETTER **For the actual version that we sent out via email (it's much cuter I have to say :)), click on that link.

Anapolis - Brazil
February 2012


Hi there.

We hope that our Christmas/New Year update found you well and that your holidays included wonderful times with family and friends. We had a very pleasant holiday season, including one really fun Christmas party with lots of our Brazilian friends here at our house...they are so much fun!! Love love love them. Very thankful for our sweet, fun friends God has given us here!

January brought some visitors our way...a very fun brother/sister duo. She lives in Ohio and he in Alaska...they are super close and super fun and we LOVED having them here for two weeks. While they were here, the need arose for Joel to go to one of our bases. Rather than me and our visitors just staying here, it worked out that we all got to go (our kiddos staying behind with our very good friends). I had never actually even been to another base before, so it was really neat to see it all up close and personal. Joel was very busy the whole time getting the float plane there up and running again. It was very rewarding to be able to test it out on our last day there...his first time to fly in a float plane.

A few weeks ago, the kids and I started volunteering at the orphanage a street over from our house. We've gone there many times...so many that when we go there with visitors, at this point they just tell us to go on in and give them a tour ourselves..."you know this place...make yourselves at home" they say. But, we've never gone as volunteers on a regular basis. I knew that when our family got to a certain stage I wanted to do that. I had been thinking about it for several months actually, but didn't know about the risks involved...awkwardness since we are on the list to adopt, plus practical things like lice and scabies, etc. Just me, that's fine...but for my 4 children, I didn't want to put them in that situation if it wasn't for sure the Lord's idea. Well, in January, I knew it was. So, we go every Tuesday and Friday to help with the 0-2 yrs. old age group's end-of-the-day routine...4:30-6:30. And we seriously love it. It is exhausting work (or as Cass says when she leaves there, "I'm jezausted" haha). And there are some incredibly heartbreaking things that we see. But, it is incredibly rewarding and my children are learning so so much.

As far as adoption for us personally, we are still waiting. There just aren't any children that are available for adoption in our state at the moment that meet our profile (5 and under, sibling group welcome). We were told that if we asked to be put on the national list that we'd for sure get at least one call within a week. In some ways, we are both itching to do just that. But, we both just feel like it is not quite the right time for that. God is not bringing us any children to adopt yet and probably for good reason...one being that we have nowhere to house them. Which brings me to another point of concern for us. (*Update since this paragraph was written just a few days ago: Even though we are not on the national list, they can still call from all over the country with cases of children that are hard to place. We were just called again yesterday from a state in southern Brazil with a sibling group that needs a home. Please pray with us for wisdom as to how to answer this call...we need to give them an answer next week. And it just makes what's in the rest of this message that much more urgent. Please pray!!)

I counted it up the other night. Yesterday was our 11th wedding anniversary. In those 11 years, we've moved into 15 different homes. Of course, that doesn't even include all the furlough travel and staying in countless hotels and in countless friends' homes (thank you so much, friends).
But to say that we are so very weary of transition is just the biggest understatement of the century. Housing is a huge concern right now.

Last time we were back on furlough, God arranged it so that we now have a wonderful little plot of land in the states. So so so so thankful. Our hope is to very soon be able to put a little dwelling place of some sort there on our land, eliminating the stress of finding housing every time we go, bringing things out of storage to set up living there, putting it all back into storage when we leave, etc.

And here in Brazil, we are fortunate enough to have a wonderful personal loan available to us to buy a plot of land. The need is fairly urgent to be able to build something here on that plot of land. So please pray with us that God would bring in those finances needed to meet our very specific needs as a family home (adding more children as the Lord sees fit, hosting many visitors, homeschooling).

"If you build it, they will come." O.K., that wasn't really about a house and kiddos I guess, right? Haha. But, maybe that is really what the Lord is waiting on. Adopting aside, a house is a great need for us anyway...we will need to be out of this rent house very soon. So please pray with us and even consider, yourselves, donating to this cause.

To donate to this need, please just visit the 'join us' section of our website which will tell you the several different options for how to give: www.EbersoleOnline.com.

Thank you so much for your prayers and support. We really do very much appreciate you all.

Love, Michawn and the whole Ebersole crew...Joel, Grady, Hadley, Eissa, and Cass