An Unusual Friendship

Now that I am back from my mission trip to Denver, I am ready to hit the ground running on our adoption. Last week was an amazing time away and time to refresh. I gained a lot of perspective and stood amazed as God changed hearts. 
Our team got back Saturday night and by Monday I had several adoption things to accomplish. I had to get something notarized and then send our FINISHED HOMESTUDY to USCIS...after an hour of  trying to figure out how to properly mail it, it was finally on the way. This was an amazing step! What does this mean? Well right now we are waiting to be assigned a new fingerprint appointment. When we get that we will head to Fargo to get reprinted (3rd time during this process) after that we wait for approval. Then we send our "paper baby" (lots of very specifically filled out papers) to our little man's country and wait for submission and travel dates. Things are rolling and we are getting more and more excited! 

With all of that being said, we still have quite a bit of money to raise which brings me to my next story. (Money yuck! I know, please stay with me!) This is the story of an unusual friend. A few weeks ago, while writing a youth talk on forgiveness, I ran across the story of a man who in 2006 committed a tragic crime in an Amish school house in Pennsylvania. I will not go into more detail on the man but through my research I came across the story of his wife, Marie, whose story was one of forgiveness and redemption. I was in awe of her and as I sat and watched her video. (video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9ydPtBEWbI) I wanted to know more about this woman and where God had taken her life. So what did I do? Googled it of course! I found her blog (https://whisperandwonder.wordpress.com/), and as I was reading I was quickly amazed at one entry in particular, she was adopting! More than that, she was adopting a child with special needs, I couldn't believe what I was reading. Marie and I had similar hearts for orphans. I decided that I would try and reach out to Marie. You see, during this process I have tried to reach out to people who have similar hearts and see if they would help advocate with us. As I reached out and barely held my breath on getting a reply (I have reached out to many people). I sent my initial email around noon and by that evening I received a response. I read it over and over again not believing that she actually wanted to help us; that she was willing to listen to our story. She even had a fundraising idea!!

Marie Monville with Cindy Lambert has written a book:
"One Light Still Shines: My Life Beyond the Shadow of the Amish Schoolhouse Shooting"

Not only did she write the book, she sent Derek and I 25 signed copies to sell and put towards out adoption!!!! Can you believe it! Her generosity is overwhelming! She also did a phone interview with me and may be blogging out story soon. I cannot put into words how much it means to me to have her support and love us in this way! 

So here is how this will work, if you want a copy of her book (hardcover) please send $20 (local), $25 (if you need me to ship it to you) to our paypal macbenz630@gmail.com, once you have done this please email me the receipt and your address and I will either deliver it (meet you somewhere) or ship it to you. If we sell all the books we have the chance to make $500!! This would be incredible for us! 

Here is a description of the book:

“My story is not about my past, but about your future,” says Marie Roberts Monville.

In the startling tragedy of the Amish schoolhouse shooting at Nickel Mines, one story has never been told; Marie Roberts Monville, the wife of the man who created such horror, tells her story for the very first time. It is a story of sorrow and destruction, but also one of majestic deliverance, unending compassion, breathtaking forgiveness, and grace-filled redemption.

Within a solitary moment, Marie Monville realized that life, as she knew it, was over. What she never anticipated was a tangible encounter with God reaching into her circumstances, through them rewriting all she believed about herself, her faith, and the God she thought she knew.One Light Still Shines reveals three love stories: the innocent love of a devoted wife for a husband in pain, the incomprehensible love of God in the aftermath of massacre and destruction, and the redemptive love of Christ, waiting to unfold in the life of every person who reads this book.

Marie's journey since that darkest of days has been invaded with light which shines through these pages into the darkest questions we all face--questions about our past, our value, our identity, and own powerlessness in this fallen world. Come face to face with the Power behind every answer―a love that begs to be received.

I know this post has been rather long, but thank you for those who have stuck with me! I will probably write more posts as we get closer to traveling and meeting our son. I also have a very unique fundraiser up my sleeve after we give this one some time, so stayed tuned! Thanks for taking this journey with us! We appreciate everyone's support and kind words.