Painting Classes for Christmas!

Hello, blog readers!  

I have an exciting announcement to make.  We are holding painting workshops at our home in Lebanon during the month of December to raise money for our adoption!  There are some workshops for adults, some for kids, and some for both.  I will sketch the picture onto the canvas before the painters arrive, and we go through it step by step together as a class.  No painting experience or art expertise required!  

Upon arrival, your canvas will look something like this:

When you leave, it will look more like this:

You don't need to know how to paint - we'll go over a few helpful tips together before we get started, then paint your painting as a group!  I'll be happy to help with some finishing touches, such as a bit of outlining and some snowflakes added to the background.  

The price of each painting class depends on the size of the painting.  Times and prices are listed below.  Reservations are a must!  We have limited seats available for each class, and I'll need to make sure we have your picture sketched and waiting for you when you arrive. You are welcome to stay and help your child or watch your child paint, or you may like to paint along with them!  You may, instead, want to use those two hours to go get some errands done and pick your child up after class. 

Homeschool dates:
(All homeschool classes are held from 10am - 12ish.)
Wed., Dec. 5 - Whimsy Snowman (11x14")
Fri., Dec. 7 - Santa's Boots (11x14")
Mon.,  Dec. 10 - Wreath (12x12")
Thurs., Dec. 13 - Swirly Tree (12x12")
Students are welcome to bring a snack to have during a short break.  We will watch part of a Christmas show on TV during the break.
Prices are listed below.


**NEW Addition: Monday, Dec. 17, 10am - 12ish is 
NLA Family Day.  Take the kids, take yourselves, or bring the whole family!  
Choose your painting when you register, pay when you get here. Paintings are $20 per guest for an 11x14", or $18 per guest for a 12x12" painting.  Only the Wreath and Swirly Tree can be painted at 12x12".

Whimsy Snowman

Santa's Boots

Wreath

Swirly Tree

 
Weeknight and weekend classes (everyone's invited):
Sat., Dec. 8, 10:00 - 12:ish - Reindeer Day! 
*Choose the Cute Reindeer OR Reindeer with gifts (both 11x14")
(Please let us know your choice when you register.)
Mon., Dec. 10, 6pm - 8:ish - Reindeer with gifts (11x14")
Sat., Dec. 15, 10:00 - 12ish -  Trees of Whoville (11x14")

**NEW Addition: Friday, Dec. 14, 6pm - 8ish, 
 Kids of SMAC Painting Night! 
Choose your painting when you register, pay when you get here. Paintings are 11x14", $20 per guest, or 12x12", $18 per guest.

Cute Reindeer

Reindeer with Gifts

Trees of Whoville

Larger paintings for adults, teens, and older kids:
Fri., Dec. 7, 5pm - 7:ish -  Favorite Snowman (16x20")
Sat., Dec. 15, 2pm - 4:ish - Reindeer with Gifts OR Trees of Whoville (both 16x20")
*Please be sure to choose your painting when you register, so we can sketch your picture onto the canvas before you arrive for class.
**NEW Addition: Monday, Dec. 17, 6pm - 8ish, 
NLA Parents' Night!

*Choose your painting when you register.  Pay when you get here. $30 per person, 16x20" paintings.

Favorite Snowman

Reindeer with Gifts

12x12" paintings are $20, or $18 each if you bring a friend or sibling
11x14" paintings are $25, or $20 each with a friend or sibling
16x20" paintings are $35 each, or $30 each with friend or sibling

We can bring a holiday painting party to you if you have at least 8 painters and the tables and chairs for the paintings.  
Email me at MaryBesse@gmail.com or call me (if you have my number) for questions or reservations.  I look forward to painting with you!
Please consider sharing this link through e-mail or Facebook with your friends, and encourage them to come for your discount!  
 

Domestic or International Adoption

Tonight I was addressed once more by a well meaning person who mentioned that if he ever adopted, he would adopt domestically.  This same person has mentioned to my husband that we really should be adopting a child from the United States.  He didn't say quite that much to me about it, though.  He was polite to me, so I was polite to him.  But the truth is, we get that from people now and then, and it bothers me.  My rule of thumb is to be as forward with someone as they are being with me, and that usually works out just fine.  But now I've been lying in bed (although the caffeine in my sweet tea probably has something to do with it) with these things running through my mind, unable to sleep, so I thought maybe it would help if I shared them.

I think adoption is wonderful.  Adoption here, adoption there - it's all good!  So when someone tells me something like "We really should adopt a child in our own country first," it offends me.  Honestly, it kind of makes me angry. To those people, I want to present this scenario.

Imagine you have lots of kids.  Just for conversation's sake, let's say you have five.  You raise them all, they're wonderful people and you're crazy about all five of them, just like any parent should be.  Four of them grow up and live in the middle TN area just like you do, and one has an outstanding job opportunity and moves to California.  Now, imagine the child in California needs help!  They've been hurt, they lost their job, their home was damaged...whatever kind of disaster you want to imagine.  You can't get there, so it's up to one of your other children to get there and help them.  What are you thoughts?  Probably something like "How soon can you get there?!  GO!"  Or, on second thought, wait a minute.  Do you think that a loving parent would say to the child who lives in Lebanon "No, honey, I know your brother in CA needs you right now, and his house has burned down, and he has nowhere to stay, but don't you think you should check on your brothers and sisters here first, and help the one who lives in Mt. Juliet instead?"  
Would that make any sense?!  

I think of God as the perfect parent.  That's why we call him Our Father!  Can we honestly say that we think, one day, adoptive parents will get to the gates of Heaven, look into the eyes of God Himself, and hear Him say "You've done a good job.  You've helped my children.  You've given them a home and a family.  You saved them.  But I would really have preferred you helped one of my children who was geographically closer to you than the one who was in a different country."  Um, I think not.     


To John and me, the location of the child is irrelevant, other than affecting the means by which we need to bring them home.  We considered adopting from the US, as well as Africa and Haiti...we've considered anywhere, really.  We do have other reasons we choose to adopt from Korea and China.  While some of them are a personal choice that we have every right to choose, believe it or not, one reason we adopt from other countries is actually patriotic.  

Here's the thing.  I did not earn the right to be an American.  It is a God-given privilege.  Some might say the military have earned that right, and to those who serve, and have served, in our military, I say THANK YOU.  I am genuinely grateful!  But when those men and women were newborn babies, they hadn't fought for our freedom yet anymore than I have now.  If you were born in the U.S.A., you did not deserve that privilege any more than the babies born in Africa or China.  God just smiled upon us, people, and blessed us with being a United States citizen.  We're just that lucky...or just that blessed, however you want to see it.  

There are babies in China now, whose birth parents had to be courageous to even carry them through pregnancy and give birth to them.  If those birth parents had been caught pregnant, they would have had a government-mandated abortion.  And the babies have no idea.  They were left on a door step, or at the park, or the street corner, and they have no idea that they're lucky to even be alive and healthy (if they are healthy).  They have no idea where they are.  They have no idea because they didn't ask for it, and they don't deserve it.  

There are kids in Africa right now who are happy because they're loved.  They don't have much, but they've got their family.  They have no idea that by the time they're five years old, both their parents will die of malaria or of AIDS.  And they will be lucky to live to be an adult, because life expectancy there is nothing like what it is here.  They have no idea, because they didn't ask for it, and they don't deserve it.

It sounds cheesy, yes, but I truly am "Proud to be an American."  And I'm THANKFUL.  And I'm HUMBLED.  So why would I look at this gift that was given me, and say to an orphaned child that it's my gift, and I'm going to try to take care of other kids who were given the same gift first, and if I had anything left over, then I will try to send something to them too?  The sad fact is that the poverty stricken of the United States are better off than the middle class in some countries.  There are people here who are jobless, who are on welfare who receive food stamps, and while those people may very much need that help too, they did not earn the right to live in a country who will help them.  The poor in other countries make the poor of America look wealthy.  There are people who drink the same water they bathe in.  There are kids whose parents walk 20 miles one way to get them an antibiotic because there are no such things as pharmacies where they live.  I thank God I don't have to do that!  So why would I not want to cherish this gift and share it with a child who is less fortunate?  ...Specifically, a child less fortunate who has no parents to provide for her? 

I've had someone say to me (I try to tell myself she meant well) "I'm Proud of my country!  I think people should adopt from the United States!  Kids here need help, too!"  Yes, I agree, orphaned children in the US need help as well as orphaned children anywhere.  However, I do not agree that an orphaned child in one region needs to be adopted before an orphaned child in another.  You adopt from here; I'll adopt from there.  Adoption is God's work.  If someone would like to tell me and my husband that we aren't doing God's work correctly, then by all means, please show us how it should be done. It would find homes and families for more orphaned children.

Some day, we'd like to adopt another child from the US.  Honestly, we joke that we'd like to get one from each country!  I know we could never afford that, but a colorful diversity sounds good to us!  But this time around, we're going with China, because it's just what's right or us now.  

Faith, Hope, and Love

Hello, blog readers!  I have several updates to tell.  But first, I must say that I am clearly not a regular blogger these days.  I would love to say I'm going to fix that, starting today, but as soon as I say that, then everything we're working on will consume my time, and three or four months later, I still won't have written another blog post, so at this point, I'm just not making any promises!  But I do have good intentions.  (:-]  I do tend to feel like the time I spend writing a blog could be spent on adoption paperwork, and the paperwork trumps smaller things most of the time, but someone asked me recently if we are still adopting!  So okay, I need to update more often than once a year!

First - we have named our daughter.  No, we don't have pictures yet; those will come later.  We don't even have the home study done yet.  We did fill out some papers and I'm writing my 'autobiography' now so we can get the home study visit underway.  But for now, she has a name, and it's Anna Faith.  We love the name Anna because it's a beautiful Biblical name, and also because John's sister is named Anna, and due to health reasons, she won't be able to raise any children, but she is a wonderful person, and this way her name can carry on.  Faith comes from how much Faith it's taking to get this little girl home.  We love how Anna Faith flows together, so we'll likely call her Anna Faith (rather than just Anna), but she will actually have a total of four names, the poor girl.  When we adopted Sara, her Korean name was Young Ran, and we kept Young as her middle name, so she is Sara Young Besse.  We love that idea, and want to keep a part of our next daughter's Chinese name as well, so she will be Anna Faith (something) Besse.  So now we can pray for her by name!  I don't know why, but that helps me a lot.  I also pray for the other kids in the orphanage, that they'll all learn to be nice with each other, and have enough to eat, and be safe.  We pray a lot for the people who care for these kids, that they'll show them compassion and teach them to be sweet and share, and we pray that Anna Faith will somehow know in her heart that her family is coming.

Secondly, we have paid our home study fee and we're getting this ball rolling.  We wanted, first, to raise as much money as we could before getting started, because if an adoption is not completed within one year of the home study, then the parents will have to pay an extra fee to get the home study updated.  When we're already talking about $28,000, avoiding any extra fee that can be avoided is a good thing.  We don't have nearly that much yet, but we have extra motivation to get started.  For one thing, my daughter is alive, and somewhere without me!  She's having happy moments, sad moments, and probably sometimes feeling lonely, and she may not even know she has a family yet, but she does.  She needs to meet us, and come HOME.  Secondly, we have spent immense amounts time working (and working and Working!), teaching classes, doing photography, computer repair, extra web development (for John), and any other odd jobs we can find to pay for Anna Faith's adoption.  And it's been helpful!  We've earned and saved thousands already!  But in the meantime, when we schedule almost every hour of our day working, it leaves literally no time to do the paperwork to bring her home!  So my goal now is to keep working as much as possible, but not to let it stall the paperwork.  Please pray for us in this! When we take care of our kids and each other, and finish our work and regular life chores at 10:30pm, there really is no energy left for paperwork.  We've got to work it in somehow.  I'm writing this blog now as a result of time I have because of the kids needing extra sleep this morning after being sick.  On a regular schoolday, we would be having breakfast by now, getting ready to start our school work.  I have faith, though, and somehow, some way, I have to make the time to do the paperwork to bring her home.  But while I'm not thankful for illnesses, I'm thankful for a seized opportunity. 

I have been honestly very Frustrated with our lack of progress.  I've been prayerful about it, but just overall extremely frustrated because I feel like Anna Faith is waiting on us, and we're just working and working, but not getting almost any closer!  We wanted to bring her home when she was around 5 years old.  I thoughts she should be 4-5, while John thought she should be 5-6.  So we decided 'around 5' would be just right.  When we decided to adopt, Sara was almost 6 years old, and we wanted her sister to be old enough to play with her, but still be younger than Sara so she would get to be a big sister.  But when Sara turned 7 in September, I realized something.  I think I found a reason to why everything seemed to be taking so long. 

First - a brief explanation of one thing.  Adopting a healthy baby from China (or even a healthy toddler) takes around 5 years.  We do NOT want to wait 5 years.  So we decided to go with the waiting child program for a couple of reasons.  One reason was obviously the wait.  Adopting a waiting child can take closer to one year, maybe a bit more (unless you're like us, and take a year to get the home study done in this case, but I'm getting to that).  Still, it would be a much shorter wait.  Secondly, we decided not to request a baby or a toddler.  In an orphanage, once a child reaches preschool age or older, it gets harder and harder to find them families.  We've been blessed to have three babies, and there's nothing in the world I would trade for that.  But to think that Chinese girls age out of the orphanage at 14 years old breaks my heart.  My oldest child is 14 years old, and he is still a kid!  He's a great kid, mind you, but for goodness sake, I cannot imagine moving out and searching for work and a place to live at 14, with no Mom or Dad to call and ask for help or advice!  Also, we would really like for Sara's sister to be old enough to play with her.  So we decided to request a slightly older child to adopt.  But still, she would have to have some sort of mild special need to be on the 'waiting child' list, or it would still take 5 years. 

In China, a perfectly healthy child who is 7 years old or older is considered a special needs adoption, simply because it is so hard to find them homes at that age.  They have 7 more years to find a family, and then they are on their own.  So at 7, they are put on the Waiting Child list,and if a family wants to adopt them, then their adoption is pushed forward much faster.  At first I didn't want to adopt a 7-year-old because we hoped Anna Faith would be home before Sara turned 7, and I wanted the birth order of my kids to remain the same.  That didn't happen.  So now if we request a 7-year-old, then by the time she comes home, Sara will be 8, and she will still be the older sister!  While I've been extremely frustrated with the lack of speed in our adoption process this time, I do think this was our God's plan all along.  A healthy 7-year-old sister for Sara would fit our family just right.

When she comes home, she will have trouble adjusting, we know.  She'll be fluent in Chinese, and will not be accustomed to being part of a family unit, eating with a family, walking along with us and staying with us at the grocery, all those things that our children learn from the time they can walk, talk, and understand what their parents are saying.  We have a couple of Chinese friends who can help us talk to her sometimes, and we'll use translator apps on our smart phones to help.  Also, Aaron is taking the Rosetta Stone Chinese edition for a foreign language this year, and is doing great with that.  But overall, we'll just love her like crazy no matter what, and she'll be ours forever, so she'll have to get used to us.  :)

This was a longish update this time.  I hadn't posted in a year, people!  Next time I'll be sure that even if it's not as soon as I intend, it will definitely not be a year before the next post.  In the meantime, please help us pray for our second daughter, Anna Faith Besse, and join us in the faith, hope, and the love it will take to bring her home to her family!