Greg Adkins

A break from the you-tube onslaught...

I just realized that I haven't really actually WRITTEN anything here in quite some time.   Not that anyone is asking but a blog just isn't a blog if I don't actually tell everyone what is going on with me lately.   Here it is in convenient, ordinary bullet point format.   

1.  We're going to Taiwan!   No, our adoption hasn't progressed or anything but we've decided to visit our future daughter's homeland now.   Our initial motivation for this was a desire to know our way around Taipei a little bit before we're handed a 6 month old baby and told to take good care of her in a country where we don't speak the language and don't know our way around.   Spending a week there with no one else to take care of will give us a great chance to get to know the culture and learn our way around.   

That was the initial motivation for me to suggest the trip to Jessica but it's turned into a lot more.   When the actual adoption happens, we'll go into the orphanage and pick up our sweet little girl, say thank you, and leave.   The more we thought about that, the stranger it seemed.   We won't know anything about the people who are going to be raising Claire for her first few months of life.   We're treating this trip as a "thanks in advance" to the folks at Cathwell Orphanage... we're going to be spending at least 2 days there working with them and serving them in the orphanage.  We're also planning on collecting supplies for the orphans who live there at church in the months before we leave and taking them with us.   Our hope is to build some friendships, encourage the workers, provide them with some much needed supplies, and hopefully let them know that we deeply appreciate what they are doing in the name of Jesus.   

We are flying out of Nashville (cheaper airfare) and leaving early in the morning of Saturday, December 27th.   We'll be back on Sunday, January 4th late at night... we'll get to spend New Years Eve in Taipei which should be pretty wild.   My dad reminded me that I'm going to miss Tennessee's bowl game more than likely... on second thought, cancel the trip! 

2.   We've been having a lot of great family fun this summer.  It's really nice when Jessica is off in the summertime and she does an awesome job of making everyday fun for Connor.   You can keep up with all of their adventures over on her blog.   They're my 2 favorite peeps and we always have a great time.   Just last night we went blackberry picking and it was awesome... you should see these blackberries!   My cousin Alan owns a U-pick blackberry farm and he let us take all we could carry.  We took about 3 gallons of blackberries.   Pies and cobblers are in our future.   Life is good. 

3.   Work has been going really well lately.   We just hired Jesse Watkins as our new tech / creative arts guy and I've been having a lot of fun getting to know him and working with him.   He's only working a couple of days a week right now but hopefully that will become full time sooner rather than later.   Jesse and I are going to be working closely together to supervise all areas of contemporary worship and technical / creative arts at Powell.  

The band has really been clicking lately and we've worked in some great new players.  It's been really exciting to get to work with and get to know them a little bit and I'm hoping to keep that going.   My brother Adam has been playing drums with us along with Jeff Bills who used to play with a really great band called the V-Roys.   Dave Eckman has been sitting in on saxophone sometimes and Rose Williams has been playing violin a bit with us.  It's also been good to get to play with Skip Tanaka again as he's been joining us a little bit on electric guitar (and also his giant wooden tambourine).   

On that note, this coming Sunday is BLUEGRASS.  I love bluegrass Sundays!   We're opening with a Dolly Parton song!   If anybody wants to say anything bad about Dolly you better come say it to my face because we love us some Dolly Parton in the Adkins' household.  

4.  Not much else going on...  one final thing I've been enjoying is free wi-fi at Starbucks!   They just started offering it a couple of weeks ago and since my office is 15 minutes from the nearest Panera and about 1 minute away from a Starbucks, I'm in heaven.   I've been hoping for a good place to get out of the office and work and now I have one... I've found I can be a lot more efficient if I can get out of the office for a couple of hours every day.   This is a great place to work... no distractions and lots of caffeine = Greg being productive.   

Prayers for a big decision...

Jessica and I are wrestling with whether or not we should follow through on an idea I had a few weeks ago.   If you don't know, Jessica and I are adopting a little girl from Taiwan.    Our agency tells us that it will probably be about 2 years before we're able to travel to bring Claire home (she hasn't been born yet... when we go to get her in two years, she will be between 6 and 12 months old).   It's a long wait but we know this is what the Lord wants us to do.   It's hard to wait so long... and that's part of what brought on the idea. 

Traveling to Taiwan is a scary proposition... we'll be strangers in a strange land.   The thought of traveling to a place we've never been and then spending 10 days with our new child is terrifying to me.   What if we get lost... we won't know anything about the people, the culture, the language... anything!   So, my idea is that it would be nice to take a trip over there first.   The purpose of the trip would be twofold.   Yes, it would be great to experience Taiwan on our own first... so that when Claire arrives we'll be able to take better care of her while we are there.   A less stressed mommy and daddy should make for an easier transition... it's going to be hard for her anyway being taken away from an orphanage that will have been her home.   

The second reason for going is really the important part.   The Cathwell orphanage is where Claire will live from the time she is born until the time we bring her home.   We would like to visit the orphanage and attempt to build a relationship with some of the folks there who take care of the children.   Almost like a mini-mission trip... we'd like to see if they have any needs we could meet... odd jobs, helping with the kids, whatever.   These are the people who are going to be raising our daughter for the first several months of her life... it just feels like we should do something now to thank them in advance... I guess it's a pay it forward kind of thing.   When we actually go to bring Claire home, it will be tough to do much other than to say "thanks" and then leave with our little girl.   

So... that's the decision... we're trying to figure out if we should go for a trip now.  Obviously it will be expensive.... it's not expensive once you get there, it's just that getting there that costs a fortune.   If anyone knows anyone who would like to donate a heap of frequent flyer miles, let me know... the airfare alone will be nearly $3000 for us to travel.   It's not just about the money though... we would have to work out a time to go, arrange for someone to take care of Connor, and also we would need to contact the orphanage to see what there might be for us to do.  

I know in the grand scheme of the world, this probably isn't that big of a decision, but it's a big one for us.   We really feel it weighing on our hearts and we would really like to go... we're just trying to figure out if there's a realistic way that it could happen and if it's really what we're supposed to do. 

Taiwan Update

As most of you probably know and some of you probably don't, Jessica and I are currently in the process of adopting a little girl from Taiwan.   It's a long, frustrating, expensive process, but we hit a milestone this week that's worth sharing.

When you decide to adopt internationally, the first thing you have to do is something that's known in the adoption community as "Paperchasing".   Basically, that means you have to put together a folder full of birth certificates, background checks, marriage licenses, reference letters, fingerprints, passports, agency applications, government documents, and... you get the idea.   Anyway, that usually takes about 6-8 months.   Jessica and I were able to complete this process in only 4, mostly thanks to Jessica's really hard work to keep us moving. 

This past Monday we submitted the last document for our dossier (our collection of documents) and yesterday we received word that our dossier had arrived in Taiwan.   What that basically means is that we have now done pretty much everything we can do.   Adoption people say that we are now "paper pregnant" but I don't really care for that... just sounds gross.  Anyway, now we begin the wait.  We're told that we should expect to wait anywhere from 18 to 30 months until we get a referral and then we'll have to wait another 5-6 months before we can travel. 

So, if you ask me how the adoption is going anytime in the next 18 months, I'll probably just tell you that we're waiting and there's no news.  There probably won't be any news at all for at least that long.   It's hard... really, really hard but we believe it will be worth it.