antelopedrive

We have had 4 more kids come and go since my last post. 2 Sweet little boys 4 and 2, and then an 11 and 7 yr old. Naomi had alot of fun with the older kids, she was so sad when they got to go home to mom and dad.
The kids had so much fun with the Stahnke mopping method. Car wash sponges, a bucket of soapy water, shorts and tank tops,.... need we say more. The only rules are you can not hurt yourself or anyone else, and you cannot get the carpet wet! For those who think I am crazy, well Maybe I am, but I hate mopping and the kids have a blast this way and the floor comes out sparkling! According to Joci it was the most fun she has ever had!
We also have a 2 week old boy, Talen. He is tiny and sweet, he eats every 3 hours, so I do get some sleep but not much. Elaina loves him as do the rest of us. She tries to calm him down when I am changing his diaper by patting his arm. HEHE. She also likes to " hold him". I say " Lana want to hold the baby?" and Then I hold him next to her chest and she wraps her little arms around him and grins from ear to ear. She then puts her cheek against his head. Oh. so cute. We may have him for a month or so.

Elaina just turned 1 and is successfully weaned from the bottle. Yeah! Although she did throw a tantrum when I gave Talen a bottle this morning, I think she thought it was for her! She surprised me recently by taking a pen she found and writing on the wall, I thought she was to young for that but apparently not! She is not yet walking yet, she loves to walk with help, but does not quite have the confidence to walk on her own yet. Looks like we may have her for a while yet. I am not complaining! I hope to keep her.
That's all for now. Time to feed the baby!

We have been so busy with the kids I did not have time to post. As most of you know, we had to send Evan to another home, he has some special needs and the other foster parents had more specialized training to help kids like him.

We got Elaina in Oct. and she is so sweet. She is now 10 1/2 months. She loves to eat REAL food. and get into everything in sight. She says mama and papa and hi, but only when she wants to or she is protesting. She also is learning to sign for her bottle or food, but again only when she wants to will she do it on her own. She loves to wrestle with Naomi and play with anything noisy. She has figured out how to unscrew lids, ugh! I found her in her crib with a sippy - lid off juice all over the place! No more sippies in bed!

It is looking like we may have her for a while.

Evan is adjusting very well. We have made huge progress, he does love to talk all the time, even if he is not in on the conversation he puts him self in it. So we are working on interupting. He loves to play outside and jump on the trampoline next door. He loves to learn and be in on everything. He does however put things away the same way Naomi does. I bought a natural bath sponge and asked Evan to go put it in the bathroom, later I could not find it and so I looked in the trash and sure enough there it was. He was helping clean the living room and I asked him to put Jon's shoes by the coat rack, I thought I saw him do it , but we cannot find the shoes, hopefully they will turn up somewhere. He loves to play with guns and so we got him a couple at the $ store, he calls them his Gunshot.
He loves Jon's guitar and calls it a Bang Bang. Not sure where that one came from.
He gave me a funny compliment at dinner last night, I made chicken a la king with spelt biscuits. I fixed his plate and then mine, by the time I finished fixing mine he hands me his bowl and asks for more, I asked him if he liked it and he replied, yes I want it for 4 months. Now I know he has no concept of time, but it was really cute.
He did see mom today and he was sad to not be able to go with her. I met her and it was a bit strange she was polite and somewhat friendly. Not sure what or when will happen or how long he will be with us, so we just pray for God's best for him. And we know that the seeds we are planting will not be useless.

Evan had been having some really horrid temper tantrums and trouble sleeping, we took him to the doc for a checkup for his asthma and the doc said it was because of his albuterol and the albuterol was only a temp thing for him. So at this visit he was able to switch to an inhaler, he gets it in the mornings. He is much calmer and more obedient. He also has no trouble sleeping at night which is so nice for us. He does like for me to sing to him at bedtime, his favorite is Jesus loves me. His face lights up when I sing that one. He is fitting in nicely. He and Naomi were even arguing today. hmmmm.
He had a visit with his mom yesterday and seemed to have a fun time. He is sad today because he wants her, so I have him pray for her and we are making pictures for her. He gets to see her again next week. I have not told him yet in case something comes up and it gets cancelled. Don't want to disappoint him.

Evan has lots of energy and is just as stubborn as Naomi was at that age. He is currently learning the rules and playing with Naomi. He seems to respond better when I correct him than when Jon does, that is a switch for us. Naomi responds better to Jon on most things. It also could be that he has spent more time with me.
We bought him a jacket, toothbrush and pj's last night and also a fire truck and a book about the movie Cars and the Little Engine that could. He was very excited but he was more excited about the jacket and toothbrush.
Yesterday we made homemade biscuits and he cut out and rolled his own dough. and then we colored on the sidewalk with chalk. He did 2 color sheets while Naomi and I did school. and when we were outside he gave me a handful of "flowers" ( or grass!) He was so proud.

We got a call yesterday morning for a 3 yr old boy. His name is Evan. We felt comfortable with the situation so we went ahead and said yes. He has grey eyes and blond hair, very cute. He did get up in the night and change his clothes, he has all new clothes and is very excited. He loves sweets but If I tell him no he says ok can I have ... and so far is not upset about it. THat's all for today.

We talked with Carmelinda yesterday and she said that they have not had any new babies come in the last two months. So "business is slow" so to speak. At least we know what is going on. God's timing is always perfect so we are not worried. We rearranged the bedrooms again! I think this is the last time well..... for now.

so far we have not heard anything. We just get to hurry up and wait. Hopefully soon.

We were temporarily offline. But we are back.
All the evaluations went well and last week we finished all the home visits and safety inspection. So we are finally approved and certified. So now we just wait till we get a call. House is almost ready, we decided to move some rooms around. But we are really excited to see the changes. We have been approved for 3 kids, meaning that is the number that they think we can hold in our house. ( 75 sq feet per child in a bedroom).
That is all for now will let you know what happens!
Have a blessed day
The Stahnke's

Well, Saturday we have our home/psych eval.

Thanks, to Melody who sorta surpised us with a money shower in Fort Collins. We had a wonderful visit with the Myers, and were blessed by our family. We now have the crib set up and dresser and Naomi has decided that the baby room is the prettiest in the house. We have most of the baby things we need to get started, I even have 2 large cans of formula and 4 sizes of diapers, just to be prepared.
We got a call last week for older kids 9,8,and 5. But I turned them down, we can only take babies. ( Besides that where would I put them????) Seriously, we can't take older kids right now because Naomi is so young. And we want to make sure to only take kids younger than her as to not stress her out to much.

We have a new date for the psych evalutation. June 10th at noon. We got the paperwork for that yesterday, oye! what a mess! So this week we get to wade through all that and hopefully end up not to overwhelmed. Jon just has the followup for his TB test tomorrow and that is all on our part, now we just wait for the home inspection and the appt on June 10th.

What a process!
The Psych evalutaion this weekend was cancelled due to scheduling errors on their part. So we are not sure when it will happen. They should call this week to reschedule.

Well, we are done with the Pride Classes ( training for foster parenting).
I passed my CPR class and my TB test! Yeah 3 things out of the way. Jon still has to do his TB test hopefully next week. Then we will have all the paperwork side of things done.
All that is waiting is:
1. the Psych test - which we found out this week is more like a personality test, Yeah!
2. a home visit and interview with DFS (they do 5 but not all at once)
3. I think that is it, then we wait till they have a baby that needs a home. This month has been a slow month for them, not many new kids coming in. They are glad for that since breaks are always nice.

It is nice to have the classes and doctor stuff out of the way so we can relax a bit. It has been so crazy! Nice to have a break. Now we can just deal with the last few weeks of school.

Nothing else new, except my house is filling up with baby stuff. Oh, where to put things????

What a Mission!
For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost." --Luke 19:10

Conflict of interests? Double trouble? Burnout? But what about...?

Dear Friends & Family,

I wanted to send you a letter to let you know about the some of what God is calling us to do for Him. You are all so close to my heart that I really want to share this great report with you. God has called Michelle and Naomi and I, to be ministers in a very challenging field. A place that is a virtual mine field of heart ache, injustice and reportedly endless frustration. Yet, in the middle of the fearsome crossfire lives some of the most needy people that you could imagine. God has called us to love the unloved, protect and nurture the abandoned, and to even turn hard selfish hearts into hearts that are compassionate and even heroic in their new love. We have been called to become foster parents to babies that are under twenty months old here in Wyoming. But that is only the tip of the ice burg! We intend to reach out the mothers of these precious babies (ninety-seven percent of foster children are reunited with their birth parents) and show them something radical and totally different then they have ever seen.The LOVE OF CHRIST!!! Allow me to digress for just a minute and let you know a little about this unique state that we refer to as "America's Outback". Wyoming -Rock Springs in particular- is a highway crossroad for a lot of drug trafficking and of course has a huge epidemic of drugs because of it. Over sixty percent of the adult population here can not even pass a normal drug screening. Methamphetimines are the poison of choice and also the most physically destructive. Our state government is trying to combat the problem the best that it can by automatically taking away the children in a home where drugs or drug parafanallia is found. You can imagine all of the children that now are in the care of the Department of Family Services (DFS). In addition drug screening is performed on all new born childrenas a precaution which leads to some children being taken away from their mothers before even leaving the hospital. The goal of DFS is to rehabilitate the birth parents whenever possible and gradually work toward reunification. Michelle and I also believe that is the best thing in the end. We will be foster parents with the goal of caring for one or two babies at a time as if they were ours though we do not rule out the possibility of adoption should a child's status change our main goal is of foster parents. We want to give these mothers and hopefully the fathers something that the state system does not offer: God's real love. We hope to be having more of our own "biological" children in the future and we laugh at the irony of caring for someone else's baby while possibly looking after our own (Yikes! I hope they all sleep through the night!) but we know that this is God's call for us and the time is now.We are also aware of the unavoidable heartache that will inherently come with this sort of ministry but we are confident that the Lord and our friends and Family will be our strength through those times when they come. Now that I have "talked your ear off" let me start on the other one. Last week a prophet named Dick Williams ministered to our congregation in a dramatic way. He said something that still challenges me and gnaws on my soul: "God looks past the 'flesh trappings' of our lives and into who he wants us to be." Wow! Maybe that is part of how he can love us so much. That is the type of love that we will extend to these precious babies and their birth parents. A love that is not nieve or foolish but yet an uncanny love that sees them in a way that they have never seen themselves. These babies and their mothers are definitively lost in nearly every sense of the word; with God's help we can seek them out and save them.Please support us in your prayers because this is going to be a hard place to minister in. Also please support Carmelinda and other Christians in DFS that arethere for all the right reasons.

For the Cause, For the Kingdom, For Christ,

Jonathan, Michelle, Naomi & ...