Ethan is doing great. He likes to take long walks on the beach eat, sleep, and poop. Logan and I are having the time of our lives. We spend most of our time just staring at the little guy and thanking God for the privilege of having him in our family.

Please continue to pray for Ethan’s birth-mom. We have heard from the adoption agency that she is doing well. She knows she made the right decision but it is still a very difficult thing to walk through. Pray that God gives her strength and peace.

Please also continue to pray for us as we figure out how to be parents. We also still need to raise about $4900 to pay for the adoption. Please be in prayer for this and if you would like to give you can find out how on our partner page.

Alright now for the good stuff…

Please continue to pray for the situation with the birth father.

Also pray for the birth mom. These next few days will be a roller coaster of emotions. Pray for God’s peace to flood her heart.

Thanks for your prayers. We will keep you updated.

Here are some prayer points.

1. Pray for an easy delivery so she won’t need a c-section.
2. The birth father is being served today with papers to sign away his paternal rights. Pray he signs the papers quickly.

If the father signs and the delivery goes smoothly we could bring the little guy home as early as Friday.

We will keep you posted.

It looks like we may get a very special Christmas gift this year. For those of you who have been following our adoption journey, you know that this year has been a roller coaster of emotions. A few months ago we thought we were about to have a little guy added to our family and at the very last minute the birth-mom decided to keep her baby. It was tough to say the least, but even now we are confident that God answered our prayers to put the baby exactly where he was supposed to be even if that place wasn’t with us.

We have been on our adoption journey for a little over a year now and really have the desire to start this next phase of our lives called parenting. We still want to be a answer for a girl in a crisis pregnancy situation, but we also are aching to start a family of our own.

With a heart full of emotions brought on by the first adoption not happening, Logan prayed a short prayer to the Lord, and with longing-mother’s heart she asked for Jesus to give us a baby by Christmas. Now that prayer might sound a little funny but I believe God heard that prayer and was happy to send an answer our way. We found out recently that another girl had picked us as a family to adopt her baby and that the baby’s due date is December 25. Sometimes I think Jesus has a really good sense of humor and he really does hear our prayers. Don’t you?

Today we are about 10 days away from Christmas and our hearts are hopeful. We know that there is still the possibility that the mother could change her mind or some other circumstance could arise that might complicate things, but we have peace in our hearts that this is something God is orchestrating. We know He is answering Logan’s prayer for a Christmas baby and he is fulfilling our desire to help a girl in a crisis pregnancy situation at the same time.

Will you please stand with us in prayer over the next couple of weeks? Below are a few things you can pray for us:

• Pray for the birth mom. This will be a very trying and emotional time for her. Pray that she makes the best decision for her and for her baby.
• Pray for the baby. Pray that he continues to develop like he should and that there are no complications with the rest of the pregnancy and the delivery.
• Pray for us. We want to be ready to receive this wonderful gift.
• Pray for our finances. We still need to raise about $5000 to pay for the adoption and we will have extra monthly expenses to pay for the little guy.

If you would like to help financially with the adoption, you can find out more about giving on our partnership page.

Thank you so much for following along on our adoption journey. We will keep you posted as the events unfold.

Logan and I hope your Christmas season is blessed and filled with good things.

As mosts of you know, Logan and I have been going through an adoption process for about a year now. Right now we are possibly approaching the finish line of that journey and the starting line of the new journey of parenthood. But we need your prayers. The next few days are very important for a young lady who is thinking about placing her little baby with us, for the baby and for Logan and I.

Let me catch you up

About a month ago we got a call from our adoption case worker that a girl in a crisis pregnancy situation has chosen Logan and I as adoptive parents for her baby. Our case worker warned us that there would be a significant possibility that the mom might change her mind once the child was born. As we prayed about what we should do, we felt like we were supposed to say yes and make our home available if the mom were to decide to place the baby with us.

The very next day we met with the mom and the adoption case worker. We have been praying for the mother of the child we would adopt for along time now. It is very exciting to think that we can now put a face to our prayers. Being able to see her face in our minds as we pray for her has made it much easier to pray for her and the baby. We left the meeting with excitement in our hearts at the possibility of bringing a baby into our home and being an answer to prayer for a mom in a really tough situation.

This past Tuesday, the baby was born. Both mom and baby boy are doing fine. She had a c-section and is pretty sore. In the state of Texas, a mother cannot terminate her parental rights until the baby is 48-hours old. That 48-hours has technically passed and now she has to make the hard choice of wether to place the little guy with us or choose to raise him herself.

Please be in prayer over the next few days for the mom, the baby boy, and Logan and I.

Here are a few prayer points

• That mom and baby would both continue to be healthy. Specifically that the mom would heal quickly from the c-section.
• That the mom would be able to hear God and make the most loving decision for her baby.
• That the mom would have no regrets with her decision.
• That the baby would not sense any of the tension and stress that is surrounding his little life right now.
• That Logan and I would be able to wait patiently as the mom prays and comes to a decision.
• Most of all that this little guy would be placed right where God wants him to be.

We will keep you updated with more information as it becomes available. We know that God has good plans for the mom, the baby, and for us. We would love to bring this little guy into our family, but most of all we want God’s will for his life to happen. Thanks for standing in prayer with us.

Most of the students there were part of various campus ministries and so what we thought would be an evangelistic outreach turned into more of a teaching session about what it takes to fulfill the destiny God has created us for. I lead worship and then one of my co-laborers, got up to speak. He used C.S. Lewis as a model of what a Christian in an academic setting can accomplish when their lives are submitted to the Lord.

It was a great time of encouragement for the students and a serious call to live their lives in a way that displays the transforming work of God. We ended the evening by breaking up in small groups and praying for God’s purposes to be fulfilled on the campus.

Several of the campus ministries are coming together next week to have a week of prayer. The university is allowing them to set up a prayer tent in the same place we held the open air meeting last night. I believe that God is going to use the prayers of these college students to “water the seed” that was planted last night. God’s word never returns void. It always accomplishes what it is sent to do. Please be in prayer over this next week that God will reveal His Son to the students of A&M Commerce and that He will use this campus as a center for revival and another student volunteer missions movement.

Please be in prayer for the university students we will be ministering to and for the team that will be ministering.

As we have prayed for the event and the students we have really sensed that the Lord wants to give salvation to His kids on Thursday night and that He is going to give students more understanding on how their gifts and talents are a pivotal part of His plan of building the Kingdom of God in the earth.

On this trip Logan and I are taking eight students to India for their field assignment. We will be in two major Indian cities over the next 5 weeks. We will be working with widows and orphans, doing evangelism, intercession and many service projects.

Please be in prayer for us and our team as we go to serve the Indian people.

Houston We Have A Problem

The Second largest abortion clinic in the world is being built at this present moment in Houston, Texas. This six-story Planned Parenthood abortion “super center” is right in the middle of four (4) “super neighborhoods.” Three average to 85% Latino in population and the other is 85% African American. Planned Parenthood is targeting these minority pro-family communities, both for their finances and the restriction of their populations. But, there is a voice rising out of Houston and out of Texas, declaring, “We don’t want this death camp specializing in late-term abortions in our neighborhoods!”

On Martin Luther King Jr.’s holiday, January 18th, 2010, thousands are gathering to march against this Goliath to pray, fast, and peacefully siege this massive injustice in the spirit of that great liberator Martin Luther King Jr. Key African American, Latino, and political leaders are coming to speak and hold a nationwide press conference challenging this “super center.” This is a great hour for the Hispanic pro-LIFE people, Catholic and Evangelical, to raise their voices against abortion and for adoption. Public opinion over abortion is shifting radically in America to pro-LIFE at the same time this facility is exalting itself above the humble and oppressed.

[excerpt taken from bound4life.com] Click here to read the full article.

The response effort will be immensely challenging. The earthquake occurred 45 minutes before the sun set and due to the loss of electricity, people were soon in total darkness. Phone service was lost, keeping people from getting in touch with family and friends. Dozens of aftershocks measuring up to 5.9 kept people awake throughout the night. Even before the earthquake, there were few, if any, emergency services in Haiti. Most of the people survive on less than $2 per day. Haiti’s envoy to the United States described the earthquake as a “catastrophe” and says the damage from the earthquake could run into billions of dollars.

Henry Bahn, a visiting official from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, reported just minutes after the earthquake seeing houses that had tumbled into a ravine. He went on to say, “Everybody is just totally, totally freaked out and shaken,” and described the sky as “grey with dust.”

We have heard from Terry Snow, our YWAM Haiti national director several times since Tuesday evening’s earthquake. All the YWAMers in St. Marc and Gonaives are accounted for and buildings received only relatively minor damage, so the YWAMers are in a good position to assist in short-term relief as well as long-term response efforts.

Earlier this morning, Snow reported, “We were up early to see the video footage and pictures of the Presidential Palace destroyed and so many other buildings. Communications are still down so we have sent our own assessment team into Port-au-Prince to see the true nature of the devastation and how we can respond. Haiti has no infrastructure, much less a crisis management team.”

Haiti’s President, René Préval, told the media, “Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed. There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.”

The International Red Cross estimates a third of Haiti’s nine million people may need emergency aid and said Haiti’s disaster relief teams are “completely overwhelmed.” Many people are still trapped in the rubble from the killer quake. The United Nations reports Port-au-Prince’s main airport is “fully operational.” However, roads are filled with rubble and debris and the main artery connecting the airport to the city is blocked. If aid cannot travel over the airport road to Port-au-Prince, it may be rerouted through the Dominican Republic.

Governments and global companies are responding with pledges of financial aid as well as human resources such as rubble-clearing specialists, rescue units of engineers, and medics, firefighters, etc.

After Hurricane Katrina, which so devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, the people most impacted came to realize it was not government or corporate aid that made the biggest difference, but rather the body of Christ responding in a multi-year commitment long after the cameras and world’s attention shifted elsewhere.

I invite you to be a part of the YWAM MercyWorks response to this devastating loss of life and property by joining a response team and/or by making a generous financial donation. Your gift will help with the procurement of medicines and food, and will assist in the reconstruction and rebuilding efforts.

We also need medical personnel to assist with this effort as well as other volunteers. We need grief counselors and construction crews in the days and weeks ahead. Please contact us if you can go. Lastly please keep these precious people in your prayers.

MercyWorks brings hope and lasting change to people afflicted by war, famine, extreme poverty, and natural disaster. Now is the time for the body of Christ to rise up and demonstrate our commitment to the suffering poor.

Because of His mercy,

Debbie Lascelles
Founder, MercyWorks