Where am I?
We had our annual Thanksgiving dinner at our church the Sycamore Tree this past Sunday. There was a huge crowd so we were standing in line to get our food. Along the way is a wall with pictures of all the baptisms that have been done in our church since it was planted. I’m standing with Anna, David, and Bennett and looking at all of these people who have become followers of Jesus. Bennett sees Anna’s baptism picture and our whole family in the river with her. We keep looking and see Courtney’s baptism picture but it’s just me and...
read more2010 Family Update
Well, dang ya’ll it’s about time!It’s been quite a past year for us here at the Vaughn household. We’ve been through quite a bit with our children, with our finances, with our extended family, you name it. Faithfully though God has stood by us and continues to bring us through these times. Our children are such a blessing to us and we love watching them grow and mature, helping them with struggles – David with learning, Bennett with his behavior, Stephanie with her school, boyfriends, job drama; Courtney with her high school...
read moreKid Faith
So I last wrote about being depressed and now I’m writing about something joyful. It seems to go like that these days – periods of blah and periods of joy and glee. This was an email exchange that I wrote first to Katie Logan our Youth Director and long-time close friend of the family. I wrote to Katie to encourage her in what she is doing with our children. I told her of a discussion at the dinner table around helping the children in Africa and the letters that our children had written to them with Katie’s help. Next is the...
read morePAD
How time flies – it’s been almost a year since I’ve written any thoughts down; strange. As wonderful as the past three years has been with out expanded family it’s also been very hard. I’m not sure if it’s coming off the mountain top of international adoption and then the next year adding onto our house or if it’s just general doldrums. Georgia and I have both been in a rut for the past year it seems. I took a week of vacation this summer and we literally did nothing. I’m not sure what was in my mind except just...
read moreSpecial prayers for Latvia
So today the coolest thing happened in church. We were going through the normal routine of arriving at church early in our family bus aka. the suburban. All seven of us coming marching through the back door of the church and pick a spot to lay all of our stuff down. We make the children sit and behave in somewhat close proximity to the stage and preferably me (Barry) as the boys seem to behave better when we’re up on stage in the band if they’re sitting directly in front of their father. I guess it’s the healthy fear that I instill in...
read moreMy Family
So this is another really cool thing that happened this week. Every week on Wednesday night at our church is prayer time. We get together and pray for everything and anything to do with our church family. In fact the Sycamore Tree (our church) bases all of its decisions through the mechanism and outcome of prayer.Anyway, we were at prayer and those of us there were sharing about answered prayers, prayer concerns, ect. – Jeff Wadley, our preacher asked me saying “Do you know what your children said the other day during children’s...
read moreCommunion & Adoption
After taking somewhat of a summer hiatus I decided it’s time to get creative again and return to writing down some thoughts.A couple of weeks ago we celebrated Communion at church. Of course I was deep in thought as usual when it hit me – something I’d been thinking about for a while suddenly had a new twist. The subject was about how adoption here on earth is a visual picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact Steven Curtis Chapman calls adoption the “visual gospel”. It’s a miracle.As we were taken communion it hit me...
read moreSurprise Pictures
We got a great surprise the other day when I received an email with the picture above attached. It’s an early picture of Anna, David and Bennett right after Bennett’s arrival at the orphanage. They’d been separated for almost a year and are just getting to know each other again here in this picture. Bennett was left at the hospital after having some problems with his umbilical cord and so was sent to an orphanage for babies. Here in this picture he is about 1 year old and because he was in an orphanage where they really just left him...
read moreDaddy’s Day
I have to share some thoughts about Daddy’s day with Anna. It was absolutely an amazing time to be there with my daughter and make a mother’s day present together with her. I showed up at around 9:30am and we worked together to create a book of all the reasons that we love Mommy. It was really special because I remember the time when we were living with the children in Latvia. We did all the same things we do here – we’d get up, make breakfast, take them to school in the morning, pick them up in the afternoons. All those good...
read moreDavid’s progress with writing
Well, David continues to amaze us in many ways. We worry about him constantly about whether he’ll ever be able to read well, to write, to graduate from high school some day, or hope beyond hope to be able to go to university some day. We worry so much because David was the most affected by the neglect that he and his siblings suffered. Many of you may know that David could not speak any word except for “machina” (Latvian for car) when he came to the orphanage at 3 years old. We’re told that his caregiver Sarmita worked with him...
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