New Prayer Letter-Update

The boys are home!  We are overwhelmed with joy and with diapers!!!!  Check out our latest prayer letter for more info on the boys (with pics) and on a child sponsorship opportunity.

To view our latest prayer letter, please click this link: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4943381/prayerletter%2329email.pdf

J+J Are Coming Home!

Yes we are coming to get you boys!  It is official!  We will be heading down to Haiti on the 14th to get Jackson and Judeson!  FINALLY!!!!!!!!
This road of international adoption has taken us 4 years to complete.  What a journey!
We have learned a lot that is for sure.  In some ways it has been the most trying time of our lives, but isn't it in those times when God teaches us the most?  That has certainly been our case.

It feel so good to finally be at the end of this journey!  We will be returning to Calgary with the boys on December 18th Lord willing.  We will have our boys home for Christmas!  What better present could there be than that?  It is what we have been praying for since the summer.  So many others have also been praying for us as well.  Just last week a good friend called an impromptu prayer meeting right after the Sunday service.  Many gathered around and asked God to bring our boys home for Christmas.  It was more than possible, but far from probable.  Then all of 3 days later we received news that not only were the boys' documents submitted to the Canadian Embassy the day before, but their Canadian visas had already been approved!  What normally takes a week to 2 weeks, took all of one day!  Praise God!
Let me say that this process of adoption has usually not been so easy and we have waited and waited and waited, but now it is finally at its end and we are ready to go get them!  Now the real work begins!  Ha!  Raising twin boys!
We will need to teach them what family means and who mom and dad are and that might take some time.  Hopefully friends and family will understand that we will need time together, just our family, in order to prove to our boys, that we aren't just another volunteer who has taken and interest in them and then left them again.  That is all they have known their whole lives so far.  We are so thankful for the volunteers who have spent time with them, but now they need to learn what family is like, what it is like to have a Mommy and a Daddy who won't leave them.  We need to earn their trust.  Hopefully that goes well and they adjust to us and we adjust to them quickly.  Other than praying for safe traveling, the adjusting is now our biggest prayer.

We will post another update when we are with the boys!

We are the bearers of good news this morning!  Our boys are officially Elliotts!  We received word a few days ago that their paperwork has now progressed to the point that the Haitian Courts recognize our boys as well.........................our boys!  Elliotts! 
We still have a number of hoops to jump through, signatures needed etc.  Then comes the passport application process etc.  Having said all of this, the authorities would say that our timeline is somewhere between 2-6 months until we can go get them and bring them home.  We are praying they will be here with us before Christmas!  It is a bold prayer, but our God is more than able.  Please join us in praying that this dream He put in our hearts almost 4 years ago will be realized before the end of this year! 
Thank you for your prayers! 

Summer Youth Team from Manitoba Visits

July has been a good month!  We had a youth team from Manitoba come to Hermosillo to help out with a kids VBS at our church.  Only a youth team would be crazy enough to come during the summer and endure the heat!  They were a great group though!
Many kids showed up for the VBS which not only presents Christ as the only way to salvation, but also increases the exposure and reputation of the local church in the community.
The team also helped out at the Orphanage where we partner, located just outside of the city.  It is always a busy busy time when teams come but at the end of each one I find myself thinking it is always worth it!  God does so much through each team and so much in each team!  We see some of the effects of short term teams who come, but we won't see the full extent until we are in heaven!
Please pray for the young people who leave their comfortable lives in Canada for a week or two.  They come and see needs some of them have never seen before and they are impacted by it.  Impacted by the spiritual needs as well as the physical needs.  God calls them to reach out and keep reaching out, sometimes even calls them to a life of ministry.  Sadly the pull of our materialistic society in Canada often seems to push that call to the background and they don't end up doing what God called them to do, settling for the comfort that Canada offers.
Please pray that God would send out workers into the harvest field!
Also continue to pray for our adoption!  We haven't heard anything since we were there in Haiti.  We are awaiting the email that says that Jackson and Judeson are now Elliotts!  Thanks for your prayers!

Hello everyone,

Whew!  What an amazing past few weeks we have experienced!  I won’t go into tonnes of detail on the timing of things but it is sufficient to say that our trip to Haiti came together all of a sudden and off we went, almost before I had time to get to Alberta, see the kids and pick up Sheri after having been in Mexico!  Confused?  I almost was too!

Anyway Sheri and I arrived in Port au Prince last Tuesday and met our boys Jackson and Judeson for the first time!  Because we have poured over the pictures and videos of the boys that we have, it felt almost like we “picked up right where we left off” with them, even though it was our first meeting!  It just felt like we knew them already which was really cool!  They both came to us and wanted up right away which was also a blessing!

There really are no words to express how our time was with them.  It just felt so right.  God has moved this adoption into the final stages but I hesitate to guess how long we have left.  That is always a dangerous game when talking about International Adoption.  The best estimates we have been given range from 3-5 months left before we can go get them and bring them home for good! 

We have been so blessed and felt so supported by all of you who have prayed for us during this process.  Please don’t stop now!  We need you to stick with us through to the end! 

Thank you once again.  Hope you enjoy the picture!

Lane and Sheri Elliott

EFCCM Mexico

Off to Haiti!

After a long long long wait, we are finally heading to Haiti to meet our adoptive twin boys!  Yeah!!!!!!!!
We won't be able to bring them back with us to Canada, but we will be able to spend 2 or 3 days getting to know them and signing some paperwork for the Haitian Courts.  Then we will return without them and wait for another expected 5 months or so until we return to Haiti to get them for good!
We leave in about 6 hours and will return next Saturday

Thanks for your prayers!

We will hopefully be able to post a pic or two during our trip, so check back!

Lane and Sheri

Getting the Word Out

I am happy to report that during each visit to the Vineyards (3 per week now), we are able to transfer the audio New Testament to many young men who come and ask for it.  I was even able to download a copy in a tribal language of Southern Mexico and get it into the hands of about 10 different young men who spoke that language. 
I have also just completed an order of 500 bibles which should be arriving shortly.  It is such a joy to be able to get the Living Word into the hands of people who are hungry for it.

As I have mentioned before, some of the men who come to do the grape harvest come from unreached tribal areas of Southern Mexico.  They are said to be isolated in the hills and emotionally closed off to the message of Jesus.  However once they come up to Northern Mexico, far from their families, they experience an emotional transformation!  So many of them are open to God's saving grace and it is a privilege to go out to them in order to minister the Word of God.  We are regularly getting 150 or so each evening we are there.  The number of workers is about to go up in a big way however as the harvesting stage is coming soon, when the number of workers goes up to as many as 1000 workers per vineyard!  We have access to as many as 5 vineyards, but are only able to visit 2 right now due to lack of God's laborers. 
"The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.  Ask the Lord of the harvest therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field."  Luke 10:2