Mourning Mexico

Over the past 8 years, the Hogar de Amor orphanage in Colima, Mexico has become a huge part of our lives and has captured our hearts. Every year, we lead a group of folks from our CenterPoint Church family down to Colima to encourage, support, and be loved on by the kids and caregivers of Hogar de Amor. Our brothers and sisters in Colima truly are our family.

This year, we are unable to take our scheduled trip in April because of the border closings - and we are gutted. It's incomprehensible to us that we won't be spending April in Mexico, and we are mourning missing this trip as a family.

But regardless of whether we can travel to Mexico, the need at Hogar de Amor continues! Will you join us in supporting the orphanage's needs? You can donate online at https://centerpointutah.org/giving (select Mexico Mission Trip as the fund) or make checks out to CenterPoint Church with a memo of "Mexico trip" and mail them to us. Or if Venmo or Paypal are easier for you, just email or text us and we're happy to send your donation down to Mexico.

And above all, please pray for Hogar de Amor. Pray for the kids' health and safety and continued emotional growth even in a tough time. Pray for the caregivers and volunteers at Hogar de Amor as they now need to provide schooling on-site in addition to all of their other responsibilities. Pray that each person at Hogar de Amor would feel God's love, every day.

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Every year, we put together a letter as a family explaining how much Hogar de Amor means to us and sharing our heart for Colima with family and friends.

This year, we asked the girls if they wanted to share a little about their experiences in Mexico and I was blown away by what they shared:

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My name is Sasha. I have gone to Hogar de Amor about three years. This will be my fourth. I enjoy it all because I learn some really important lessons about poverty and what it means to “Help”. When I go there I feel like I'm doing something really great and important in my life and make a big change in the world. I feel like when I grow up that I will lead a mission trip to make orphanages and kids a great place to be. This is very important to me in my life and I feel like we should all put some kind of help into this mission trip for the children and their families, caregivers, friends, and everyone in this world.

 The Hogar De Amor orphanage is full of kids with either family problems or have no relatives. We go there to help the kids go through some hard times and help the orphanage. We like to go there to have fun with the kids and to have a great time with them. We go there every year to have fun. Some great things about this trip is that we get to make great relationships with the kids. We go there to make a difference in the world and help people in need. If you can’t go with us and you still want to be part of our team we would love donations for the trip. All of the donations will go to fund activities and supplies for the trip and for the orphanage. Last year we were able to save enough money to help build the new adolescent’s boy home which is so beautiful and they love it. The donations each year make a great impact and the orphanage gets better every year.

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My name is WanYing, I have been going on the Mexico Mission trip for a few years and it’s so cool to see all the kids and how happy they are to see us when we come. It’s a nice little break for the caregivers, too, because when we go down we hang out and do crafts and activities with the kids and that means the caregivers can take a rest when we’re doing those things.

One of the things that’s cool about going is you can make some friends or buddies and if you go again they’ll remember you and want to hang out again.

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Truly, Hogar de Amor has become part of our family’s identity and mission over the past 8 years as we have traveled annually to Colima, Mexico. As a family, we are proud and grateful to support Hogar de Amor Orphanage with our time, prayer, and finances year-round.

We invite you to join us in support of the orphanage financially. If you choose to donate, your entire donation will go to Hogar de Amor. Thanks for being an important part of our support team.  We are grateful for your prayers and enthusiasm for our family, and for the kids and caregivers of Hogar de Amor!

This week I had the honor of sharing a message at the annual CenterPoint Church Women's Christmas Dessert. This year's event was as beautiful as always - lovely tables, over 500 women joining together to enjoy each other's company, festive carols, delicious desserts, fellowship and worship. Mom and I teamed up to host two tables full of our neighbors and friends, and I loved sharing such a special night with our Utah Valley community.

It was such a joy and privilege to speak at this year's event. I got to share about some of the beautiful, transformative truth I've learned over the past few years about how adoption is the perfect analogy for how we join God's family. And to ensure that I never lose the notes, here they are! I hope this truth touches your heart this Christmas as deeply as it has mine.

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The Focus of God's Love

Hi, my name is Jamie Morningstar. My family and I been a part of the CenterPoint Church family for 16 years. We started coming to CenterPoint after moving to Utah from Maryland right after college and CenterPoint has been our church family ever since.

I work in Provo as a Software Product Manager for Qualtrics, I’ve been married almost 20 years, and I have 4 kidlings - 2 by birth and 2 by adoption, ages 8-16.

Tonight I get to tell you a little about how our journey to adopt our daughters has changed my perspective of God’s love for me,
for you,
for each of us.

Our Adoption Adventures

Let’s rewind to 2007.

Our sons Sam and Ben were 4 and 6. We had survived those crazy baby and toddler years, the boys were sleeping through the night and could get their own cheese sticks from the fridge. We had hit our groove as a family, and it was clear to me and to my husband Steve that it was time for another adventure.

After 6 months of research and prayer and financial planning we decided that it was time to grow our family, and that we wanted to grow our family through adoption. To dramatically oversimplify the decision, at the end of the day we knew that there were kids in the world who needed a family, and we were a family who wanted a kid. That equation made sense to us.

And so we decided to pursue international adoption.

Thus began one of the most challenging, expensive, exhausting, growing, stretching seasons of our lives. Adoption is HARD WORK! Meetings with social workers, collecting form after form and document after document, physicals, immigration paperwork and immigration interviews. Plus there was all the work of preparing our emotions, our family, and our home for welcoming in a new child coming from a tough situation 6,000 miles away. Those months for me are a blur of FedEx envelopes and official seals and parenting books.

But there are a few moments I will never forget, a few emotions and mental snapshots that define the whole experience for me.

Like, when we received our first photo of our daughter.

Of course, the adoption process had always been a personal journey, but the moment our daughter became not “our daughter” but when we saw her face and knew her name, that changed everything. We weren’t just pursuing a process or pursuing a child - we were pursuing this child. Our child.

I remember when her photo came, when we opened that email attachment and my heart caught in my throat and all I could think was, “Oh! It’s you!”

I remember the intensity of my fury at any delay, any snag in the paperwork that kept me from that child, from my child. I remember thinking, “Don’t those government officials know? Every extra day they take processing this form is a day longer our daughter is suffering? Every day is one day longer that she isn’t getting the medical care she needs, the nutrition she needs, the love she needs?”

And, of course, I remember the visceral, body-wracking joy of that first meeting.

That joy wasn’t really our daughter’s. She didn’t really understand what was going on as these weirdos who didn’t talk right, smell right, or look right swooped in and got their happy tears and snot all over her.

Those first few minutes of inexpressible joy, that was the joy of parents who has labored for months and years and traveled half the world finally holding their daughter in their arms.

There is little in my life that I have worked so hard for, that I have sacrificed so much for, or that I have received so much joy from.

Our Adoption Story in God

So far, I’ve talked  about the struggles and joys of our adoption journey to Sasha, our eldest daughter. So in fairness to WanYing, our second daughter, whose story is every bit as beautiful and miraculous, here are is a photo of that adventure.

But we’re not here to talk about me, or to ooh and aah at adorable pictures of my family :) Adoption was and continues to be an incredibly growing, stretching experience for me. The biggest change that the experience of adopting our girls cultivated in my heart was a totally new understanding of God’s love for me, as expressed through Jesus.

Through our adoption adventures, Ephesians 1:3-6 has become an incredibly personal passage of scripture for me. It reads

How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.

Do you see hear this is saying?!?

God chose you as the focus of his love!

God planned to add you to his family!

Motivated by his love and desire for you, God pursues you!

God adopts you!

And God celebrates adding you to his family!

It’s like that experience when we first saw Sasha’s photo, and suddenly we were no longer pursuing the idea of a daughter - we were pursuing that girl. Our girl.

God has known you and dreamed of adding you to his family since before the dawn of time. He didn’t have to wait for a picture to arrive. His pursuit of you has always been the unique, individual, personal, tender love of a father.

In Jesus, he came to you. He was born as a helpless baby - that’s what we celebrate at Christmas! We celebrate Christ coming to us, becoming like us, all for love.

Not only did Jesus sacrifice his authority and position as God to be born in a stable, raised by normal working class folks, sharing in our pain and sorrow and weakness, but Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice so that we could be made right with God. He died for us.

God is perfect; we can never be - and God’s perfection cannot abide the sin of our nature, our prideful rebellion against him. And so Jesus - all God, all man, and completely perfect - took our sin upon him and died. Jesus sacrificed himself, so that we could call God “Daddy”, so that we could enter God’s family fully accepted,
fully loved,
made right with God.

And this is all God’s work! It’s a lot like our journey to Sasha - Sasha literally did nothing. She couldn’t! She couldn’t go out and find herself a family halfway across the world. She couldn’t apply for a visa or U.S. citizenship. She couldn’t pay lawyer and court fees or buy herself a plane ticket to the U.S.! The idea of a toddler doing any of that is completely preposterous, right?

The same thing goes for our adoption into God’s family. We can’t earn it,
we can’t make ourselves good enough.
We can only say “yes” and accept that love.

And when we say, “God, I’ve got nothing going for me. I can’t be perfect, and I’m done pretending - take me as I am. I accept Jesus’ sacrifice for me on the cross. I want to be yours."

When we accept God’s love, the Bible says there’s a party in heaven! There is sheer, exuberant, unrestrained joy at our adoption into God’s family!

The Bible is clear - when we are adopted by God, we become children of God. We get to call God, “Daddy”. We get to live with him forever as part of his family.

Our Response

So what? What does all that mean for you, today?

First, I challenge you to care for the vulnerable.

There are 140 million orphans in this world. 40 million people live in modern day slavery. Just as God sacrificed and reached out to you, we get to do the same for the neglected and abused in our world.

There are 1001 ways to care for the vulnerable, from considering adoption as a way to build your family, to supporting organizations like International Justice Mission that rescue slaves and defend the rights of the poor, to supporting the CenterPoint Mission team and the Hogar de Amor orphanage as they care for vulnerable kids in Colima, Mexico.

But this isn’t about what you need to do. This is about what God has done for you.
Listen one more time to what the Bible is saying to you about God’s love:

Long before God laid down earth’s foundations, he had you in mind, had settled on you as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago God decided to adopt you into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted you to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.

If you have already said yes to this love, then this Christmas revel in that joy in a new way. Bask in being the focus of his love.

And remember that it’s ok if the journey is still bumpy. I know of no “happily ever after” “everything is smooth-sailing” adoption story. Our relationship with Sasha takes daily work. It’s a two-way street now, and as our daughter Sasha is a part of deciding how that relationship is going to evolve and grow. The effects of her early traumas provide very real challenges to her and to our relationship. Living as family is hard.

But as parents none of the hard stuff changes our commitment to our relationship. In fact, the tough times often bind us closer together. Sasha is our daughter.
Always.
Focus of our love.
precious,
fully loved,
and totally ours.

The same is true of your relationship with God - life can be hard, even if you have already said “yes” to his offer of adoption. In the sweet times and in the heart wrenching times, he is with you, leading you, loving you. Nothing ever can or ever will change your position as his daughter,
the focus of his love.
precious,
fully loved,
and totally his.

And this Christmas, if you don’t know if you’ve said yes to this love, if you aren’t sure that you’ve accepted his invitation to adopt you, you have the opportunity to accept the greatest gift of all.

Say yes to God. Accept God’s perfect, astounding love for you and his sacrifice to adopt you - that he has chosen you, sacrificed for you, done all the work to make you his daughter.

Revel in his joy in welcoming you to his family.

Respond to being the focus of God’s love.

WanYing and Sasha's Baptism

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

Romans 6:4

Sasha: Baptism means you have let Jesus into your heart and you want the world to know.

This is me and WanYing wearing our baptism shirts before we got baptized.

WanYing: The people are watching us doing baptism. Not just me and Sasha, other people are doing it, too. There were people from our church watching us and supporting us. About like 100 or 200 people came. About 40 people got baptized from our church at the Provo River. That's how many people got baptized!

Sasha: This is me when Pastor Scott was asking me if I wanted to let the world know that I let Jesus into my heart and I said, "yes!"

I felt nervous before I got baptized. I was a little scared to go under the water and go back up.

Sasha: After I got baptized I felt great! I let Jesus into my heart and I showed everybody that I let Jesus into my heart.

WanYing: I was sorta nervous, but it was gonna feel good to be baptized, to let the world know that I follow Jesus.

And nothing magical happens, it's just saying, "I follow Jesus."

WanYing: Afterward I feel cold but I let the world know that I follow Jesus.

WanYing: Annie's our church teacher and she teaches about God. And she was proud of me and my sister, Sasha.

Hope and a Future

This was a big weekend for our family - WanYing's birthday, Superbowl party, Chinese New Year celebrations, a sledding party, and our first Sunday meeting in our new church building! So much to celebrate, so much to contemplate.

Meeting in our new church building this morning was amazing. This has been such a long road for CenterPoint Church - this building is a decade in the making! Steve and I were a part of the original decision to purchase property on Sandhill Road. We've given and participated in 3 separate fundraising campaigns, dozens of work days, and countless Sundays as a church on the move as we've met in 4 different schools in Utah County. It's been a long, tough, often heartbreaking journey as we've overcome opposition and roadblocks, trusting God all the way.

And nowhere we are, worshiping as a church family in our very own church home! And I just step back in wonder and awe at what God has accomplished in us and through us. Yes, meeting in a building of our very own is glorious - it feels amazing to have space that we built, designed, and decorated to be our very own.

But what's more amazing is how God has sustained us as we have learned to trust in him day by day, Sunday by Sunday, decision by decision. I love our building, but I love even more the character we have developed as a church family. That character, that faith lasts so much longer and reaches out so much wider than the four walls of any church building.

And the funny thing is that Chinese New Year means a lot of the same things to me.

I'll level with you - regular New Year's is a complicated time for us as a family. Steve's mom passed away 4 years ago at New Year's and our family entered a despairing season that almost tore our marriage and family apart.

And after a very dark January, suddenly it was time to celebrate Chinese New Year and this bright and colorful day invaded our dark season with hope.

And so we rejoice that we are individuals, a family, a people, a church, with a hope and a future. And, yes, we revel in the happiness of a finished building, a strong family, the end results of so many miracles strung together. But what is more important than the "happily ever after" (because no story is ever done!) is the truth we've lived that God is with us in our troubles.

God's provision and love for us is most strongly demonstrated in the dark times when he sustains us step by step.

Over the years, I've come to deeply love Lamentations 3. In the middle of unspeakable horrors, deep depression, and a seemingly hopeless situation, the author bursts out with:

I’ll never forget the trouble, the utter lostness,
the taste of ashes, the poison I’ve swallowed.
I remember it all—oh, how well I remember—
the feeling of hitting the bottom.
But there’s one other thing I remember,
and remembering, I keep a grip on hope:

God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out,
his merciful love couldn’t have dried up.
They’re created new every morning.
How great your faithfulness!

God's faithfulness sustained the author of Lamentations before anything changed about his situation. And that's the source of my deep joy this weekend - not that everything has or will ended up "happily ever after" but that God's loyal and merciful love is new every morning, and that my faithful God is more than enough.

Christmas Eve Festivities

As always, our Christmas Eve was a blast and chock full of holiday fun, bookended by the nativity story (of course!). And, as always, both readings of the Christmas Story were... nontraditional.

We started with our annual tradition of reading the Christmas Story and acting it out with the nativity set that Steve's mom and Dad made Sam for his first Christmas.

This year we mixed things up a bit and Sash opted to read while the other kids acted out their parts. As a direct result, the story was a lot less chaotic and violent than usual, although Ben did his part to keep it exciting, as evidenced by the beans that beanbag Mary started leaking halfway through her ordeal. Poor Mary. And it must be said that Sasha made an excellent narrator.

And we ended with Christmas Eve service at church where Steve and I and several other members of our congregation acted out another entertaining retelling of the Christmas Story. Think Drunk History with kids as narrators instead of tipsy celebrities and the grown-up cast making fools of ourselves and you'll get the gist of it.

It turned out brilliantly! You should totally check out the whole video at https://vimeo.com/149823606

And between our two nativity stories, we had a heck of a day.

As usual, we opened presents on Christmas Eve. We started this tradition a few years ago to

1. make Christmas Day a little less psycho
2. open presents a day early (who can argue with that?), and
3. carve out more time to ski on Christmas Day, because if any day deserves a family ski-fest, it's Christmas

So once we were dressed and nativitied we packed up and headed down the street to Grammy's house for french toast, mimosas, and loads of present opening.

Ben unwraps a case of cream soda from Sasha

I'm so glad Sam hasn't outgrown Legos!

Yep, it was American Girl doll year! Sasha and WanYing were thrilled

We see many tea parties in our future

Ben had only one thing on his list - a new unicycle - and apparently didn't like our ceaseless taunting and fake-outs

But never fear, the unicycle was eventually presented with due ceremony and excitement

It's going to take a little while to master, but he's well on his way!

And then we paused for a glass of wine before dealing with the aftermath

And in the evening, it was off to Christmas Eve service, properly bedecked in Elsa dresses

Acoustic Christmas was appropriately banjo-tastic!

We had a beautiful Christmas Eve, filled with the joys of giving, worship, laughter, and banjo. Just like it should be.

Favorite Christmas Memories - The Annual Nativity Reenactment

Our Christmas celebrations started, as usual, with our annual retelling of The Christmas Story - Morningstar style. And for our church's Christmas Eve service this year I had the chance to tell everybody about our favorite Christmas tradition:

This year's retelling was as weird and wonderful as usual. Sam read. The girls fought over who got to be the sheep (they really are the cutest). A wise man lost his hat. The shepherds were drunk (Daddy mentioned that shepherds were usually a rough-and-ready crowd in ancient times and Ben does a disturbingly convincing drunk shepherd). And our Christmas started just right.

(the angel is appearing in the sky, that's why he's over WanYing's head)

By the time we get to the shepherds, the kids are usually pretty wound up. This year was no exception.

The wise men did eventually make it to the stable.

And Chorney worshiped the Baby Jesus with her Christmas AT-AT. Sounds like just the right ending to our version of The Christmas Story.

We hope that your Christmas is just as blessed, just as wacky, and just as full of love and laughter and snuggles as ours. From all of us to all of you, Merry Christmas.

What we're doing on our summer vacation

We are so (so!) excited - this summer Sam, Ben, and Jamie are headed to Colima, Mexico on a short term mission trip working for and with the children of the Hogar de Amor orphanages!

It all started this fall.  As y'all know, I'm terrible at sitting still and with the boys hitting ages where they are both useful(ish) and trustworthy(ish) I started considering the possibility of a family mission trip.   I knew I wanted to go international, I knew I wanted to do orphan service projects, and I knew that I wanted the boys to go, so I contacted some friends and online groups where I thought I might be able to get recommendations for groups that facilitate family trips.

Well, it turns out that one of my adoption heroes, Dawn Davenport, and her husband lead trips for their church every year to Mexico and this year they were hoping to extend the experience to another church.  So we chatted and they asked if I'd be interested in leading a group from our church.  How could I say no?!?

So that's how I ended up leading a group of 17 people, aged 9 to 65, to Colima, Mexico this summer.  Dawn and Peter will come along with us to help facilitate the logistics (hooray!) and I'll handle the organization from the CenterPoint side.  I am so, so excited about the group of people we have going from CenterPoint Church and can't wait to see what God is going to do in and through this team as we serve together.

Of course, I'm most excited about sharing this experience with the boys - to serve alongside them, watch them grow and stretch, and together recognize God's blessing in our lives and in the lives of those we serve.  The boys?  They're excited about using power tools.  Oh, and serving, of course, they're excited about the serving.

Oh, and did I mention that my mom and dad are coming, too?  Three generations working together - I can't wait!

How can you be involved?

1. Pray!  Please join us in prayer for our trip.  Pray for the team and for those we will serve, that we will each be transformed through God's work in us on this trip.
2. Follow our adventures!  Subscribe to http://centerpointmexico.blogspot.com for updates, prayer requests, photos, and stories as we travel to Mexico.
3. Be a part of our support team!  Each person traveling needs to raise about $600 on top of travel expenses (which we are paying ourselves).  If you would like to support our trip financially, we would sure love to have you!  Contact Jamie or leave a comment on this post and I'll give you the information for how to make your tax-deductible donation.

Yurt-tastic

Ah, Solitude Yurt Day. You are one of my very favorite days of the year, combining so many wonderful things: snow, hand-crafted food, Mongolian yurts, good friends, and inebriated nighttime skiing. Perfection!

This year we started out our yurt-tastic day early with an afternoon skiing at Solitude.  I'm proud to say that we shut down the slope!  Of course, we didn't start until one... but, still, we made it on the slopes until four!

Remember those days when you used to ski open to close?  Man, what happened?  Oh, yeah, kids, 20 years, and 10,000 extra vertical feet.

And then it was yurt time!  We met up with our whole small group from church (or Bible study/family group) and enjoyed a fabulous evening together.  The menu was, as always, wonderful (the blueberry bread pudding with butterscotch pudding on top surprised me by being my favorite selection of the evening... but now that I see that sentence written in black and white, it doesn't seem that shocking that such a thing was my favorite item on the menu), the company delightful, the stars brilliant, the skiing hilarious.

Ready for a heck of a date night!

Chef Joe even treated us to a fire show - now that was an exciting end to the evening's festivities!

As always, the Solitude Yurt delivered.  Being there with 8 wonderful friends didn't hurt, either :)