Top Ten (12) Things we Love about Pasadena (in random order)

1) We love that we have ideal discipleship: wise people above us, peers going through life with us, and younger ones we are mentoring.

2) Working with students. We love still feeling like we are in college, having parties at our house, going to the coffee shop late at night, doing things on the weekend. We love that our life is filled with students in our house, movie nights, meals with them and doing life together.

3) Our work life/bosses. We feel appreciated and needed. We have good relationships with our supervisors who give us the freedom to use our gifts and that they give us responsibilities. We love that we have set but flexible hours.

4) Weather. Its warm most days and barely rains. What’s not to like about So Cal weather?

5) Living in a community with families. We love living in a community where people know you. We know if we ever needed anything help would be close by. We love living with families where kids are running around and playing with each other, often crossing many age/ethnic barriers.

6) Living near, but not in a big city. Pasadena still feels like a neighborhood. It is an escape from commercialization where local businesses thrive. At the same time we are an hour or less away from everything L.A. has to offer.

7) Walking to work. Who wants to drive in traffic for hours? We walk two blocks to work, eat lunch at home and barely use our car.

8) Missional community. Being around like-minded people that see the world the same way we do. We don’t feel crazy or like we harass people all the time talking about God’s love for all the peoples. Our week is filled with fresh insights on developing issues fresh off the field. We get reports straight from missionaries themselves as well as the executives that run the major organizations.

9) Cultures. We live around so many different cultures, we live in a primarily Armenian neighborhood, but ethnic neighborhoods are close: Little Tokyo, Chinatown, ect. At the same time the USCWM community is diverse with people having influence by birth or serving in countries/cultures all over the world.

10) Working together. We love to be a team and use each other’s giftings. We work beside each other, able to collaborate with each other, but don’t overstep each other’s territory.

11) Flowers. All these random flowers are everywhere. They grow instantly and are beautiful. Roses grow like wildflowers as well Melissa’s favorite bird of paradise.

12) Thursday nights: the community gets together for a meal together in the cafeteria. It’s a great time of watching the kids playing together, talking to parents or students and interacting more than just a superficial level.

Interview with Social Worker

Thursday we had our first meeting with our social worker, Linda. Linda is very nice and embraced us both with hugs before and after we met. It was pretty low key interview. She asked a lot about our families, our relationship with each other. She wanted to know about why we started dating, what attracted us to each other, what we were looking for in the adoption and why we were adopting, what type of child we wanted to adopt. She explained to us a little more about the process. Unfortunately we were confused and thought the interviewing would take a few weeks and the main portion of the in-take process was the classes. She informed us we still had 2 – 4 months to go until we would be finished with our home-study and be officially approved to adopt. While we wished we didn’t have as long to wait we are glad not to get our hopes up. We are working on our profile (form of describing us as a family to birthmothers) and will post it when we have finished the text. We are excited to be moving ahead in the process. We’ve recently been around a bunch of young children. I (Adam) am getting really excited that soon we’ll be able to hold our own. Baby Hoffman, we are ready for you.

One Year in Cali

Wow one year! We’ve been reflecting on our first year out here and are just floored. March 23rd 2008 we made our way into Pasadena, a year later we call it home. April 1st 2008 was our first day at our new assignments. I remember last year barely being trained and still having a hard time describing Insight, going to college fairs and sharing with high schoolers what Insight is. As I type this now, we are on our way to a college fair.

One year later we look back and are amazed that God used us to accomplish all the things we have. At the Pasadena Insight campus, we are experiencing one of the best classes in the history of the program. We have learned the ropes well and are finishing this year’s class and preparing for the next class. The Insight National Office is barely recognizable. It’s amazing to see how all the things we dreamed in the beginning of our time have actually come together. The program is successfully packaged and available to be exported to different locations. We have a detailed manual on how to run the program and a training for upcoming Program Directors.

It’s been an amazing year of community building, finding our niche in Pasadena and getting to know people. More to come later on our favorites of Pasadena.

Tarheels 2009 National Champions

What a great year of basketball. It was so much fun watching Lawson, Hansborough, Ellington, Green, Thompson, Davis and the rest of the team have a great season. Congrats to the 2008-2009 team for accomplishing their goal: National Champions. Following basketball has been different out in Cali than in our home ACC country. Everybody here is obsessed with the Lakers or Dodgers, no one really follows NCAAs. We do have a co-worker who graduated from Carolina in the 70’s. He’ll brag with us, but that’s about all the chatter we hear. Most of the games throughout the season we watched by ourselves with the aid of ESPN360. Why didn’t they come out with this when I was in college? We even watched the early round tournament games online.

A couple of guys (Andrew Mitchell and Chad Hines) are out here to watch games with every now and then, we rarely have the big time celebrations we are used to though. The later round tournament match ups we went a sports place to watch the games. Lots of TVs, lots of Carolina peeps and lots of Carolina beating its opponents. Every time after the game we’d all stand up and sing the alma mater with arms wrapped around another. Started to feel like home for just a little bit. After the national championship we were all pumped and ready to rush Franklyn Street. We almost went to Franklyn Street, Hollywood but decided to rush the most available street, Lankershim. Now unlike on Carolina’s campus, we weren’t able to shut down traffic. The 10 or so of us would run up and down the sidewalk yelling and screaming every now and then darting out on the road when there wasn’t traffic. Where at Carolina, everyone joins in, in L.A. we just had a bunch of people starring at us strangely. Again, great season. Rah Rah Carolina-lina.

New INSIGHT Promo video

We have been working on all kinds of new promotional stuff for INSIGHT. This video is just a part of it. One of our students, Josh Flynn, made it, good work huh? So the video goes with the new website www.yearofinsight.org . Right now there is just basic info up there and a way to contact the different sites. Some day soon this will be a fantastically dynamic and interactive website full of information about INSIGHT for students, parents and churches that might be interested in becoming a host. Hopefully that some day is not too far out.

So we were just excited about the video and wanted to share it with you. If you know of any High School seniors who are passionate about missions and want to have the most dynamic freshman year of college ever, send us their contact info, we would love to have them at INSIGHT!

Adoption Class # 3: Infertility and Adoption

Last night we walked into that office standing tall, handed over our 19 page thick home study questionnaire and paid our bill in FULL for the home study. It was a glorious moment. So much work done! We also got to meet our social worker last night! She is really nice and we met some families who worked with her as well and they loved her. Her name is Linda, and she will be doing our interviews, home inspection and working with us throughout the rest of the process. Things are really moving along!

The class last night was good. We talked about dealing with the grief of infertility. I think we were surprised as we both began to talk about our pain in the past tense. There is still residual pain, and this will always define us in a way, but last night we realized that we have dealt with our grief and are now in a really good place. God is so good and faithfully He has healed our hearts.

The second half of the class they bring in a panel of people to share their experiences of the adoption process. This time it was three couples with their newly adopted babies. They each told their story of meeting the birthmother, doctor appointments, the birth, emotions, bring home the baby, and the relationship they have with the birthmoms now. Each story was a little different but all of them were really encouraging.

While they talked, all I could think about was: that will be us, we are going to be sitting together with our little baby smiling at us, because we are their mommy and daddy. We will be a family.

Yard Sale Success

Saturday was the most tiring day of our lives, especially since it came after Friday which previous held that title. Saturday we had a Yard Sale.

Over the last month we have been collecting items for a Yard Sale. Going through old clothes, books, etc. We have also been getting donations from people in our community for us to sell. The backroom in our house was piled high with all kinds of treasures. Friday we had to sort through everything and price it. Our house looked more like a furniture store that some kids lived in than a home. The signs went up at 11pm Friday night and we quickly fell into bed.

The sale started at the glorious hour of 7am. Which meant we were up at 5:30, even Melissa. We had great friends who came and help set up. They came of course for Prontos donuts we provided, but also out of the goodness of their hearts. There was a ton of stuff to sell and really nice things too! We are so blessed by this community.

The sale started off slow but we had a great late rush starting around 10. We were haggling and bargaining away. The time flew by. Adam was in charge of keeping track of what we were making and he had all kinds of predictions. There was even talk of statistically if we made proportionately the same amount every hour as we did in the first three hours we would reach our goal kind of thing, lol. That came from the boys. Adam loves numbers. Throughout the day Adam was collecting the larger bills from my money pouch, and every time he came I had one or two, I felt like they were growing in there.

Our reason for this yard sale was to help pay the last part of the Homestudy. Before the weekend we needed $900 to pay in full. We felt we would probably make about 400-500 on the sale and then we would just save the rest over the next couple of months. I could have cried when Adam told me what we made: $750! I didn't cry, but I did scream and do a little happy dance. On top of this two families gave us checks for the adoption fund. so the grand total: $900

God is so good and so faithful!

We can not wait to go to our adoption class on Monday night, turn in our completed homestudy paperwork and hand them a big check! We are so full of joy and thankfulness right now it is overwhelming. God has been so amazing in the ways he has provided for this whole process. Thank you thank you to everyone who helped out and all of you who have been praying for this. We love you!

Adoption Class# 2: The Profile

We had our second adoption class and it was awesome. We really like this agency more every time we are there. A lot of the same couples were in the class again so it was nice to see familiar faces, and build those relationships.

This class was about creating our adoption profile. The profile is what they show to expectant mothers to help choose a family. They talked about what should and shouldn't be in the profile, and had a ton of examples that we could look at. That was really helpful because you could see what caught you eye. We got to take home copies of a couple profiles that we really liked to help us make ours.

The profile should tell a little bit about who we are individually, as a couple, our extended family, what we do for fun, where we work, why we are adopting, and how we see a baby fitting into our lives. It should also have lots of pictures highlighting these different areas. This is going to be a lot of fun to put together, and we are already scheming up ideas of how to do it. We also need a separate photo album of just pictures with small captions for them to look at if they want to get to know us a little better.

Over Christmas we were camera happy with our families because we knew we would need lots of pictures of them, so we got that covered. Now we are camera happy all the time because we need pictures of us at work, at play, with friends, with kids, just us, etc. The new phrase is "Profile moment!" when we feel the moment would be a good pic for our profile. Cheesy I know, but that is who we are.

If you have any great ideas for our profile we would love to hear them! When we actually start working on it we will post some of the pictures for yall to see.

We thought we would start with this one, what do you think?

Adoption News

Sorry we haven't posted in awhile, we are busy getting back into the grove of INSIGHT after a long holiday with our families.

Monday with the holiday we are looking to spend most of the day going through the more difficult sections of the paperwork. As of yet we have filled out the biographical/informational sections as well as the descriptive sections outlining our lives. Now we have the difficult sections: a specific parenting plan for the next 18 years of their life (Not exaggerating that much) and the questionnaire of what kind of special circumstances we would be willing to accept.

These past few weeks have been filled with discussion about the adoption. It was great being with family over the holidays talking about the adoption and dreaming of what the next holiday could possibly hold. Everyone has been so supportive and encouraging us through the good and bad of the process.

I also want to give a quick shout out to those who have sent us gifts. Thank you for being a part of our dreams. We look forward to actualization of those dreams along side of you. As of today we have received around 35% of our goal of $4,000 for the first part of the adoption. We are blown away by your love. Thank you.

Our next class is a week from Monday (the 26th). We'll update you about the class after we've processed it.

Awesome Video

Here is an awesome video from our time in Florida. I can't get the whole video in the frame so click the link to see the full screen on YouTube.