This is my gift to you. Merry Christmas, Authors Den readers and writers! :)
Louisiana shares the year's events in newsletter form, and she wishes all her friends a most merry Christmas and holiday season.
December 2005~
Dear Friends~
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to each and every one of you! I am writing to let you know just how God has blessed us this year. This has been a very memorable year for us Sanduskys, and we are basking in His Glory and His Goodness to us!
This year, we added three new children to our family! That is correct: we no longer have fifty children we have adopted--we now have FIFTY THREE children that God has blessed us with, and we couldn't be happier than we are right now! We adopted two children from Sri Lanka that I had meet while helping out with the tsunami relief efforts, and in April, they came to our country, where they were adopted by Bill and myself. Arjun is but a year and a half old, cute as a button, and Rani, who is older, is five, going on six, and she has been making leaps and bounds in her recovery from a devastating head injury. (Both lost their families in the tsunami, and it is only by a Miracle that they survived!) Then, if that were not enough, in the summer, we heard about a little eight-year-old Romanian girl with spina bifida who was in desperate need of a family, and now she is with us as well! Little Janica is a sweet child with a shy personality, but she is adjusting well to her new home here in America, and she has already celebrated her first Halloween, Thanksgiving, and will now be celebrating her first American Christmas! Who knows what next year may bring down the pike, in terms of adopting, but we already have more than enough kids; but we are willing to take in more if God sees that this is His Will! He knows that giving children with special needs a home and a family is our Ministry, and He has blessed not only us, but other people that have wanted a family of their own! I also have the adoption community that keeps me hopping, and I have been able to help other families with the adoption process as well, and the feeling that I get in helping others realize their dreams of having children surely makes me feel very good, indeed!!
I also have regained lost health: as you know from past newsletters, I had been plagued with ongoing back problems for YEARS, ever since I was but a child of nine, after I fell out of a tree while playing, and for years, I could not walk without being in searing pain or walk without the aid of a cane or even Lofstran crutches. Well, back in the spring of this year (right after I had come back from Sri Lanka), I had back surgery that finally put an end to all the pain that I had suffered, and it is as though I am a completely changed person. I can now walk WITHOUT crutches OR a cane, and I can hug and hold my children again, and I can do marathon shifts at work without my back killing me by shift's end, and I can even DANCE! It has been absolutely MIRACULOUS!!
My children have also done well with their health: no unexpected medical emergencies have popped up, and it has been MONTHS since I have last had to call for an ambulance on their part, which is a MAJOR Miracle indeed! :) The last time I had ANY children in the hospital was back in June, when my son, Johnny, who has muscular dystrophy, had tests (to see how his disease has been progressing; Miracle of Miracles, it has NOT gotten ANY worse, much to our surprise!!), and also when Ronee', my daughter, had her hips replaced. She has JRA, and her arthritis caused great difficulty in her mobility (she was using her wheelchair more often than her crutches), and it also caused her great pain; and if she didn't have this done, she would probably have ended up needing the wheelchair insteaad of getting around by foot. Well, she is walking better now than she has in several years, and although she is still dependent on the crutches and leg braces, she still is walking MUCH better, and she can even beat ME in a race, she gets around that good! LOL She also hasn't had a major attack of her asthma, and now the ONLY allergies that still plauge her are her allergies to penicillin (and all cillins), bee or insect stings, and peanuts. Other than that, she has outgrown all her past allergies, and she has been breathing so well lately that Dr. Emmons, her primary pediatrician, is considering in stopping her oxygen therapy by the spring or summer! :) Johnny has also been doing well with his epilepsy: he used to have terrible seizures quite often, but doctors were finally able to find a medication that has put his seizures to a stop, and he is also doing very well academically: while learning for him is still a challenge for him at times, he is now bringing home A's when he used to bring home C's, D's, and F's! :)
In addition to all this, my daughter, Stephanie, is now attending college at Texas A & M, in Austin, and she loves it there in Texas. My other college-bound daughter, Dwerlina, is also doing well in college (she goes to the University of Louisiana-Lafayette), and she has informed me just a while ago that she and her boyfriend, Andre', are ENGAGED to be MARRIED! So it looks like another wedding is in the offing for the Sandusky Family! :) My oldest daughter, Lightning, is here from Colorado with her husband and the grandkids, and my kids have been having a ball playing with their little cousins! They love the new babies, and they love having their big sister home! PLUS my daughters Melizza and Dianna (they live close by our place, in an apartment complex for people with disabilities) are doing well, too, and they come by our place every weekend for a good home-cooked meal and to do their laundry. They are both working hard, and thay are both becoming self-sufficient. :)
My son, Anh Kim, also had a very good year: this spring, he was Miraculously HEALED of cancer during a service at church, and after years of fear and uncertainty, his future now looks extremely bright indeed: he is thinking of going into either journalism or politics when he is older; he would like to become an activist for the rights of the disabled, and he has proven to be a very articulate, gifted young man. We are so proud at how far he has come in his life!
I have gained new friends through the adoption community that I run: I have friends from Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio, Georgia, and now England. They have either adopted children or expressed a deep desire to adopt children who have special needs, and I have been putting them in direct contact with reputable adoption agencies like AASK (Aid To The Adoption of Special Kids), WACAP, Holt International, Bethany Christian Services, Gladney, and others, and they have either started getting the ball rolling in their Adoption Journey, or else they have added children to their growing families. We keep in direct contact with one another, offering a supporive and sympathetic ear, or even prayers, and helping each other through the adoption process. Some are just starting while others (like yours truly!) are hardcore veterans of the Adoption Game! :) There may be more people writing, so 2006 will promise to be a very busy (if productive!) year for me and my friends in the adoption community! :)
I also have good news from friends to celebrate: my friend Jenna Aurora Doucet and her husband, who both live in Anchorage, Alaska, are beaming with the news that Jenna is now PREGNANT! She and her husband just found out just around Thanksgiving, and their first bundle of joy will be due sometime in August if all goes well!! I am keeping my fingers (and toes) crossed! :) This will be their very first child, and I am hoping that the child is born healthy!! (Even if he or she is NOT born healthy, I pray that Michael and Jenna give him/her the love and the support so that child can get through life!!)
My friend Kendra from Soulsbysville, California, has also added to HER family: a little girl from Georgia named Chelsea, a little girl named America Hope from Sri Lanka, and has just had her first natural child, a little girl that she has named Felicity! She was going to adopt three little sisters from Mississippi, but the girls are still unaccounted for: some sexual predators have kidnapped them, and their whereabouts are unknown. Police are still on the case. I had thought that Kendra had adopted them, but another friend told me what was really going on, and I am in tears as I think of the horrors those dear precious babies must be going through! I am praying that God grants them (AND Kendra) a TRUE Christmas Miracle!! Kendra's best friend, Louisa Mason, and HER husband, Jeff, have also had thieir new baby, a little girl. Both Kendra and Louisa both have health problems (Kendra has spina bifida, and Louisa, muscular dystrophy; both are in wheelchairs), but so far, they have been doing well. (I hope and pray that this continues!!)
My little friend in California, Rebekkah Cohen, has also been doing well: she has pain insensitivity disorder that causes her the inability to feel pain, and sometimes she isn't aware of her surroundings, and as a result, she is at risk of getting infections, or horribly injured or burned, but so far, other than a spell in the summer that landed her in the hospital (she had an infection), she has been dancing and enjoying life. (She is a formidable little dancer; she wants to be a professional ballerina when she is older.)
Well, this is about it for now. I wanted to let my friends know what is going on in my part of the world, and I also wanted to write and wish each and every one the Merriest of Christmases and the Happiest of New Year's! God bless you all, and may You experience the True Joy of the Season, and may you all remember the TRUE meaning that is behind the Christmas season: the Birth of our Lord and Saviour, JESUS CHRIST!
~In His Most Precious, Holiest Name,
Your Friend, Louisiana Sandusky in Nashville, Tennessee. :)
May you ALL experience the JOYS and MIRACLES that define the Christmas Season, and may your New Year be bright with promise! God bless each and every one of you, and thank you so much for your support of what I do here! I love each and every one of you with all my heart and soul!
~Love, your friend in Texas, Karen Lynn, The Texas Tornado. :D
A wonderful holiday letter filled with family news, Karen...you do a fantastic job with this series...thank you for sharing your talent. Merry Christmas and New Year blessings to you and yours...
A total miracle - or, in fact, a chronicle of miracles - from start to finish in this comprehensive account, Karen. But my own mind is enfeebled by the thought of all those Christmas presents to sort out! :)) Guess the greatest gifts are love, life and the closeness of family though, right? AND an appreciation of all the blessings we take for granted moment by moment. May the Sanduskys be blessed with MORE AND MORE of the good things in life in 2006: "To him who has, much will be given" and "Give and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, overflowing and poured into your lap"... sounds like a Sandusky recipe to me!! LOL Sage! BLESSED CHRISTMAS, Karen and may you know great rest, peace, joy and love with you and yours in all the coming days. Kate xx
Do you keep all of these family names and bios on recipe cards and put them in a recipe box. WOW! You should write a book on names and their meanings. What a chain of reference! EX-cellent newsletter! Happy Holidays and my very best wishes for you and your extended family. And may the Spirit lay a white ironed and starched tablecloth on your Christmas Holiday dinner table and sign all of the names in black magic marker! Love to you Karen, and your pen twin sister, Karla. Thanks for the letter today, Karen Lynn.
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