Chanel's Blog

The Loux Family | Nominate for Extreme Home Make Over

Take a look at the http://louxfamilyblog.com/

Make a difference in the life of the Loux Family. This is a family near Kansas City, who have been nominated for Extreme Makeover Home Edition. I was able to be apart of EMHE a few years ago and it was an amazing experience! This family's story is absolutely amazing! They have 11 children, 8 of whom are adopted. Go to... their blog & email EMHE to nominate them for a new home!

~Chanel

(I copied their image and the following from their blog to help spread the word)

 

Here is a post from their blog.....

This is Renee’s sister in law, Tracie Loux. I found out today that Extreme Home Makeover is looking for a candidate for a makeover here in the state of MISSOURI!!!

As you know that my sister -in- law, Renee’ and her beautiful children lost their husband and daddy in 2009 just 2 days before Christmas. Renee and Derek worked together trumpeting the cause of the orphan. They not only spoke out in defense of the fatherless, they put actions to their words by bringing children into their own home.

Renee and Derek’s first son, Josiah was born with Spina Bifida and passed away at age 2  1/2. Josiah’s incredible life opened their eyes and ours to the precious gift of children with special needs. They went on to have 2 beautiful daughters Sophia and Michaela. Over the past 10 years, Derek and Renee adopted 8 children. Their 5 daughters, Teyolla, Keyolla, Telma, Leeann, and Sana are all adopted from the Marshall Islands . Through Derek and Renee’s loving parenting, much prayer, and devotion to their daughters, these precious beauties have walked through incredible healing and restoration. Their 3 precious boys (Sasha, Ethan, and Silas) were abandoned at birth in an orphanage in Ukraine. Sasha has Spina Bifida. Ethan and Silas both have Down syndrome. The boys were severely malnourished, emotionally neglected and were suffering on so many levels. Derek and Renee literally nursed Ethan, a 5 year old weighing 11 lbs, unable to walk or  even crawl,  back to life! As a family we witness this starving, sick little boy come back to life, a true miracle of God’s kindness and his parent’s loving commitment.

After, her husband’s death, my precious sister in law, not only walked through grief and suffering with her children in  such a remarkable way, she also stood tall, determined to carry on the mission that she and Derek worked passionately for- defending orphans and standing for justice.

Renee currently serves as the director of the Orphan Justice Center in Kansas City, MO with the mission to RESCUE, ADOPT, and RESTORE! The goal of OJC is to raise awareness, equip families to adopt, and establish safe, restorative communities for orphans.

In addition on a personal level, Renee continues to walk heroically, bringing orphans into her home and calling them her own. Since Derek’s death, Renee has brought a beautiful 1 year old boy, Judah, into her home, has taken in a little blind girl, Joanna to assist her parents in getting her the care and education she needs to thrive, and has opened her home and offered to legally adopt  a 30 year old, Dawn, an orphan herself, who is working on the streets of Ecuador caring for orphans.

Renee has been given 45 acres in Grandview, MO to help her walk out the vision she and Derek had to build a home with space enough to personally take in 30+ orphans. Their dream together was to take in children with special needs and provide them with a loving home where they could be restored and healed. Their dream was to have horticultural therapy, equine therapy, along with traditional therapies (physical, occupational and speech).

When I heard today that Extreme Home Makeover was looking for a deserving family in the state of Missouri, I couldn’t think of a more deserving family. This precious family: Renee, her mother Flo, and the 12 children currently in their home, share a 4 bedroom home that is bursting at the seams. They have exhausted every available space and have simply run out of room. Renee doesn’t know the word “No” when it comes to children in need. Their garage and family room have both been converted to extra sleeping space, and there is simply no room left. In addition, their current home has three floors and requires Renee to lift Sasha and his wheelchair from level to level so that he can be with the family.

When someone as rare and precious as my sister Renee desires to love and live her life in a away that to some may seem extreme, extravagant, or hard to even fathom, it seems just wrong to see something like MORE ROOM hold her back from LOVING LARGE!

If you would please help spread the word and nominate Renee Loux for this amazing opportunity to be considered for an Extreme Home Makeover. If you have been touched by this story, I would also encourage you to blog, post on FB or share in anyway possible.

DIRECTIONS:

Email nominations to CastingMissouri@gmail.com

Each nomination must include the names, ages of everyone in the house, a description of the major challenges within the home and a short description of the family story. (Feel free to copy and paste some of the information above if you need, but your own connection to Renee would be great to share as well!)

Here’s a list of their names and ages if you’d like to copy and paste, though I encourage you to write a personal description of this sweet family if you know them at all.

Renee-mother (49)

Flo- Renee’s mother (72)

Telma-Renee’s daughter, adopted from the Marshall Islands (19)

Teyolla- Renee’s daughter, adopted from the Marshall Islands (19)

Keyolla- Renee’s daughter, adopted from the Marshall Islands (19)

LeeAnn- Renee’s daughter, adopted from the Marshall Islands (16)

Sophia- Renee’s daughter (13)

Michaela- Renee’s daughter (10)

Sana- Renee’s daughter adopted from the Marshall Islands (9)

Sasha- Renee’s son with Spina Bifida adopted from Ukraine (8)

Ethan- Renee’s son with Down Syndrome adopted from Ukraine (7)

Silas- Renee’s son with Down Syndrome adopted from Ukraine (4)

Judah – Renee’ son adopted from the Marshall Islands (1)

Joanna- a blind girl under the legal guardianship of Renee (from the Marshall Islands) age 13

Deadline is March 31st. Additional Details HERE!

 

Thank you so much for taking the time to look at this and please do your part!

YRMS would like to present Mr. & Mrs. Damon Apsey

On September 18, 2010 Chanel married her best friend and love of her life! We wanted to share with you the sneak peek video done by Sweet Tea Media, there will be many more images to come but hopefully you can get a get a chance to see what a wonderful day it was for Damon and Chanel and celebrate their love! God truly brought them together in an amazing way and we look forward to seeing what God has in store!

We would love to hear what you think! Here is Damon and Chanel's Wedding video!

Chanel and Damon's Wedding Video

Chanel & Damon from sweetTea media on Vimeo.

Pray for Jude

UPDATE: Praising God for a Miracle.....Jude is coming home today!

His mom just posted this!- From his Mom- Amanda's post!!!!!
I Kings 17:22 "The LORD heard Elijah's cry, and the boy's life returned to him, and he lived." Psalm 116:1 "I love the LORD, for he heard [our] voice; he heard [our] cry for mercy." We are going home today with a happy little Ju-Ju! Thank you so much for your prayers. I believe we witnessed a miracle yesterday.

UPDATE: Keep the Prayers coming 4/8/10 at 5:00pm

Quick review of day: Temp of 102.5. Dr.s try to drain fluid w/help of ultrasound. Not successful again. Surgeon called. Chest surgery scheduled for tomorrow. CT scan in afternoon-fluids decreased around lungs. Surgery cancelled. If he goes 24 hrs w/out fever, we go home!! Thanks for prayers. We are headed in right direction!!!

PRAISE THE LORD!!!

UPDATE: KEEP PRAYERS COMING! 4/8/10 at 3:00pm

The procedure on Jude did not go as expected again today. They were not able to drain the fluid because they found that it all had hardened, so the docs are going to be talking to Dave & Amanda about the pros and cons of surgery. Please pray for them as they have some tough decisions to make soon.

Please join me in praying for Jude! This little man is 2 years old and I have had the honor of photographing him over the last couple years! His mommy is due in about 6 weeks with twins and he has just been transferred to Carle Hospital in Champaign. Jude has had pneumonia for 6 days and he is not getting better. There is more fluid in his chest now then there was last Thursday! Also, pray for Amanda (his mommy) and the twins she now has high blood pressure.

I have known Dave and Amanda for at least 10 years as we were part of the same church. I was also able to photograph their wedding and now I have photographed Jude several times in the last couple years.

 

Please Pray for Jude!

~Chanel

Christmas 1961

One of my clients sent me this email this morning and the story was too good not to share!

Share this with your family and friends and say a prayer thanking God for all His blessings big and small!!!

In September 1960, I woke up one morning with six hungry babies and just 75 cents in my pocket.
Their father was gone..
The boys ranged from three months to seven years; their sister was two.
Their Dad had never been much more than a presence they feared.
Whenever they heard his tires crunch on the gravel driveway they would scramble to hide under their beds.
He did manage to leave $15 a week to buy groceries.
Now that he had decided to leave, there would be no more beatings, but no food either.
If there was a welfare system in effect in southern Indiana at that time, I certainly knew nothing about it.
I scrubbed the kids until they looked brand new and then put on my best homemade dress, loaded them into the rusty old 51 Chevy and drove off to find a job..
The seven of us went to every factory, store and restaurant in our small town.
No luck.
The kids stayed crammed into the car and tried to be quiet while I tried to convince who ever would listen that I was willing to learn or do anything. I had to have a job.
Still no luck. The last place we went to, just a few miles out of town, was an old Root Beer Barrel drive-in that had been converted to a truck stop.
It was called the Big Wheel.
An old lady named Granny owned the place and she peeked out of the window from time to time at all those kids.
She needed someone on the graveyard shift, 11 at night until seven in the morning.
She paid 65 cents an hour, and I could start that night.
I raced home and called the teenager down the street that baby-sat for people.
I bargained with her to come and sleep on my sofa for a dollar a night.
She could arrive with her pajamas on and the kids would already be asleep
This seemed like a good arrangement to her, so we made a deal.
That night when the little ones and I knelt to say our prayers, we all thanked God for finding Mommy a job.. And so I started at the Big Wheel.
When I got home in the mornings I woke the baby-sitter up and sent her home with one dollar of my tip money-- fully half of what I averaged every night.
As the weeks went by, heating bills added a strain to my meager wage.
The tires on the old Chevy had the consistency of penny balloons and began to leak. I had to fill them with air on the way to work and again every morning before I could go home.
One bleak fall morning, I dragged myself to the car to go home and found four tires in the back seat. New tires!
There was no note, no nothing, just those beautiful brand new tires.
Had angels taken up residence in Indiana ? I wondered.
I made a deal with the local service station.
In exchange for his mounting the new tires, I would clean up his office.
I remember it took me a lot longer to scrub his floor than it did for him to do the tires.
I was now working six nights instead of five and it still wasn't enough.
Christmas was coming and I knew there would be no money for toys for the kids .
I found a can of red paint and started repairing and painting some old toys. Then I hid them in the basement so there would be something for Santa to deliver on Christmas morning.
Clothes were a worry too. I was sewing patches on top of patches on the boys pants and soon they would be too far gone to repair.
On Christmas Eve the usual customers were drinking coffee in the Big Wheel. There were the truckers, Les, Frank, and Jim, and a state trooper named Joe.
A few musicians were hanging around after a gig at the Legion and were dropping nickels in the pinball machine.
The regulars all just sat around and talked through the wee hours of the morning and then left to get home before the sun came up.
When it was time for me to go home at seven o'clock on Christmas morning, to my amazement, my old battered Chevy was filled full to the top with boxes of all shapes and sizes.
I quickly opened the driver's side door, crawled inside and kneeled in the front facing the back seat..
Reaching back, I pulled off the lid of the top box.
Inside was whole case of little blue jeans, sizes 2-10!
I looked inside another box: It was full of shirts to go with the jeans.
Then I peeked inside some of the other boxes. There was candy and nuts and bananas and bags of groceries. There was an enormous ham for baking, and canned vegetables and potatoes.
There was pudding and Jell-O and cookies, pie filling and flour. There was whole bag of laundry supplies and cleaning items.
And there were five toy trucks and one beautiful little doll.
As I drove back through empty streets as the sun slowly rose on the most amazing Christmas Day of my life, I was sobbing with gratitude.
And I will never forget the joy on the faces of my little ones that precious morning.
Yes, there were angels in Indiana that long-ago December. And they all hung out at the Big Wheel truck stop.

THE POWER OF PRAYER. I believe that God only gives three answers to prayer:
1. 'Yes!'
2. 'Not yet.'
3! ‘I have something better in mind.'
God still sits on the throne, and the devil is a liar.
You may be going through a tough time right now but God is getting ready to bless you in a way that you cannot imagine.

This prayer is powerful, and prayer is one of the best gifts we receive. There is no cost but a lot of rewards
Let's continue to pray for one another.

Prayers for Willamina

Yesterday I received an email from some of my clients who are on our babysteps program. I have had the opportunity to photograph them now at their maternity, newborn, 4 month, 8 month and even as recent as last week their extended family images. They are such a fun family and love their long awaited little girl so much!
Katie and Will had just been in this past week to order images and we were so excited to find out that they are expecting their 2nd little one early next year!
They went to Willamina's 9 month check up last Friday(13th) and the doctor felt a mass in her stomach.
Here is what Katie just wrote me...
"She ordered bloodwork and an ultrasound. We knew it was something bad when the nurse ran out to get us as we were leaving the hospital and said the doctor wanted to see us right then. As you can imagine, we were shocked, scared, upset. . . you name it. We no sooner got home then the dr called us and told us that we needed to be seen at Riley's (children's hospital in Indy) that afternoon. Yikes! We spent nearly 12 hrs in the ER getting admitted before getting a room at 3 AM. Basically we have been talking with oncologists and surgeons all weekend about options. The tumor is really big. I feel like we should have know about the tumor since now that we know it is there, we can feel it. The tentative plan is to shrink the tumor by using chemo and then removing it. We are fairly certain it is malignant. . . but the drs can't really confirm anything until we get moretests run. Willamina is such a trooper and is going through this very well."

A site for Willamina has been set up through CaringBridge
to help keep everyone updated on her progress. Please bath this little girl in prayer and send this link out to any prayer warriors you may know. Will, Katie and Willamina will covet any prayers that can receive for this little one.

Willamina is not a big smiley girl but very sweet and just takes everything in! We laugh at every session at how serious she can be.....I think she thinks we are all crazy sometimes trying to get her to smile!

I think we have pretty much had a crying one at every session.....I think it is so funny!

Please keep this little one in your prayers!

~Chanel