God Loves to Surprise Us!

  I'm just going to cut to the chase.  In just twenty four hours we received $885 dollars in donations!  Some for the puzzle fundraiser and some just for a donation.  


It's been an interesting couple of weeks for me.  I really started struggling with doubt that God could provide the money we need.  I let worry overtake me at times.  I prayed and prayed that He would help me stop worrying and that I would remember that He knows what He's doing.  As the days went by I noticed that I was worrying less and less.  Which is kind of like a miracle because I'm a natural worry wart.  I basically just decided that adoption is God's heart and He will make this happen and I allowed myself to relax and be excited about my new child without the dark cloud of worry looming.  


This past Sunday within an hour 4 different people came to us and gave us donations that totaled $495!!  It floored us.  It took us a minute to compose ourselves so we could participate in worship.  I just stood there looking at the words of the song through my tears and kept willing myself to breath and swallow back the weeping that wanted to bubble up inside of me.  I was so surprised.  I was so humbled.  God blew us away.  


He also surprised us with the gift of affirmation.  In several different ways, through conversations we had a church and during the sermon, God was so sweetly telling us that yes this is what He's called us to do and yes, go to Haiti for this child.  


Yesterday, another surprise, we received a check in the mail for $40 for 4 pieces of our puzzle!  I was thrilled, but God didn't stop there.  Last night around 8:30 I received an email notification of a donation of $450!!!!  Man do I cry a lot these days! :)  What a blessing and oh how much that means to us that God is providing and friends and family are will to partner up with us to get this child home!!  In the notification this person added a sweet note with the bible reference of Matthew 18:5 which says, "And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me."  Love that.  Enough said.

Puzzle Progress

We are overjoyed today and we are celebrating God's goodness.  Click on the link to our fundraising blog for the latest.

www.haitipuzzlefundraiser.blogpsot.com

:)

Fundraising

If you look at our fundraising thermometer, it's significantly lower than it used to be.  I can assure you that the 2300+ has either been used already for all those smaller fees or in our savings account.  Since that money needed to be used elsewhere in our adoption journey I thought it would make sense to not count it toward our international fee goal.  In the near future I will make a separate thermometer that displays all the money that has been raised with the total amount needed at the top so  that we can see the bigger picture.  The 220 dollars is from our puzzle fundraiser which is strictly to raise money for the international fee.  I have provided a link to the right if you want to participate in this fun fundraiser.  It's so easy, jut ten bucks for a puzzle piece.  That's it!!  Thank you!  

Middle of the Night Musings

I'm up.  It's 4 am.  I have a sick child and to try and go to bed and sleep is laughable.  So here's how it went down.  My mom sense kicked in and began to awake around 3:40 am.  There's a light in the hallway.  Did I leave that on when I came to bed?  Is Nate still in here or is he up?  No, didn't leave a light on, yes Nate is still here.  So I get up and check the bathroom just in time to direct my child to the toilet, this child is VERY inexperienced with stomach bugs.  :)  Ah yes, it's take action time.  Does it hurt or feel sickish?  Is it bad or just annoying?  Do you want to try to drink something?  Let me get a bucket and get you back into your comfy bed.  Oh and do you want me to set up the iPad so you can watch something on Netflix?  Phineas and Ferb?  Okay buddy, you got it.  He also gets his mother and father at his disposal.

Even though I don't like seeing my kids sick, I find it a privilege to take care of them.  I love taking care of them and comforting them when they feel bad.  I know I'm not the only parent that feels this way.  Then I think of the sick kids that don't have a mommy or daddy to get up with them in the middle of the night, let a lone stick an iPad in front of them to watch a cartoon.  I find that I feel frustrated a lot because I can't adopt them all.  I don't have enough money to get the proper medical care all millions and millions of them need.  So I pray for them.  I put them in God's hands and hope that someone will be there to show them a parents love, even if it's just temporary.  So while my son lays next to his bucket and laughs at the cartoon, I'm sitting here praying for the children who don't even have a blanket to snuggle.  Pray with me.

Pictures and Prayer Requests

First of all, I'm sorry for the look of this blog.  I don't like it one bit.  I was trying to change it up for Haiti and the giraffe background wasn't cutting it.  I have no idea how I managed to mess it up and I'm trying to figure out how to fix it without screwing it up even more.  Ugh.  Now on to more important stuff.

We have access to pictures from the orphanage we will be adopting from and I can't stop looking at them.  There is one particular picture where the children (who look to be about 2-4 years of age) are sitting on top of boxes that were recently donated to their orphanage.  They received boxes and boxes of dry milk.  The kids that are 3 or younger will get 2 cups of reconstituted dry milk twice a day to help ward off malnutrition.  They have their little hands up in the air cheering for their dry milk donation in this picture.  They have so little and are thankful.  I'm excited to be on this journey and humbled God is using us.

I'm excited because after this adoption is final, it's really only the beginning of our journey to help the orphans.  Think of all we could do for this orphanage with our money and resources!  It's so exciting!

We have to have psychological evaluations for the Haitian dossier, we need eight passport photos for each of us and pictures of our home and family and we are done with the dossier!!!  Eeeek!  

Here are some ways you can pray for us:

1. For our psych evaluation to go smoothly and that it won't take forever to get the report to put in the dossier.

2. That all our dossier docs are approved and that we won't have to re-do anything and we can get it sent off to Haiti.

3. We have the money to send the dossier and to take care of the smaller fees such as USCIS (immigration) application fee of $720 and the $85 per person fingerprint fee and passports, which is a huge praise.  Just keep praying for that international fee to build up.  

4. We have four grant applications filled out but just not sent because we are waiting for the final copy of our home study, because they all require a copy along with several other documents.  Pray they have funds to help us out!

Thanks everyone!

The Need

If you have noticed, I changed the fundraising meter to one that was big enough for the new amount we need, for now.  It's a lot isn't it?  When I look at it my heart sinks and let me explain why.  The seventeen thousand needed includes a $3000 fee for when our future child/ren paperwork and our paperwork moves out of Haiti's Social Services known as IBESR.  The $14000 is for the international fee per child with the acceptance of a referral.  Meaning, when we get our precious child/ren's picture and profile we must have the $14000 to send to Haiti once we say yes, these are our kids.  Here's the kicker, it's $14000 per child.  PER CHILD!!!!! Understand that that amount is not the adoption agency fee, it's Haiti's government fee.  I guess I could have put $31000 on the meter, and I would but we are not even sure we'll get two children, so I did what seemed reasonable to me.


 There are other fees that need to go to the agency but thankfully their fees are so much more doable from our budgets standpoint, so we are concentrating on the fee that will be crucial.  The thought that we will be matched with a waiting child and then put them on hold because we lack the money to bring them home just about breaks our hearts in two.  We have been working very hard on filling out grant applications but even now we wait.  Some places only accept apps once every quarter and because of the great demand of adoptive families needing help, the funds are limited.  So we wait, ugh, I'm starting to loathe that word for real.  One thing I have learned is that God is working, I have to trust that He is, he adores the orphan and wants nothing more than His children to be His hands and feet and go to them and show His unending love for them.  He WILL make a way.  But, He wants us all to do our part.


  Thank you for those of you who read our blog and follow our journey, it means so much, but what would mean so much more is your prayers for us,for the money and more importantly our little one/s in another country waiting, that they are getting the food and water they need and they can sleep at night.  And pray for him/her or them to be able to start dreaming of a family because God is working to make that dream come true for them!  Watch this video, maybe it will help you understand Gods heart and ours as well.  Thank you.

Where God Leads, We Will Follow

We have officially begun the process for a Haitian adoption!  We are thrilled at what God is doing, and are so excited to know that He is taking care of details, we just have to be totally on board with what He wants.  It's been amazing to remember back when adoption was just a conversation and how it would be really great to adopt from Haiti.  With the earthquake still fresh on our minds we were, at the time, thinking of all the people in need, especially the children.  My sister and her husband were a host family for a little girl from Haiti that came to the states for medical care in 2009.  She came with club feet and some other issues that I can't recall right now, but because of difficulties she ended up having to have her legs amputated.  Once she healed from that it was time to go home for a few years before coming back to the states for prosthetics.  She arrived back in Port Au Prince, Haiti two days before the earthquake.  We still don't know whatever became of her, but we do know how much my sister and her husband and kids loved this little girl.  That has never left us and we thought of her when we discussed adoption.  Once adoption became a clear calling for us, I researched Haitian adoptions and found one law that stated we couldn't adopt because we had more than two children living in our home.  The door was closed.  Or so we thought.  That's why after more research we fell in love with Ethiopia.  Then things happened, see my other blogposts to get more detail, in November that led us to the waiting children list, which led us to this orphanage full of waiting  kids, which led to me calling and finding out that there are three Haitian adoption laws and we fall under one of them!!!!  I was ecstatic and overjoyed!  So after much prayer and more waiting we took the plunge and so here we are.  It's so awesome to me how God works.  Our first initial thought was Haiti exactly a year ago, and decided on Ethiopia.  But now we are back to Haiti.  God just brought us full circle and gently guided us in the direction He wanted us to go all along.  --enter skeptical Brenda--  Now I'm saying all this with a  little reservation, because we thought we knew what God wanted for us when the possible disruption adoption was going to happen for us, and that rattled us spiritually.  But I try not to concern myself with that and look back at all the events that led us to this place we are in now.  God is still in control and if for some reason we're missing it again, I'll just trust that He's still working and getting us to the kids that need us the most.  This has been one heck of a roller coaster ride and it's been hard on us emotionally but we're getting through and still need lots of prayers!!  Also, don't hesitate to push that little donate button on the right or buy some coffee from the Just Love Coffee link on the right as well, to help bring our kids home!  I hope this post isn't just some confusing rant, just trying to keep it honest and keep everyone in the loop!