Fundraising excitement!!

The cookbook sales are doing pretty good. Quite a few of my dear friends have bought some and we put some at my brother's bakery as well. Yesterday a lady went into his bakery and was talking about wedding favors and my brother showed her the cookbooks we were selling. So I get a call to see if we could have 100+ sent to her by Friday for the wedding this weekend!!! So today it was confirmed that we could ship 110 of the cookbooks to her!!! Praise God!! I love how the Lord works it all out in a way that we could never do ourselves. I still have some to sell as well as the pocket calenders, so if you're interested...:)
We are also continuing to gather items for the auction which is in 3 weeks!!! I am very much looking forward to that event-it should be a lot of fun! I also have a date set for the cookies by the pound sale in early December...just need to secure the location.
We got quite a few more documents notarized this weekend. Still waiting on all J and I's blood work results before our physicals will be notarized. My brother will be helping me with our photo pages for our dossier as he has a Mac and can do it a lot more efficiently. So other than waiting for our home study rough draft to come back we're looking pretty good. I hope to have our dossier in the mail by the end of this year.
Again, I have to say I have been so blessed with the people who have jumped on board with this adoption and stood with us to help with all that this adoption entails. It is certainly not a solo effort and I truly am beyond words at what people have done for us. It really is so neat to see how this is affecting so many people and touching so many hearts. Adoption was His plan from the beginning and as I've just finished the Old Testament it was so neat to read it with that in mind. Esther, Jesus and more throughout the Bible were adopted. I bet God has big plans for our son too ;)

While we wait...

While we wait for the perfect timing...




they hope they can wait another day.





While we wait for more money...



they wait with nothing.





While we wait for a bigger home with enough room...



they wait for room in our hearts.







While we wait for others approval...



they wait with any dignity they can find.









While we wait for the ideal child....



they wait knowing they are not.



While we wait trying to decide if we can manage another...



they wait trying to manage on their own.









While we wait to see how much we have to give to them...




They are waiting to give us even more.





While we wait for God to provide...



He waits for us to take the first step so He can.



We must NEVER use 'waiting to hear from Him' as an excuse for not doing what He has ALREADY commanded in the bible for us to do... proclaim the truth, care for orphans, serve others, be His hands of justice for the poor, and show compassion.



So, what are you waiting for??

Checklists & Fundraisers

HOME STUDY IS DONE!!! Normally it takes 4 weeks to get the report back but it will be about 6 for us as the lady who did it is on vacation for 2 weeks. Again, in God's perfect timing everything will happen exactly when it's supposed to. Jonathan is now finished with his online training and we both have passports in hand ready to go!! We have a bunch of paperwork to get notarized and I still need to have my physical done. Well I tried to have it done last week and waited an hour in the waiting room when they came out and told me my Dr. went home sick!! Go figure. So it's rescheduled for next week. Jonathan also needs to get his updated as they didn't do all the blood work that was required. We have a little time though as we have to wait on the home study report to come back before we move forward with the next steps. We have all three reference letters from our dear friends and just need to get those notarized as well.
On the fundraising front...we are selling Gooseberry Patch books and calendars. They have the cutest stuff!! Check out their website if you are not familiar with them. Or let me know if you'd like to purchase either or just want information on them. We are also in full swing of planning our auction/dessert/coffee bar event!! We are doing it in the County (!) October 22 at 7pm. We have a saint up there pulling together the event (collecting auction items, etc) and J's Mom is doing her part and collecting items, etc as well. I am working on getting auction items from our area. We now need to work on getting all the desserts together. Anyone want to bake?? Very exciting although I must admit I am having a hard time letting someone do all this work for us. But when I think about it, it's not really for US, it's for a child, for the Kingdom, for what God has called us to do. This adoption has never been about US. Some days I am quite comfortable with where we're at, with our THREE children. But God doesn't want us to be comfortable, He wants us to be more like Jesus. Jesus wasn't comfortable on the cross, but He was being obedient. And that's simply what we're doing, being obedient.
"Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west. I will say to the north, `Give them up!' and to the south, `Do not hold them back. Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth.'" -Isaiah 43: 5-6

Reality Check

So I read a great blog post this morning, although my hubby may disagree as he woke up to a weepy wife. The lady had adopted two children previously and is in the process to adopt another. She was writing about the "other" side of adoption. The one not many people consider. Most people think about what they're doing for the orphan and how they'll really be able to bless that child. However, how many of us consider what that child has been through? What the mother/family has gone through? Was the child hostily taken? Did the mother walk away after dropping her baby off, crying? Was the child abandoned somewhere? My heart just broke at the thought, the emotion of what it would be like to have to give up my child because they weren't the "right gender" or because we couldn't afford to feed him/her. We've been praying for our little guy but my prayers have turned to his family as well. It breaks my heart that he'll have gone through more in his few years than I have in my whole life. He's going to come with baggage to his forever family, but hey, didn't we all come with baggage when our Heavenly Father opened His arms to us??

Check, check

I have finished my 8 hr online adoptive parent training course!!! J still has his to do (with all his free time ;)). We finished our 2nd home study and have two more to go, which are scheduled for September, (they were supposed to have been done by now but our home study lady is busy-all in God's timing!!). J got his employment verification form notarized and will pick up his police record on Monday. Once school gets underway a bit for the kids (our 4 yr old is going to Pre-K!!) I will start planning a silent auction/spaghetti dinner. We're still waiting to get our passports-should be another month or so. So there is your brief update-just a few more things checked off our list!! :)

Clean Record

So I am going to get a little personal here but it's all for the glory of God so here goes...As I went to pick up my police report today (which is clear, don't worry) I started thinking about how He had protected me even when I didn't know Him.
Before I was ruined by His grace at the age of 21 I lived according to my will which definitely put me in many an unsavory situation. How many times had He protected me from being in the wrong place at the wrong time? And saved me before I headed down a path of self-destruction? I am so thankful that He loved me when I lived like a complete heathen, that He kept me from taking that one more step which would have made me fall off a cliff, that He had a perfect plan for my life. I am thankful for the things He brought me through so I could look back and see His hand upon my life before I knew it even existed. I am thankful for a clean record.
"I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me."-Acts 26:17-19
"In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding." Eph. 1:7-8
T

Paper Chase

Well I've been gathering documents like a mad woman!! I've gotten my birth certificate, our marriage certificate, picking up our police reports tomorrow, scheduled our physicals, sent for our passports (we'll need copies of those), waiting for our dear friends to write referrals...J's birth certificate was sent in with the other papers to get his passport, so we'll have to wait until we get that original certificate back so we can send that along. Our family coordinator through our adoption agency wants to see all of our documents to make sure they look good before we send in our final dossier. I had to write a "non-employment" letter stating why I don't work (ha!) and we need a letter from J's employer. We also need to get a few letters of reference for our home study lady (I am sure there is a better name, but I like that :)) So it's not actually as bad as it seemed when I first saw THE list of documents.
We had our first home study today. It went really well and she was great to talk to. She's a Christian so when she asked us why we were pursuing Ethiopia we could tell her God led us there and she didn't look at us like we had 7 heads. The kids were fine but were kind of stuck in front of the t.v. all day on this gorgeous day so it made me a little nutty. Also we were babysitting but the boys might as well not even be here because they are so awesome!! 1 down, 3 left to go!
J and I have appx 8-10 hrs of adoptive parent training to get down in the next week or so. I've done almost half of it and J has done a few hours. Soooo much reading but very informative and good for those who may be going into the process with lofty ideas of how it will be. I told my dear hubby who doesn't LOVE reading about the 55 page article in one of the modules we have to read and he said, "Whatever it takes to bring him home!!" Wow, God is good!! Just another confirmation to me that this is indeed HIS will and not ours. Have I mentioned I am SOOOOOOOOOOO excited about this???
The chase continues...hope I don't get frost bite!! (see previous post ;))