Update on What's Been Happening

The past week has been quite busy as we have been promoting our garage sale and trying to get some other fundraisers lined up.  We were so generously offered by so many of you to host parties for us (THANK YOU), but unfortunately we will have to narrow it down to about 3 or 4 parties since many of you will be receiving invitations to each party since most of them can be done online as well as in our home.  On that note, Skeeter and I want to make sure that even though you are sent an invitation to each party, that that doesn't mean we are expecting you to help each time (if you can't help at all, we understand!!).  We just simply want you to know when the opportunities are available to help should you desire to do so.    We have also filled out an application for a grant, but it won't be reviewed until the end of June if I understand correctly, and we will be notified ONLY if we are chosen as a recipient.  We have another grant application filled out and will try to get that sent out later this week.  We are also so very thankful for the donations that have already started to come in.  I found a neat thermometer to help us all keep track as to where we are at in the process.  I am excited to see how high God will raise the bar! :)

June is looking to be a busy month for us!  Our garage sale will be June 6-8 (we can still accept more donations to our sale and are so thankful for the donations we have already received).  I have contacted our editor of our newspaper to see if he could put some additional information about our garage sale in the paper other than what we will post in the classifieds.  He asked for more information and we have not yet heard back since we submitted it. We have scheduled a Thirty-One party and are in process of scheduling a Tupperware party.  Hopefully in July we can schedule one or two more parties.

Lastly, as of today we have THREE MORE MONTHS until our baby is due to arrive.  We received a call from our social worker last night and she shared with us that our Mommy D, is back in jail.  We are kind of relieved to know that as now we don't have to wonder if she has a place to live (she roamed the streets a lot), or whether or not she will have food to eat.  We do pray for her as we know she did not desire to go back there until after the baby was born, but we trust that she will get the medical care she and the baby will need while there. This also means more "security" for us from the adoption perspective that if she delivers while still in jail, there will not be any way she can back out or change her mind.  I don't think she would have changed her mind anyway, but its kind of nice to get the little reassurance as so much of the adoption process carries with it UNsecurity.

Thank you so much for your continued prayers and support for us in this journey!

We Are Matched!

Thank you so much for praying for us!  As of today, we are officially matched with Mommy D!! She is due to have a baby girl at the end of August....which right now seems forever away!  We are pretty excited and hope that since she isn't too far from us that we can build a bit of a relationship with her so that we can show her more about the love of Jesus.

Now we get to move on to the more unpleasant aspect of adoption....raising money.  It has been amazing to me how much adoption has changed since we adopted 6 years ago!  Even since we started our second journey a year and a half ago, adoption has changed.  We were notified by Angel Adoption that we should consider raising our limits for birth mother expenses, which we chose not to do.  By the way, this match does not come through Angel.  Our experience with them has been disappointing, but that is the risk you take as you learn, I guess. God has definitely been teaching us a lot of lessons through this whole ordeal...especially learning to TRUST Him, and take things literally a day at a time.

We have been given the amount that this adoption will cost us and we are about $7,000 short of where we need to be by the end of August.  Due to our having to pay off my hospital bills from last year, that ate at some of the extra savings we had.  We are going to trust that Jesus will help us by providing us with the amount that we need!  We will attempt to find some grants, but the last adoption proved futile in that area which was really disappointing!

How can you help?!  We are planning a fund raiser garage sale for June 6-8, so if you have any extra items laying around that you would be willing to donate towards our garage sale we would greatly appreciate it.  All funds will go towards our adoption!  If the Lord lays upon your heart to donate directly towards our adoption fund, you can do that through the paypal button we have established at the top right of our blog or you can contact us privately for our address.  Most of all, we greatly appreciate your prayers in helping us bring home our next forever child!