Garage Sale for Baby!

God is so faithful! My sweet friend Holly suggested a garage sale to raise money for the adoption about 2 months ago. I liked the idea and so started telling a couple people about it. Another dear friend Ana began cleaning out her home to sell it and saved all her "giveaways" for our sale. Five other families contributed to the sale, and it was like the fishes and the loaves. On sale day we started dragging out the stuff and it just kept pouring out! We had a great sale and made $350.00! Huge success for a garage sale in my opinion. I had put on the signage that it was an a "raising money for adoption" sale and several people just handed me money. One sweet lady even came back and gave me two precious dresses for Eden and the new baby (if it's a girl) to wear! It was a really neat day. We met so many people who either had adopted or were themselves adopted. I enjoyed the day immensely! I loved getting to spend time with my friend Holly and I loved talking with so many people. Another amazing friend drove over to our home at "o'dark early" to get our truck to go back to their home to bring us some stuff. God has sure blessed us with amazing loved ones to share our lives. It's humbling. This morning at church our pastor asked for an update and an estimate of how much the total adoption would cost. I told him just under $30 thousand and he looked so shocked. He asked how we were managing it and had we been saving for it. I was pleased to answer honestly and confidently by saying, "No, we don't have the money but God keeps bringing it in and we are not concerned. We will apply for grants and send out support letters soon, but in the end we know that God will provide." If any of you really know me, for me to say this and mean it is huge! God has been doing quite an overhaul in my heart with regards to money lately and I am so glad that I am free to say..."I'm not worried." I mean really is worrying going to bring any money in? Nope. Plus, it's just a sign of not trusting in God's provision. He ordered this baby, it is a gift he is giving us, he'll pay for it. (smile) And we can't wait to receive his gift!!

If God Orders It...He'll Pay For It!

So the title of this blog is my mantra. If God orders something in your life, he will pay for it! I believe this and I continue to see it play out as truth throughout this process. With the home study completed we will start applying for grants once the final copy is sent to us. Yay! I know we won't hear from many places till the last moment which makes planning difficult but who cares if the money comes! So I am now praying that we apply for the right grants at the right organizations. I don't really know the process but I'm sure I'll get up to speed soon enough. Our agency has a workshop on how to adopt without debt scheduled for September, we will be going to that. Also, we have a garage sale planned for this weekend with all the proceeds going towards the adoption. I kinda want to throw up thinking about it, since I am writing this blog from my Florida getaway with Eric, and I'm totally unprepared for said garage sale. However, one of my dear friends is helping me with it, Holly, love this girl! So that is my strength! I will cover the garage sale in a later blog, if we get $5.00 it is 5 more than we had! So I'm thinking that anything is success!

Home Study is Finished

Okay so finally we have our home study finished, and by finished I mean we have turned in all that we are required to turn in. We are lacking a couple references but Amy (social worker extraordinaire) is going to call the remaining 3 people. So now we wait. At least for the most part.

Our home study goes to our state DHR (Department of Human Resources) for approval. Once we get their approval they will send our home study to CIS (Citizenship and Immigration Services). Somehow during this time we also will send our I-800 form requesting citizenship for our new child and our Dossier will be completed as well I believe. A Dossier (pronounced dos-e-a) is comprised of 8 documents. Most of which are already on file. Once CIS determines that we can indeed bring a child into the country as a U.S. citizen, then the dossier goes to China. We wait for a LID (log in date), this is when China says that they have our paperwork and we can adopt. Once we get this then it is "game on" to be matched with a child. Our agency will handle most of that but if we find a child on the shared list, a list we only have access to once we get a LID, then we can request any child we find on said list. Sigh, is anyone exhausted yet? After we get our match then it is roughly 5 months before we can go and get our child to bring home.

So now, for the most part, it really is a waiting game. We get emails from our agency periodically of waiting children and just last week we received an email with links to about 60 children in a special needs orphanage in China. Our agency is partnering with them now and so we had access to the videos. It was enough to make me scream, I want them all! So precious. Noah watched a couple videos with me and was quite taken with a few children. I wanted him to look at the videos with me so he could see what some of the special needs look like...for example, clef palette and lip. That one was shocking but he gets it now and is not as taken aback. He also saw a little boy with his left foot missing and a brace on the other one...this is the boy that Noah really liked. I really liked a little girl who had on her right hand only her thumb and one opposing finger. Noah's first reaction was, "Cool Mom! She is a T-rex!" Coming from anyone else that would have been totally inappropriate. But if you know Noah, then you know his love for T-rex, and you know that was a total compliment.

So we will sit and wait on the Lord. It is a good place to be.

Home Visit was a Breeze

We cleaned our home to the level that would pass military inspection. Amy didn't even care. She basically said, "Yep there's the fire detector, let me see your fire extinguisher and it looks like you have enough room for another person to live here." I knew it would be that way but it was still great to get a lot of "spring cleaning" done. Feels good to have it all organized. We discussed the possibility of adopting out of MBHOH. We have to find out who is the sending orphanage and if they actually house kids at MBHOH, if not then we can at least try to get a child out of the same provience. If we do that then we can visit MBHOH while we are there. We had met a couple that I will blog about later, that said it was indeed possible. That couple lives in China in the same area and works with MBHOH often. So I verified that we have to wait on my medical garbage to resolve itself before the home study can be completed. But we also have to wait on the CAN reports so currently it is a race to see what gets resolved first; me or the CAN's. My money is on the CAN's seeing as April will be month 4 when they are due.

Maria's Big House of Hope Final Tally!

Sleepers: 51 brand new sleepers in sizes Premmie to 3T, 12 additional sleepers were used for a total of 63 sleepers!

Medicine: 39 bottles of medicine (Ibuprophen, Tylonol, Cough, and Cold n Cough)

I am so proud of Noah I could just bust! God is doing such an amazing thing in that little boys heart, it is so big that it is contagious! So many people got excited about what he was doing and donated. I am so grateful! Blessed be the name of the Lord. I have tasted and I know that God is good!

Adoption Update

Not a lot to say currently. We are looking at our final home study appointment next week. It will be the actual visit to our home to see how we function and interact as a family. Amy will finally get to meet our children we have been bragging about for months now. I don't know what really comes after this step because I believe my back condition will be holding things up for awhile. I don't think the home study can be officially finished until my back surgery (or whatever will be done) is finished and I am released from a doctors care. Me being the hold up is surprisingly funny since I am the chomp at the bit gal. I am fairly calm about it, in that I know ALL OF THIS is about God's timing. I keep praying I won't take one step ahead unless his light is there to illuminate my path. I refuse to step out into darkness. So I figure, we need more time to do more homework and we need more time to collect funding and we may even need more time for Maria herself to even be born. Who knows but God and we just are trusting in his timing. We got our fingerprints back from DHR stating that we passed our security clearance and we are clear to be able to foster and adopt in the state of Alabama. It came back like mid-February which was in good time. Amy was shocked when I brought her copies of our letters. So that is good news. The CAN's are another story, apparently they can take up to 4 months or so to process. Those are the record of abuse reports. I finished my 8 hour online Hague training and Eric is halfway through his. We have yet to tackle all the millions of discussion questions from the Adoption Manual so I suppose that is next, it is the dreaded homework I spake of earlier. Our interviews with Amy our social worker have gone great. We really like her and the feeling is mutual. Most of the people we asked to fill out letters of recommendation for us have already sent in their letters. So really everything is moving along swimmingly. We received our tax refund so we can pay our first payment or two payments really, I think it is about 5 thousand. God is so faithful. How we ended up with a tax return at all is amazing and Eric gets a 3,500 bonus in April. We will begin the application for grants and the support letters when the home study is completed. You can't apply for any of the grants without the home study in hand. I have a lot of peace about the money currently. If God orders something, he will pay for it. It is my mantra. So far, he has been faithful to bring in the money out of our own checkbook. I know we will have to ask for support, but for now, it is pretty neat to be able to pay for it ourselves. We are blessed! So no real exciting news to report other than I guess we have a name for our new daughter...Maria. Noah chose it and it sorta has stuck. It is in honor of Maria Chapman, who has gone on to be with Jesus. Noah says he can't wait to meet her in heaven. We pray for our Maria her name and discuss our second daughter by that name now. So if you think of it pray for our little Maria!

Noah's 7th Birthday Gift Idea

Maria's Big House of Hope (above)

Noah’s presents for his birthday party were footed sleepers for babies and infant medicine to be sent to Maria’s Big House of Hope in China. We were discussing another friend’s birthday gift and I told him the friend had asked for donations to an organization that provided for orphans in India, like Maria’s Big House of Hope does in China. Noah got very animated and said, “MOM! I don’t want any presents for my birthday, I already have too many! I want to collect things to send to MBHOH! Then maybe the things I send can be used for my little sister if she gets to go there! (We are adopting a special needs child from China). Again, pass the tissues! So we wrote a letter to our friends to stick in the invitations and asked for donations. We told our church about it and now people are handing us money and asking us if they could also donate too. It’s incredible! I’m so blessed by the heart inside this boy. Thank you sweet Jesus for making him this way!