12 Days!

In less than 12 days we are leaving on a plane for Eastern Europe! Ask me a year ago if I'd be packing to go, packing our family's things, packing a little bag with little toddler boy clothes - and a little blue stuffed puppy, play phone, sensory ball, toy cars, and a few other little things. I might have hoped but to actually be doing this - to be so close to bringing home our little boy! His bed is all made-up. I've taken pictures of our home, his room, family and friends, and placed them into a small photo book for him. I wonder how much he's grown since that last time his photo was taken? I wonder if he'll be big enough for 24 months size clothes - so just in case I've brought some 18 month sizes too. I found these neat slipper type shoes called "skidders" for him and some adorable little moccasins as well - these are both like socks that will not wrap too tight around his banding marks on his ankle, just to be safe. I cannot describe all the emotions running through me. I feel like I will blink and then be on that plane, blink, and then have him in my arms! I'm praying for him, thinking about what a big change this will be for a little child. Everything familiar will be gone. Any comforts gone, but I hope replaced with new ones and to the best of our ability some similar ones.

I feel like it's much later than it is. I will have to write more later. All the excitement and packing and planning is apparently wearing me out. I guess I will have to be quite mindful that I keep a steady pace and get rest, as hard as that is to do with all the thoughts running through my brain!

Watch THIS!

I just saw this. It is so powerful! So many people feeling they need "something more", something "worth living for" and this young man Nick Vujicic has found it in Jesus! What a testimony this person has and what an encouragement he is to me and to so many other people. I love how at the end all those people who felt ALONE found each other and laughed and played TOGETHER. So many times we feel we are alone on our journey. If we really look around there are so many others who also just want to feel loved and valued and to have purpose in life.

Nick's website: http://www.lifewithoutlimbs.org/ "from no limbs to no limits".

Thankful!!!

Yesterday morning we shared our adoption story with our home-church. We were not originally going to share 'til the following week but we had a feeling we'd be getting a travel date soon and that it wouldn't be far off so we asked if we could share this week and I could not believe - just walking into first service the pastor had shared with us that the Bible text that he's been teaching through just "happened" (you know this is really God, right?) to be talking about Jesus healing the leper and paralytic - once his friends cut a hole in the roof of where Jesus was and lowered him down. They went to great lengths to help him, to bring him to Jesus. It seems crazy that of all the thousands of people trying to get to Jesus - this one man who couldn't physically bring himself was brought by people who cared and Jesus DID heal him!! And of all the millions of orphans in this world in need of family (among other basic needs) we have chosen to pursue the adoption of this one precious little boy. I could go on - so much was "mirrored" just by divine "built-in"! We will be keeping the video of all that!

On to additional amazing stuff: after first service a couple people graciously donated towards Wallace's adoption and a man in our church told us he is donating enough frequent flyer miles to get both mom and dad's flight home tickets!!! Several more people lovingly donated after second service. A total of $440 was donated yesterday and our FSP went up another $100. Wow. That more than covers our orphanage donation of $500 (or in other words, bringing our facilitation fee down from $9,000 to $8,500 - orphanage donation is included in the facilitation fee)! And covering (at least) two adult one-way tickets will lower our expected cost by likely $1400 to $2,000 (give or take, depending on date, rates, etc...)!

Should we be surprised that God can do these things, move in His people? No. But, being finite humans - we are in awe of His goodness. Thank you, Jesus! We are thankful to everyone at our church and elsewhere that has been helping however they can - thank you for PRAYING, SHARING and DONATING! We can't say thank you enough except to just do what we have set out to do and go get Wallace!!!

By the way - we've been asked a lot if we will name him Wallace, what his real name is, etc.... "Til last night we did not even know his real name! But I had inquired and our state-side helper from Reece's Rainbow e-mailed me some information including his name. Now we will be praying if we will keep part or all of his name and any other names we might consider. It's sinking in, becoming so real. All this way and we are getting so close to going to meet him! Eek! So excited!

Starting School Soon!

I don't know who it is but more "Thankyou"s for those who just donated to our FSP fund! I'll try to keep our thermometer updated whenever I notice a change :)

Prayers, please as I'm meeting with my son's ES in a minute - his education specialist for his school. He is starting school again next week and I am his teacher. So we are about to go over his learning plans and all that. Though his public charter school program will not pay for Christian curriculum they will pay for curriculum that does not conflict with our Christian values and we are free to use curriculum of our own (that I've kept from mine and my husband's childhood and have been graciously given by family and friends) that is God-centered.

I also am SO excited because recently a friend I have known since I was 9 years old contacted me and told me she works up the street from me at a school for children with special needs! She told me about the things they can help Wallace with (once we feel he's bonded to us and ready for "outsiders") and that they offer in-home therapy!!! That means they will come here and will teach me how to do things day in and day out that will help him with learning! There is also another place nearby that she told me of that will work with him with more physical therapy type things when he's ready! I'm so excited because these people are so loving and they really love what they do and really love the kids!

What's left:

I've put up a thermometer to show what we have and what is still needed to fund this adoption. I am also going to put up the breakdown of estimated costs and fees we are told to expect to pay for in THREE WEEKS:

$7,000 - plane tickets ($4,500 is the estimated cost for Me and Scott and Wallace tickets) - The other $2,500 is for our three children's plane tickets.

$500 - Train (13 hour train ride - $100 per "compartment" that seats 2 so we need 2 cars up (Rachel, Scott, Wallace, Facilitator) there and back.

$500 - Car travel (taxi, facilitation drivers, or car rental, etc..) (Again, this is an estimate that is just for Parents, facilitator, adopted child)

$9,000 - facilitation fee, that includes an orphanage donation - I think it's $500.

$3,500 - living expenses for 5 weeks in Eastern Europe (hotel, apartment, food, water, and we could possibly be there longer so this is just an estimate. This estimate is based on TWO adults ONLY but we are hoping it will be less)

$150 - medical exam fee for Wallace (required for visa)

$404 - Visa for Wallace

$1500 - Update here! Jill who's family just recenly adopted "Turner" (rr name) from the same orphanage just let me know that I was mis-informed on this. The passport they just bought for their child was $1000 US dollars and 350 of the country's currency which works out to aprox. $43.73 so it should be more like $1043.73 instead of $1500 - thankful for that! That's such great news!!! We previously figured $650. I will change our total amount needed from $23,554 to $23,098

$1,000 - emergency fund (because things can and do go wrong sometimes delays or extra costs come up).

Total: $23,098

As of this post with fund-raising from Reece's Rainbow, friends, and kind donations from people we've never met with our chip-in and fund-raisers we have a total of aproximately $2,975. We need $20,579 in three weeks. Lord, please help us!

Travel Date!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have a travel date and appointment date!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Whoo-hooooooooo!!!!!!

We leave for Eastern Europe on Sept. 11th! Our appointment is the 14th!!!!!!

My heart is pounding, my brain is hurting from all the thoughts scurrying about trying to figure out everything.

And I'm praying - PRAYING that in the last few weeks before we go that somehow our FSP (family sponsorship page) funds through Reece's Rainbow will increase. We are SO short! Please if you know anyone - a business or person - who might want to donate TAX-DEDUCTIBLE - PLEASE let them know that we urgently need funds before we travel and while we are there!!

We are SO, SO grateful to all who have donated what they can and what was on their heart to give. THANK YOU, thank you, thank you!!!

23 months of your life in an orphanage, little one

23 months you have not known what it is like to be part of a family

23 months you spend way too much time in a crib

23 months in one building, one area.

23 months with little hope

23 months away from possibly going to a mental institution for life

I hope to call you mine before you turn 2. I pray your 2nd birthday will be your first with us!!!!

This whole process has gone by so quickly! What was going to be 7 months and then be delayed 'til November/December has turned into NOW! Soooo amazed by God moving so many mountains to bring our little boy home!!! We just need to trust God the rest of the way, to provide for all the up-coming expenses that are to be incurred by travel, fees and expenses. Here's our loaves and our fishes, Lord - do whatever You want with 'em!!!!

Dossier Submitted!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanking God today for .......

Up early this morning - getting ready to take the kids on errands today and opened my e-mail to find that.... our dossier was submitted today!!!!!

What this means: this means that our facilitators in Wallace's country (after having finished translating and proofing) turned in all our papers to the place that will issue us a travel date to come and officially accept a referral for him!

The papers I mailed should arrive there today at some point so they should be close behind our other papers (not a big chance of them getting lost or mis-matched and close enough that they won't likely reject our dossier). :)

Praise God!!!! Thank you, Jesus! So many mountains have moved, so many prayers have been answered! And as it gets closer for us to go get him we can tell the spiritual side of things are getting heated. One thing is for sure: God loves us. And from what I've read in scripture: there is an enemy who hates us because we are created in the image of God. This enemy hates when people get saved (and he's probably getting pretty upset with the Harvest Crusades happening around here this weekend! = gospel preached to thousands, Word of God piercing hearts and bringing them to accept Christ), hates when God's people give glory to Him, live for Him, do things He wants us to do - like, oh, say, adopt orphans! So I urge anyone reading this - please continue to be in prayer. There is so much behind the scenes that we will never know - truly it is only by God's grace that this adoption is moving forward. By His grace so many closed doors have been opened. He is Powerful, Amazing, Merciful, and Mighty to save!!

A long trip!

We got word on Thursday that one document in our dossier needed to be re-done and two others as well. I was able to get those documents ordered (and re-ordered/corrected) and by God's grace they BOTH arrived in the mail on Monday and our mobile notary was able to get the other form notarized for us on Monday night after Scott arrived home from work.

The problem: our facilitators are planning to submit our dossier on this Thursday and we needed everything to go together if at all possible so things don't get separated, lost, - that could result in the rejection of our entire dossier - can you imagine? All the time, effort, emotion, energy and money that's gone into our current dossier that is already over there - just starting all over and it in turn causing our little boy wait longer for his family?? The ONLY option for even having a CHANCE at having our papers apostilled and mailed and IN Eastern Europe by the 11th was to.... get in the car and DRIVE all the way up to our state capital - it was a 7.5 hour drive up there, got apostilles done and walked around the corner to UPS and mailed them! Then went to my (Rachel's) Aunt and Uncle's house nearby for a couple hours to rest (brought Evie along).

Then I went back on the road early this morning and JUST got home.... and Scott showed me our back yard.... a large branch from our wonderful Fruitless Mulberry tree that gives us such nice shade - broke off yesterday. It's MASSIVE. It's going to take quite a bit to dismantle it and also trim back any other large branches.

The long drive gave me a great opportunity to spend quiet time with God - except when Evie and I sang along to Psalty The Singing Songbook songs - he, he! She loved it - it's children's music I grew up listening to. And I realized that I learned a LOT of spiritual concepts and compassion for others by listening to these children's songs. On the way home I saw a cloud of dust go up in front of my car and quickly realized someone went off the road - the car flipped over and people began trying to get the person out - I watched ten people flip the car back over and sit with the person for quite some time - once a fire-fighter arrived I snapped "out of it", realizing that there were capable people there doing things with their hands and knowledge skills so I did what I could.... I prayed and I hope that person is okay. And then I continued on home. So tonight in all the excitement of being home and very tired and having accomplished "mission impossible" - I am simply thankful to God for getting me and Evie home safe and keeping Scott and the kids safe while we were away. We await excitedly the news of our dossier being submitted so we can add this precious little boy to our bustling family!

Chosen!

When we were trying to decide when would be the right timing, from where should we adopt and then finally - of all these precious children listed on Reece's Rainbow - how do we choose? We had almost gone with an agency and almost adopted a little baby boy from Russia - but we didn't have a peace. Once we felt Reece's Rainbow was the organization we wanted to be part of we had gone back and fourth and had settled on two little 4 year olds only to be told by Reece's Rainbow upon committing - that they were no longer available for adoption.

One evening I was scrolling down the little sea of beautiful faces and one stood out. A little boy dubbed, "Wallace". Something hit me. I couldn't wait to show this little one to my husband. I started e-mailing Reece's Rainbow asking a million and one questions. Scott saw Wallace and we prayed and then we made an official commitment to pursue his adoption. We don't think choosing Wallace was so "random". We really feel like God lead us to him. This entire journey had been so many "what ifs" and "we don't know" and "we won't know 'til we get there" - so much blind faith. There are no guarantees. We want this little boy to be our son, to no longer be an orphan. We have chosen to pursue adoption for "Wallace".

We are so thankful, thus far, for the friends, family, and even strangers who have been loving and supportive through this process. We hope to be traveling to meet Wallace face-to-face in a little over a month, maybe a little more. Dates are still up in the air but we know one thing: travel day will arrive before we know it!

Call us "old-fashioned" but here is how we decided the winner of the devotional should be "chosen":

That's right! Cvcraven! Thank you so much for being part of this give-away on our blog!

Delivered!

Just another little quickie update: Monday, 08/01/2011 at 4:29 P.M. - our dossier arrived in Wallace's country! So... it's there! Now it just has to get translated and submitted! Then we wait for a travel date.

Everything is still up in the air over there right now. We do not know how long we might wait to travel.

I chatted last night with a mom who's family adopted two little boys from the same orphanage as Wallace last year in December. She shared some information with me that she got from a family who just came back last month from that orphanage with their little boy. Apparently now the passport for Wallace is going to be $1,200 plus a $350 processing fee of some sorts. This is instead of our estimated $600, what it is in most other parts of the country. So I will change that to factor it in.

I also have an idea since they JUST bought their plane tickets - of what we MIGHT expect to pay for airfaire, hopefully not more, maybe even less since we travel most likely in the fall.

I also found out that the train we might be riding on for about 13 hours (or taking a small plane for 1 hour) - the train stops for about 2 minutes and if you and your things are not off - too bad - they start going!

I'll keep updating as we find out more!