The Lord will provide...
We received an anonymous check in the offering at church yesterday. For our adoption. For $5000. Overwhelmed is not the word. We are praising the God who led in someone's heart in a mighty way to lead them to give in such an awesome way. If you read this, thank you, thank you. There really is no adequate way to express our gratitude.
Praise God!
All glory be to God, who goes before us and knows all things. Our homestudy has been approved. One of the blessings of the last few days of craziness is definitely that God called us to put our story out there. We have invited many people into the story of what He is doing in our lives- way more people than we thought we would invite into the process at this time. What potential there is for more people to be impacted/ministered to through this journey that God is taking us on! And God is hearing the prayers of His saints, and we are so grateful that so many are partnering with us. Another blessing of the "roadblock" was that it sent my tail into high gear to complete our LifeSong application. We are most excited about the possibility of partnering with this organization for support/grant/loans and I was waiting to work on the application until our homestudy was totally finalized. But in the midst of this hurdle I spoke to a rep at LifeSong who was an amazing encouragement to me and extended the invite to submit our application without the "finalized" homestudy. So our application was sent in the mail today- which means now we are one step closer to seeing how God is going to reveal Himself through our financial need. Keep those prayers coming and thank you so much for partnering with us. May He be glorified.
I just read this verse in my Bible study and thought it would be appropriate:
"Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours" (1 chron 29:11).
I just read this verse in my Bible study and thought it would be appropriate:
"Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours" (1 chron 29:11).
Urgent prayer request
I just spoke with our social worker. She submitted our home study to the agency committee, thinking we were going to be approved with no difficulty. Upon looking at our finances, the committee is concerned that we cannot afford the approximately $25,000 price tag and they may not approve our homestudy. They're right- we can't afford the price tag. We are planning on writing a support letter as well as applying for an adnoption grant and possible adoption loan. But we cannot apply for those things without a completed homestudy. Our social worker will present that information to the committee next week- and she is unsure what they will have to say. I am trying my best to not be discouraged and to trust... I know that God desires this for our family. I know that He has already provided the money for the adoption. We just don't know where it is yet. Please pray with us. Pray that we will be approved. And pray that we will find God's provisions for this adoption. Thank you for partnering with us!
Please pray with us
We found out this week that we have an extremely large amount of money due very soon. We don't know what it means if we don't come up with the money right away, but as I wrote in the previous post, I don't want anything to delay this process of at all possible. We don't have the money we need just laying around. We have been waiting to apply for grants/loans until our home study is completed as they require completed homestudies for application purposes. But as soon as our homestudy is completed (which could be as early as this week) this large amount of money is due. Please pray that God will show up in a mighty way. That He will show us where this money is going to come from. And that we will be one step closer to bringing our boy home.
Long Overdue Update
Is anyone still checking this blog? I'm so sorry I haven't posted in almost two months. Time flies in our household, let me tell you! Here's an update...
1. We are finished with our home study. We enjoyed our three visits with our social worker. She was super friendly and kind and knowledgeable about the whole process. She wrote us an amazingly favorable report that approved us for adoption of up to two children ages newborn to 18 months. Right now our home study has been sent to a committee at our agency, where they will review it, make any needed corrections and hopefully approve it! Once that is done our social worker will make some notarized copies and we should have our completed home study in hand next week!
2. We are also done with our online adoption courses. They were very informative- preparing us for some things we hadn't really thought about in terms of our child's adjustment to his new world and how his previous living experience will/could really impact him both long and short term. I am looking forward to going back to the courses as resources once we have him home and we are actually experiencing the challenges/difficulties.
3. Notice I keep saying "him"... we have decided on pursuing a boy from Ethiopia. We were led to decide on a boy for a number of reasons. Most importantly, we felt that is what God laid on our hearts. We feel like it will be valuable for Markus to have a younger brother, and knowing who Markus already is, we feel our adopted son will probably have a best friend and protector instantly- and throughout life- in Markus.
4. Up until a couple weeks ago, I had gone into autopilot mode a little bit when it came to moving forward with the adoption. It wasn't as if my excitement was gone, however, I was really enjoying Halle Joy and Markus and not feeling any sense of urgency to add another baby to the mix. Then I went to my Perspectives course (AMAZING course by the way... but that's another topic) and God rebroke my heart for the plight of the orphan. It was during that class that I realized our baby boy could already be born. He could already be in an orphanage. He could be cold. He could be hungry. He could be WAITING for me. And I broke. And I got to work. If he is out there already, I don't want him to have to wait ONE MORE DAY than he absolutely has to before he comes home to us, his forever family. So I have been frantically working again (I completed all of our adoption courses in less than a week) and I plan to do everything I can to keep the process moving along. There will be a lot that is out of our control in this process, and I am okay with that. But as much as I can do I am doing, so that our son can come home. And I am praying. Daily. Sometimes hourly. For him. For his biological mother. For his caretakers. For his heart, his mind and his body.
1. We are finished with our home study. We enjoyed our three visits with our social worker. She was super friendly and kind and knowledgeable about the whole process. She wrote us an amazingly favorable report that approved us for adoption of up to two children ages newborn to 18 months. Right now our home study has been sent to a committee at our agency, where they will review it, make any needed corrections and hopefully approve it! Once that is done our social worker will make some notarized copies and we should have our completed home study in hand next week!
2. We are also done with our online adoption courses. They were very informative- preparing us for some things we hadn't really thought about in terms of our child's adjustment to his new world and how his previous living experience will/could really impact him both long and short term. I am looking forward to going back to the courses as resources once we have him home and we are actually experiencing the challenges/difficulties.
3. Notice I keep saying "him"... we have decided on pursuing a boy from Ethiopia. We were led to decide on a boy for a number of reasons. Most importantly, we felt that is what God laid on our hearts. We feel like it will be valuable for Markus to have a younger brother, and knowing who Markus already is, we feel our adopted son will probably have a best friend and protector instantly- and throughout life- in Markus.
4. Up until a couple weeks ago, I had gone into autopilot mode a little bit when it came to moving forward with the adoption. It wasn't as if my excitement was gone, however, I was really enjoying Halle Joy and Markus and not feeling any sense of urgency to add another baby to the mix. Then I went to my Perspectives course (AMAZING course by the way... but that's another topic) and God rebroke my heart for the plight of the orphan. It was during that class that I realized our baby boy could already be born. He could already be in an orphanage. He could be cold. He could be hungry. He could be WAITING for me. And I broke. And I got to work. If he is out there already, I don't want him to have to wait ONE MORE DAY than he absolutely has to before he comes home to us, his forever family. So I have been frantically working again (I completed all of our adoption courses in less than a week) and I plan to do everything I can to keep the process moving along. There will be a lot that is out of our control in this process, and I am okay with that. But as much as I can do I am doing, so that our son can come home. And I am praying. Daily. Sometimes hourly. For him. For his biological mother. For his caretakers. For his heart, his mind and his body.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)