More GREAT News!!!

I just called immigration and was informed that we have been assignment a case worker!!! Woo hoo!

USCIS received our 1-800a application on 8/21/13 and 69 days later, we have been assigned an immigration officer! Funnily, the lady who answered the phone informed me that she was OUR officer and had just pulled our file a little bit ago! She stated that she would be reviewing the file this afternoon and if all was in order would be sending out approval in the mail tomorrow.

I am beyond excited to have movement today! Praise Jesus; he must have known I needed a boost today! ;)

HFTF Adoption/Orphan Conference

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A year ago, I went to this conference alone as Isaac got called into work. I debated heavily about just not going since I felt awkward being there by myself. I even asked the girls to come along with me, but in the end, I got up early, drove to the church and sat alone drinking in all the info I could about adoption. Heavy hearted, I felt alone in the whole thing. God had been breaking my heart for the orphan for many months at this point. I knew God was calling us to adoption, but Isaac did not. And so I sat, feeling awkward, knowing no one, but wanting to learn more about what this whole adoption thing was and what it was like to call a child, not of my own flesh, my daughter.

This was a big day for me and one where God was faithful to move, showing me I was meant to be there. It was here that I was introduced to our social worker from Lifeline and here that I was encouraged to learn more and not give up hope that God was indeed calling us to this journey with him.

I am in awe as I sit here writing this today because of just how much God has done in the past year with us and where I am sitting now. After the conference, I posted a comment on a message about the conference saying that "next year I hope that our family will have our own adoption in the works" not fully believing that that would actually happen. But, I was wrong and God had so much more in store for us than simply sending us on the private adoption journey that I pictured that day. He was calling us to the front lines to fight for the millions of children that need families and are desperate for someone to love them.

This year, I am not only attending the conferenece in the place I had so hoped to be that day, in the process of adopting a little girl, but also in a place I could never have dreamed of! We are working to bring home TWO little girls from China, as well as working with HFTF to help other families bring home children from around the world as the Fundraising Chair for Alongside Fundraising. We are not only attending the conference, but working at it, setting up a booth to share how God is calling us to help other families fundraise, and, God willing, perhaps speaking at some of the break out sessions about this adventure! God is sooooo good and I am blown away at how our lives have changed since my hesitent attendace to this amazing conference last year!

Our Brief Layover in Immigration Land

Hello everyone, I promised an update on our actual adoption process so here goes. We finally completed our home study after a grueling 7+ months of bumpy turbulence. It seemed that all we did was wait and deal with cancellation after cancellation in addition to the craziness with Isaac's job.

I am so glad we made it through and I know that all of the things that seemed to be delaying us were things that God is using to lead us straight to our girls at just the right moment. I have to admit, my patience is being tested, but also being made much stronger in this whole thing too! Praise the Lord for that because I am certain I will need it when we begin the transition to a family of 6.

Now that our home study is complete and in our hands, we have moved on to the I800a immigration application. We are currently 69 days into our wait and I am not going to lie, it is grueling! I am feeling a bit discouraged at times as it seems like there is nothing to do, other than fund-raise, right now.  I know, I know, that is a big job, but it sometimes does not make me feel like we are making progress.

If you would like to pray for us, we could really use prayer that we would be matched soon with a case worker and that our paper work would be returned quickly. It can take up to 90 days to get a case worker, but we are hoping we are one of the lucky ones that does not have to wait that long! As we are only waiting on this one final piece of the puzzle for our Dossier, it makes it all the harder to wait.

Once we get this final piece of paper, our Dossier (the story of our life on paper) will be sent through the authentication process, which usually takes two weeks, and then scanned and downloaded into the CCCWA, China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption, database so that we can begin the process of being officially approved to adopt from China and receive our LID (log-in date). This little number is our ticket to starting the referral process and the point at which we will finally be introduced (on paper) to our daughters and have tangible pictures to hold!

I guess that about sums it up. We are hoping to have our referrals by Christmas time, but this is all God's timing and we are willing to wait to ensure that it is his will and not our own being done here.

Photos In the Park

So excited to have a new adoption pic to share! My sweet friend volunteered at our Photos in the Park event and edited this amazing pic from our session! I just love it! :)

So what is Photos in the Park you ask? Well, this was an idea formed from the combination of a friend, some internet research, and a whole lot of God's leading.

THE BASICS. Over the course of two weekends we had 7 photographers volunteer their time and services to take 30 minute mini sessions of families. We ended up scheduling over 70 families for this event and were able to sponsor two other adopting families from the area!

I was a bit nervous putting this event on in the beginning as I knew that it was going to be big and take a lot of time and effort to fill all the open slots we had. But God had other plans and thanks to him we ended up selling out in the matter of hours! YOU READ THAT RIGHT, HOURS!

THE SCOOP. After sending out some flyers and creating door hangers to put out, I began Facebook chatting with a friend of one of our photographers that wanted to get her family's photos taken. She then referred three other friends and I jokingly told her she was hired! :) After contacting me again to schedule a fourth family, she informed me that her friend worked for the local news channel. She went on to ask for more information about our family and our adoption as well as the event. I shared the short version and a link to our flyer for the event, which she passed on to her friend who had offered to perhaps put a post on their Facebook page. I prayed that God would bless us and boy did he!

The next morning we got up early to head to my family's for our annual trip to the beach. 9 am hit and all of a sudden my phone began to ding relentlessly notifying me of incoming emails. I had no clue what was going on until I began to read through them and realized that not only had this awesome lady posted about us on her Facebook page, she had actually written an article about our event and had it on the news website front and center!

By 5pm that night I had over 400 email conversations completed and 7 photographers fully booked! It was amazing and I was so humbled and joyful, I could hardly contain it!

God is so good and, as I have mentioned before, we feel so blessed that he has given us the opportunity to be walking this journey with him. I love that he is giving me jobs to do as I wait as I am not sure I would stay sane if I were sitting here idle! Although we are very aware of the fact that he does not need us to provide the money we or the other families need to finish our adoptions, I love that he cares enough about us to let us be helpers! :)

Benton City Daze

I forgot to share about our adventure to Benton City! We decided, totally last minute and totally as a leading from God, to be a vendor at the Benton City Daze event. We had a cute little booth, pictured above, and spent the day hanging out in the beautiful weather. Although we didn't sell a lot, we met some great people and were able to witness to a lot of people about adoption and what God was doing in our lives. It was a super cool day all in all and we ended up coming home with this:

Meet Rosa, our newest addition to the family. What can I say, we were in an adopting mood! ;)

A big thank you to my Mom and Andrea for coming over for the week to help prep for this event and make some awesome wares to sell!

New Updates!

Ok, so I have been so busy that I have not taken the time to give any updates. Here's what's been happening over the last several weeks:

WE HAD ANOTHER YARD SALE! :) The last one of the season and it was a big success for the time we got to sell before it started raining. Ughhh! God was good, however, and blessed us with so many donations and lots of people to buy up lots of our treasures!

WE FINISHED ANOTHER ALONGSIDE FUNDRAISING EVENT! For our second alongside fundraising event we held a Photos in the Park event over the course of two weekends. It was a massive success and I will share more details on this one in a separate post.

WE ARE WORKING ON OUR NEXT FUNDRAISER, THE CALVARY BAZAAR. We are super excited to continue on this adoption journey doing what God leads us to do. He has been so good to bless our labors and we continue to "use what we know" as He told us to. We are hard at work refinishing lots of new furniture pieces that I have been gathering that were both donated by generous friends and even past patrons as well as pieces picked up on craigslist, facebook swap sites, and at yard sales. The garage is packed and all of us are doing our part to get all the awesome pieces finished and ready.

WE ARE PREPPING FOR OUR NEXT ALONGSIDE FUNDRAISING EVENT! With our Photos in the Park event finished, Isaac and I are already in the early planning stages of the next big event we will be hosting for Heart For the Fatherless. I absolutely cherish this ministry and am so grateful that God plugged us in here! We are hoping to do a Night of Wishes as our next event in which we will be launching a few hundred Chinese lanterns, that people have inscribed with their wish, near the Chinese New Year. We are super excited about this event and hope that it is yet another way we can support other local adopting families as well as bring awareness to the community of the many children that need families and how they can help even if they are not called to adopt themselves.

I will post more details in a separate blog entry about where we are in the adoption process. Thank you all for your continued support; we are so grateful for how our family and friends continue to rally around us as we prepare for the addition of two little girls into our family! :)