An Amazing Weekend....Update!

From Saturday morning until this afternoon we have been blessed over and over and over again and I am just still in awe of it all!

First I do want to mention my thoughts on the recent news of adoptions in Ethiopia.  This adoption process is such a roller coaster and with everything that may or may not be going on in Ethiopia with the possible closing of 90% of adoptions I somehow have a huge peace with it all.  Yes it is heartbreaking but not for us personally, just to think that there are children that need forever families and they may end up being deprived of that.  I am 100% on board with ending child trafficking and unethical practices as well as doing whatever to help family preservation but the sad truth is there will still be children that won't have families stepping up for them.  There will still be children that won't be able to be adopted by another family within their own country, so we are their last resort, we are their plan C and when that is taken away imagine what will happen?  Growing up on the streets? In over-crowded orphanages?  Die before their 5th birthday or younger?  That is what I am scared of and why I pray that this doesn't take effect.  We will know more this week but for now nothing has been set in stone so on with our Ethiopian adoption! So for now, please PRAY pray PRAY for these children and for God to speak to the officials of this government as well as other countries who have gone through or are going through the same issues to make decisions that will be in the turly best interest for these children.

Okay I've said my peace and now I have some exciting news to share.  Saturday morning I had 2 wonderful women over for breakfast and a planning meeting for our next BIG fundraiser.   Amy is adopting a 13 year old boy named Jimmy from Haiti and Christy is getting ready to submit her application to adopt from Ethiopia.  We all live in Ada and are so excited more than anything to do something to get the word out about what we are doing and what the needs are that are out there in general for children in this world.  Soooo....we are having a western themed benefit night complete with a dinner, door prizes, entertainment, and silent auction.  Because we are here in good ole Oklahoma we thought we do something we know our town loves, BBQ!  So we will be selling tickets and giving more details VERY soon but mark you calendars, Saturday, April 30th 5:00-8:00pm for our Lil' Buckaroo BBQ adoption benefit to Bring Our Lil' Buckaroos Home!
 
I also want to help spread the word for our friends The Linck, The Ellis, and The Habuda families as they are having their adoption fundraiser dinner on April 16th in Moore, OK and tickets can be bought here.

By Saturday afternoon we got this is the mail..... Our much awaited Notice of Favorable Determination letter from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services which means we can submit our dossier as soon as we have the full $5,000 raised!  Yay!!!!!

As of Friday evening we were still just over $2,000 short of the $5,000 needed to submit our dossier and by this afternoon we were blessed so greatly by a couple wonderful friends of ours and now we just have $950 left to come up with!!!!  All I can say is there have been many tears of joy and thanking God for all he is doing in our lives.  I said in my last post all about our history of moving to Oklahoma and how amazing this last year and a half has been, simply life changing! But it is just never ending, we seem to keep having more and more real, loving, caring, down to earth, God loving, servant hearted (is that even a word?)...people put in our lives that it is almost overwhelming!  Our blessings this weekend both came from friends who we love and respect so much and the meaning behind each donation was just heart warming and very humbling!  I don't want to say too much about the details but have to say it will be going down in our journal of this journey.  Thank you SO so SO much, there are not even words to say to express our gratitude!