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!

Only God...

I feel like I have been away from the blog world forever when really it's only been a week but I just feel like this past week has been such a whirlwind and it all started last Sunday at church.

I volunteer on our host team and pretty much have my position at the door handing out the "talk notes" and greeting people that come in.  I love it because I get to meet so many people but there are sometimes when I am not sure who someone is but don't want to offend them by asking if they are new if they have been coming longer than me and I have just never met them.  Last weekend that happened, I saw a couple come in with their little boy and I just said good morning and handed them their talk notes but during the service their little boy was getting fussy and so the mom brought him out into the lobby to calm down.  She said this was all new to him and then I overhead someone else say something about them being new so I jumped in and welcomed her more and started to tell her about how Jalen took a while to get used to going into the nursery but now loves it.  We started talking more and she said they had just moved here from Arizona a couple weeks before!  I was shocked because that is where we moved from a year and a half ago.  So then I asked where in AZ and she said Queen Creek, in a tone that was almost followed by an explanation of where that was, before I jumped in and said "that is where we moved here from.  NOTE:  if you are not familiar with the Valley of the Sun, Queen Creek is a small town outside of Phoenix that is mostly rural and although is growing is VERY rare that one would meet someone that moved from one small town to another...Queen Creek to Ada...what are the odds?  So then I told her if she needed anything to call me anytime and showed her that my name and number was in the talk notes under the ad about It's A Child's Life (the orphan ministry that we have started with 3 other couples at our church).  From one shock to another, she told me that they have been praying for a while now about moving here and finally had doors opened and closed where they were able to and have felt called to start an orphanage!!!!!  Are you kidding me???...that is just beyond crazy and I am getting chills again just re-typing this.  So with both of us speechless I gave her all my information and went on about my day just in awe of what had happened, yeah I can 100% say that this was NO coincidence whatsoever, I mean really?!?

I am starting to realize that the move from Arizona to Oklahoma just may have been more than my finding it on the map and saying lets go check it out and I have been realizing that for about the past 6 mths but after last weekend I started thinking back to everything that has brought us here and how it all really has just been so perfectly put in place for us and really could only be by the power of God.

In short this is how it's all played out, let me know what you think :)

-Brought to Ada, OK (2 hrs from one of my childhood best friends, Hilary) to payback my PT school scholarship with the Indian Health Service.
-Brought to an amazingly welcoming neighborhood filled with young Christian families and have since found out that 2 of the couples have hearts for orphans and are planning on adopting internationally in the future (maybe sooner).
-Church hopping and by chance one day the church we were going to was closed due to the snow so as we were driving back home saw H20 Church was open and went in to check it out...and we never hopped again! 
-Placed in a Life Group with other families we would come to find out had a passion for orphans as well and would later be part of our It's A Child's Life founding families..
-Was recommended to see a doctor whom I found out adopted 3 children from Uganda!
-Was asked to do a huge "favor" for Hilary and check out the Ethiopia program for adoption since we were going to be looking into adoption later that year.
-Placed some powerful families in our lives to allow us to launch our orphan ministry
-and now placing this new family form our town in AZ to OK and to H20 Church and to right in front of my face to talk about a heart for orphans.
...and honestly there are so many more "only God..." things that have happened that would make this post way too long but those are just some main ones.

Now this has all occurred in a year and a half....so what's next?    Maybe we'll see at our next meeting of It's A Child's Life next Saturday.  We know that adopting 1 child from Ethiopia is not going to change the problems going on and it breaks our hearts to no end.   But... along side of adopting that 1 child we are doing everything we can to advocate for the needs and pray that God will open the eyes of many more people to jump on board with us in one way or another.  We are thrilled to have the group that we do with such strong hearts for children, and to work in so many areas of orphan care (adoption, foster care, mentorship, advocacy, sponsorship, etc).  You can check us out on Facebook HERE.

http://its-a-childs-life.blogspot.com/

We know we are here for a bigger reason than to payback my scholarship and we can only imagine what is to come of our lives here!

Win a Portrait Session...Dossier Fundraising Continues!

 This week I got an email from my friend Courtney that has such a big heart for adoption and offered to donate a portrait session & bonus gift with purchase (Valued at $200), to add to our puzzle piece giveaway...how awesome is that? 

 

Courtney lives here in Ada, OK and is super talented.  You can check out her work HERE.

SO, the way this will work (since it isn't a prize I can ship out) is if you want to be entered to win, just purchase puzzle pieces through the separate link on the LEFT column of our blog with the picture of the camera above it.  Each puzzle piece is 1 entry and you can buy as many entries as you want.

By Folsom Photography

 

By Folsom Photography

The drawing will be done in LESS than 1 MONTH and all proceeds are helping us have enough money to submit our dossier (and officially be on the wait-list for our child!)  which we can do as soon as we receive our USCIS approval letter in the mail

Also I have been adding more prizes to the regular puzzle piece fundraiser so check them out HERE

500 Puzzle Pieces Needed

As of this weekend we have sold 80 puzzle pieces for the giveaway/fundraiser which has raised us $400!!!

That is awesome and we are so thankful to everyone who has contributed items to be used as prizes in the giveaway and for those of you buying pieces...THANK YOU!!!  I am planning on doing the drawing in the beginning of March because that is when it is estimated that we will have our USCIS approval letter and be able to submit our DOSSIER (a word that never had meaning before this adoption journey and now is a word that I don't go one day not thinking about).  There are still more prizes coming in and I will keep posting pictures as I receive them so still if you have anything you want to throw in, we'll take it!

Now I say we have sold 80 pieces and need to sell 500 more to meet our goal...I know that does not equal the 1000 puzzle pieces that we have but we have also raised money through our 147 Million Orphans fundraiser and with our own savings so all we need to sell is 500 pieces to meet our next financial goal.  It's a lot but we have a lot of friends and family and awesome blog followers we have never met that have already helped so much so I think we can do it!  OH... and let me know what you want written on the back of the piece(s) you buy before it ends, otherwise I will just write your name.  (some have asked for verses, other family member names, messages, etc)  I keep hearing from others and telling myself, God knows the amount we need and the timing in which we need it all so I am not worried.

Now I wanted to share a little art project I worked on yesterday that is now hanging on our wall just waiting for the 4th canvas to be filled in with another little hand print!

It's so funny to think that the little hand that will make his or her print on our wall (hopefully this year) may already be born right now for all we know.  It seems like we have been dreaming of the day we can bring our child home from Ethiopia forever and somedays it just hits me that this is going to happen and may not be too long from now!  Whether we find out who our child is in a year from now or less than 6 mths from now we are ready and so excited.

I got to see Jalen acting as a big brother last night for maybe one of the first times.  He is always the youngest when our friends kids come over but yesterday and last night he got o play with our precious neighbor Easton who is about 6 mths younger and I was so proud to see how Jalen did, I truly saw the big brother in him and am I think MORE excited for Jalen to have a lil sister or brother than anything now!

Pregnancy vs. adoption

It has been heavy on my heart a lot lately that there are so many people out there that see adoption as something so completely different from having a child biologically.  Yes, there are the obvious differences but it is so interesting how once you start comparing some realities of both paths of adding a child to your family, they really aren't that different.  I often get some same questions/comments over and over again and I am seeing a pattern.

"wow, that is really expensive to adopt, wouldn't it be cheaper to have your own?"

"the adoption process is really long, why do you have to wait so long?"

"what if you get a child that ends up having medical problems?"

"what if you get a child with psychological problems?"

"you're going to adopt a girl right, since you already have a boy?"

Do you see a pattern?  They all lean in a direction of what would be convenient for us.  Which option would cost less, be quicker, and in some way assuming we would be guaranteed to have a healthy child.  That last one always gets me.  Maybe because we are overall healthy people, who have a "healthy" child it is assumed we would have another but in reality there is NEVER going to be that guarantee.  No matter how much you can try to be perfect during pregnancy it does not guarantee you that your child will be free of a genetic syndrome, be free of cerebral palsy, autism, behavioral disorders, cancer, etc.  I am thankful every day that my baby boy is healthy and I would like to think it is because I took my prenatals, ate well, nursed him for a year and took the best care of him I could possibly do BUT I know a lot of moms that did this same thing and have a child with a medical or behavioral problem so there is just no guarantee.

My baby boy at 1 mth old (Dec 2008)

Now, with all that said I know I will be getting the question..."So are you adopting a special needs child?" and no, we are not planning on adopting a "special needs" child at this point because of our work situations.  However, we do know that there is a chance that the child we are blessed with may end up having some problems down the road just as any child may, biological or not and we know we will be able to handle whatever comes our way and we have no fear whatsoever about that.  The funny thing about adoption is, you have more control over what child you will be given more so than when you have one biologically.  When I was pregnant with Jalen I could decide what I did to impact my pregnancy but I had no control over genetics and what syndrome/illness/problem he may end up with, I had no control over if he would be born too early and end up having developmental disabilities, I had no control over how his birth would pan out and if something traumatic would have occurred  and how that would have impacted his life, or how much in medical bills we would have due to this, or how this may impact my life physically...I had basically NO control over who my child would be and yet in the adoption world, if I wanted to,  I could have control over the sex of my child, the age of my child, and the current health status of my child...hmmmm???   So why is it that so many see adoption as such a scary unknown and pregnancy is not?  

I am also really struggling with the fact that so many companies do not recognize the required and necessary leave for adoption as  maternity leave!  In many companies you are allowed up to 12 weeks of maternity leave in which you are paid (some percentage of your salary) to recover and bond with your baby but yet so many only "allow" the federally mandated FMLA in which you are allowed leave without pay.  I understand there is the medical need to recover from a pregnancy and be allowed maternity leave but maternity leave isn't based on how fast you recover, it is just a set amount of time and even if you are fully recovered and cleared to return to work after 4-6 weeks, you can choose to take more time to stay home and bond with your new child and get maternity leave benefits.  So since that is the case, why is it that a mom who is adopting a child and is required to be home with that child for 6 weeks for bonding and attachment time, isn't allowed the same benefits?  Being a full-time working mom that will be affected by this, I am quite passionate about it but even if you aren't working outside the home you should still see the need because if we could get more companies to understand this discrimination that occurs, maybe we could get more families on-board with adopting and really start putting an end to this orphan crisis.  I will get off my soapbox...for now...but stay tuned because I have some plans in the near future to start that change here in my community and will keep you all posted, please pray for me and for those who I will be speaking to, to see the need as well and have compassion for us adopting mamas.

I will leave you with a great link to check out about a family adopting twins from Russia...one healthy and one suddenly not and their decision to keep their referral for both children.

http://www.bpnews.net/BPFirstPerson.asp?ID=34499

Fundraising Summary

Phew!!! Where to begin?  I can't say I am not SO thankful that we adoption families have the ability to do such amazing fundraisers with the help of the internet to reach out to our friends and family along with all of the AWESOME supportive friends we meet via Blog-World.  I can say it is overwhelming sometimes because there are so many ideas, so many "must have" t-shirts, so many GREAT CAUSES that it is hard to keep up and hard to afford.

With that said...I feel TERRIBLE posting so many updates about our fundraisers because I don't want anyone to feel obligated to buy anything and I'm sure it gets old reading these too.  It's just so hard not to post so often though because we keep getting new items added to our fundraisers from SO many of our SWEET sweet supporters (family, friends and those we have never met that have heard about us from a friend of a friend)

So, to sum up what we have going on right now is...

1.  Puzzle Piece/Giveaway:  HERE    $5.00 per piece/entry, many prizes to be won, drawing to be done in March (most likely when we receive our USCIS Approval letter)

2.  147 Million Orphans Gear to Buy:  HERE    There are 10 items on the right column of our blog (note:  addition of the Long Sleeve Grey Unisex Tee  until Valentine's Day!  This is in celebration of Josie Love Mayernick's HIV levels reaching the undetectable level!

3.  Just Love Coffee:  HERE    Buy great African coffee and $5.00 from each bag goes towards our adoption

Thanks so much for reading and remember if you post about our fundraisers on your blog, facebook, or any other means, let me know so I can give you a free entry into the giveaway.  Have a great weekend!!!!

Fundraising in FULL effect!

First and foremost THANK YOU to everyone donating items to our puzzle piece fundraiser/giveaway and to everyone buying pieces.  We are still accepting items to give away and of course still have many puzzle pieces to sell :)  (see the left column of this blog to purchase your piece(s)/entry to win!

Second...The 147 Million Orphan  gear is ready to be ordered now.  I have placed pictures and links to buy each item on the right side of this blog.  You will order and pay via our PayPal links this way but can also send me a comment or email if you would rather order and pay by check or cash.  Once we have around $200 ordered, we can place the order and will let you know so you will know when to estimate your items arriving to you.  That being said the more people we can get this out to, the quicker we will be able to place orders so please if you don't mind, share this with all of your friends and family members. 

The proceeds are generously being given to our adoption by 147 Million Orphans.  We are so happy to be parterning with them to help bring our baby home!