Pushing forward

Hello my friends.  I know it has been a while since I have posted anything.  Things have been very busy around here.  Jason has been putting in 55 hours a week at his job and just picked up a second job to top that off.  I can't wait until this adoption is paid for and Claudia is home so that I can see my husband regularly again!  I have been doing quite a bit of pet sitting over the last few weeks to earn some extra cash :)

Next week is our yardsale!  Please keep this in your prayers as we are still about $2800 away from being able to submit our dossier.  Praying for a miracle.  The sale will be June 21-23, if you are in the area feel free to stop out and help support us.  On Friday of next week my friend is throwing a fundraiser for us by selling her Arbonne products and donating her profits to the adoption.  How awesome is that!?  We also still have the puzzle fundraiser going and could really use some more names to put on those pieces Click HERE!  The give-away will run until the end of the month Click HERE.

As far as the adoption goes we are still waiting for our FBI background checks to come in.  We had our Psych eval done and are waiting for that to be approved by our agency and sent to us.  We had our biometrics fingerprints done for the USCIS and are awaiting their approval.  I also have to get my paperwork to our Doctor to be signed and sent back to us.  Once this is all taken care of we have a bunch of papers to be notarized, certified and then Apostilled so that we can send them off to Claudia's country.  It seems like a lot but really we can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

My birthday is tomorrow, I get to share it with all the wonderful fathers out there for Fathers Day this year.  It would be such a blessing for me and Jason, the soon-to-be father, to see our donations grow tomorrow and through the upcoming week.  Please consider donating to our FSP HERE or to our Chip-in on the Right-->.  Use your donation to get something for yourself  through the give-away, purchase coffee or purchase something from this blog or my Etsy shop.  So many ways to give and also get something in return. 

We have had so many people bless us thus far through our journey.  We are amazed at the generosity of complete strangers, acquaintances and friends.  We hope you will continue to pray for us and follow our journey through to the end.  We hope that our story will be a blessing to others and even an inspiration.  We just want God to use us to further His Kingdom and do His will.

Prayer requests: Please join us in praying for the following: Claudia's health and safety, our paperwork to come in quickly, for financial blessings, that the officials in her country will find favor with us, and for safe travels.

I will update you all when we hear back from those we need to hear from and of course let you know how the yardsale went!

The Husband Speaks!

So, now that Angie has finally allowed me to post on here, I figured the time was ripe for my first ever blog post.

First things first: A lot of people that I haven't been able to catch up with for a while probably think that this is really out of character for me. 

I completely agree.  This is a good thing, really.

My "character" is selfish, prideful, quick-tempered and lazy.  If something I'm doing now is out of character for who I've been for most of my life, I know I'm doing something that's heading me in the right direction.

The person that I want to be is not who I have been, so the more out of character I act, the better.

Second: The first thing that most people (outside of my Cross Creek family) ask me when I tell them that Angie and I are being called by God to adopt a soon to be 3 year old girl with special needs from Latin (/South) America is "Are you crazy!?" To which the answer is of course: "Yes, quite."

If you had tried to tell me a couple of years ago that I would ever be the kind of person who says stuff like "I know this is what God wants me to do right now" I would have laughed in your face and walked away. 

I do NOT cry.  Ever.  I make Chuck Norris look like a big softie.  But when I think about meeting our little girl for the first time - wondering if she'll hug me, or be afraid of me - I come close to tearing up.  We don't know if she can walk, or talk or what her level of independence is, or will ever be, but I love that little girl more than my own life. 

If the change that's taken place in me isn't proof that God is real, and working in people's hearts and lives, I don't know what is.

Clairification...

Ok, so I know that in my previous posts I discussed that we were looking to adopt more than one child from Latin America.  You may have noticed that in my recent posts I have only been talking about "our daughter."  We found out from our agency a while ago (when we were switching agencies) that during the time we work trying to work with our original agency that one of the girls had been applied for.  This was a bit sad but also was great news.  This means that we are not the only ones looking to adopt children with DS from LA!  Raising two children, about the same age with DS would have been very difficult, not that we did not take that into account before pursing the adoption but we felt that God had a plan for all of this.  He does have a plan!  Now, I am not God, I cannot even begin to guess what His plan is for us but maybe, just maybe He wanted us all along to only adopt one of these precious children?  Not only that but maybe He did not want to make us choose which one we would adopt (how hard would that have been!?!)  So, we are currently pursuing the adoption of one little girl from Latin America with Down syndrome. 

We have known for some time that we would most likely only be adopting one but today we found out which one it is.  It is bitter-sweet news, we would have been happy to adopt either one, but now we also know which one will almost definitely not be coming home with us.  We are so happy that she will have a home soon!  Now please help us pray that our home study process goes smoothly so we can announce to the world who our daughter is!