Monday, December 19, 2011
Thank You!!!
Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! to everyone who is participating in our "Just $1" fund raiser. We are so blessed to know so many people who have a heart for orphans. You are all such an encouragement to us! We are still passing out fliers and moving rapidly forward to our goal of $5000 by the end of January so we can submit our application and start our home study!
Friday, December 9, 2011
Just $1
"I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." Mt. 25:40
Nate and I feel the Lord has given us an idea for our first fund raiser to bring our child home. We are going to start by asking everyone we know to donate just $1 (or more) and then for each of you to in turn ask 25 people you know to also donate just $1. We hope this fund raiser will help us meet our goal of $5000 by the end of January so we can begin the adoption process. I have made up a short flyer to give to everyone we talk to explaining who we are, what we are doing and how to contact us. I plan to mail/hand these out starting this week.
Please consider if you can donate just $1 at this time and what 25 people you could ask to also donate just $1. You can either give your donation directly to us or, thanks to a technical genius and kind friend of ours, you can donate right here on my blog by clicking on the donate button on the right hand side of the page. Thank you again for your support. We appreciate whatever you can do.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Our Big News!
Let's go skydiving!
A couple of weeks ago I posted this as my facebook status: "I feel like I am about to jump out of an airplane with a parachute that may or may not open so I will either hit the ground dead or have the best adventure of my life and hit the ground alive." Funny enough, one person thought I was referring to getting my hair cut! However, I wrote this because Nate and I had just decided that day that the Lord is asking us to adopt an orphan from Ethiopia.
The Journey Begins
This past July I began feeling like someone was missing from our home. I began praying about this thinking maybe I was suppose to be babysitting another child or something. I didn't know exactly what I was feeling - just that someone, a child, was missing. By the end of August, the Lord had not directed anyone to me who needed childcare and I had this strange feeling everywhere I went that I was looking for a lost child, MY lost child. I felt like I was going CRAZY as I found myself looking around the grocery store or driving down the street looking for my child - a child I didn't even know yet! So, I prayed some more and the Lord brought to my mind a book about adoption that a friend of mine, Heidi Limmer, read when she and her husband adopted a little, precious boy from Rwanda. I felt led to read this book, Adopted for Life by Russel D. Moore. Within a couple of days Nate noticed what I was reading and said, "so, your reading a book about adoption." I wasn't trying to hide it from him but I hadn't gotten up the courage to tell him what I had been thinking. He immediately jumped on board and began praying for God's direction every night and he also sent me lots of online links about adoption. In his research he discovered that you have to be married for 3 years to adopt domestically. We have only been married for about 1.5 years. We weren't even considering international adoption at this time so we stopped our research and thought we must be off on our timing. I went ahead and finished reading the book all the while suppressing my feelings and reminding myself that it wasn't the right time for us to adopt. In October, I picked up a book called Choosing to See by Mary Beth Chapman. My mom had been telling me to read it for over a year just because its so good and I was just finally getting around to it. I was instantly hooked and finished it in 5 days. I knew the Chapmans had adopted from China but I had no idea how this book was going to affect me!
So Why Ethiopia?
Like I said, we were not even considering international adoption because of the cost and because I don't travel well. As I read Choosing to See, I was also sharing the Chapmans journey of adoption with Nate. I must have been pretty excited about it because one day he asked me "So, are you open to international adoption now?" I hesitantly replied, "Yes, I think so." In early November, I came home from getting my hair cut to find Nate at the computer working on an Excel spreadsheet of Christian adoption agencies, the countries they work with, the requirement to adopt from each country and a column at the bottom for yes or no, indicating if we were eligible to adopt from that country. I was shocked but I quickly recovered and we spent the day pouring over websites and our handy little spreadsheet until we narrowed it down to Ethiopia. We met the requirements and the 2 required trips are only 4-6 days long so hopefully I can handle that and Nate's boss will let him off work. The next day at church Nate talked to a traveling minister friend of ours, Grady Strop, about our decision to pursue international adoption. Grady replied by saying, "Hey, what about Ethiopia? I have connections there." Nate was shocked and told Grady that was the exact country we were considering! We both felt that this conversation was confirmation that we were hearing from God about choosing Ethiopia. A couple of days later Nate received more confirmation when he was reading the Bible looking for something in particular and randomly came across the passage where Phillip talks to and baptizes the Ethiopian eunuch.
Wait and Trust
Because Jesus died on the cross, our adoption into God's family is FREE to all who believe in Him!!! However, adoption here on earth is NOT free. Our cost is estimated at $25,000-28,000! Ya-OUCH!!! And, we are beginning our adoption journey with $0. We feel very strongly that we are not to go into debt for the adoption so that means we have to raise ALL the money. Most morning I wake up and think "This is crazy! Where is the money going to come from?" Then, Nate is good to remind me that this was not our idea. It was God's. We don't have to make it happen. He will! So, now we just wait and trust.
Sorry this was so long. We are just so excited about this step of faith in our lives that I wanted to share ALL about it with you! Be sure to check back every so often so you can keep up with our adoption journey.
A couple of weeks ago I posted this as my facebook status: "I feel like I am about to jump out of an airplane with a parachute that may or may not open so I will either hit the ground dead or have the best adventure of my life and hit the ground alive." Funny enough, one person thought I was referring to getting my hair cut! However, I wrote this because Nate and I had just decided that day that the Lord is asking us to adopt an orphan from Ethiopia.
The Journey Begins
This past July I began feeling like someone was missing from our home. I began praying about this thinking maybe I was suppose to be babysitting another child or something. I didn't know exactly what I was feeling - just that someone, a child, was missing. By the end of August, the Lord had not directed anyone to me who needed childcare and I had this strange feeling everywhere I went that I was looking for a lost child, MY lost child. I felt like I was going CRAZY as I found myself looking around the grocery store or driving down the street looking for my child - a child I didn't even know yet! So, I prayed some more and the Lord brought to my mind a book about adoption that a friend of mine, Heidi Limmer, read when she and her husband adopted a little, precious boy from Rwanda. I felt led to read this book, Adopted for Life by Russel D. Moore. Within a couple of days Nate noticed what I was reading and said, "so, your reading a book about adoption." I wasn't trying to hide it from him but I hadn't gotten up the courage to tell him what I had been thinking. He immediately jumped on board and began praying for God's direction every night and he also sent me lots of online links about adoption. In his research he discovered that you have to be married for 3 years to adopt domestically. We have only been married for about 1.5 years. We weren't even considering international adoption at this time so we stopped our research and thought we must be off on our timing. I went ahead and finished reading the book all the while suppressing my feelings and reminding myself that it wasn't the right time for us to adopt. In October, I picked up a book called Choosing to See by Mary Beth Chapman. My mom had been telling me to read it for over a year just because its so good and I was just finally getting around to it. I was instantly hooked and finished it in 5 days. I knew the Chapmans had adopted from China but I had no idea how this book was going to affect me!
So Why Ethiopia?
Like I said, we were not even considering international adoption because of the cost and because I don't travel well. As I read Choosing to See, I was also sharing the Chapmans journey of adoption with Nate. I must have been pretty excited about it because one day he asked me "So, are you open to international adoption now?" I hesitantly replied, "Yes, I think so." In early November, I came home from getting my hair cut to find Nate at the computer working on an Excel spreadsheet of Christian adoption agencies, the countries they work with, the requirement to adopt from each country and a column at the bottom for yes or no, indicating if we were eligible to adopt from that country. I was shocked but I quickly recovered and we spent the day pouring over websites and our handy little spreadsheet until we narrowed it down to Ethiopia. We met the requirements and the 2 required trips are only 4-6 days long so hopefully I can handle that and Nate's boss will let him off work. The next day at church Nate talked to a traveling minister friend of ours, Grady Strop, about our decision to pursue international adoption. Grady replied by saying, "Hey, what about Ethiopia? I have connections there." Nate was shocked and told Grady that was the exact country we were considering! We both felt that this conversation was confirmation that we were hearing from God about choosing Ethiopia. A couple of days later Nate received more confirmation when he was reading the Bible looking for something in particular and randomly came across the passage where Phillip talks to and baptizes the Ethiopian eunuch.
Wait and Trust
Because Jesus died on the cross, our adoption into God's family is FREE to all who believe in Him!!! However, adoption here on earth is NOT free. Our cost is estimated at $25,000-28,000! Ya-OUCH!!! And, we are beginning our adoption journey with $0. We feel very strongly that we are not to go into debt for the adoption so that means we have to raise ALL the money. Most morning I wake up and think "This is crazy! Where is the money going to come from?" Then, Nate is good to remind me that this was not our idea. It was God's. We don't have to make it happen. He will! So, now we just wait and trust.
Sorry this was so long. We are just so excited about this step of faith in our lives that I wanted to share ALL about it with you! Be sure to check back every so often so you can keep up with our adoption journey.
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