Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Travel Dates!


The day we have prayed for for a year now has finally come! 

We have travel dates!
We will meet our daughter for the first time on December 15th. This will be a day visiting the orphanage where she has lived all her life, meeting all the wonderful people there who saved our baby girl's life, and getting to know our precious girl.

On December 16th our Giving and Receiving Ceremony is scheduled. This is when Rori will officially become a Ford forever!

Another prayer was answered all in HIS perfect timing as well…We have prayed that we might be able to bring Rori HOME for Christmas, and we will be doing just that! Our process is being expedited while in Vietnam because the embassy will be closed for renovations from December 23rd-30th! All parties involved have agreed to push us through BEFORE this happens which means we will leave Vietnam on the 23rd and arrive HOME CHRISTMAS EVE!

What an awesome God we serve!

Thank you for all your prayers and support during this process. Please cover our family in prayer while we travel, and most importantly PLEASE lift up sweet Rori. We have waited for this day for a long time but she does not know us, and she will not understand. Please pray she will feel our love and know she is safe and home in our arms. This trip will be hard. Rori will be leaving the only home and family she has ever known. Pray for her little heart to be comforted in this time. She will no doubt be grieving hard during this transition. Please, please keep her in your prayers.

Monday, November 21, 2016

A day of incredible provision. ONLY GOD.


When we started out on this journey to adopt our daughter the cost was a bit daunting. We are a lower income family and $30,000 is quite a lot of money for us. However we knew our daughter was waiting and we knew our God was bigger than that number. God is not checking your bank account when he calls you to do something. He knows YOUR limitations. He has no limitations.

Today I have some truly incredible news. (For me its incredible and I'm awestruck by His provision and power, however I imagine my Heavenly Father is shaking His head a bit at my happy tears and saying "I told you so.") We stepped out in faith, believing that we would try our hardest to find a way and He would provide in our time of need.


We are FULLY FUNDED!

Yesterday our Pastor presented us with a check for $3500 that our church family gave to bring our baby home. I am in awe of the love they have shown for our sweet girl.

Our auction wrapped up last night and once everything is paid for will have raised just over $500!

Last week we were just over $5,700 away from having the funds we need to travel to Vietnam and adopt our daughter.

after this weekend we were just over $1700 short of our funds needed by December!

I was contacted by a wonderful family that has been an enormous blessing to us in this journey and they have donated the remaining funds for us to travel!

There is now no obstacle standing between us and our precious little one! As soon as we get the call we can buy plane tickets! We are READY TO GO!


PRAISE GOD! HE is ABLE to do ALL things! Stay tuned for travel dates! I cannot wait to hold my little girl and show her how much she is loved by her Heavenly Father and by so many who have helped so much to bring her home!



Thursday, November 3, 2016

A whole different kind of Christmas shopping for us this year!


That "Its about to get real." feeling is starting to hit me, the same way it did in the last month or so before I met my first two children. That "nesting" feeling is definitely present and the current state of unfinished projects in the house, pending fundraisers, pending expenses, my daughter's unfinished room, and the holidays is honestly giving me a bit of a sense of being overwhelmed.

But despite that whirlwind feeling, I welcome what will surely be the most beautiful and chaotic Christmas celebration of our lives! Yesterday we received news that our Article 5 letter had been issued and we were given the green light to apply for our travel visas! It looks like early/mid December travel! 

Ford family of FIVE for Christmas!

So now I get to add a host of "To Do" items to my holiday prep list! Items like, packing suitcases, booking plane tickets, arranging everything for our absence, scheduling doctors appointments for after we get home, doing my best to have EVERYTHING in order at home so we can focus on bonding as a family when we get home, maybe even get a couple dozen freezer meals stocked up for after we get home, and shopping for gifts!

Yes shopping for gifts, but not for family or friends. This year we have put a major budget on Christmas shopping and I managed to get all three of the kids gifts second hand and very inexpensive! This year we will be gift shopping for our trip to Vietnam! It is considered customary  to bring a small gift to official meetings and ceremonies such as our Giving and Receiving Ceremony where we will officially become Rori's family forever.  We have been given a list of officials that will be present at our ceremonies and meetings and a list of the number of children and nannies at Rori's orphanage. So I will be busy finding gifts to take with us! I love shopping for gifts so I am excited to have a good excuse! (These don't need to be extravagant, just small gifts. They won't even be opened until after we leave, this is an observance of the customs of our daughters country.) I am most excited to look for gifts for the children and caretakers at Rori's orphanage! 

My excitement simply cannot be contained! I can't wait to hold my baby girl! Please continue to pray for our family and especially for our daughter. This day is one we have prayed for, for a year now, but she has little understanding of what is happening. Please pray for her little heart to be protected and that she will know she is safe and loved.












Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Adoption Fundraising Update.



So I think I finally have an accurate update on our funding!

At the start of September we needed to pay our $6,360.00 in agency fees to our agency. We had $3500 in our adopt together fund and we finished up our shoe drive. Both of these organizations pay our agency directly…

So I requested a grant from Adopttogether and yesterday they sent $3,400 to our agency. So that took our fees down to $2,940.00! Yay! 

Next I called the shoe drive company and got an update that they sent a total of  $1,029.00.

So our agency fees now sit at $1,911.00 and our travel cost are approximately $10,000. (Yes plane tickets and hotels for a 2-4 week trip to Vietnam are every bit this expensive or more.)

Right now our adoption fund account reads $4,100.47, and our Reece Rainbow account has $617.82

So we are $7,192.71 away from having all the funds we ned to go to Vietnam and bring our baby girl home!

$7,192.71 TO GO BEFORE DECEMBER!

On the home front, we are slowly piecing our house back together. We got all the mold out and are now working on replacing the floor downstairs and rebuilding the currently gutted bathroom, and we are looking into financing to replace the central AC unit so that we will have central heat before the weather gets cold. Ideally we want to get this all done before we travel. It will be quite enough coming half way around the world to live in a different climate with a new family she has never met. We do not want to also have construction projects going on while Rori is trying to acclimate to a new home.

Thank you to everyone that has helped so far! We are working on a few more fundraisers for October and at least one for November. Please keeps us in your prayers! God's got this!

Updates of the very best kind!


Monday was a day filled with happy news!

We received an update on our baby girl! These updates come every 4 months. Our last update honestly made my mommy heart worry and hurt. Our little one did not look healthy. I was concerned. This time she is glowing in her photo and she has gained a pound and grown by inches! 

Not only has she grown physically but she has leapt ahead in development! She is now SPEAKING in short, clear sentences. She recognizes people by their voices, and she is letting her nannies know when she needs to use the bathroom! She has also begun walking on her own, though they said she is fearful of this, and is eating some solid foods!

Also they noted that she has an amazing memory and can sing and memorize a song after just hearing it a few times! They are taking extra care to familiarize her with our voices on the audio books and toys we sent, and doing their best to prepare her to go home with her family!

I cried so much over this news. It makes me so happy to know she is growing and getting stronger, and at the same time it hurts so much not to be there to see her hit these milestones myself. I can't tell you how much harder this waiting gets every day.

We are waiting for our I800 approval. Praying it won't take more than two weeks. We still plan to be traveling in December and holding our little miracle on Christmas Day. Please keep us in your prayers as we need there to be absolutely no paperwork stalls in order for this to happen!



Thursday, September 15, 2016

MATCH LETTER!


I have been waiting to type these words for what feels like an ETERNITY.

WE GOT OUR MATCH LETTER!

Today I received the best phone call ever! Vietnam has OFFICIALLY approved us to be Rori's parents! 

What does this mean?
It means in 3-4 months we will be on a plane to Vietnam to bring our baby girl home FOREVER!

We have prayed for this letter, our family has prayed for this letter, and all of our friends have prayed for this letter! I BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF PRAYER! I believe you should pray specifically. God knows your needs but that doesn't mean He doesn't want to hear you voice them in His presence. 

Thank you all so much for taking our family to the Lord in your prayers! Can I ask you to once again storm the gates on our behalf? It has been my wish and fervent prayer that our little girl would not have to spend even one more Christmas or birthday apart from her family. Would you pray for us specifically, that everything would move along in such a way that we would be with our sweet Rori before Christmas? Its absolutely possible, but will require us to move quickly through the last few paperwork steps and find a way to quickly pull together the funding we still need. PLEASE PRAY!

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Everyday Miracles...



Yesterday marked 11 weeks that we have been waiting for our match letter from Vietnam. I must confess I have not done a good job of waiting this time. Adoption involves so many steps and in between each step is a period of waiting. Waiting is not easy, especially when you are waiting to for a piece of paper to tell you that you can come and get your baby. Our match letter could come any day that our agencies offices are open. So every week day we wait for a phone call, and every day that 7:00 pm rolls around (the end of the business day for our agencies office) my heart breaks a little more. I know there are other families that have waited longer and some shorter, and each adoption is different. But even though I know that everything will happen in the Lord's timing, I can't help hoping and praying for it to happen now. Right now, ten minutes ago, I want to be on a plane today. So this period of waiting has been the hardest. But even when things seem more than you can bear, God is there to lift the weight. Yesterday He showed me that He is in control of EVERYTHING. And He is working miracles even in seemingly everyday routine.

Yesterday my sister in law and I had a rare treat. We got to leave the kids with our husbands and enjoy an afternoon out with just the two of us. Girl time. It was the first time I think I have been out for just me time in about 4 years…basically since I got pregnant with our first child. We decided to get our nails done and go thrift store shopping. (I know, we get crazy when we are kid free.) So we set out to the nail salon, only to find that they are closed for a long holiday weekend. We remember another salon we had seen and head there. They are closed as well. (Beginning to think that getting our nails done is not going to be part of our day out.) We try one more salon, and they are OPEN. So we are sitting in the salon, talking with this really sweet man that is doing both our nails, and he happens to mention that his family is returning to Vietnam on vaction in a couple weeks. This brings up the fact that we are adopting our daughter from Vietnam. We get talking about our little girl and his wife is there as well, we get to show them pictures of Rori and they tell us that we have to bring her in to hang out with them and their children when she comes home so they can help teach her Vietnamese! I could have CRIED right there! God knows exactly what he is doing. He made sure we went out for our girls day on THAT day. He knew those shops would be closed. He knew we would go to this salon. He knew we would get to meet this amazing family, right here in our town, who would want to be a part of our little girls life and could help her connect to her birth and her culture in a way we cannot. And He knew in this hard time of waiting that I needed just that kind of miracle, to see so clearly His hand and His will in my life. He showed me how much He loves our little girl and how He is in control with this seemingly ordinary, everyday miracle.

All in His timing.