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!

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!

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.