T-Shirt Fundraiser

This week we spent a lot of time working on our online Hague International Adoption training (required for our homestudy). I am very happy to say that I completed mine and received my certificate. Joey, however, had a little more trouble staying focused and still has a few hours of training before he completes his. And yes...I do remind him regularly that I successfully completed the assignment before he did! We have a few more tasks to complete before we finish the Homestudy. We have two more meetings with our casework and hopefully we will be done by mid to late April and we will begin compiling documents for our dossier. The dossier must be complete and accepted in Haiti before we can be matched with our child.

We have been overwhelmed by the amount of support we have received from people who just want to help. We have had several very generous people give to us financially this week and for that we are incredibly thankful. We have also had numerous people tell us they are praying for our family and our child and for that we are equally grateful! It is our prayer that our child is being hugged and loved until we can get him/her home.

This week we will begin selling our adoption t-shirts as a fundraiser for the process. We will be selling them from now until April 8th. Hopefully, they will be printed by April 17th. The cost of adoption is not something we consider a barrier, because we know God will provide and He has! The t-shirt is shown below. It will be stone blue with navy writing. The price of the t-shirt is $15.

Our biggest request from all who are reading this is to pray! Please pray specifically for our child, but also pray for our beautiful biological children as they plan to adjust to a new sibling. Pray that as our paperwork moves through the system that God will move on the hearts of those in administrative positions to work efficiently for the sake of our child.

Abandoned to Christ,
Amy

Homestudy Visit and Immigration receipt

Today we had a Homestudy visit and checked a few more items off of our Homestudy to-do list. Our case work is awesome! We have had a great week in terms of our adoption. The week started out by us receiving our receipt from the immigration office, which is really important because we had to be pending by April 1st in order to be grandfathered in as a I600 family. I was getting nervous because we hadn't heard anything, but we are good and now we are waiting to receive our appointment for immigration fingerprinting in Atlanta. Another item of praise comes in the form a great financial gift. A couple of weeks ago, Joey and I shared our adoption story at a marriage seminar and the leader of the seminar graciously allowed people to donate to our adoption through their non-profit. We knew very few people at the seminar and through God's leading, people donated $2100 to our family. This is a HUGE!! I haven't mention the cost of the process, because I know God has called us and will provide, but the total cost (domestic, international, travel) is around $34,000 and for two school teachers (and for most people) that's a lot of money. But we know that God knows our salary and adoption costs and He is in control. We have seen his provision already and look forward to how He is working in our lives. Right now we are working on getting a T-shirt fundraiser together and we are planning a 5k for May 17th. We have been so blessed by the support of people who have said they will come run and celebrate this process with our family. We are thankful to be in service to such a GREAT God.

Abandoned to Christ,

Amy