What does the Bible say about adoption?

As I read through the Bible this year, I made a note of each reference to the orphan.  I want to share as a reminder of God's heart for the widow and orphan.
Happy New Year!!

Exodus 22:22-24 Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan.  If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry.  My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword; you wives will become widows and your children fatherless.

Deuteronomy 10:18-19  He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing.  And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt.

Deuteronomy 14:28-29  At the end of every three years, bring all the tithes of that year’s produce and store it in your towns, so that the Levites (who have no allotment or inheritance of their own) and the aliens, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be satisfied, and so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.

Deuteronomy 16:10-11  Then celebrate the Feast of Weeks to the Lord your God by giving a freewill offering in proportion to the blessings the Lord your God has given you.  And rejoice before the Lord your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name-you…and the aliens, the fatherless and the widows living among you.

Deuteronomy 24:19  When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it.  Leave it for the alien, the fatherless and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.

Deuteronomy 26:12  When you have finished setting aside a tenth of all your produce in the third year, the year of the tithe, you shall give it to the Levite, the alien, the fatherless and the widow, so that they may eat in your towns and be satisfied.

Deuteronomy 27:19  Cursed is the man who withholds justice from the alien, fatherless or the widow.

Psalm 10:14 But you, O God, do not see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand.  The victim commits himself to you; you are the helper of the fatherless.

Psalm 68:5-6a A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling.  God sets the lonely in families…

Isaiah 1:17 …Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.  

Isaiah 10:1-2  Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless.

Jeremiah 5:28  Their evil deeds have no limit; they do not plead the case of the fatherless to win it, they do not defend the rights of the poor.

Jeremiah 7:6  If you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and…then I will let you live in this place…

Jeremiah 22:3 Do no wrong or violence to the alien, the fatherless or the widow…

Job 29:12  because I rescued the poor who cried for help, and the fatherless who had none to assist him.

Job 31:17  if I have kept my bread to myself, not sharing it with the fatherless-

Zechariah 7:10  Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor.

Malachi 3:5  …I will be quick to testify against …those who oppress the widows and the fatherless…

John 14:18  I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

Ephesians 1:4-5,14  In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.  …you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God/s possession- to the praise of his glory.

Titus 3:7 …so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.

James 1:27  Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by this world.

I John 3:1  How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!  And that is what we are!

I praise you, Lord, for your heart for the orphan and adopting me to be your daughter, a daughter of the King of Kings!

Mailed in our new LOC

We received our revised Letter Seeking Confirmation yesterday from China and we mailed it to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.  We are so thankful to be done with that (hopefully) and moving forward again.  If the Lord is willing, we should travel in about three months.  We now wait for an approval from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services which takes about three weeks.  We will keep you posted.

New LOC has been mailed from China

I received news that our new Letter Seeking Confirmation has been mailed from China today.  We pray it arrives soon.
Thank you for your prayers!

dissapointing news

We just found out that there is a problem with our paperwork that the US citizenship office is reviewing.  Two names were misspelled and they have told us we must request a new Letter Seeking Confirmation from China.  We are heartbroken.  This should delay our traveling about a month or two.  Why does it have to be so hard!?!  I have prayed that God would go before our paperwork and correct any mistakes we missed.  I am having a really hard time right now, asking why, why, why...  
It's just so hard to believe it has to be this hard!!!
As I was fussing, crying and praying earlier, my Lord spoke to me through a song that came on the radio by Matthew West.  The lyrics went something like this...

You must think I'm strong,
To give me what I'm going through.
Forgive me if I'm wrong,
but this looks like more than I can do,
on my own.

I know I'm not strong enough to be everything I'm supposed to be
I give up, I'm not strong enough
Hands of mercy, wont you cover me?
Lord, right now I'm asking you to be strong enough,
strong enough for both of us.

well maybe, maybe that's the point,
to reach the point of giving up.
because when I'm finally at rock bottom, that's when I start looking up

I am broken, You are God.
You are strong when I am weak.
I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength
And I don't have to be strong enough.
Lord, right now I 'm asking You to be strong enough for the both of us.



I've also been praying the lyrics of this beautiful song for the past few months, Blessings, from Laura Story...

We pray for wisdom, your voice to hear
We cry in anger when we can not feel you near.
We doubt your goodness, we doubt your love
As if every promise from your Word is not enough.

And all the while you hear each spoken need
Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

What if your blessings come through raindrops?
What if your healing comes through tears?
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know your near...
What if trials of this life are your mercies in disguise?

This Christmas I will be praising God for our beautiful daughter and that He has brought us this far and for what is to come.  And at the same time, I will be mourning that we will not be together this Christmas and for the two years we have missed of her precious life.  He is faithful and He is always good!

Merry Christmas!!!

We received our LOC!!

On Tuesday we heard from ACGI that they had received our Letter Seeking Confirmation from China.  A very sophisticated form from China written in Chinese and English basically seeking to confirm that we want to adopt the precious baby girl we already said we want to adopt.  This is what we have been waiting on since September 1st.  Praise the Lord!!!  So, since Tuesday we have been very busy gathering and anxiously filling out all the forms that are to be mailed in with the signed LOC.  Because of the typo I previously made, I was so worried that I would make another error and that we would be delayed again.  Tonight we will sign this form and overnight the package to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services and then we will begin gathering some more documents to be mailed to China.  Then we wait again to hear back from the US and Chinese governments.  We should travel to China in about three months.

Thank you so much for your prayers. This waiting has definitley not been easy, even though I keep telling myself that I better enjoy this time while I can still sleep through the night!  I had a dream a couple of nights ago that she was here in the US and we took possession of her here.  It was very sudden and unexpected, like a phone call saying, "meet me at ..., I have your child for you."  In my dream, that first night, I couldn't get her to sleep and I was so tired and she was so tired.  But she wouldn't go to sleep that night or the next day.  When I woke up I was very thankful for the rest I was able to get in my comfortable bed that night.

We are so excited to have reached this step in our journey!! Thank you so much for keeping up with us!!

It was one of those days...

We've all had those days, when you get the feeling you really should just go back home and go to bed.  Tuesday of last week was one of those days.  I got out of bed at 4:20am to eat breakfast and spend time in the Word and fellowship with my heavenly Father.  Then I headed outside to walk the, dog, Ginger and the cat, Tiger, had left parts of a dead animal at the back door.  The cat had successfully pulled every major organ out of the poor animal.  Yeah!!!  Cleaning up that mess wasn't what I wanted to spend time (time I didn't have) doing.  Thank you, dad, for helping me clean up the mess the cat left!
I had a haircut scheduled at 8:00am, so when I got ready for work, I decided to save time by not washing and fixing my hair.  Normally, the bus picks Noah up at 7:35 and I leave and take Brian to EMCA after Noah is picked up and drop him usually five minutes 'til 8:00.  Well, this particular morning we waited for the bus to come until 7:45 and it never came.  So, at 7:45, we left to take Noah and Brian to school.  Noah was on time, but Brian got to school ten minutes late.  Any other morning, I wouldn't have distressed so much, but this morning, I had not washed and fixed my hair and I REALLY didn't want to walk into the school looking as bad as I did!  I had thoughts of just dropping him and not walking in to check him in, but I did.
Well, throughout the day, again and again, things kept happening and I kept thinking, "I knew I should have just gone back to bed!"
Early in the afternoon, our case worker from our adoption agency called on my cell.  A voice in my head kept saying...don't get your hopes up, don't get your hopes up, yes, it is time to receive our letter of confirmation from China, but wait to hear what she says, to make sure it is news worth celebrating before getting excited.
And she was not calling with the exciting news I was hoping for.  Instead she was calling to say there was a problem with our paperwork.  We had to give details on a medical form about any surgeries we have had and we disclosed on the form that we had been in a car accident and had surgery for the injuries from the car accident.  We also had to send a letter from the doctor about the surgeries with a statement confirming that our injuries nor the surgeries would keep us from being good parents.  The problem was that on one form, there was a typo and it stated the accident and surgeries were in the year 2006 and the letters from the doctors correctly said the accident was in 1996.  So, we had to go back to the Dr. and get the medical form redone, signed, notarized and then had to take them to be county certified and state certified.  On Wednesday we mailed the corrected forms to All God's Children and on Thursday they mailed them to DC to be authenticated.  Tiffany thinks she should have them back by the end of next week and then she will mail them to China. 
The good news is that China no longer automatically penalizes the family 6-8 weeks for a mistake like they used to do.  Praise the Lord!!!  It will take a couple of weeks longer, but hopefully no more.
Thank you all so much for your prayers!!!  We really need them.  This is SO hard!!  My theme song currently is Mandisa's "Stronger", knowing in my heart that this time of waiting will be over soon and while we wait, God is making us stronger.  We must trust in Him and when our strength is gone, we "fall into the arms of Jesus".

One Step Closer!

After a longer than expected wait, we have received a preapproval from China to adopt X(We are not allowed to post info on her on the web, so we will just call her "X")!  We are so thankful for all your prayers and your concern!  Now we are one step closer to bringing her home!
We have three remaining steps before we travel...
1. Letter of Confirmation from China (1-3 months)
2. Consulate Approval and provisional approval (6 weeks)
3. travel approval (3-4 weeks)
4. TRAVEL 3-4 weeks after we receive our travel approval
(each step has to be completed before the next step begins)

We are praying for God's timing, and we know that our Heavenly Father wants X home as soon as possible!  Oh, I desperately want to receive the Letter of Confirmation from China in less than a month!  If all the wait times are on the short end, we could be traveling at the end of December.  If the wait times are on the long end, we should travel in March.  We would LOVE to travel the last week in December to pick up X!  Our kids will be out of school, so that would be easier on our parents to not have to keep up with the rigorous school schedule of our kids while Greg and I are in China.

Thank you so much for your prayers!

"I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine" Isaiah 43:1

We received our log in number from China last Tuesday, July 19th, and with that number we were ready to receive the much anticipated referral we've been waiting on since we began our adoption journey.  I knew that China normally updates their databank with a new group of orphans at the end of each month.  So, on Tuesday, the26th, I couldn't stop thinking, --when, when, WHEN!  When are we going to hear from our agency with "the call", the call we've been waiting for?!?  When are we going to get to look at the face of our daughter and find out where she lives and what she eats and how she sleeps and how old she is and what she likes and what type of health problems she has and how much she weighs and... 

...and then the phone rang, and it was All God's Children International!!!  And Tiffany at AGCI said, "Hi!  I found a little girl..."

We are SO EXCITED!!  This is the moment we've been waiting for since we began our adoption journey in December 2010.  We have received a referral, which means we have have been matched with a specific child and our agency put a hold on her so that no one else can claim her while we finish all our paperwork to finalize the adoption.  I am not allowed to give any information about her on a blog or internet for privacy reasons until we have her in our custody.  However, if you want details, get in touch with me, because I would LOVE to tell you all about her!! 

Greg and I told our adoption agency that we do want to adopt her and they have sent our information to China to request an approval from them.  Now we are waiting on approval from China (which takes about three weeks) before we know for sure that she is ours!!
I praise my God and Father for this precious daughter of the King!!!  I praise Him for a unified vision between Greg and I about her and I praise Him for the confirmations He has blessed us with, even before we received her referral that she is the one He has chosen for our family.

Thank you so much for ALL your prayers and your support!  Please pray for her health and that God would prepare her to be a member of our family and that she will bond and attach to us quickly.
OH, We are already so smitten with her!  The next 5-6 months will be hard as we wait for all the paperwork to be prepared and completed before we can travel.

"Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are Mine." Isaiah 43:1

Both Hands Project

We had a great day at Mr Strecker's house!!  It was a very hot day!!  We didn't find out until a few days after the project that the heat index that day was 108 degrees!!!  We had a few team members to get too hot, but after a time of rest, everyone recuperated.  We praise the Lord that we had no injuries and we accomplished SO MUCH for Mr Strecker!  We have been blessed to get to spend time with Mr Strecker over the past month and get to know him better and what a blessing that has been to Greg and I.  I believe all our team members were blessed to meet him and serve him also. 

We have THE BEST FRIENDS in the world!  Greg and I were humbled by our friends and family giving their lives for the day to serve Mr Strecker and help us bring home our daughter.  "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13.  Our team members laid down their lives for us that day!!!  Greg and I pray that we can return the favor and pay it forward.  We were also amazed at the generosity of Marvin's, a local store that donated lots and lots of materials and supplies, Lumber Junction, who donated ALL the lumber we needed, CVS, who donated LOTS of bottled water, and Speed Screen, who donated all the screen to re-screen Mr Strecker's porch!  We are in AWE of the generosity of family and friends who have donated financially toward our adoption expenses! 

Check out our Both Hands project video at http://bothhandsfoundation.org/greg-and-angie-jones.aspx.  Thank you to everyone and God Bless!

Our Dossier has been mailed to China!

Our Dossier was mailed to China on June 21st!!!  WHEW!!  We are so excited to be at this point in our adoption process.  Now we wait to hear back from China that we are logged in to their system.  We have to have our "log in" number to receive a new referral of a child on the databank of Chinese orphans.  Hopefully in the next couple of months, we will know who God has chosen to place in our family!  We can't wait to know her!  We have been told by our agency that once we are matched with a specific child, we should travel to China to bring her home in approximately six months.

We are so excited about our Both Hands project!  God led us to a very special widower and we are so thankful for the opportunity to help out around his house.  When we began looking for a widow for our project, we talked to our pastors, the WELCOME center, the Elmore Baptist Association and no one knew of a widow/er that needed any help around his/her house.  I thought, this is hard to believe!  Praise the Lord that we can't find a widow that needs any help!  BUT...we need a widow that needs some help!!  We continued to pray that God would lead us to a widow or widower.   Meanwhile, we were very intently trying to get our Dossier documents ready to be mailed and we were also praying about team members for our project.  As God brought certain people to my mind, I made a list of people to ask to be on our Both Hands team.  The team will help us fix up the widow/ers home and also help with the fundraising by sending letters asking for sponsorships for their work on project day, in addition to the letters Greg and I send.  As I prayed about team members and a widow, a friend kept coming to mind.  I kept thinking..."Am I suppose to ask her to be on our team?"  We didn't have a widow yet, and something didn't feel like it fit just right, so I wrote her name down on my list, but I waited.  The day after we put our Dossier in the mail to AGCI, I felt the urge to contact her, so I emailed her and told her about the Both Hands project.  I told her we were getting a little anxious because we couldn't find a widow that needs help anywhere!  I asked her if she would happen to know of a widow or widower that needed some help around the home.  Maybe one with tornado damage, but not necessarily.  I said..."We feel like we will be doing jobs around his/her home like replacing plumbing fixtures, electrical fixtures, painting, landscaping, light repairs, etc..." 
Her reply was, "Oh, mylanta!  I could just cry...My dad is a widower...for five and a half years now...and we sure could use some help."  She went on to explain that he had a bathtub that needed to be installed and hooked up to the plumbing, some wainscoting and trim needed to be put up, tree limbs needing to be trimmed, bushes needing to be trimmed, skirting needed fixing, screen needing fixing, bathroom tile needed completing.  I got chills when I read her email!  Her list of needs almost perfectly lined up with what Greg and I imagined we might be doing!  After Greg and I discussed it, we felt that God had definitely brought us together with Mr Greg Strecker. 

We went and visited with him that weekend and we were amazed to hear his story!!  He was born in the Ukraine in 1938.  His mother was Ukrainian and his father was of German descent.  When Greg was young, his father was executed by the Russian KGB.  Greg, along with his mother and brother moved around Europe trying to escape the hand of communism as Stalin and then Hitler rose in power.  When Mr Strecker was an adolescent, they came to Brazil and he was successful in the different jobs he took.  He was very good at everything he did and whereever he went he brought success to the businesses he was working for!  Then Castro gained power in Cuba.  They had come halfway across the world to escape Communism and here it was knocking at their backdoor again!  About that time, he and his mother and brother finally received their VISA's to enter the United States of America!  I've never met anyone so proud to be an AMERICAN!!!  When he speaks of this country, tears come to his eyes.  When he came to the US, they told him he had every right of a citizen, except he couldn't vote.  He was immediatly drafted into the US army.  He served four years and then met and married his wife, Patricia, in 1964.  Mr Strecker became a US citizen the day his oldest son, Andrew was born, December 7, 1965.  Mrs Strecker passed away in October 2005.  Mr Strecker is no longer able to keep up with all the needs around his home and we are DELIGHTED that we have the priviledge to help him!  There are so many more details and miracles of his life that I have left out.  If you ever get the chance to hear his testimony, it is awesome!!
Our project day is July 9th and we will post a video on the blog or you can go to our Both Hands page at http://bothhandsfoundation.org/greg-and-angie-jones.aspx to see it soon after our project day!

Thank you so much for your prayers and keeping up with us!  Sorry so long between blogs, it is hard to find an extra minute.  I can't wait to share our project video with you when we complete our Both Hands project.  I am so thankful that God worked it out so that our Both Hands project is happening now, while we are in a waiting stage with our adoption.  His way and His time is always PERFECT!
Both Hands, One for the Widow, One for the Orphan.

The puzzle pieces all fit together when our Heavenly Father places them

WOW! What a amazing week we have had in this amazing race we are in!  In my last post I talked about getting our fingerprints done in Birmingham on April 18th and since then we have been waiting on the letter of approval from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.  I felt like we had been waiting too long for that letter of approval and began wondering if it got lost in the mail or worse, maybe our fingerprints got lost on the way to USCIS!  Everyday, I raced to the mailbox to see if the letter had come.  We had all of our other documents ready to go to China, except that letter.

On Monday, May 16th, when I went to the mailbox and hurriedly flipped through the contents, I didn't see the one piece of mail I was looking for.  As I walked up the driveway to the house, I flipped through again and there it was!!!  The return address on the envelope read, "United States Citizenship and Immigration Services".  Could it be???  When I got inside, I told Brian and Noah and we three danced and celebrated!!  And then, I opened the envelope and read the first line, "We can not compete the processing of your application at this time because..."

It turns out there was some information missing in our homestudy.  Thankfully, our home study preparer was "johnny on the spot" and she whipped out a revised homestudy within a couple of days and emailed it to the USCIS.  A few days later we had received our letter of approval and revised home study.  We thought we were ready to mail everything before we realized we had to make a trip to Birmingham to get the revised home study county certified again.  So, Greg and I went to Birmingham on Wednesday and then we mailed our Dossier (paperwork) on Thursday, May 26th to All God's Children!!!  Praise the Lord!!  We celebrated!!!

When All God's Children receive our Dossier, they will have it authenticated and translated to Chinese and then mail it to China!!!  We are hoping to receive the referral of our little girl in 2-3 months and until then, we are in a waiting stage (thankfully).  It feels good to have that portion behind us.

We've been praying about how we are going to pay for our adoption expenses.  It has been hard to trust and obey.  God has whispered quietly in times we desperately needed His divine confirmation that it will all work out and this is THE BEST WAY to use our life's savings.

After much prayer, Greg and I felt the leading of the Holy Spirit to apply to Lifesong For Orphans-Both Hands Project to help pay for our adoption expenses.  This idea was born to JT Olsen after he had sent out letters requesting sponsorships for him to play in a charity golf tournament.  He received his letter back from one friend and written on the letter was a note to Mr Olsen saying the letter recipient would have gladly sponsored him if he had been fixing up a widow's home, but that he would not sponsor him to play golf.  So, this is how it works...Greg and I find a widow in need and assemble a team of our friends.  Then the team, including us, would send out letters to family and friends asking people to sponsor us for the day, as we work on the widow/widower's home.  All the funds go toward our adoption expenses.  What an awesome opportunity, to "look after the orphan and the widow" together. James 1:27  We are VERY excited because we received a call from Lifesong For Orphans and they have accepted our application!!!  Now, we are working on getting a team together and trying to find a widow or widower who needs some work done around his/her home.

The sponsorships for our Both Hands project will help to pay our adoption expenses.  With our Dossier we had to send in a payment for translation fees, authentication fees, fees for China's government and a payment to our adoption agency, totalling $6600.  Praise the Lord, we had made $1500 from the yard sales and we received a federal tax refund of $1000 and we had been seriously pinching pennies to save enough for that payment, but we were still short a couple of thousand dollars.  Last weekend Greg and I traveled to Tennessee to attend a cousins wedding.  Before the wedding we were talking to my cousin, Lucy Thrasher, about our adoption process and progress.  When we finished updating her on our process, she began telling us about the SGA group at the school where she teaches, Trinity Presbyterian School.  She also told us about Logan Powell, the senior class president and member of the SGA.  From what Lucy told us, he sounds like an amazing and compassionate young man, with a great personality.  Lucy began telling us that every year the SGA takes on a project that they are able to fund through fundraisers they complete during the school year.  When the group began discussing how they wanted to use the funds they had raised this year, Logan expressed his dream of adopting a family...a family who is adopting...from China.  Lucy told the group she just so happened to know a family who is adopting a child from China.  So, after she told us this, she handed us an envelope.  They had decided to adopt our family and they donated $2000 raised by the SGA and Key Club to help with our adoption expenses!!!  I felt like I was on the Secret Millionaire (one of my favorite shows).  I felt like I was in a dream.  I couldn't believe it, but it was a very obvious answer to prayer.  This gift couldn't have come at a better time!  We want to thank Lucy, Logan, and all the members of the SGA and Key Club at Trinity.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!  What a HUGE blessing you have been to our family, including our little girl from China!

Greg and I are overwhelmed by God's work and we are very thankful we get to watch His perfect plan unfold before our eyes.  We are so moved by the giving of others!  So many times this week I have pleaded with God to lighten the load, to give us a glimpse of His supernatural power moving through our circumstances, to remind us what this journey is all about.  Sometimes it is hard to keep your eye on the prize when your down in the trenches and it feels like you'll never cross the finish line.  He keeps saying, "Trust me" and I have failed miserably at that this week.  Looking back on the puzzle pieces He placed together by His hands in His time, I can see that His way is perfect and of course, so much better than mine!
I praise my Father who is Faithful and True, and a Father to the fatherless and Defender of widows.

Thank you all for your prayers!  We are praying that God will lead us to our widow/widower for our Both Hands Project in His time(but please hurry). :)  And, we are praying that God, with His mighty hands will assemble our team of family and friends who want to make a difference in the life of a widow/er and an orphan.  If anyone is interested in helping out, please let us know!!

Third Day- Children of God

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6jO7xhU_Pw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

3All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. 4Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. 6So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. 7He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins. 8He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding. ~Ephesians 1: 3-8

There will be surprises!

The yard sale was a huge success!  The Holt family and our family each raised $1000 to go toward our adoption expenses.  Thank you so much for donating items to sale and for coming by to see us on Saturday.  It was such a blessing to see your beautiful faces!
We sold so much, but we had so much left over, it took us over two hours to pack up everthing.  We are planning to have another yard sale on April 30th at the same place, in front of Fountain Climate Control Storage.
Greg and I are so excited!  We have received our fingerprint appointment from the USCIS and we are scheduled to go to Birmingham on Monday, April 18th, to do our fingerprints.  Hopefully we will receive the results in about 4 weeks. 
We have just had a couple of unwelcome surprises in our adoption journey, but thankfully we think everything will work out with no lost time.  We just found out that Alabama requires all notarized documents to be county certified before the Secretary of State office will state certify them.  When they "county certify" and "state certify" the documents, they are saying that the notary on the document is commissioned in that county and state to notarize and they are "legal".  So, now we have an extra step in our process we had not planned on.  So, we are going through all the notarized documents we have received to find out in which county each notary is commissioned.  We have documents that have been notarized in Birmingham, Montgomery, Elmore and Portland, Oregan.  We are so thankful we found out this info now, instead of next week.  Fortunately, we plan to be in Birmingham Monday to do our fingerprints, so we can get our homestudy county certified in Jefferson County.
While I was finding all this out, I also found out that our homestudy agency is not a 501c3 non-profit agency and that the home study agency is supposed to be.  What!!  Major PROBLEM!!  I thought this was going to be a major set back and that we would have to do our home study all over again.  On the information that the home study agency submitted to our adoption agency, they had marked that they were a 501c3 agency by mistake.  So, today our adoption agency got on the phone with Chinese and Americans and found out that China actually doesn't require that the home study agency be 501c3, but that they do require it of the adoption agency, the agency they will be working with directly in the adoption.  WHEW!!!  Our social worker with AGCI (our adoption agency) took a very deep sigh of relief with us.  If we had to start over, we would have been set back about three months.
Praise the Lord for His goodness!!  We know there will be set backs and things we will have to do over and over and over again.  We are praying that this doesn't come back to haunt us later!
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your prayers!!!  They are much needed!

Sorry it's been so long...

Sorry its been so long since my last post. I just keep thinking that no one wants to hear about this....

On March 17 we mailed our homestudy with our I800A application to the USCIS (United Stated Citizenship and Immigration Services). I have hesitated to post this because I thought... "how exciting is this to anyone but Greg and I?  Really, what is the big deal about putting a packet in the mail?"  But, it was very exciting to us.  This is one of those bridges we waited eagerly to cross and now have crossed it which propels us to the next step. 
So, now we are waiting for the USCIS to send us an appointment for finger printing. This will be our second time doing fingerprints, which is standard. After the USCIS receives the results from our fingerprints, they will mail us an approval letter,which we will send along with our Dossier to China.  The Dossier is kind of like a biography of our lives from childhood to present, supported with "official" documents from government agencies.

While we are waiting, we are collecting some of these "official" documents that will be mailed with our Dossier.  We have been to the doctor for a second physical and completed a local criminal check. Some additional things we are now working on collecting are family photos, letters from our employer, another financial statement, and an application letter.

Hopefully our next post will be about mailing our Dossier to China.  At that point, most of our paperwork will be done and once China has received our Dossier and logged us into their system, we will be eligible to receive new referrals!!!

Saturday, April 9, will be our first fundraiser. Together with the Holt's, a couple at our church who are adopting from Bulgaria, we will be having a HUGE Yard Sale in front of the Climate Control Storage on Hwy 14, Millbrook, across from O'Reilly Auto Parts to raise money for our adoptions.  We are excited about this opportunity to help with the cost of the adoption!

Thank you so much for your prayers and your support!!  Please keep us in your prayers!

Finished with home study!!

We have been VERY busy collecting all the documents required for our home study.  We began collecting these documents at the end of December, including child abuse/neglect registry clearence, fingerprints/criminal background check, financial statement, copies of marriage certificate and birth certificates, 1040 Federal Tax Return for the past two years, photos of family and house, certificate of immunizations for Brian and Noah, a letter from their pediatrician, statement from our health insurance carrier, CPR class certificate, medical disclosures for Greg & I, vaccination records for our pets, reference letters, and an autobiography for Greg and one for me.  We also spent about six hours in interviews over the course of two weeks with our social worker.  We were VERY excited to receive the first draft of our completed home study on Thursday, February 24th!!! :)  Hopefully, the final draft will be complete next week.  Once we receive it, we will get it notarized and mail it with our I800A form to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).  The I800A form is an application for suitability to adopt a child from a Hague Convention Country.  This initiates the immigration process for the adopted child and gives our child permission to enter the United States.  It usually takes about three months to receive an approval from the USCIS.  While we are waiting, we will be collecting MORE documents including another financial worksheet, an employment letter, another medical form, more doctors letters, another criminal check, more pictures of our family and our home, authentication application, and an application letter.  Well, I hope this gives an idea of the process and I haven't bored you to tears. :)  I started the blog to educate others about the process (hopefully not scare them) and to keep people informed about where we are in the process.  Also, I am using the blog as a journal for myself, to help me remember the details and more importantly, for our daughter.  It will be very important for her to know her story.  Unfortunatly, there will be many details of her story that we don't know.  We will share all the information we have with her and from the beginning, we will tell her the story of how God led us to her in China.  We will also tell her of her heritage as a daughter of the King.  We pray that she will accept His offer to become one of His children.  Thank you so much for keeping us in your prayers!  "In you the orphan finds mercy" Hosea 14:3.

Our journey has begun...

I began sensing God speaking to me about three years ago.  I heard His voice everywhere I went and everywhere I turned, so I stopped and asked, "God, are you talking to me?"  Surely not.  There is no way I am capable of adopting.  We have two beautiful and healthy boys.  Our lives are busy and our home feels full and complete.  So, I waited.  When I could not ignore His voice and the desire He was growing in my heart anymore, I talked with Greg about adoption.  Greg was very happy with our family just the way we were and had not sensed God leading us to adopt, so we waited.  This fall, the longing and desire to bring another child into our home through adoption had grown so strong in my heart, so Greg and I discussed adoption again.  We decided to pray together daily for God's leading in this area of our lives.  We prayed that God would unite our vision with His own for our family and that He would show us clearly what His will is for us.  I cried and cried, knowing that we have a child that we haven't met yet and wondering if we would ever bring him/her home.  Not long after we began praying together, God made His will known to both of us.  His confirmation was before our eyes and ears over and over again.  Constantly, we saw tv shows, movies, heard songs and others talking about adoption.  He also confirmed that our adoption would be from China or another country in Asia.  I love the way He makes His will known to us when we seek Him with all our heart!!  Neither Greg nor I could deny the will of God for our family and in November we requested information from three adoption agencies.  We began our adoption process on December 7, 2010.

For the adoption agency, with our application, we had to send in a financial worksheet, letters from our doctors, and personal statements.  We had everything ready to go to All God's Children International (AGCI), our adoption agency, that first week of December, except a letter from Greg's doctor.  His doctor sent three letters and none contained enough information to be acceptable.  After much grief, we finally received the Dr. letter containing all the needed information on January 14, 2011 and we put it along with the application and other supplemental documents in the mail that day (as we did the happy dance).  While we were waiting to send in the application to AGCI, we contacted some home study agencies and decided to do our home study with Alabama Family Adoption Services (FAS).  They sent us a packet of information and we decided to start our fingerprints and background check clearances, even before sending in our application, since it usually takes about three months to get the results back on the fingerprints.  We did our fingerprints at the Millbrook Police Dept on 12/21/10.  We found out mid-January that usually the FBI requires ink fingerprints, not electronic, like we had done.  So, we figured ours would be rejected and we would have to start that whole process over again.  Instead, we received a letter from the Department of Human Resources that our fingerprints had met the suitability criteria!!  We have been told that this is VERY unusual to get the fingerprint results back this quick!!  Thank you, God!!!     

We have now sent in our application and most of the other paperwork they needed to FAS and we have our first home study visit scheduled on February 3, 2011!!  We should receive our adoption planner from AGCI in the next couple of days with detailed instructions on what to do next and how.  It is amazing how slow things can be going and then all of a sudden we are propelled forward and things seem to be going really fast!!  After we complete our dossier, we will be able to receive new referrals.  We will let you know as soon as we have any information on our child.  We can't wait to meet the child God has chosen for our family!!!  Please keep us in your prayers.