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!!
