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.