Humbled and Grateful

Just an update for our family's sake and anyone who is actually interested in the process that wants to read our journey, give some details about what it looked like to get here.

We began this journey, as most families do, with a timeline in front of them and high hopes that ours would actually be smooth, unlike most other families that seem to hit huge bumps in the road. HA. First mistake. Actually, we knew that obstacles and hurdles were going to come up, and we have had our bumps. Our wiggle room is getting smaller and our next steps are feeling farther and farther away. We spent the majority of the month of March feverishly applying for grants. We applied for a total of 10 grants. To the unsuspecting eye, that may not seem like a big deal. It's just an application. In one sense, yes, that is true. But the truth is, these applications are almost just as involved, if not more on some levels, as the initial application to begin the adoption process. And while each organization asks the same general questions about finances, testimony, calling, parenting and lifestyle, the questions are worded just differently enough that you have to write your answers differently for each one. While we did copy and paste a lot, it was still a difficult task. But we got them done. We had to step out of our comfort zones and ask for even more references, often having to burden the same people again and again to fill out a reference form. Oh and it needs to be turned in like now. :/ But fortunately, we have some great friends and leaders who went above and beyond to help us out.

The next task was fundraising. The month of April we poured ourselves out completely asking anyone and everyone that we knew and even those that we didn't know if they would be willing to donate an item or service to an online auction that we were hosting. It was a TON of work, but in the end we ended up collecting over 100 items and we were able to raise about $3,500. We also sold T-shirts, which astonishingly brought in almost $900. We are overwhelmed at the generosity of friends and complete strangers!! During this time of fundraising, I think we pushed half of our Facebook followers away and I'm sure we were deleted several times. But that's ok. We also saw God provide in really big ways through people that we didn't even expect and we are so incredibly thankful!

When we started the process, we really didn't think that we would be able to fund raise money successfully. First of all, we lived overseas and so "traditional" fundraisers were obviously out of the question. And second of all, we have spent the last 3 years raising money for ministry and our circle of influence are already so incredibly generous to give to what we do. But we did fundraise and were pleasantly surprised with the success. We could not have done it without the help of our friends and family, mainly our brother and sister in law, who were themselves in the process of adopting. The biggest fee that we have had to date was certainly our agency fee of $6,000, which had to be paid before our agency would begin work on compiling our Dossier packet. This seemed almost insurmountable to us, but through our fundraising efforts, very generous donations, personal savings and an organization that awarded us a $1,000 grant, we will be able to turn that in within the next week! (During our fundraising, we also received our USCIS approval, which was so exciting!!)

The next financial hurdle is a fee of $3,100 that covers the document preparation, registration and authentication. This amount had to be turned in before our agency could actually send the paperwork to China. We had been hoping that this was an amount that they could bill to our family, as they had several fees in the past. But we found out that it in fact had to be paid before they could mail the papers. This is honestly disheartening for us. We have worked so hard for two solid months, and we are flat worn out on fund raising. We know that God is the only one that can make this happen, because He is the only one that has made any of it happen so far. And deep down we know we can trust in His timing, whatever that might be. But if we are honest, we are discouraged because we feel like this just meant more waiting. More time before we could be with our son and he could be with us. We want so badly to be able to send him a message and say Mommy and Daddy are coming! But from where we were standing, already more than a month behind our timeline goal, we just know that we have to surrender our desires to God's sovereignty. We have sent out one last plea to our friends and family, and put on our best face. We are choosing to keep the faith. We still have a couple of weeks. And we know from experience that a lot can happen in a couple of weeks!