Home Study Update...Check!

We received our home study update in the mail this week, notarized and ready to go!  Now we just wait for the legal documents from Taiwan.  Nothing we can do about those but...wait!  So, we wait...

Slowly but surely we are coming, Sophia...

A Little Movement

It looks like our home study update will be finalized this week and hopefully we will have our notarized copies by the end of next week.  That just leaves the legal documents from Taiwan...and then we can get everything state sealed and off to our agency!  Every little bit of movement helps!

Slowly but surely we weave our way to Sophia...

Progress!

Today we were able to check off another step in our referral dossier process...another step closer to Sophia!  We finally had the final paper in hand that needed to be notarized on our part, so we headed to the notary and got all nine documents notarized at the same time...check!  Tomorrow we meet with our Social Worker to update our home study, so when that gets back to us, we will have all of the paperwork on our end ready to go.  We also go and get re-fingerprinted for USCIS tomorrow afternoon...check, check!  We are still waiting for the legal paperwork to arrive from Taiwan that we need to sign.  Once that gets here we will need to sign and notarize all of that, then take the entire huge pile to Harrisburg to be state authenticated.  I'm thinking I may just go to that office one day personally, as you can wait in line and get it done.  We'll see how adventurous I'm feeling when the time comes.  But gettting any step in this laborious process accomplished is means for celebration, as anyone who has "been there, done that" knows.  We are making progress!

Hang tight, Sophia...we are coming!

Whew!

Things have really been busy on the adoption front this week as we scramble to renew this and that!  So far I have managed to get Dave's passport renewal and our child abuse and criminal clearnace requests mailed out.  We have also managed to receive a re-fingerprinting date with Immigrations for June 30.  Thankfully, we don't have to return to Philly for that!  Yesterday we had a phone meeting with the adoption coordinator from our agency to discuss our service plan, and from that meeting, we have an on-line international adoption training to complete this summer.  It sounds pretty interesting, but it might be tricky to find a time that Dave and I can sit down and complete it together!  I'm working on getting paperwork together for a grant request, so that is a matter of prayer.  We have requested updated growth information and photos from the orphanage so we can include an outfit in the care package we are putting together to send to Sophia.  We are also setting up a date to meet with our social worker in person at our home for our home study update.  Whew!  I told you it has been busy around here, but it's all good, and I'm officially on summer vacation, so I have time to do it!  God is good--the timing couldn't have been better!

Things to pray about:
         - A quick turn around for all of our paper work and home study updates.  Many items are out of our hands and we must rely on the offices from which we are requesting information, and the USPS!
         - Sophia's continued therapy and development.  Pray that she might be prepared for meeting us and the adoption process as much as possible for her age and developmental level.
         - That God will prepare our entire family for meeting and loving our new addition.  This will affect each of us in a different way, and we are praying that we will all grow closer to each other and God as a result!
         - We still need approximately $3000 for this phase of the adoption process.  God will provide!

Thanks for continuing to journey with us!

Paperwork Update

Today Dave and I finally had the time to go to a notary together and get some paperwork notarized. We praise God for the kindness of the notary who did not charge us saying, "Adoption is expensive enough!" I also sent two copies of our home study to Harrisburg, PA, to receive the state seal of Pennsylvania which is needed to authenticate the notarization, I guess? Goodness me there's a lot of hoops to jump through! But we are getting closer! Once I receive the home studies back, everything will be sent certified mail to our agency in Kansas and it will be out of our hands...yeah! We are getting closer, baby step by baby step!

In other news, we are planning an interesting fundraiser for the next few weeks. It involves selling flower bulbs that can be planted this fall to come up in the spring. If you are interested in helping us sell these (think Girl Scout cookie-like brochure...really easy!) or would like to purchase some bulbs ($6 a packet and the number of bulbs per packet varies depending on the flower type) let me know! We get 50% profit on these!

Each step brings us closer to Sophia...guide our steps, Lord!

Financial Update

Many people have been asking me about our financial status since the completion of our successful garage sale. We praise God that our home study ($1500) is paid for due to the proceeds, as well as our immigration paperwork ($800) and post-adoption visits ($900). I have changed our ticker on the right side of our blog to reflect our next big goal which is $5500 for our agency fee. Please pray that our cookbooks will sell, as this would make a big dent in that amount. We also have a myriad of other fundraisers going on right now: Avon (through 4/26), Mary Kay (through 4/30), homemade cards being sold at a local art gallery, and sub sandwich tickets for a local sub place being sold around town. There are several other fundraisers in the works, too: Tupperware, Pampered Chef, Tastefully Simple, a Zumba-A-Thon, spaghetti dinners, and pancake breakfasts. If anything interests you from this list, make sure and contact me for more information! You can also pray for a few grant applications that will be going out soon--hopefully God will see fit to provide in that way as well. We are so excited about how God is providing as we need it...thanks for your prayers!

Until Sophia is home...

Praising God for a Successful Yard/Bake Sale!

Here is a synopsis of our Yard/Bake Sale Adoption Fundraiser in pictures...enjoy!

This is what the church foyer looked like on Thursday night when we began unloading the four locations where we had been storing items...

Sabastian and Jonathan were big helpers with the loading and unloading, as well as their friend, Brandon, and several men from church...

When we finally got everything into one location, there was way more stuff than I had ever imagined--what a blessing, but what a lot of work! I'm so thankful for my Mom and some other ladies from church who helped organize on Thursday night and again on Friday morning...

This is Beckie setting up the Bake Sale...she and her husband and daughter are adopting a little boy, most likely from China, and joined us in this endeavor...

Here we are on our beautiful, sunny yard sale day! I am praising God for answering our specific prayers: nice weather and lots of buyers! In the foreground of this photo is Tiffany, one of my special friends from church who helped us on both days of the sale--she's the clothing sorter Queen!

A view of the household items...

The shoes my Mom meticulously separated and organized...

Nicole and Tiffany hard at work on the 40+ boxes of clothing we received!

Some of our buyers rummaging through the clothing boxes...some ladies were at this for hours!

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All told we made close to $3000 on the yard sale and $600 on the bake sale (which we shared with Beckie and her family.) God provided once again, just when we needed it...we got our home study bill on Friday and another bill on Saturday that our yard sale funds covered completely! Praise God! We continue to need our agency fee of $5500, which, if we sell all of our cookbooks, will be covered. Thanks so much for your prayers for this huge fundraiser, and know that God answered them completely!

Praising God for His bountiful blessings!

Excitement is Mounting!

We have so much to be thankful and excited about on our adoption journey this week:

1. Our HUGE Yard/Bake Sale is this coming Friday and Saturday! I know God is going to richly bless this effort. We have already been blessed by so many donations of items and time by friends and family. Come on out if you live nearby!

2. The cookbook is here! Stay tuned for how you can order one if you would like one. I'll post about that next week...

3. Our home study is done and in hand! Yeah! Now we can move ahead to the immigration paperwork and other items for the dossier, as well as grant applications.

4. I get to create a scrapbook as part of the dossier--I just found out about that today! What fun that will be!

As you can see, we have a lot to be thankful for and excited about. Please continue to keep us and our daughter Sophia in your prayers. We are many steps closer to meeting our new daughter...I can't wait!

Rejoicing in what the Lord has done, is doing, and will do...

Home Study Update

This week we received an update about our home study. It has been through the first review by our agency, and has been sent back to our social worker for some corrections. Hopefully we will have the final, notarized copy next week sometime! We are thankful that this step is behind us, but know that the financial aspects of the adoption are now going to be set in motion quite quickly, and we still need to raise a lot of money. Please continue to pray for us in this regard!

He owns the cattle on a thousand hills...

Little by Little...

I know I haven't posted anything in a while, but that's because little has really changed since the last post. We are still waiting for approval on our home study so that we can move forward with the other government paperwork and grant applications. The proof for our cookbook is being reviewed as I write, and hopefully we will have cookbooks to sell in the next few weeks. Garage sale donations are flowing in...just pray for good weather and lots of people to buy all the stuff we have! And we are in the middle of our sub ticket fundraiser as well...lots of irons in the fire, but nothing is burning too quickly--guess that's a good thing in many ways!

Thanks for journeying with us!

Keep Praying!

Thank you so much for your prayers on our behalf as we move forward by faith with Sophia's adoption. Our home study might be completed by this time next week, so we are looking at not only the homestudy fee needing to be paid, but also the agency fee. However, we are so very excited about that milestone being completed because it opens up so many other doors for us...grant applications, fingerprinting and documentation appointment, and ultimately, a completed dossier. Please continue to pray as we walk by faith through the open doors that God places in front of us. We only want to do His will, not our own!

We walk by faith, not by sight!

Finally Moving Along

After many months of not moving, we are finally picking up speed on our adoption process! Today I forwarded our preliminary application and a draft of our home study to our adoption agency. There are many changes coming to our agency, and since we are in transition, they are trying to figure out how to best nudge us in to the process amidst the changes. Only a few minor corrections need to be made to our home study to get it up to par for Taiwan, so that's wonderful news. We are also looking into getting a date to go to Philly to get fingerprinted for our immigration paperwork, which is another big step. Please continue to pray for the funds to come in, as now that we are picking up speed, money will be needed more urgently! I'm excited to see how the Lord continues to provide, IN HIS TIME!

Moving forward toward Sophia...

Long Story Short

We have changed our goal from adopting from Mainland China to adopting from Taiwan. Why? A variety of reasons: paperwork issues, government regs, financial issues, timing...put most importantly, we feel a peace about this change and know that God is in control. We have many Chinese friends who are actually Taiwanese, and we are excited to think that Sophia will be from their country. We are still considering a special needs placement at this point, so that hasn't changed. Once we get approved by our new agency (our former agency did not work in Taiwan), the process could move fairly quickly, so we are excited about that.

We praise God for supplying the $1500 we needed for our home study. It is still not completely done, and we need to wait until we are approved by our new agency before we can get the home study approved. Which brings us to our next financial need...we need the agency fee of $5500 before we can move forward with this agency and our home study. This is a procedure that our new agency has implemented recently because some people have never paid for their agency services after the agency put in a lot of time and effort on their behalf. Please pray for us to be patient and wait for God's timing on this. We know He is in control!

The program director for Taiwan with our agency (located in Kansas, by the way!) actually lives right down the road from us...how cool is that! We are looking forward to meeting her and her family soon. She has two adopted daughters, one of whom was adopted from Taiwan. We know that none of this was just "coincidence" and we are excited about how God will continue to lead us in the days and months ahead.

Thanks for your continued prayers on Sophia's behalf!

Adoption Update

I haven't posted much on here lately because not much has been happening on the adoption front. Right now we are in a waiting pattern for our home study to be completed. We have run into some glitches with wording (it has to meet the Hague Covention criteria) and clearances (apparently we need clearances from every state we have lived in since we were 18...for me it's just PA, but Dave needs several...one would think the federal clearance would cover that, but...). So, we are doing what we can to move that process along, and still trusting God for the funds to cover it. We are still about $500 short of the necessary $1500 for the home study. But we haven't had to pay for it yet, so there's still time for God to work. I am also working on getting all of the cookbook recipes typed so that we can begin that fundraiser. I'm excited about how that's going to turn out. Thanks for checking in and keeping us in your thoughts and prayers!

Taking it one step at a time...

New Plan

After much prayer, discussion, and pursuit of other options with no clear results, we have decided to stick with our current agency but pursue a special needs adoption from China. All along we had it in the backs of our minds that we would be doing a special needs adoption anyway, but our agency wanted us to enter the traditional program first, and then possibly switch down the road. This was due to age restrictions, etc., which are agency policies. We know we are not willing to wait the 4-6 years that many are now predicting the wait will be for a traditional Chinese adoption (once the dossier is logged in...not including all this time we are spending now!) so we are just going to trust the Lord for a special needs placement that fits the birth order age policy in His timing. The good thing about this is that it lowers the amount of money that we need for our first agency fee, which I have reflected on our ticker. We are now at $1000, thanks to some new donations, which is 2/3 of our home study fee...only $500 needed to cover that cost entirely! We have not received our home study this week as I thought we would, but since we don't have all the money yet, I guess that's fine! Please pray for patience on our part, as well as the needed funds to come in...I know they will in God's time!

Xie, Xie...Thank You!

We're Getting Closer!

Thanks to the generosity of some more friends, we have been able to add $100 more to our adoption fund recently. We are now in need of $550 in order to have our home study completely paid for. We are so thankful to God for His provision thus far, and we know He will continue to provide, in His time.

After much consideration and prayer, we decided to stick with our original agency, so our home study is being written by that agency's guidelines. It is being written in such a way that we are being approved for a special needs adoption or a traditional Chinese placement, so that we can go either way and not need to have anything rewritten. Please pray for our social worker as she writes the report, and for the additional home study funds to be supplied by the time it is finished!

Thank you for your prayers and support!

Home Study Interview

Thursday's home study interview went well--thanks for your prayers! Our social worker took a guided tour of our home, led by Mr. Benjamin, who proudly showed off all of the rooms of our humble abode. Then, she talked with our two older boys, who didn't really do much talking, but that's how it goes with 11 and 13 year old boys who would rather be outside playing--and that was fine with me! She then finished up with some questions for me and Dave, and we discussed the fact that our agency has not been very cooperative thus far with providing needed paperwork to our social worker, so perhaps we need to find a different agency. That is a little nerve-wracking to me, but we want to be open to God's leading, so we are taking this next week to pray about this decision and research other agencies. We would covet your prayers on this!

Our funds are coming in slowly but surely. We now need to work on gathering the second half of the home study fee ($750) so that we can pay that when our home study is done. I have a lot of recipes to type into the database for our cookbook fundraiser, which I hope to have to the publisher in November, so that is moving along. We continue to try and get the word out about the ornaments and other gifts available here...I have colored flyers coming in the mail to help me with that endeavor. If you would like to help us get that word out to friend and family, please let me know, and I will gladly send you some flyers!

We are so grateful to family and friends who are keeping us in their prayers. May God richly bless you all!

Sophia Elizabeth thanks you, too!

Updated Ticker!

I have updated our fundraising ticker...God is good! We have our final home study interview here at the house tomorrow evening, and I should be paying the first half of the home study fee. Now we need to save the next half ($750) so we can pay it when the home study is finally written. That way we can send the completed home study to grant agencies, in hope of getting some adoption grants to help us with the country fees and other agency fees. Don't forget our fundraising efforts via the ornament and other gift sales (there is a drawing going on this month for some great gifts...you are entered if you spend $50!) and look for information on our recipe book in the next couple of months!

Thanks for helping us bring Sophia home!

Progress!

Today I took the last two pieces of our home study paperwork to our family doctor, and Dave and I got our fingerprints taken...I think we are done with all of the myriad of little "this's and that's" for the home study paper trail. Yeah! As "we speak" (or "I type"), Dave is at his personal interview with our social worker; mine is on Wednesday morning. Then, our family interview and home visit is scheduled for October 9. Hopefully all of the paperwork that we had to farm out to government agencies, doctors, and friends (for references) will all be returned promptly so that our social worker can get our home study written quickly and efficiently. Of course, once it is completed, that means we need the second half of the home study fee, so begin to pray about that! God is good, and He will provide in His time, just as He did for the first half of the fee. Our excitement is mounting!

Jehovah Jireh...my Provider...His grace is sufficient for me!

God Answers Prayer!

Last Sunday, I asked our Sunday School class to pray very specifically for the first $750 needed to pay the first half of our home study fee. We need to pay this fee this coming week when we have our home study interviews. I knew from past experience with the Lord that He would provide just what we needed, when we needed it, and it would come from sources totally unexpected to us, but not to Him. Well, if you glance over at our little ticker on the right, you will see that we are just shy of our goal with a few days left..Praise God! And yes, the sources were totally unexpected and humbling, and we are eternally grateful to those who gave.

Thank you for praying...and giving...our Sophia home!