Home Study is Underway

We had our first home study meeting yesterday.

In my mind I had this built up to be an intimidating/they are out to get us kind of thing. I pictured a cold-hearted Nazi-like person coming into my house to prove that we are terrible people and that they may even take away the children we already have...not really. But, I was anxious.

It was actually really good. The lady who his walking with us through the home study is fantastic. She was extremely helpful and encouraging. We will meet with her a couple more times. As we go she has to gather information about our background (she is a certified investigator). We will fill out a bunch of forms, get our finger prints done, get references etc. It is a lot to do but each part is one step closer to the end or really the beginning...


On the fundraising front, we need to raise about $15,000 more. That sounds like a lot but God has provided so much already that it really doesn't seem like a big deal.

Here are some of the things that the remainder of the money will cover:

International Service Fee $4,500
Medical Tests $450
Document & Translation Fees $600
Airfare for 2 trips to Ethiopia $6,000 ($1,500 per person, per trip)

There are more things but this may help you know where all this money is headed.

We have seen God provide in amazing ways so far and are excited about how He is going to do it from here on.

Please continue to pray for us to love our child and that God would bring him/her home quickly.

Moving on...

These past couple of weeks have been full of adoption craziness. Right after we sent in our first big chunk of money and paperwork we began to aim towards scheduling our home study.

Our agency, AGCI, is based out of Oregon so they can't really do the home study. We are having it done through an agency here in South Carolina, called Adoption Advocacy. They sent us a bunch of paper work to fill out as well as scheduled our home visit. They will come and check out our life on the morning of May 26.
After that visit we will meet with them once more in their office.

We also received a package from AGCI that includes our adoption planner notebook, more stuff to fill out, and a workbook for our on-line course we have to take. There is much to do!

On the financial side of things, we have been blown away by God's provision. we are just over a month into fund raising and are just about to pass the half way mark. We had one person, that we don't even know, send us $5000 just because she has a heart for Ethiopia. God is being so good to us.

We know that this whole thing is from Him and we are humbled that HE is letting us be part of it.

Please pray for our home study. It is kind of stressful to think about have your life dissected...

Big Day Today

In my previous post about our BBQ, I mentioned that we were $500 away from our first big goal. Today, we move on to the next goal....

We had a check in our mailbox today for $500! Thank You Lord!

This is such an amazing journey.

BBQ

Yesterday was such a good day. We are constanly blown away by God and how he uses people to help us out. He even uses BBQ...and it was really, really good. I consider myself an expert on eating BBQ and my very sensitive and refined tastes judge this bbq to be beautiful to the taste.

There two basic things about the day that really humbled us. One was that we made just over $2200! We were expecting around $1200. There were several peopl who voluntarily paid WAY more for their BBQ than the $6 we were charging. That was very humbling. So, with that amount we are roughly $500 away from our first goal of $7300.

So we are so thankful that God provided for us financially again and proved to me that my faith is pretty small....why can't I learn?

The second that blew me away was the people who served us. It is one thing to see money come in but it is such a humbling thing to see your friends give so much of themselves. Thanks to Neal, Joel, Hunter, Krystal, Walt, Andrew, Amber, Cory, Matt, Megan, Sara, Katelyn, Jimmy, who worked all day cutting meat, holding signs, setting up, cleaning up, serving people...YOU loved us well.

Then there are the pastors of Crossopint Church, Jason, Jeremy, and Ken who gave us free reign of the church facility and helped us promote the BBQ. Great friends and pastors!

Finally the Bennetts a.k.a "Slap Yo Mama BBQ", from Rock Hill SC. Jim, Annette, Samual and David (also a student at CLemson). They drove 2 hours, slept in the church parking lot cooked the meat, worked all day Saturday then drove home. THAT IS CRAZY! But it was such a gift of love towards us.

We are thankful. So thankful. And, just a little closer...