Update and a change of date

I have a few quick updates. Donations are continuing to come in, and we will be able to make another payment to our adoption agency this month. Although we are still far short of the amount that we owe them, we are thankful for each step, and greatly appreciate all of the people who are helping us bring our daughters home.

In our last update, we mentioned that we had a silent auction fundraiser coming up on November 10th, but we are going to have to move the date. As you might remember, we are hosting this event with our good friends, and they just got news that their paperwork is being processed several weeks ahead of schedule, and they will be in Russia for the first of their three trips during the first half of November. We are overjoyed for them, and quite relieved to have an extra month to plan this event. The new date for this fundraiser is December 8th. We already had a craft sale planned for that week, so we are going to combine the two events. If you are in the Cincinnati area, please stop by. You might be able to find some great Christmas presents there. And for those of you who don't live in the Cincinnati area, the items that don't sell on the 8th will be available online afterward.

My sister-in-law is going to be hosting a Thirty-one party for us in the greater Pittsburgh area. The Thirty-one consultant has agreed to donate her entire commission to Isabelle and Hallie's adoption. That will be 25% of the sales that day. This event will be on November 10th (That is not a mistake. The date really is the same as the original plan for our silent auction), and again there will be a way for people to participate on-line if they don't live near Pittsburgh, so stay tuned for details about that. This could be another way to help our girls while doing some Christmas shopping, so please considering being a part of this.

Thanks for all of your prayers and encouragement. This process is long and tiring at times, but we just keep thinking about how wonderful it will be to have our girls home with us.

Kristie

Fundraising Update

We just want to give everyone a quick update on the fundraising opportunities for our adoption.

Grants:
We submitted a grant to National Adoption Foundation the middle of last month. Their board was supposed to meet the last week of September, and recipients were to be notified in the next two weeks. We are now two full weeks into October, so we are assuming we did not get that grant. We are disappointed, but we know that God has the perfect plan of the funding of our adoption. We are able to resubmit our application for consideration next quarter, so we are planning to do that.

We submitted an application to Help Us Adopt near the end of last month. The deadline is the middle of this month, but they won't make a decision until early December. We would appreciate your prayers, as they tend to give priority to childless couples.

We are nearly finished with our application to Show Hope. The deadline for that one is the end of this month, and we anticipate sending it in at the beginning of next week. They will make a decision within 90 days of that point.

Other fundraisers:

As I mentioned in a previous post, our pancake breakfast and silent auction fundraiser was a great success in spite of a smaller crowd than we had hoped for. As a result of this fundraiser and a few donations that came in afterward, we were able to submit our 800a and make a small payment to our agency. Praise God!

We're having a similar fundraiser on this end of town next month. Since November is national Adoption Month, we are hoping for a better turn-out. We are also having this event in the evening, not the morning, so hopefully we won't have all the sports and work conflicts that we had the first time around. We are going to do a dessert and silent auction this time, and might even have some live entertainment. We already have a few donations in hand, and several more are already pledged.

Greg already wrote a brief post about our wristband fundraiser, and we have had some success with that.

We also have a new opportunity to benefit our adoption just by buying coffee. Simply follow the link to our store front https://justlovecoffee.com/godwinadoption. Anything you buy will benefit our adoption. All of their coffee is Fair Trade, and as much as possible is also organic and shade grown. Check it out.

I think that's probably enough for now. We have two more fundraisers in the early planning stages, but I will save them for a later post.

Kristie

Wristbands for Our Girls

As a way of raising funds for Isabelle's and Hallie's adoptions, we are selling wristbands imprinted with their names. We are wearing them as a way of reminding us to pray for our girls constantly, and as a way of starting conversations with others about them. I haven't had any luck with that so far, but who knows, maybe someday somebody will ask me why I have a couple of wristbands on my arm. If you'd like to have a pair to wear along with us, then click here to order a pair. We're asking for $5 per pair, and you'll get a receipt for a tax-deductible donation of $4.23, per IRS regulations. They'll be up on the right-hand side of our blog, too, so you'll always be able to find them there.

I'm sorry for the lack of posts this week. Everyone in the family—except for Gabriela—has gotten sick over the past five days, and we're spending our evenings working on grant applications. Over the past two weeks, we've managed to submit two applications and have another just over half-way done. We expect to get an answer on the first grant we applied for in the next 7-10 days, and we are anxious to hear their answer. Thanks for all of your prayers, and we hope to give you a longer update before too long!

Greg