Good News!

We have some good news about our adoption. We learned today that our Agency received our Letter Seeking Confirmation, or LSC. This is the next big step in the adoption process, and we are thankful to be that much closer to bringing our girls home. Our agency is going to overnight that to us, and once we have it, we can submit the paperwork to USCIS for our i800. Sometimes it seems overwhelming that there are still so many steps to get through, but it is really exciting to be past another major milestone. In ten to twelve weeks, we should be in China! I can't wait to get my girls home!

We have started doing a little bit of our shopping for the trip, and that is so exciting. We bought a baby doll for each of them, and a little hat, and a pair of sunglasses. We want to try to find some good touch-and-feel books, but we haven't gotten any of those yet. We still have plenty of time, but it feels really good to be close enough to start picking up some of these things. Question for other adoptive families: What was the best thing you brought along for your child? We would love to learn from the experiences of other families.

Kristie

LID and our Jimmy John's Fundraiser

I just realized that we never updated everyone about our LID. We learned at the end of the month that we had a log-in-date of March 21st. So the day of my last post, when I was feeling discouraged and disappointed, we actually had been logged in; I just didn't know it yet. I think it is really cool that we were logged in on World Down Syndrome Day! We were told to expect travel four to five months from LID. That still seems like a very long time to wait, but we are trying to be patient. We know that God's timing is best.

We also heard back about our Jimmy John's fundraiser. We were greatly encouraged to learn that we made $434 for our girls' adoptions! Than you very much to everyone who participated. Our next fundraiser will be in May at The Cone, and we will pass more details along as we have them.

In addition to praising God for the good news about our adoption, we would appreciate prayers for our family. We have been very sick again, and both Greg and I feel more tired than we can ever remember feeling before. It is easy to be discouraged when we feel so run-down. Please pray that God will remind of us of his incredible faithfulness and that we will have a season of rest soon. Thank you for your friendship and support.

Kristie

World Down Syndrome Day

I don't really have much news to share at this point, but I do want to make sure that I acknowledge the fact that today is World Down Syndrome Day and express how blessed I feel to be the Mommy of a little girl with Down Syndrome. I can't wait until I am the Mommy of three! I am posting a few pictures of Mikaela in celebration of this day. The first one is her dressed as a princess for Halloween. The second is a shot of her with Josiah and Gabriela showing off the outfits that they got for Christmas. Next year, I will make sure to have shots of Mikaela with Isabelle and Hallie.

Several people have asked how our Jimmy John's Fundraiser went, but we don't know yet. As soon as we hear something, we will post about it. Many, many thanks to everyone who participated! It was an encouraging evening for all of us.

We really hoped that by this point we would have had our LID (Log-in Date - the date that our papers are officially entered into the Chinese Central Adoption System). We sent our papers to our agency near the beginning of February, and they sent them on to China right at the end of Chinese New Year. We thought it would only be a week or so after that before we had our LID. Unfortunately, our agency just discovered that one of our papers had been misplaced in China, and no one had let them know about it. Nothing has been done with our papers at all! They were able to straighten everything out, and are very optimistic that we will have LID soon. Please keep praying.

Jimmy John's Fundraiser - March 12

As we mentioned in our last update, we are having a Jimmy John's fundraiser on Tuesday, March 12th. Please help us by spreading the word and stopping by if there is any way that you can. The manager who has been helping us is extremely nice and compassionate, and he worked hard to get this fundraiser approved for us. His supervisors are concerned about our ability to spread the word and get people involved, so we are really praying for a good turn-out. It seems like that might make the supervisors more willing to approve these sorts of events in the future.

The important information about this fundraiser is

- The event will run from 5pm-9pm on March 12th.

- 20% of participating sales will go directly to Isabelle and Hallie's adoption.

- All types of purchases count - dine-in, carry-out, drive through, and delivery.

- Three different locations are participating:
Springdale - 11493 Princeton Pike
Bridgewater Falls - 3335 Princeton Rd.
Hamilton - 1388 Main St.

- You must bring a flyer with you if you want a portion of your purchase to benefit our adoptions. You can click on the links below to download the correct flyer.

Hamilton

Bridgewater Falls

Springdale

New Pictures!

We were so surprised today to get new pictures of the girls. We didn't expect to get any new information of any kind before we traveled, especially about Isabelle. Hallie is in the yellow shirt, and she hasn't changed very much since her last picture. Isabelle is in the pink, and we can't believe how much she has grown up. We can't wait to get these two little ones home!

A lot of good news

I can't believe how long it has been since Greg and I have updated our blog. We have been busy as usual with the adoption and with life, and on top of that, we have all been sick twice in the last month and a half. Fortunately, we only had colds, and not some of the nastier bugs that have been going around, but even so, it has been difficult to keep up with everything that we need to do.

Our dossier is finally done!!! Yay!! -- We had all of the documents together by the end of December, and mailed them off to a courier service in Washington D.C. to get the Federal certifications and Chinese Embassy seals. Unfortunately, when they arrived here in mid January, we found a mistake in one form. We had an extra copy without the mistake, but all of the certifications had to be redone. We mailed that form back to D.C., and sent the rest of our documents to our agency in California. Unfortunately, they discovered at the beginning of this month that a different form also needed to be redone. We completed it, had it notarized, county certified, state certified and set it back to D.C. as well. Our agency now has all of our forms, and they think that they look good now. I am not sure if they have mailed our dossier to China yet or not, because they are trying to time it so that it arrives right as Chinese New Year is ending so that it won't end up buried at the bottom of a pile on someone's desk. As long as the Chinese adoption authorities don't reject any of our forms, then we are essentially done with our paperwork for this adoption. There will be a few more short forms for us to fill out, sign, and return at a few points along the way, but we think the hardest part is finally behind us. Please pray that this is the case.

We also have some wonderful news about out fundraising. As you know, God did provide everything that we needed for our dossier submission. We were incredibly thankful for that, but we knew that we would owe our agency between $10,000 and $12,000 once we reached the next phase of our adoption, and we didn't have any idea where that money was going to come from. We did not receive any of the other grants that we had applied for. But by God's amazing grace, we already have everything we need for this next step! Friends and family members have continued to send donations in for our adoption, and a family that we barely even know contributed a donation more generous than anything we had ever hoped for. As a result of these gifts, there is currently more than $16,000 available in the girls adoption fund! That will cover everything we need until travel time. We cannot even find words to express our gratitude and joy!

We have now raised nearly $35,000 for the girls' adoption, and that is incredible. When we travel, we will need just over $20,000 more, so we can't stop our fundraising efforts yet. Toward that end, we will be doing a Jimmy Johns fundraiser on March 12, and a fundraiser at the Cone, probably in May. We will be providing more details about both of those soon.

Thank you always for all of your support.

Kristie

Fund-Raising News!

If, based on the title of this post, you guessed that we have good news to share about our fund-raising, then you'd be absolutely right. We mentioned just before Christmas that we had been approved for a matching grant of a potential total of $8,000 and that we were really praying that God would supply that full amount to go along with what is already in our girls' account with The Shepherd's Crook. A couple of our family members contributed to the matching grant over Christmas, and that was a huge encouragement to us. But, with the deadline coming up next Friday, earlier this week we were starting to feel a bit discouraged about all of this. As we were leaving our small group Bible study on Tuesday evening, some of our friends asked us how the matching grant was coming along. At that point, we were still roughly $3,500 short of the $4,000 that HANDinHAND could match for us, but we were still praying that some how, God would provide all of that, because that would allow us to submit our dossier to China right away, which would keep the process moving. Well, a couple of hours later, He showed us what He was doing.

A family from our previous church (the sending church for the church plant that we are a part of now) had contacted us shortly before Christmas to ask how our adoptions and our fund-raising were going. They said that they wanted to make a donation, but it would have to wait until after the new year and they weren't sure yet how much it would be. We were really touched at their interest in Isabelle and Hallie's story. (On a side note, that has been an enormous and humbling blessing throughout this journey; our girls' stories have reached more people than we ever could have dreamed, and it has been astonishing to watch God work over this past year. He has been bringing people into our lives that we didn't know or hadn't heard from in a long time, and we are deeply grateful for His work and for everyone who has gotten involved along the way.) Late Tuesday night, they e-mailed us to say that they would cover the remainder of what was needed for the matching grant, and maybe even a little bit more! We were floored when we read that! We didn't expect God to work in this way, but this news was a HUGE answer to prayer, and we are overjoyed at this. We still can't quite believe it all. This means that we'll be able to send our dossier to China in the next few weeks, which means that we could be traveling in June. That would be another answer to prayer, as Isabelle will turn 4 in early June, and we want to be there with her by her birthday. Things will have to move quickly from this point, but it seems possible right now. So stay tuned, and we'll see what God does in the next few months!

Greg