Not a whole lot has happened since our last post. We are STILL waiting on Callie’s LOA. We are not just sitting here twiddling our
thumbs though J
The Lord continues to prove to us that He has every aspect
of this journey in His hands. We were
told we would be considered for a grant from Adoptions from the Heart May
3. We were so praying this would
happen. You see we are projecting our
travel to be end of July beginning of August and that is the highest tourist
time for China. This means the estimated
costs for our plane tickets and hotel will probably not cover the cost. So even if we would have only received a
small grant it would have helped to cushion that extra expense. We were informed we did NOT receive the
grant. I was kind of proud of myself
because my first response was, “Ok Lord you must have this all taken care of
already!” This past week in one day we
received two checks for the adoption that equaled $1000! God has this!!!! Every piece of it. We received a video of Chayla (which I am not
going to share for privacy reasons) and we were discouraged with what we
saw. Then the Lord reminded me we have
two daughters coming home so they will have each other through the scary,
emotional and uncertain times. Before we
knew there were two daughters for us I had never really thought about the
comfort this will be for both of them.
To see someone else that looks like them, talks like them (for a little
while) and is going through the same things they are and to have a sister to do
life with.
Ciara has been at me for MONTHS to redo her bedroom. When we found out we have two daughters
coming home and not just one we knew we would need to make some significant
changes to her room. We took down the
crib. This is the first in 18 years
there isn’t one up somewhere in our house.
It was kind of sad. We also took
her antique rope bed down. We painted
the walls. Ciara has wanting to make an
accent wall with circles since she started talking about this so we let her
pick the colors and do it. Her friend
Becca helped her and they did the majority of it free handed. It looks great! My mother said we could have the day bed that
she had so we brought that home for Ciara.
We are in the process of painting the bunk beds that we were given by
some awesome friends. When it is
completely finished I will post a picture of the finished product.
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| The "pink" room Ciara wanted rid of |
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| Painting, painting and more painting |
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| Finished! |
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| Bunk beds being painted |
We are anticipating Conrad’s graduation from Manheim Central
High School on June 9th. So
we have been busy trying to plan his party before he leaves for three weeks to
go to North Carolina to help harvest Sage.
We were told that our agency received our authenticated
paperwork back a week and a half ago and they sent it to the Chinese Government
last week. So we are really praying that
they will issue our LOA for Callie quickly since they have the “extra” step of
paperwork that they required from us. We
are getting to the point of having to rethink when we might be able to travel
and I don’t like this one bit L I know God has this all in control also it is
just so hard to remember when while we are in the middle of it.
Exodus 14:14 says, “The Lord is working for you, and you
have only to be silent.” This verse has been a daily reminder that we need to
just rest in the Lord and it WILL happen in His perfect timing. This is so not me. I am very much like my Daddy in that I want
to fix it and I always have a plan “A”, “B” and “C” to back it up. So resting in His arms and trusting Him is
work for me.
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A sister from Church had a word for us last Sunday and it
was focused around this verse. She had
no idea it is one of our verses we are clinging to. The word the Lord gave her for us is that the
sea has already been split and we need to just continue walking through it
while we rest in the Lord as He works for us.
AS we worship and thank the Lord for all He has already accomplished for
us through the process He will continue to break the chains for the remainder
of the process to move quickly.
We sold 60 t-shirts.
Thank you to everyone that ordered one.
They were delivered to me the end of last week so I will be making
contact with you for delivery.
We kicked off our puzzle fundraiser a week and a half ago
and the support and Blessings given have been overwhelming. If you did not receive information on this
and would like to be involved please comment in the comments below.
Lastly we were surprised with an update from the girls last
week. We received our first picture of
the girls TOGETHER!!!! They also told us
they will be moving the girls together.
There was one concern in the update but will wait until we have
confirmation on it to share. Just pray
we get that confirmation this week, nothing life threatening. We so want to be able to be with our girls to
be a support and love on them for anything scary they have to go through in
life.
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| A painting a friend did that I can't wait to get on my wall with our girls pictures |
