Wow....

Aaron and I continue to be overwhelmed by the generosity of those around us, helping us bring our baby home.  These next few weeks are about to get crazy, and we are working constantly to make sure these fundraisers are going to go well!  Donations continue to pour in for our yard sale next weekend.  Friends and family, both here and back home are constantly collecting stuff for us and no doubt we will be taking a car load down with us!  Can NOT wait to see what God is going to do with this stuff!  We also got word that a church back home in GA that we have never been to and don't even know the name of, not only got together some things for the sale, but also, the pastor told them instead of taking up an offering they were going to give what they would have normally given to someone who needs it and they gave it to us!! How AWESOME is that? I am just in awe of God working through all of this!

Things are coming together SO well for the concert on the 11th as well.  We've got flyers out everywhere, it's posted on several Raleigh events websites, people are Facebooking and tweeting it like crazy.  Donations are coming in for the silent auction.  So far we've been given a year's worth of free breakfast from Chick-Fil-A, ice cream from Goodberry's, a tote from Minus 1 Project, and a year's worth of shoes from Squeak Me Shoes(these are super cute and it's an adoption driven company!!)!! These will all be a part of our silent auction that night as well as some other things we're working on.  The music is going to be great, there's going to be FREE coffee from a new coffee house in the area, and we are praying for a BIG turnout!!  Wow, I'm getting so excited about the next couple of weeks just seeing it all in writing.  I love seeing how God is providing for our family!

On another note, we've had the first 2 of our 4 homestudy visits already and they have been great! Only 2 more to go and they will be done by Wednesday!  Sunday we're getting a pile of stuff notarized for the dossier, which should pretty much take care of that except for a few small things.  We are getting SO close!! Thanks for all the encouragement in the last post, we so appreciate all of you!

Concert Update

We have added another artist performing for the concert, Jonathan Edwards: The Aftermath.  We are excited to have someone local playing as well!  We have been blown away by how generous people have been for this night, God's hand is truly in it and we cannot wait to see how it turns out!  Here's the new flyer, feel free to share it with friends!

Exciting News!!

We are a little excited in our house right now!  After about a month's delay, we have finally been given a social worker to do our home study!! Not only that, but she has already contacted us(on a holiday weekend!!) and it looks like we will be fnished with all of our visits by next Wednesday!!! Thank you Lord!! We were so praying that this delay wouldn't cause major problems with the home study getting done way later than we thought.  Especially now that we have to have our FDL in order to submit our dossier.  Our first visit is THIS Wednesday night! I feel like things are really about to take off right now, we're praying to be waitlisted sometime in April! We've got several big fundraisers coming up over the next few weeks with the yard sale and the concert, and now we're adding the home study on top of those, so we're going to be BUSY!  But I wouldn't have it any other way! We are praying for HUGE results with these fundraisers, and that we raise the money we need for our dossier.  Please join with us and pray that things go well, that God is glorified through it all, and that we use all of this as an opportunity to teach others about this journey we are on to display the Gospel in our lives!  God is so so good!

We're Having a Concert!!

All right NC people, here's a way for you to support our adoption.  One of our favorite music artists has agreed to do a concert to benefit our adoption.  We are SUPER excited and praying this to be BIG!!!  Jon Troast is going to be performing.  You can check him out at http://www.jontroast.com/ .  If you like Jack Johnson, Jason Mraz, Matt Wertz, you'll love Jon!  Here are the details:

When: Friday March 11, 2011  7:00pm
Where: The Summit Church: North Raleigh
               5805 Departure Dr.
               Raleigh, NC
Cost: Suggested $10 donation at the door

We're going to have some awesome raffles going on all night, as well as some prizes from the Chick-Fil-A prize wheel!  So tell all of your friends and come join us for a fun night of music and fellowship!

Here's the flyer...

Happy Valentine's Day!

Well, this is the third Valentine's Day celebrated with my sweet, sweet man.  I have not always been a fan of this day, especially before I was married.  Even now, it's not that big of a deal to me.  I am thankful that I have a man who makes me feel special each and every day of the year and doesn't need the push of a holiday to buy me flowers.  God has truly blessed me with my husband.  He is a man that is not afraid to speak his mind or stand on his convictions. He leads me each day closer to the Lord.  Through this crazy process of adotion he has had to, on more than one occasion, preach the Gospel to me and remind me of the bigger picture, and I am so thankful for that.  He totally gets this journey we are on, and always knows how to pick me up when I need someone to speak truth in my life.  He is going to be an amazing dad and I am so excited to see him with our sweet little one.  I was walking through Target last night and just had to stroll through the baby section, doing a little dreaming.  I was overwhelmed with love, for our baby, for our family, and cannot wait to become a family of three.  So this Valentine's day, I am loving my husband, our sweet baby we have yet to see, our family, our amazing God, this crazy adoption journey, and we pray that this will be our last Valentine's day as a family of 2!

Another Yard Sale!

That's right, we're having another yard sale!! This time, we'll be back home in Georgia.  We are currently almost finished with our dossier paperwork, and about to start our home study, woo hoo!! So this yard sale is going to help us raise some money to go towards that $5,000 we have to send in with the paperwork.  We are so excited to be in this phase of the process and are hoping and praying to be on the waitlist in April!!

So the yard sale is going to be   Saturday March 5,  7am-whenever, and it's going to be at my parents house in Bremen!  We're going to make a flier to send out to everyone so we'll include the address on that.  If any of you Georgia people reading this have anything you want to get rid of just email me and let me know, we'd love to take it off your hands!  We have a couple other things coming up that we're excited to announce, so be looking for that.  We are excited to see how God is going to provide for our family!  Please start covering this event in prayer now.  Pray that we would have lots to sell, great weather, a great turnout,  that God would be glorified through this and many would be able to see the beauty of adoption and the Gospel.

*Don't forget you can still purchase puzzle pieces.  We've sold 89 so far, 411 to go!

More on Why...

     One thing I want to be sure we do through this whole process of adoption is to let people know why. We want to teach others about the beauty of the Gospel and adoption. Why are we on this journey?  There are many reasons why, but I don't want us to ever neglect the most important reason why.  This is something bigger than us.  We are adopting because we have been adopted by the Father.  I recently re-listened to a sermon on adoption from our church from last summer...WOW, powerful stuff.  I encourage you to listen to the sermon here, just search for the sermon entitled "I am adopted."
           James 1:27 states that "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world."(ESV).  I really like how this sermon fleshes this out.  Our pastor asks the question, why does James make this statement in this way?  It's a test of our faith, as in, if we aren't doing this we may not know Christ.  Not in a legalistic way(like checking it off a list, because that's not the Gospel), but a way that means if you have experienced the transformation of the Gospel you are going to naturally lean towards helping those in need, whoever they are.  We have heard many say "well this is just your calling"....and yes, we realize that not all are called to adopt as we are, but we ARE all called to care for the orphans and widows in some way.  This is going to look different for every family, but for our family it means we are adopting a child into our family, just as we are adopted into God's family. 
      This sermon uses text from Ruth 2:1-23 and it is just beautiful...the point is that we ARE NOT BOAZ, we are Ruth.  Just like Ruth, we are the despised, the outcast, and the children of disobedience.  We have been left defiled, disgraced and starving.  But Christ has redeemed us, Christ is Boaz in this story.  We are not the savior of this child, we are this child's equal, we were the orphan, and just as Christ has redeemed us, he is going to redeem this child.  THAT is why we are adopting, to give our child, and the world, a picture of the Gospel and our redemption.  Because we have been redeemed we cannot help but to love others the way we have been loved and do for them what was done for us.  How can we not? We have been given the ultimate rescue. 
      Yes, there are staggering statistics about the conditions in Ethiopia, about children dying everyday because they have no food to eat and no shelter, a child whose family has been ravaged by disease or poverty.  These are what have drawn our hearts to Ethiopia, but this is NOT why we are adopting.  We want to be clear that we are not the solution to this problem, the cross is.  We have realized what it means to be adopted as sons and daughters of our great God and we want to live that out.  This is how we are living out the Gospel in our life, and this journey is oh so beautiful.  This journey has already showed our hearts just a taste of God's love for us and this child and we are eager to learn more.
     I know this video floated around blogworld a couple months ago, but if you haven't seen it, take the time to watch it, it's along the same lines as what I've talked about it's definitely worth your time. 

A good deal of this post came from the sermon linked above, but definitely listen to it, it goes into WAY more detail.If you want to know more about any of this, please email us, we would love to share more with you!