WE HAVE A COURT DATE!!!

Praise the Lord- we found out yesterday morning that we have a court date! We are going to meet our baby girl!! Ahh!!! Seriously amazing!!  We will be holding her in less than 2 weeks! We've been staring at her picture for 3.5 months- and now we will finally get to see her and hold her and tell her how precious she is and how much we love her.  So, so ready!! Thank you all so much for the prayers you sent our way for paperwork. This was undeniably God orchestrating this.  We were just told on Tuesday that we were missing not just one- but 2 letters at our preliminary hearing last week.  We knew we would be missing one, but missing the other was a surprise.  So we expected at least another 2 weeks delay in hearing anything- and possibly not making it in before the courts close.  But God totally intervened and brought in both of the letters in record time and we now have a court date! I am so relieved to not have to worry about her being in an orphanage a couple months longer than necessary because of not making it before courts close.  We are trying to finalize our flight plans right now- it has been unbelievable crazy to try to do this now.  Apparently everyone is trying to do what we are doing- and flights are not only outrageous in price because of it being peak season and short notice, but they are also filling up as soon as we find anything that may work! So crazy!! As I mentioned before- we are still short of our fundraising goal and these flights are way higher than we anticipated. So if you feel so inclined to help us bring Ryah home you can still donate through our Pure Charity link on the right or Paypal on the left!
Now- we will not be able to bring Ryah home on this trip. After court we will come back home and wait for the Embassy process to take place.  It will be at least 8 weeks after court before we can return to bring her home.  Those will be the longest 8 weeks of our lives. Please pray for our trip, for all of our hearts, as we prepare to do one of the hardest things we've ever done.  So much joy is surrounding this trip- but also sadness as we think about having to leave her and her having no idea what is going on.  We know she is in good hands- but it is still going to be so hard and we are praying for our Father to protect her little heart and love her in ways that we can't. Alright- off to finalize those flights! Can't believe I'm finally saying that!!!

That's a Wrap!

         Now that we have successfully blown up your Facebook and twitter for the last week, our Give1Save1 week has come to an end.  It was one amazing week! As of right now, we raised $4,008!!!!! In one week! And donations are still coming in! We have been reminded over and over again that God sees our daughter.  He loves her infinitely more than we ever could and he is going to bring her home! I love doing things like this, because I love seeing how God works.  For us, through this process, there have been so many people, along with friends and family, that have heard our story and helped us raise funds.  When I look at the list of the people who have donated for this fundraiser there are a lot of them that I don't know.  It's so amazing to see who God chooses to work through to accomplish his purpose. We've had so many notes of encouragement and offers to fundraise and blog posts written- which by the way, if you haven't read this post that a friend of ours wrote for us, you should stop reading this and click over there now.  She so beautifully said everything that we want to say about this process.
       Now- a huge THANK YOU to every single one of you who read the blog, watched the video, shared it, and donated last week! Thank you for rallying around us to bring our daughter home!  We are still completely overwhelmed at the generosity we have seen this week and we have so many stories to tell Ryah of God's faithfulness and his working to bring her home.  I am working on trying to find a way to thank each of you individually- but for now, if you read this, THANK YOU, from the bottom of our hearts!!  We still have a ways to go to reach our goal of funding the rest of this adoption- but I have no doubt that God will do it- people, HE IS GOOD! So I will be leaving our Pure Charity button up on the blog for a while and if you feel led to donate please do! If you donate through PC it is completely tax deductible, or you can donate through PayPal as always. You can even send a check if you would like- just email me for our address!
      On Friday- pretty much at the end of the day, when I thought time had passed and we wouldn't hear anything; we heard that our preliminary court hearing has been scheduled for THIS WEDNESDAY!! TWO days from now! That is so incredibly awesome! Thank you for praying with us that this would happen soon! I had been praying that we would hear something the week of our fundraiser, and once again God proved himself faithful. However, we have once again hit another bump.  There is an approval letter that is needed at this court hearing, that is normally there on this date, but the people who write them we have been informed are about 2 weeks behind in writing them.  The catch is, our court date, where we would get to travel and go hold our girl, cannot be scheduled until this letter arrives.  So we are literally down to the wire of being able to make it to court before they close.  Please pray boldly with us that this letter will arrive this week and we can receive our court date. We are preparing ourselves mentally that we may not be able to travel until October, but I believe that God is going to make this happen.  I believe we will travel before the closure.  Please believe and pray with us- this little girl needs her mommy and daddy!  We will update as soon as we know more!

Time to Rally!!

Coalson Adoption Video Final from Stephanie Coalson on Vimeo.

Ok friends here's the update for today! Today it's time to rally! Today we have a new goal, we need to get to at least $4000 in the next 3 days. This is what is needed to finish paying Ryah's fees for her care in country. Now, this is totally doable, we are $300 away from hitting $2000- almost 600 of you have watched our video, 600!! That's awesome! but, less than 50 have donated. If each of those 600 people gave just $5 we could easily reach our goal over the next few days. So- we are asking you to RALLY! If you have watched our video we are asking you to give to change the life of a child. It's that simple! Every dollar really does count- if you can only give $1 that awesome- that's what this fundraiser was about, give $1, save 1 child. To make a difference with just $1! THANK YOU, THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts to those who have given and shared! Words are not enough. Please keep it going and help us rally over the next few days!  You can donate through the Pure Charity button on the right hand side of the blog or through our PayPal link on the left. THANK YOU!!

Give1Save1 Update!

You guys are awesome! I cannot wait to tell our little girl one day how many people have been helping us get her home! I have lost count of how many people have been sharing our story- but it's been no less than 50 or so tweets, facebook posts, emails- so incredibly awesome!! After 2 days, the total amount we've raised is $1570! In just 2 days- less than 48 hours really.  God is good! We cannot thank you enough for helping us with this fundraiser! But we've got a ways to go and a few more days to reach our goal- so please don't slow down! And if you are reading this and you haven't watched or given or shared, please prayerfully consider doing so today. Every dollar counts- and every dollar is changing the life of a precious little girl who is soon to be an orphan no more.  What better way to spend your dollar today?  Seriously- this adoption is so amazing.  We are literally watching God make beauty from ashes: He has made everything beautiful in its time- Ecc. 3:11
You can check out the video here! And please keep praying with us that we would here about a court date soon! Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts!!

Give1Save1 Week!!!!

         It's here! It's finally here! Our Give1Save1 Fundraiser week starts now!! I am so excited about this opportunity and we are praying that God just blows our minds with what he has planned for this week! So in case you missed my earlier post- we have been chosen as the Give1Save1 family of the week.  So the awesome people over at Give1Save1 are featuring our video on their blog for this week.  They are helping us spread the word about our story to bring our precious Ryah home! And we need all the help we can get! Since she was with another agency- we had to start completely over with funds.  Luckily- and not so coincidentally I think- we had grant money that was just sitting, waiting to be used for over a year now.  And because of that, we were able to pay the first big chunk of fees we needed to be able to accept Ryah's referral. We are so thankful for that! But now, we need to finish paying our fees to this new agency, and fundraise for travel.  So we are setting our goal at $10,000. Yes, that is a big number. But we have seen God provide every single penny up until this point, and we have no doubt that he will continue to do it until our girl is home!  We are just excited to see how he does it this time!
      What is Give1Save1 you ask? Well here is what they do, straight from their blog:

GIVE 1

Every Monday I’m going to ask you for a dollar. I’m going to tell you who it’s going to and what it’s being used for. We’re mostly funding adoption for the people, by the people.  We’re just going to rain down a crazy blessing on a family, organization, orphanage, or project and we’re going to do it every week. We’re going to get huge. And the world will be changed for lots of people because of your generosity. That sounds exciting, doesn’t it?! Let’s do it.

I’ll tell you who we’re sponsoring and where to send your dollar. Then once you’ve donated your dollar spread the word to get some more dollars in here. If you have a voice, an email account, a blog, a facebook page, a twitter account or a pinboard USE IT! The only way we can make a big difference is to make it viral!

SAVE 1

And your dollar will be saving and restoring lives in all kinds of ways. Removing a child from an orphanage gives that child a family and a future, something everyone needs. It also frees up a bed in an orphanage for another orphan. Your dollar will change lives and save lives in ways you may never know.

So, we are humbly asking that everyone who see's this post or our video posted somewhere, to consider giving a dollar to bring our girl home. You can certainly give more than a dollar- you can give whatever you feel led to give, and we would be forever grateful! Believe me, she is beyond precious and she needs to be in a family, like yesterday! And we are so close to getting her here! We should hear of a court date any time now!

 To give, simply click on our Pure Charity button at the top right  to "back our fundraiser" and it will take you to the website where you can donate- completely tax deductible.  And without further ado- here is our awesome video that we are so excited to share- filmed by Matt Berry! Please consider sharing this post after watching the video and help us get the word out!

Coalson Adoption Video Final from Stephanie Coalson on Vimeo.

And you can check out our post on the Give1Save1 blog here!