Lots of great news!

       These past few weeks have brought lots of exciting adoption news!! In the past 2 weeks alone there have been 9 referrals with our agency! Praise God for that! That means 9 more precious children have been matched with their forever families! It's also very exciting because there haven't been that many referrals in so short amount of time since before the slow down last year.  And there were 3 more referrals the few weeks before that, so overall 12 referrals in the past month and a half, so so exciting!! Our agency has also started to partner with a new orphanage, which we hope will be bringing in lots more children!  All of this has filled us with renewed hope, hope that our Father will indeed finish what he started, and hope in His love for these children.  As much as we love our yet to be known son or daughter, our Father loves him or her so much more, and he know him intimately.  He knows their innermost being, and knit them together in the womb.  There is such amazing peace in that.  There will be times that I will have major mommy fails, but I can rest in the fact that my Father never fails.  This chorus has been ringing in my head a lot lately:


"I may be weak, but you're spirit's strong in me. 
My flesh may fail, but my God you never will.
Give me faith, to trust what you say,
that you're good, and your love is great."

I am so thankful for the love of my Father.

We also are in the final stages of our home study being updated.  We met with our social worker last week so we are just waiting for it to be written and then approved by our agency, which will hopefully happen in the next week or so.  We got our state background checks back in a record amount of time which was all we had left to get, so they have everything they need! And after all this movement, we are seriously excited about our July numbers! We are getting there precious one!!
 

June Numbers!

Here we are again! Time for more numbers! This is our 2nd round of June numbers.  This time last year we had just gotten on the wait list and were so excited to be getting our numbers.  This year, it's still exciting to get these numbers, and we are thrilled that there has been movement, but personally, I'm ready to say goodbye to the 40's and say hello to the 30's, which I believe we are pretty close to doing, unofficially, and I'm really hoping our July numbers reflect that!  We are closer every day to seeing our baby's face, and we are finding our hope in the Lord being faithful to his calling on our family.  We are so blessed!  We have been praying some really exciting/bold prayers.  This journey has been amazing so far, and we can't wait to see where it takes us! So here are our numbers for the month of June:

For a boy:

For a girl:

Paperwork Round 2!

It's that time! We have reached the time period where most of our adoption paperwork is going to expire, sad, I know.  And lucky for us, everything expires at different times, fun! Our USCIS fingerprints expire in August, but we already got those redone earlier this month.  Our Home study expires in October, which we have to start working on now! And our immigration approval expires in December. Lucky for me, our awesome caseworker got me on the right track to know when to start working on this stuff, because there's another catch, most things can't be updated unless you're within 90 days of the original expiring.  Which is why we have to start working on our home study update in July, but we can't send it in to immigration until September.  Are you confused yet? :) So today and next week we've got all our appointments lined up to update documents for our Home study that I plan to send off before I head down to GA for one of my best friend's wedding! Our home study agency says to plan on a few week turn around since they have such a huge case load right now.  Our amendment we did 2 months ago took a LONG time to get done, and we want this update done ASAP, so I've already been working ahead making sure I've got everything ready to go before I go out of town next week!  Hopefully everything will go as planned and it will be a smooth update process, and we will be that much closer to seeing our baby's face!! I won't have a number update until next week, they got a little backed up from having an exciting week of movement, praise the Lord!! But we are so close to the 30's, praying we get there by the update next week :)

Yard Sale- Round 4!

We're having another yard sale this weekend!  We have graciously been donated literally car-loads of stuff from our church family and friends and we are hoping and praying to put a dent in the last chunk of money we need to raise for this adoption!  We've got furniture, toys, clothes, home decor, books, baby items, etc. So if you're local, we would love for you to stop by!  These yard sales have been a huge success for us in the past, and Lord willing, we won't be encountering any snow on Saturday, but it will be quite warm!  Apparently, we only do yard sales in extremes around here :)  We are beyond thrilled that we are working towards raising the last amount of money we need to fund this adoption. As I mentioned before we are about $3500 away from being fully funded, praise the Lord!  Only God could do this, only he could have provided so much, and we want all the glory to be his!  Even after 18 months, he is still providing a way for us to bring this baby home, we are so blessed! Email me at scoalson104 (at) gmail (dot) com if you would like to come by this weekend and need the address. We would love to see some of you and would appreciate the prayers for Saturday!

Finding the Crib

Yep, that's right, I found a crib!  One of my summer projects this summer has been to start working on the nursery.  I've been scouring websites and craigslist to find the perfect crib, and about 2 weeks ago I found it!  I looked on craigslist one last time one night after being frustrated about not finding anything, and this beauty popped up!  I was so excited and snagged it right away.  It might still be early, but it helps to have this and know that things are coming together! I've had the bedding for a year now and I was excited to finally have something to put it on to see what it looks like, and I love it! I didn't take a picture of that yet, but I had a couple from us putting it together until hubs told me to put down the camera and help him :) So, here is where our sweet baby will be sleeping!!

It's practically brand new and we got too good of a deal on it to pass it up!  Can't wait until there is a little one sleeping in there!

One Year and May Numbers!

Today, exactly one year ago, we got our very first wait list numbers. It's hard to believe that we finished our dossier one year ago!  We started this journey at #98 for a girl and #78 for a boy.  Today one year later, we are for a girl:

and for a boy:

That's a pretty good amount of movement in one year!  We have moved 40 spots on the girl list, and 33 on the boy list.  This means that many more children are orphan's no more and we praise God for that!  Obviously, from my posts lately, we have seen a significant slow down in the number or referrals each month.  We are uncertain about whether or not we will ever get back to where we see 5 or more referrals a month, and this honestly puts a damper on our spirits some days.  Hubs and I were talking the other night about how nothing about this process is easy.  Adoption involves beauty and loss.  And the pain of this seemingly never-ending wait is heavier than we would like to admit at times.  These are days when we cry out to God on behalf of our child and ourselves.  We know that the days of this adoption were numbered before it was even a thought in our mind, but the waiting is still hard.  One year later, and we are starting the process of renewing some of our paperwork and updating our home study.  Today and yesterday were filled with fingerprints at 2 different offices, once again.  It feels weird to be doing these things again, but also feels like we are on the move again, working towards the light at the end of the tunnel.  After one year on the wait list, we can say that we have grown so much.  We are not the same people who started this process 18 months ago.  We are saying yes to things we said no to at the beginning.  God had been working on our hearts and we feel there are exciting things ahead for our family.  If you are still hanging on this journey with us, thank you! We appreciate the prayers more than you will ever know!  We have no idea when we will see our child's face, we are still praying fervently that it will happen before the end of the year, and invite you to pray with us.  We are trusting this unknown future to our God, who has made himself known to us more than ever over the last year.  We know everything is in his hands, and there is no better place for it to be!

Mother's Day

Yesterday was Mother's Day, and it was the 2nd Mother's Day I have had on this journey, yet without a baby.  This journey is long, this journey is hard, this journey is not convenient, but it is MORE than worth it, and it is beautiful!! I have gotten to know my Father so much better.  He is doing things in my heart, in our hearts, that never would have made sense to us at the beginning of this journey.  I thought back to this post that I wrote over 1 year ago...wow, time has flown! And I still echo every word of that post.  We are currently on the latter end of the time frame we were first quoted to get a referral at the beginning of this process.  And had we not made it to this point without a referral, our hearts would not be in the place that they are now.  Our Father knows exactly what he's doing, and he continues to reveal HIS plan, in his timing.   I am blessed to be surrounded by people that get it and are constantly encouraging me in this walk, as I got many "Happy Mother's day" notes yesterday letting me know that even though my arms may be empty this mother's day, my heart is full and ready to welcome this child into our family!  And even though this was my 2nd mother's day on this journey, and I'm praying like crazy that I will not experience a 3rd with empty arms, I am blessed to have realized that Christ is better! He is the best of all his blessings, even this blessing of a child that I am longing for daily. My friend Rebekah wrote this post yesterday and I am so thankful for it and her heart.  I pray that we all realize that Christ is better than whatever it is we are longing for today, He is the only one that can satisfy!