Dossier Sent and God continues to provide in Profound ways...

A lot has happened since our last post!  We are excited to say that our dossier has been sent in and God was so faithful to provide the money that we needed for our payment!!

(which, for those who are wondering, the dossier is pretty much everything that we have done up to this point, that is put together in one large document... it's pretty much everything you would want to know about our family and probably more. :-)  When sent, the dossier makes 6 trips in the mail, until it finally reaches Ethiopia and is fully processed, at which point we will officially be on the waiting list.  We have been told this takes about 1 month)

We can't believe that we are already to this point in the adoption process!  We praise God that things have gone so smoothly and that God has been providing!  Adam and I were just talking the other day about how amazing it has been to see, that once we started the adoption process and made the initial payment, we have had the money that we needed for each step of the process!  It's amazing that we haven't been held up at all due to finances!  Praise God!  It's been such an encouragement to witness our God providing so clearly for us!  

And we continue to praise Him, because just this last week, after we had already sent the dossier and made that payment, we see God providing for us in preparing for the next payment. The next payment that we are looking toward is the referral payment, which costs about $9200.  We pay this amount when we receive information about the child God has for us, and decide to accept the referral.  And then we wait for a court date from Ethiopia to go and meet our child for the first time.  We are amazed that God has used the tremendous generosity of others, just in the last week, to provide for $6,505 of our referral amount!!  Praise our God who is good to provide for His children!

Deuteronomy 8:18

And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day

1 Chronicles 29:12

Both riches and honor come from You, And You reign over all.  In Your hand is power and might; In your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all

Prayer Requests:

1.  Please pray that, as we're about to be put on the list to wait for our child, that God would give us wisdom and peace in thinking through the special needs that we will be open to

2.  Please pray that the dossier will be processed smoothly

3.  Please pray that we would receive a matching grant!  We have applied for a number of matching grants, and are hoping to get one, because, if we did, our amount of $6505 could be about doubled!!

4.  Continue to pray that God would be preparing our family to receive this child

  

Update for This Week:

           We are so encouraged by all that God is doing in this adoption process!  Not only is He teaching us much about Him and the gospel, but He is truly proving Himself to be the God, who is good to provide! (Psalm 68:10).  
           On Sunday we were given another $575 from our church family.  And now that puts us close enough to be able to send our dossier into our agency, once we receive the letter we need from our life insurance.. hopefully that will come this week!!  Praise God!  
            It's been amazing to see our church surround us in support, encouragement, and prayer during this journey.  Our church may not be huge, but they have supported us financially in a huge way!  
            It's such a blessed thought to think of our church coming together and answering the call of caring for orphans together!
            We just want to say thank you again to everyone one who has partnered with us in supporting us financially and prayerfully!  We are humbled and amazed at God's goodness to us through you!  May God get the glory!!  
                 

Answered Prayer

            God has been so good to us, in that things in this adoption process have gone surprisingly so well and so smoothly.
            If you read my last post, you saw that I asked for prayer that our USCIS application would go through smoothly and quickly and that we would receive approval.  Well, it's amazing that God has definitely answered these prayers!!  Praise Him along with us!
            We just received our approval yesterday in the mail!  I couldn't believe it when I got the mail from the mailbox.  In my mind, I thought we wouldn't be receiving it for at least a couple months.  But, praise be to God, that we're approved!  And now, I'm realizing, oh, I need to start putting the dossier together then!! :-)
            Once we have everything together for our dossier (which hopefully shouldn't take too long, because we already have most of it, we just need to receive a verification letter from our medical and life insurances), then we will be ready to start the process of sending the dossier over to Ethiopia!
            It's so exciting to think that once the dossier is received, then we are obviously waiting for a child!
            Please pray for us that God provides another $1000.  We are currently at about $2300 and will need another $1000 to get the dossier sent.  God has been faithful to provide so far, so we trust that He will continue to provide in His time, keeping us trusting in Him, who is Lord over all!  Pray to this end.

It is true, though, that the followers of Jesus should fill in the gap left by a contemporary Western consumer culture that extends even to the conception and adoption of children.  Who better than those who know Christ to welcome the all-too-often unwanted and discarded among the world's orphans?  After all, our God himself gathers together "the lame" and "those who have been driven away" and makes "a strong nation" of those who were "cast off" (Mic. 4:6-7).  Jesus' gospel is good news for the sick and the disabled.  In fact, they are the very ones who make up the marriage feast of our Christ: "the poor and crippled and blind and lame" (Luke 14:21).  When we care for the sick and the disabled, Jesus tells us, "you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.  You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just" (Luke 14:14)

- Russell Moore (Adopted for Life, p. 160)

           

Blessed

            Feeling blessed by what God is doing in our lives and family through the adoption process!  In the last 1-2 weeks, we have been so encouraged by the number of people who have decided to support us financially!  It has been amazing to see God so faithfully providing for us!  Praise God that we are getting closer and closer to what we need!  And thank you so much to those who have supported us so far!!
            We have now sent in 3 grant applications.  Please pray that God would provide for us through these.  Pray that God would work in the hearts of the people reviewing our application and incline their hearts toward wanting to give to our family.  Continue to pray that God would keep us trusting in Him, as we apply for more grants and begin to start compiling and preparing documents for the dossier.  Also, pray that our I-600A application would be processed and approved smoothly and quickly.
            At our church, the women's Bible study has been reading an excellent book by Russell Moore called Adopted for Life.  If you haven't read it, I would highly recommend it.  I just finished reading the 4th chapter that talks about if you already have children, to involve them and teach them in the process:
            If the Spirit is drawing you toward adopting, think of the opportunity you'll have to share the gospel with your already-here children. (p. 108)  Gather your children around, and let them share in the joy of what God is doing in your family.  He's allowing you to join him in his plan for yet another child to grow up hearing the story of Christ, with a family that names the name of Jesus.  God's fitting you into his purpose, 'that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord.' (Ps. 102:18) (111)
            It's such a blessed thought to think about how God is already working in our family to teach us about the gospel through this adoption!  And as we hear Ethan and Emma talking about and praying for their new brother, we are thankful that they are seeing the gospel.  And, as God is fitting us all into his purpose, we pray that our children would grow up joining us in praising the Lord!

The Latest

            This last Tuesday we went to get our biometrics done, which meant getting fingerprints done for the I-600 A application.  Now we wait for our approval, which could possibly take a couple months.  We can't send our dossier to Ethiopia until we get this official approval from the USCIS.  
         So, now we work on more grant applications, hoping to have enough money to send our dossier in once the I-600 A is complete.
         I'm thankful that, so far, with all that we've had to do in this adoption journey, waiting and being patient has not been difficult.  God has been kind to me in this, because I thought that I would really struggle with how lengthy this process is and how much waiting it requires.  

“…adoption is…the highest privilege that the gospel offers: higher even than justification… That justification- by which we mean God’s forgiveness of the past together with His acceptance for the future- is the primary and fundamental blessing of the gospel is not in question. Justification is the primary blessing, because it meets our primary spiritual need. We all stand by nature under God’s judgment; His law condemns us; guilt gnaws at us, making us restless, miserable, and in our lucid moments afraid; we have no peace in ourselves, because we have not peace with our Maker. So we need the forgiveness of our sins, and assurance of a restored relationship with God, more than we need anything else in the world; and this the gospel offers us before it offers us anything else…And as justification is theprimary blessing, so it is the fundamental blessing, in the sense that everything else in our salvation assumes it, and rests on it- adoption included.
But this is not to say that justification is the highest blessing of the gospel. Adoption is higher, because of the richer relationship with God that it involves… Justification is a forensic idea, conceived in terms of law, and viewing God as judge…Adoption is a family idea, conceived in terms of love, and viewing God as father. In adoption, God takes us into His family and fellowship, and establishes us as His children and heirs. Closeness, affection and generosity are at the heart of the relationship. To be right with God the judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the father is a greater.
J.I. Packer, Knowing God, pp. 186-188

The journey begins..

Time to start blogging again after a long absence...because we are adopting and want to remember this time in our lives and to keep others informed with where we're at in the process...

(pic of us sending our application in)

As many of you probably already know, we are currently in the process of adopting form Ethiopia with an agency called Lifeline Children's Services.  We sent in our application and started the process in July 2012.  After working on and sending in quite a bit of paperwork, we started the homestudy the end of July, and we just finished up the homestudy in September.   We are currently working on raising support through letters and grants and are waiting to do more paperwork.  We are scheduled this week for an immigration appointment, where we have to do another set of fingerprints and wait to be officially approved through Immigration, before we can start putting together our Dossier to send to Ethiopia.

I knew before starting this process that it was going to be a lot of work, but, oh boy, it's even more work than I thought it was going to be!!  My sister-in-law, Steph, just told me the other day that she has heard of this part of the adoption process called the "Great Paper Chase"... this is a pretty accurate title! :-)  After we finish one set of papers, we are on to the next...But, it's so encouraging to think that with each little step, we get that much closer to bringing our precious son home!

This is the update for this week.  More updates to come!

Now, I leave you with a great quote from Russell Moore's book, Adopted for Life:

"When we adopt -- and when we encourage a culture of adoption in our churches and communities -- we're picturing something that's true about God.  We, like Jesus, see what our Father is doing and do likewise (John 5:19).  And what our Father is doing, it turns out, is fighting for orphans, making them sons and daughters" (p. 73)