Great fundraising day! ( ticker update again!)

Today was the first time I had a table at an event to make money for Molly's adoption. With it being at a church and with lot's of people I knew there, and being the kids preschool, and a church we love and serve at, and where the kids play Upward soccer, I had hoped it would go well! We had sweet little cards that my friend Anne made and our friends at Postnet printed, soaps from Goat's milk stuff, clay jewrly from Compelled Designs and bags from my sister AnnaBelle! I had a fancy card reader and was ready to go! I'd hand everyone a card with a picture of sweet Molly on it and start my speal. This is where all those years of working baby fairs helped me! Put something in their hand, talk fast and hope for the best! Thankfully once they saw sweet Molly's face many of them wanted to bring her home as bad as we do! We did great today and I would love to work more craft fairs if you all have events at your churches or schools that you want to share! The day was also super successful becasue we met our goal again for our Give $10 change a life! To date we've had 16 donors each 5 days which as raised a total of $800.00 so far! We are on our way! Thank you all! Here is our table from today, simple and sweet and my scary Tiger who had a wonderful time at the Spring Fling!  Update! We just hit $5000.00 in our adoption fundraising!! Woohoo!

Day 5

Friends God has been so faithful to bring us 16 donations a day so far for the challenge. If you missed the video, we have just started the Give $10 change a life Challenge. We are asking 1000 of our friends and family, and their friends and family, to give just $10 to help us raise $10,000.00 in 60 days to bring Molly home! As you know adoption is costly and we don't have enough... Although some are against fundraising.. for many folks it is crucial to responding to the call that God has called them to. The neat thing about fundraising is that is allows other to come alongside of the adoptive family and help, to be a part of Orphan care. The truth is that not everyone is not called to adopt but everyone is called by God to support orphans and widows. This looks differently for everyone, some will adopt, some will foster, some will support those who do, through prayer, donations and more! By becoming part of the solution and doing our part we can lower the number of 147 million orphans one at a time. One adoption, one fundraiser, one foster home.. And it's super exciting to support to an adoption, even just in small ways, and then see that sweet baby come home! I can tell you first hand to know that you helped just a little and see that precious child is amazing! We are so thankful for all of you and your help! What a joyful homecoming it will be when Molly is home and an orphan no more!
When you reap your harvest in your field and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow, in order that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. (Deuteronomy 24:19, NASB)

Feels so good! ( ticker update! )

It feels so good today to be able to freely talk about Molly and share with you all her picture! Thank you for your excitment, love, prayers and donations today! Tomorrow is day 3 of the challenge and we are praying in another 16 folks who can give $10 to bring Molly home! As soon as our homestudy is finished which is mid May we have another agency fee of $2800 and an 1800A Paperwork fee to the Homeland security for $890.00! Thank you all! Please keep sharing our blog link with her video That really is the best way to make it easy for folks to donate. So thankful for ya'll!!!

Meet Molly!

What an emotional couple of weeks we have had and really almost a month of crazy emotions... Being in the special focus group through Lifeline we could match at any time and didn't have to be LID ( Logged in) to look at precious children. We would occaonsailly look at the list and inquire or not about certain kiddos. These kiddos go fast.. Early one Saturday am I was up early and taking a nose around. It was about 6:30am and I saw her sweet face for the first time. As you know, she is precious so it was easy to be drawn to her! I have to say I didn't know for sure she was ours but I had a sneaky suspicion. We were the first to see her so we locked her file, when you lock a file it means you have two weeks to research her file and go from there. Over the next two weeks we turned her file upside down, specialist, OT's, PT's, my ped, my friend a peds ER Dr and so many more. At first we said no, then yes, then no, then yes, back and forth, just begging and begging for clarity and peace about what to do. We sent questions to her orphanage and then more questions after that.. We prayed and begged some more..  The biggest question for us was can we be the best parents to Molly and to our other children we already have at home? Could we make her wait another 10 months at least for a family when someone else could get to her quicker and so many more questions.. As we prayed and begged I started to feel some peace, I kept her picture on my phone and would look at it often. Playing out scenarios in my head of having two possibly very very needy little girls... My boys, my husband, oh the questions! Finally at a women's retreat for Good Shepherd one Saturday God gave me the total peace I had been begging for! During worship I was standing in a corner of the room and I was just overcome with emotion. I knew then that she was ours. God would equip us for all that she and our other children will need!!! Leaving Camp that day I still needed to talk with Tommy and see where he was in the process. We drove over to Seacoast that night and in church he leaned over to me and said "yes"! As soon as we got home and put the little ones down I submitted the email for LOI, letter of intent as soon as I could. Silly me thought LOI was just a letter, um, no, it's a booklet.. As soon as I received the info needed I went to work. Because we were pretty early in the process there was a lot to be done, medicals and gathering of more paperwork before we could submit. I think that took a week and half and once we finally submitted LOI I was so relieved! A week after LOI the CCC*A came back with some question for us. My heart sank and thus began the longest wait of my life.. For almost 7 days we had people all over praying for us and for Molly, there were many times where the devil totally wrecked me to the point of thinking it wasn't going to happen.. Thankfully today we got the call from Emily our social worker saying that they had said YES!!!! We were overjoyed with the news and were ready to move forward right away! I had made this video announcing her and our next fundraiser and had everything ready to go! Oh, one more cool thing about saying YES! I knew Molly's birthday was right around that Saturday but didn't know exactly when. The day after we said yes I went back through her file and would you believe her birthday was on the day we said yes, the actual day that God spoke so clearly to me, she was turning 2!!! Many folks may be wondering wow, how are you going to do all of this? How do you have time now, with three busy little people at home, a husband who has work/school/tutoring...  I heard a sermon by Matt Redmen's wife a couple of weeks ago and she talked about hearing the calling, the tug. For her it was the A21 human trafficking and the work she was to do there.. She thought how Lord? I have 5 babies at home, 5 babies!?! I felt the same way also. How Lord?? We don't have $31,000.00, I am sooo busy already, Hartley has and does still consume more of me then I thought possible!! Sometimes girlfriend likes me to hold her hand while she eats!?! How will I do this? Children adopted from institutions have issues, and sometimes Lot's of them! Molly has health issues, she has a club foot, she'll be delayed? How? Friends, I just have to say that God is faithful!!  He has and is and will continue to equip of emotionally, physically, mentally and finically. Sweet Molly's redemption story already is turning hearts for the Gospel! A mother who chose life for her, who then abandoned her, chose life again! Then Molly in an orphanage, no family, is now One less! 147 million orphans minus one... God is faithful, not only will her story be amazing but what others are witnessing through this process and the work God is doing in our life's is equally amazing. Someone once told me, You don't fix them, they fix you.. Oh come Lord, let your will be done!!! You mights say, what do the kiddos think? They are over the moon! They have been talking and praying about Molly for a while now! Of course they want her here now and so do WE! We are trusting though in God's perfect timing for her and much like being pregnant and knowing that things will change for them all I am soaking up as much one on one time, especially with Hartley as I can.. What do we need to do now? Keep fundraising and pray!!! This process will keep trucking along but we need funds to do that. Everything we have been doing has been great! The garage sales, soaps, 300/100 challenge and more! All of those thing are great but honestly friends we need to make some big money.. Our goal is $10,000.00 over the next 60 days. We need 1000 friends to just give $10!  That's it.  I don't have 1000 facebook friends, but together we all know probably 1000 who could spare $10. Would you please please help us by sharing her story and helping us reach our goal? God is able friends and we are overjoyed to share with you our new daughter Molly!!

1st homestudy and 2nd garage sale

1st homestudy visit, 2nd garage sale and 3rd batch of soaps, totally 150 soaps sold so far $450 in soaps! Wow! Just quickly bc it's super late. The homestudy was great, our lady is super nice! We'll be finished much quicker with this process then we thought which is excellent! Having our 2nd yard sale tomorrow and it is HUGE! Hoping for a great crowd like last time! God is so faithful! It's been a stressful adoption week on some other levels, I can't talk about it and honestly really don't want to anymore but please pray for us. God is able...

Just waiting...

Just waiting.. So much of this process is just waiting.. We are still waiting on news back from the Oprhanage, still waiting on PA, although thats only been a few days so that doesn't seem too long. Just wating. We are preparing for our first home study visit this week on Thursday am, thats super exciting! We are also preparing for our 2nd Garage sale on Saturday the 13th! Already this one has been a huge success so far! We had some really nice items to sell before hand on craigslist and God has been faithful to bring full price buyers for those things! Already we have made almost what we did on the whole sale last time! Thank you Lord! And thank you to those who have donated! Our shed is full, almost to the roof with items. The Lawnmower or 4 wheeler can't even fit in there! Yay! During our waiting our other three little treasures have been keeping us busy. Soccer, piano, compression fractures (Thomas) birthday parties and more! Hopefully this week we'll have PA and can share our sweetie with you all! Eek!!!