You guys rock!

Wowie! THANK YOU to all of you amazing people who helped us during our t-shirt fundraiser! In case you missed it, we did a 10 day t-shirt sale through Chrome Buffalo and it was a success! We surpassed our fundraising goal and raised $552!! Sorry for all the exclamation points, but it's hard to hold in my enthusiasm about how awesome you all are. I'll try to tone it down...but we were really touched by all the people who bought t-shirts and shared our story with their friends. Others donated separately from the t-shirt sales, and that definitely gives my heart a hug. It is humbling to see the love and kindness of lovely people, some who haven't even met us.

So we are $552 closer to bringing our daughter home (soon!!). And on top of that, we have yet another reason to thank our God, for showing us His provision for us through all of you! Your generosity and support has been such an encouragement to us. Thank you, Thank you!!! (sorry, couldn't help myself with my punctuation there)

T-Shirt Sale!

As you know, we are trying to raise the rest of the funds we need to complete our adoption and bring our little girl home from Ethiopia. We are so excited to partner with the awesome company Chrome Buffalo to be able to sell some sweet t-shirts! This company was started by a couple who adopted from Uganda 8 years ago and learned that raising money for a good cause wasn't easy. So they now offer a platform for others to raise money by selling t-shirts.

Here is how it works. Chrome Buffalo designs and makes stylin' t-shirts that they sell for $22. For every t-shirt sold, we get $11 towards our adoption fund! They come in mens, womens and youth sizes. The shirts are printed on Next Level Apparel products, which is an awesome company that doesn't use sweatshops or child labor, is WRAP certified (Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production), and is committed to ethical practice in their work.  I have some shirts made by this company  and they are seriously my favorite t-shirts (you probably know which ones they are since I wear them way too often), they are super comfortable and soft.

We have 10 days to sell as many shirts as possible. So check out our page HERE and consider buying a shirt to help us get one step closer to bringing our daughter into our family! Thanks guys!

Heart Attack Thoughts

For those of you who haven't heard, my Dad had a heart attack last week. To say that it was a shock to all of us would be an understatement. I'm still trying to process what has happened in these last 7 days, so please excuse the random spillage of my heart here...

Long lost twins?

My Dad is a rock. Similar to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, minus the tattoos (although he does have a gnarly scar on his chest now). Being 55 years young, health problems weren't really on the radar. But besides being super strong, physically fit, and healthy as a horse, he has always been the steady leader of our family. So imagine how shaken I was when I found out that my dad had a minor heart attack on Friday that led to finding out he had some major blockages in his heart requiring open heart surgery on Monday. I was not prepared for this. No, he is too young, too healthy, too important...it's safe to say I was in denial. As my family and I tried to reconcile with all this new scary information, God stepped in to teach me a few things.

Can there be any good out of something as horrible as a heart attack? With God running the show, you better believe it. I know that my Dad probably has a different perspective, since he is the one physically suffering here, and I would love to have him share about that here someday. I am not trying to downplay AT ALL what he has gone through, in fact I can't even imagine that kind of pain. So these are just my personal thoughts.

First of all, I love the little glimpses of God's goodness in the details. For example, when my Dad passed out after his heart attack at the YMCA, he was found by a family friend who called my mom right away (who promptly came and convinced him to go to the hospital when he did not want to go). My parents were also scheduled to spend a week in Costa Rica with my studying-abroad sister this week. Praise the Lord this didn't happen while they were traveling in Central America. Dad also had a "warning" heart attack a few weeks ago where he passed out but never told anyone. This one was his second chance. I have seen family and friends pour out love, support and prayers that bring me to tears.

At our family Thanksgiving celebration this year, my cousin set up a cute little tree with leaves on which you could write what you are thankful for this year. My cousin wrote "modern medicine and skillful surgeons". For some reason this one stuck with me, and my brother even gave it the "best thankful leaf" award at the time. Well, I was never more thankful for that exact thing until I found out the extent of my dad's heart condition and what would be required to fix it. It is truly amazing what God has allowed us to discover in the field of medicine and we are so blessed to have access to such great medical care.

Beyond this, my heart has been pondering life and death. When you are sitting in a waiting room knowing that your Dad's heart is stopped while they perform surgery and a machine is pumping blood through his body, you can't help but grasp the delicate nature of this earthly life. I cannot imagine life without my Dad, and thanks to God's grace and great medical care, I don't have to. But all of our time here is so short in the grand scheme of things. What really matters? And what doesn't? I'm convinced that the quality of life is so much more important than the quantity. Just as I would rather have one perfect piece of dark chocolate than one hundred off-brand M&Ms, I would also rather live a short life full of love, joy and purpose than a long life of selfishness and meaninglessness. And I am so thankful to have found true purpose, in knowing the one, true God.

This experience has made me want to live with no regrets and leave nothing unspoken. (well, nothing good unspoken anyway...I'll still try to hold back my angry rants) There are no guarantees of second chances, although it seems that in His grace, God has given one to Dad at this time. I want to use this one chance I have at life not to live for myself and make this world my home, but to let the Lord use my life however would best honor Him. For us who have eternal hope in Jesus, there is nothing to fear in death, only assurance of a better life forever with him beyond the grave. I long for everyone to know this peace that I have only known in my relationship with Christ.

From Daddy...

...To Grandpa!

So Dad, I sit here tonight so unbelievably thankful that you are also sitting here reading these words. And I want to leave nothing unspoken: I love you more than I can say. You are the absolute best Daddy I could have ever asked for. I have never had to doubt your love, because your hugs and honest words spoke it to me every day. Your generosity amazes me and your passion for things that matter is contagious. You treat everyone with kindness and dignity, regardless of if they deserve it or not (except maybe the refs who makes those ridiculous calls against the Broncos...(-:) Your faith is true, I see Jesus in your daily life and want to follow those steps. You reflect the character of our heavenly Father and have taught me more than you know. All these words cannot express how much you mean to me and how thankful I am for you. Thanks for going through all of this nasty medical stuff so that you can continue to be the rock for our family. And I'm hoping for another epic Jackson Hole ski adventure one of these years...

All thanks and praise to my Jesus, who has blessed me beyond measure.

"And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which you were called in one body; and be thankful." - Colossians 3:15

Monthly Adoption Update

I guess with all the excitement happening recently adoption-wise, I have fallen behind on the monthly updates. But here is where we sit at the moment: we are almost ready to send our dossier paperwork (finally) and then we wait to hear how things are moving along in Ethiopia.

We are trying to use this time to prepare as much as we can for when our daughter joins our family, but I feel like there is no way to fully prepare for all that is ahead. We are reading books, getting advice from others, and praying more than anything.

We changed one of our kitchen clocks to Ethiopian time...and not just to confuse us and make us late. Whenever we look at the clock, we think of what our little girl might be doing at that moment and say a prayer for her. She is always near in our minds and hearts even though she is far on the other side of the world.

Thanks for all your support and encouragement as our journey continues...

15,000 is a big number

15,000 may not seem like a big number to you, but if you are talking about dollar bills, then that seems like a pretty big number to me. $15,000 is the amount that we need to come up with in order to bring our future daughter home in the next 8-9 months or so. Say what?!? We have already paid over $17,600 in adoption fees from the money we have saved and raised so far. So how is there still $15,000 left to pay? A large portion of that is for travel expenses, and other fees required by our agency.

In my little mind, this financial obstacle looks like a Mt. Everest. However, I am aware that God is much bigger than that and He is our Provider. I've never asked Him to provide so much money so quickly. I pray that as we ask in faith, He will step in and show how faithful He is. How will He do that? I have no idea, but I can't wait to find out! I hope that you can be a part of this adventure with us!

This is never a place that I wanted to be, asking for help. Yep, that's the extremely humble person that I am, ahem. (please note the sarcasm) We had actually hoped to have the 2-3 years of waiting for a referral as time we could be saving up our money for these expenses. But with so little time now before we will travel to meet our daughter, we are going to need help.

What have we been doing so far?
Saving our pennies. My wise husband says that our best fundraiser is to save the money we are already earning. So we have been cutting back on the little things and hoping it adds up to big money. This means no smartphones for us right now (our dumb phones will have to do), no big vacations, not eating out too often, etc. Dean has offered to eat only cereal and Ramen noodles in order to cut back on our grocery bill, but I'm hoping we don't have to do that quite yet. (-: He is trying to sell some of his precious music equipment, since it is the only valuable thing we own. Dean is trying to get some overtime at work and my mom has kindly hired me to be her cleaning lady. We've had a few fundraisers that have been really helpful: our thrift sale, bracelet sales, and craft sales at the Ethiopian Cultural Festival. We applied for some grants, but even if we are awarded any grants, it will not be enough.

What are we planning to do next?
This is where we need your help. If you would like to be a part of helping us bring our daughter home, we would be so grateful. We don't want to overwhelm you with fundraiser after fundraiser, so we are trying to condense our efforts. We have set up a site HERE where you can donate online. It is simple and free and uses Paypal. We also have set up an online store with some handmade items made by us or donated by others, with all proceeds from the store going towards our adoption expenses. The store will be open and an ongoing fundraiser during our process. You can check out the store here, or find it under the fundraising tab. We are also excited about a 10 day T-shirt fundraiser drive that we are hoping to launch soon, so be prepared for that. (-:

So $15,000 is a big number, but please pray along with us that God will do a mighty work and show how great He is as He provides for our every need. It is only by His grace and through all of you precious friends and family that we will be able to bring our daughter home! More than anything else, we would love your prayers as our journey continues. xoxo

Our Referral Experience

Oh silly expectations. How they play with my emotions again and again. Having read one too many adoption blogs, I had a certain expectation of how exactly your much-anticipated referral day goes down. According to my scientific research, it should proceed as follows:
1) Get a call from your adoption agency just when you were least expecting it.
2) The rest of the world stops while you and your hubby gather around the phone/computer to hear the information about your future child.
3) Start jumping up and down and hootin' and hollerin' with joy: you're going to be parents!!!

Sounds pretty great to me! Sign me up! Only this is not exactly what my experience was. If you already read this post on how we arrived at our referral point, you will know that it's not a traditional referral situation. So when I got the call from our agency (which I WAS expecting since I contacted them first...already broke procedure #1), Dean wasn't home. And there was no way I was going to be able to wait all day to look at the information with him, so I just dug in all by myself (oops, there goes #2). Then I waited for procedure #3 to commence. But instead, I read every word of the referral and ended in a puddle of tears and a broken heart. Wait a minute! This can't be right! This is not how I'm suppose to feel! Why am I not taking a selfie pic of me looking overjoyed next to my computer screen right now??

I know our situation is different than many, and an older child comes with more of a history than a baby. I just never expected that to shake me and break me like it did. I cried over our daughter's past and her future. I cried over her hurts, because now they are my hurts too. I cried over her birth family, not even able to imagine their pain. I cried over her picture, her perfect little innocent face. I cried over the broken world that we live in. I cried knowing that adoption is born out of loss and seeing it right before my eyes. I cried because I wish she could live in a perfect world where adoption isn't necessary. I cried because I love her already.

And then I fell on my face before my God, crying out to Him. He listened and spoke, giving me peace and joy. What a privilege to be a part of the life of this precious little lady. I am so humbled, so blessed. And also, so excited.

As for Dean, the experience in his own words was "love at first sight". Enough said. (-: 

How we got HERE

Let me set the stage for this story of how we ended up where we are in our adoption journey today. We had made our final decisions regarding the "desired child" portion of our homestudy (1-2 children ages 0-5). I had just gotten to the point where I was perfectly happy waiting for the time being. I was feeling content with my life at the moment and things were quite comfortable. Since I am a big planner/preparer, I thought that a few years of waiting would leave me time to feel nice and ready. But you see, that would leave me trusting more in myself and my planning and knowledge than in my Lord... 

At the beginning of every month, our adoption agency posts a list of "waiting children" who are available and waiting for a family to adopt them.  All that is given on the list is the ages, genders and special needs of the children (if they have any) and if their adoption documents are ready. I have been reading these lists every month and praying for these precious kids. So, on the 1st of October when the "waiting children" list came out, I read through it as usual. But for some reason, I could not get the "7 year old girl" listed out of my head.

So I figured I better pray some more that God would raise up a family to commit to her. Only He didn't let me stop there. He just kept growing this burden for her in my heart until I thought I was going crazy. I finally decided to tell Dean what was going on in my head and heart, because he is very good at getting my crazy plans back to reality (i.e. shooting down my dreams...haha). I was looking forward to his logical opinion, and instead he calmly said, "Well, let's pray about her, if we're the right family for her". What?!? Not what I was wanting to hear...

Meanwhile, God was speaking constantly and consistently. Yes, yes, yes. That was all I could hear from Him. Everywhere I turned in His Word He was telling me to live by faith and trust Him tangibly, not just with my words. We both continued seeking God's will, and He was so kind as to give me so many little "signs" to reassure my fearful heart. Then, in the middle of the month, our adoption agency sent out an updated "waiting children list". First of all, the list is usually only sent out at the beginning of the month from what I've seen, so I was surprised to see it. And then, at the very top of the list this time was the "7 year old girl". I think at this point my heart stopped and my hands were shaking.

When I recovered from my minor heart attack and Dean and I had some more prayer and discussion, we decided to go ahead and request more information about her. This led to our referral experience, which I will share about later. After receiving her information, we had 2 weeks to decide if we wanted to proceed to adopt her. I looked at the scant information we had and wondered how we could possibly make such a big decision with so little information. But Dean reminded me that God knows all the information and we can trust Him to help us decide.

After much more prayer and discussion, we decided to accept the referral for our little girl one week later.  We were so excited, and so thankful! This was all happening much faster than the 2-3 years of waiting that we were expecting.

(Now for a little background: A year and a half ago when we were buying our house, we had saved up for the down payment. When we were working out the financing, we decided to leave $10,000 in our savings account. For no good reason. We thought maybe we would need some new furniture for the house or something. But there it sat, in our account. Then last fall when we started thinking about adoption, Dean said "maybe that $10,000 is for our adoption.")

So last week when we wanted to accept the surprise referral, we had to pay the referral fee, which was $9700. If we wouldn't have had that money left in our savings account, we wouldn't have been able to proceed with the adoption process. God knew what He was doing and had been preparing us (and our finances) for this all along. We have seen little glimpses of His provision every step of the way.

While of course we are overjoyed and excited, we also know this is going to be hard. We have tried to picture all the worst case scenarios, and have come to the conclusion that we can trust our God through every single one. I heard a quote recently: "Prepare for the worst and hope for the best." Being the pessimist that I am, I am good at expecting and preparing for the worst. And having a wonderfully optimistic husband, he is always focused on hoping for the best. But both of us know that no matter what lies ahead, God is good and He will never leave us.

"Though the fig tree does not bud

and there are no grapes on the vines,

though the olive crop fails

and the fields produce no food,

though there are no sheep in the pen

and no cattle in the stalls,
(even if all normalcy is lost, 
if things seem hopeless, 
if expectations are not met, 
if uncertainty abounds...)

yet I will rejoice in the Lord,

I will be joyful in God my Savior.

The Sovereign Lord is my strength;

he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,

he enables me to tread on the heights."

Habakkuk 3:17-19