Yard Sale Fundraiser

by Evie

We are pleased to announce that our Adoption Fundraising Yard Sale will take place on Friday, June 1st from 8 a.m.--6 p.m.; and Saturday June 2nd from 8 a.m.--5 p. m. at 1075 Elm Street Plymouth, IN 46563

Our good friends will be hosting for us! They live in a more populated area then we do. And their children will have a lemonade stand:-)

We are grateful to all of you have have been donating items for the Yard Sale! That is a huge blessing! We have a van's worth of things to sell in order to raise money towards our adoption!

My sister is sponsoring coffee (that was purchased and mailed to us today) to be sold both mornings. And my sister in-law will be baking cookies for us to sell.

We'll be taking donations up until Memorial Day weekend. And as June draws closer, we will advertise our Yard Sale Fundraiser on Craig's List. We are asking the Lord for a great turn out and are eager to see how He will answer our prayers.

I've never had a yard sale before. It's kind of exciting, but in some ways, all of this seems very overwhelming. My flesh thinks this (adopting and all that it entails) is completely crazy! But the Holy Spirit keeps reminding me that God is big and that He will work out all the details. I need to trust HIM.

Verses that I read this afternoon (Very timely):
Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Matthew 6:31-32

What's on His Mind

Seth's art during church....

(top left hand side: c3po and r2d2

bottom middle: Ethiopia, Africa)

We Finished Kindergarten...

by Evie

Ok, that wasn't loud enough.

On Friday, WE FINISHED KINDERGARTEN!!! 
WOO WHOOOO!!!!

The boys and I are taking 3 weeks off, then we will begin Summer School (ie. working on math, reading, and handwriting. We don't want to lose what we learned or Scott's fabulous handwriting). And Mama will be PAPER-CHASING with a vengeance! I'm not a tech-savvy kind of gal, but I even learned how to scan in documents, so that I can email them to our Family Coordinator, so that she can approve them, so we can in turn get them notarized.



Now, the boys can spend more time doing things like this (house for Eeyore),

spending time finding toads and playing w/ solar powered frogs...

and this (pirate ship)...

taking nature walks and riding bikes...

making Lego creations...

and this...

Using Mom's Kindle Fire? Um, probably not! Mom will finally have more time to listen to audio books and podcasts:-)

On Wednesday, we will be headed down to Indy for our first Home Study!
The next two weeks are crunch time for Steve as he finishes his semester at Ivy Tech (on top of working overtime at work).
We really do appreciate your prayers, your questions, and generous donations for the up-coming yard sale.

YAY!!! First official year of Home-schooling, COMPLETED!!!

God's Plan from the Beginning!

by Evie

As you can imagine, anything having to do with Adoption catches my attention. Here's a good Piper quote.‎

"Adoption in God’s mind was not Plan B. He predestined us for adoption before the creation of the world. Plan A was not lots of children who never sin and never need to be redeemed. Plan A was creation, fall, redemption, adoption so that the full range of God’s glory and mercy and grace could be known by his adopted children. Adoption was not second best. It was planned from the beginning." John Piper.

Upcoming Home Study and Yard Sale

by Evie

Wow, we've been busy. There seems to be more things to get done than there are hours in which to do them.

We are excited that on Wednesday, the 25th, we will be in Indianapolis for our first Home Study appointment! It will sort of be like a mini orientation. We'll be taking the boys with us. And perhaps we will go do something fun as a family, like going to the Children's Museum:-)

As I was sitting down to write this post, I noticed there was an unread post in our google reader. Our Agency posted a blog post that is very timely as it had to do with Home Studies.

Paper work is coming along. Although I haven't been updating here much, we are accomplishing some things. We already have a pile of papers that could be notarized. I'm finding that as we work down the tracking sheet, the things we need to gather seem more complicated. We suspect that our paper-chasing stage will take longer than the average. In part, because we have been so busy and also because it feels like the home study is going slowly! But we are chipping away at it and already have half a dozen documents crossed off the list! 

We will miss our agency's monthly Conference call while we are in Indy. Thankfully, they record those and email them out. 

We are really looking forward to Steve being done w/ school for the semester, that will REALLY help us in regards to the adoption and our family life. He also has been working lots of over time. And I will be done teaching Scott Kindergarten in a few days!

I'll soon have finalized info on our garage sale. It seems like it will be the first weekend of June instead of in May. Thanks to all of you who have been donating for our Adoption Fundraiser sale!

Thank you also for all of you who have been purchasing coffee and shopping Amazon through our button.

Thank you most of all for your prayers!

Adoption: The Highest Gospel Blessing

Our pastor, Jason Webb, is teaching about Adoption -physical adoption and spiritual adoption! Today he laid the foundation of our spiritual adoption. Here is the audio.

I. Adoption is the highest privilege of the gospel. 

         1John 3:1a  See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children  of God; and so we are. 

II. Adoption is meant to be the basis of the rest of the Christian life.

1. Adoption teaches us to Control our Conduct 

       a. We are to act like our Heavenly Father.

        Matthew 5:44-48  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,  (45)  so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.  (46)  For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?  (47)  And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?  (48)  You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

        b. We are to act in a way that brings honor and glory to our Father

        Matthew 5:16  In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

         c. We are to live to please our Father (not other people) 

         Matthew 6:1  "Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

2. Adoption teaches us to Pray

            Matthew 6:8-9  Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.  (9)  Pray then like this: "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

3. Adoption teaches us to Trust

             Mat 6:31-32  Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'  (32)  For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.

Amazon.com Commission!

by Steve

I am really excited about this one! We are always buying things from Amazon.com. You can get virtually anything there and it will be delivered right to your house. Now we have signed up to become Amazon Associates.
This means that if you shop from our Amazon.com link, we will get a commission for anything you buy! It does not cost you anything extra and all the proceeds go toward our adoption.
So click here or look for our "Amazon.com" button on our blog. Go ahead and bookmark that page for your future shopping needs. Then you can search and shop as you normally would.
Thank you for your support!

Papers Everywhere!

by Steve



We have sent in the application for our Home Study and are beginning to collect documents for our Dossier!

The Home Study is done by a third-party, non-profit organization that assigns us a social worker. These are the people that we actually meet with and talk to face to face.  The purpose of the Home Study is to verify that we are qualified to adopt. This will include background checks, several meetings, and checking our references. They say the more places we have lived and moved in our lives, the longer the background check will take. With Evie's international residences, we anticipate that this will take extra long.
The average time for the Home Study to be completed is 4-6 weeks. It costs about $1700.

The Dossier is the official document that is sent to the Ethiopian government. It includes everything from Birth Certificates to our Home Study and lots of official papers.
All these papers take time to collect and make sure everything is perfect. AWAA (our adoption agency) has assigned us a Family Coordinator. Her main job at this stage is to make sure our Dossier is all in order so that nothing is rejected once we send it to Ethiopia.
The average time for this process is 4-6 months. The cost widely varies because each document is different. For example, my passport needs to be renewed ($110), but Evie's is up to date.

You know how you feel when you go to get your drivers licence for the first time? Before they can give you that licence you need to get all those different documents. Then you can't find one or another of them so you need to get that first before you can even go get your licence. That is where we all begin to develop a dislike for governmental paperwork.
Emotionally, that is where we are at and will be for the next few months. AWAA has done their best to lay it out clearly and make things easy to understand, but it is quite overwhelming when we see the long list of things that need to be done.
Please continue to pray for us as we plod our way through this -that we will remember what great effort God went through to adopt us into His family.

Big Brothers

by Evie

What do Scott and Seth think about us adopting? They are thrilled! Seth even has him named! And for as young as they are, they seem to understand more than I would have thought they would.

About two years ago, I was watching a video online about orphans, and I was crying. Scott came over to the computer very concerned and asked me what was wrong. I pointed to the screen and told him, "see all those kids and babies, they don't have mommies and daddies."  He answered, "Well, we have to go get them then." He has been mentioning that we need to adopt ever since.

In our family worship time, we've prayed for Baby Webb during the past two years, and I guess our boys have always assumed that we would be adopting. Right before the Webbs went to Ethiopia in January to meet their son, we went to the store to buy some things to donate to his orphanage. So, as we were approaching the Baby department, I explained to our boys what we were doing. Seth asked; "can we buy something for our baby?" To that I replied; "what Baby?" He said; "Matthew." Me: "what?" Seth: "you know, our Baby in Ethiopia."

What will we be naming him? To be honest, we don't know yet. And we're not even sure if we will be announcing that until the very end. IF it were up to Seth, his name would be Matthew:-)

Why not a girl? Well, why not another boy? Before we verbalized our thoughts, each of us (including the boys) already wanted another boy. If we're going to choose, we might as well choose. And for many reasons, a boy just seems more practical for our family at this time.

We often have conversations about adoption. And we pray that the Lord would help them to one day understand spiritual adoption.

"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. Gal.4:4-7

We are so in awe of how God redeemed us and made us his Son and Daughter! And we praise HIM that HE adopted us!

           Happy Good Friday.