2017: what we are believing to be a big year

2016 was crazy in our house. Madilynn turned one, God brought adoption to the surface much sooner than we expected, M started walking and turned into a toddler before our eyes, God provided our needs in a way we never could have dreamed of, and in amounts we never ever could have imagined! With this crazy year behind us, we stand before 2017 with so much hope, excitement, and anticipation (along with a little bit of fear of the unknown). Our God is a god of miracles and He is a god that puts orphans into families. This year we are honored and excited to see Him work through our little family.

 

We know that 2017 is going to be a huge year for us. It will, Lord willing, be the year that we see our baby's face. The year that we get to learn about any medical needs they may have, be able to send care packages monthly, get updates and pictures as they grow, and it will be a year of waiting. Lots of waiting. We are waiting to find out who our child is, then we will wait for paperwork to be approved by Korean government, then we will wait for our court date. We will get to travel to Korea to meet our sweet lovebug and jump through government hoops before we come back home to wait for a little more. After a month or two of waiting for more paperwork and formalities, we will be able to go get our baby! We know that this process will continue on into 2018, but 2017 is definitely going to hold the bulk of it and we couldn't be more thrilled that everyday gets us closer to seeing our baby's face!

So for now, here is where we are. (Let me preface this by saying, we stepped out in faith mid-June this year so ALL of this has happened in only 6 short months!!)

• We have our LAST thing (psychological evaluation) to mark off of our homestudy to do list scheduled for January 3rd!!! And then, we will be able to turn our 4 months of hard work to our social worker and she will write up our homestudy!!!!
• We have split our financial need into 3 goals: Homestudy and US Processing fee ($7,000), Adoption Program fee ($22,500), and Travel Expenses plus Government Paperwork fees ($15,000)

If you haven't realized this, God has raised almost THIRTY THOUSAND DOLLARS in only 6 months, y'all!! We only have about $700 left to complete our Adoption Program fee, which means we can say yes to a baby at anytime!! God is our huge, great, extravagant provider! All we have left to save is our travel expenses (for both trips) and about $1,800 of government paperwork fees! Our hearts are seriously bursting! We are 65% of the way to being fully funded for our adoption and we haven't even seen our sweet baby's face. God is good!

"For nothing is impossible with God." Luke 1:37

I will do a BIG write up at the end of our fundraising about ways God gave us to raise funds for our adoption, details on how we did them and how it all worked out, but here's a quick recap so far:

• Selling our custom adoption T-Shirts: $1,689
• Calligraphy signs: $5,280
• eBay sales: $3,325
• Donations: $5,900
• Cooking Class Night: $590
• Yardsale: $6,164.55
• Puzzle Pieces: $5,850
• TOTAL (so far): $28,778