Counting the days.

We are just days from our first visit with our babies! We have been so blessed by friends, family, and even strangers stepping into the gap for us with financial blessings and prayers. There have been a few times recently that, to quote my husband, "God has been answering our prayers like we're the only thing on His mind."

We had our doctor's visit, I've got my lessons planned for my sub, and we have made some headway on the mother-in-law bonus room. And we have our first baby shower scheduled at my husband's home church over Thanksgiving break. That's exciting. We did a little registering for gifts at Target, but I'm not sure how much we need for their stage of development. So we mostly registered for crib sheets and developmental toys. I don't know anything about bottle flow and feedings and diapers. I just know we're going to need to do it.

I'm starting to have dreams about babies and travel and adoption. Last night I was trying to adopt a little blonde headed boy ... in Honduras or Mexico? I was speaking Spanish in my dream. So I ate Taco Bell for lunch.

As far as the trip and the planning goes, we're in that stretch of the run where you know the end is a reasonable distance away, but you are just running out of steam because you expended so much energy in the excitement at the start of the race. Pray for steam. Pray for time to get everything done, and a little time to do NOTHING - because that's lacking these days. And pray for some Barnabases...Barnabi?? Sons of encouragement to come along beside us and help with some things we just can't do right now. Like....does anybody want to help me paint/make props for a musical that is going to happen about 33 hours after we get home?

For now, I'm taking advantage of one of those quiet moments, and I'm going to go back to watching (disappointing) college football (I'm an Ole Miss and Longhorns fan). The highlight of that endeavor is seeing interestingly costumed characters in the stands. What about a giant penguin suit screams "Go Sooners"?

I'm just sayin'.

Praise in the Park Update

Thanks to everyone who stopped by the booth Saturday. We had a great time getting to meet so many folks. And a few of those were definitely Divine Appointments. Met the father of a little girl with special needs who is defying all her diagnoses and doing things they said she wouldn't be able to do. Go, baby, Go!

I also sold a shirt to a woman who was adopted at birth, and had a great story to tell about how that blessed her life, and how God blessed her parents for being obedient.

I counseled with a young lady who is excited about the day when she and her new husband begin looking into expanding their family with adoption.

And a local adoption ministry in our area set up a booth 20 feet from ours, and I got to meet a lot of adoptive parents who live just blocks from me and had great advice for traveling in Russia, traveling with a new baby, and adjusting at home.

It was a great time. So how did we do with our fund raising? We did well. We cleared a couple hundred more dollars in sales, and also got some direct donations. One of the little boys from the church took a coin jar and stood in the thoroughfare looking a LOT like Tiny Tim. He would sing "Jesus Loves Me" just a little off key really softly, then say in this precious plaintive voice - "Please give to orphans". Was he successful? Heck, he alone took in about $150.

I highly recommend working with 9 year olds if you need to do some fundraising. The kid charm factor works wonders!

The other update is - We got our travel approval. It will happen this month. How we are going to do that and put carpet in the house and complete the mother-in-law 3/4 bath upstairs...I don't know. But it will happen. All three of those things need to happen. We had to plan for some modifications to the house to prepare to bring home a child who may have some difficultly walking or crawling, and to make it easier for my in-laws to come stay and help with childcare through the end of this school year.

God is doing something awesome in our own lives but also in the lives of our friends as they see God answering their prayers. So let me keep you updated on how to pray for us.

Pray for more divine appointments - both the encouraging kind and the preparation/reality check kind - with parents and doctors in the specialty that we need. We can't post about what that is, but God knows and BOY is He listening!!!

Pray for finances specific to our travel. Russia is OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive. I asked one of the parents about this yesterday. I thought our agency was padding things a little bit so we could be prepared with extra. He said, "No, it's really that expensive. You'll pay $3 for a 8oz. coke bottle."

Pray for time to complete all of the following: Writing lesson plans for about the next three weeks, just so I don't fall behind; A day Joe and I can go together to get blood panels and chest xrays done to bring with us to Russia; The house stuff; Fall festival at church; Finding a local psychologist that can administer a particular test for our paperwork and not charge us a fortune to do it; and stuff that I'm probably forgetting.

And pray for a little time to have some peace.

Another mountain moved!

That's right. $14,000 worth of mountain.

How?

Well, what do you usually find between two mountains? A valley. We faced some challenges this week that really made us dig down in prayer. Those closest to us know what those challenges are, but we cannot post those things specifically on the internet at this juncture. You'll just have to wait until our babies come home.

But the good news is....They're coming home. And we are closer and closer to the goal than ever.
So where does that leave us for our expenses and fees?

We only have $10,000 more to raise, plus our travel. That's all.

We still have plenty of tshirts for sale. You will want to place your order this week, because we're hoping to sell out of everything next weekend at Praise in the Park in Lucedale.

For the time being: Pray for us. Pray for smooth travel planning. We should know about travel in the next week or two. Pray for the girls and our first meeting together. I can't wait to see them face to face for the first time. Pray that God will prepare us for all the changes and difficulty and surprises we have ahead of us. And pray for that last $10,000 to get an answer, along with our travel.

You are
loved.

Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble?

That was God moving one of them.

A big one.

A $10,000 one.

That much closer to the goal.

PLUS, we heard for SURE from a grant agency that will guarantee to match anything we raise between now and January, which is when we should be coming home with our children. Since it has been a while since we posted our fee schedule for this journey, here's a little refresher with how God has answered and moved to this point.

1. Document fees - $9975. Paid (almost all of it) two weeks ago, thanks to gifts and tshirt sales, and children giving us their piggy banks.....seriously.

2. Trip #1 to Russia - Estimated $5000. Still working on that. 24% there.

3. Referral acceptance - $17,000 due around the same time as Trip #1. Awarded a $10,000 loan toward that amount. 60% there.

4. Trip #2 to Russia - Estimated $8750.

5. Final payment to agency - $17,000 due around the same time as Trip #2. ----This will come from match $ and other grants to be awarded....God willing.

The tshirts will go a long way toward the travel costs. Pray that we will move the last of our inventory when we go to "Praise in the Park" in Lucedale, MS in a couple of weeks. And we hope to hear from a few other grant agencies between now and the end of the year. Some wait until December to review that year's applicants. We know we have a commitment from one particular agency to match what we raise apart form any other loan or grant.

That means YOUR GIFT will eventually be doubled. As money gets donated through ChipIn, or given to us directly, or given to the church in our name, we turn it all over to the church so there's a record in and out that we can show the "One Chance Foundation" - by author Karen Kingsbury, so they can match it for us.

For now, we're moving right along.

Little steps.

Lovely little footsteps.

Painting Class

It did not disappoint. I had a blast. I have to say, though, the crowd - a few steps above me on the food chain - were still very gracious. There was a LOT of self-deprecating humor flying around the room.

Mine started before I sat down. I could not adjust my smock to go over my head. In disgust, I hung my head and said, "This is for children."

But other than that, and the fact that I kept knocking things over and had paint EVERYWHERE, I was made for this. I watched our instructor, who managed to not get a single speck of paint on her baby-pink, perfectly manicured, oval nails. Of course, she looked like a quarterback, because she had gray streaks of oil paint above and below her cheekbones. But a precious quarterback.

I will definitely be going back. Next month is "Lemon on a blue table cloth," which my husband misheard as "women on a blue table cloth". I think he may sign up with me.

Here's the end result.