Update

Thanks so much for the gifts already given, we are so humbled and thankful for your support and prayers!

• On another note, I sent out our final grant applications this week in addition to the online components we did last week, so whew!  All free time has been spent on writing essays, collecting necessary documents, filling out applications and answering tons of questions.  I hope that we find favor with one of these wonderful organizations, but it is our privilege to fill out all these forms with the hope that it will bring us closer to Zachary.  Each envelope was sealed with great love and is an offering of sacrifice and praise.  Thank you God for this opportunity!

• We are enjoying this beautiful weather.  Just checked and it is 70 degrees where Zachary lives in China.  Perhaps he is enjoying the spring weather too!

Puzzle Fundraiser

We are working hard to get Zachary home, and that includes being creative in finding ways to save/raise this final $18,000 needed to fund our adoption.   So, in addition to the many grants we have applied for (which is quite the process), we wanted to invite you to help us put together an "adoption puzzle" for Zachary.  Here's how it works...

We have a 200 piece puzzle that Asher helped pick out for Zachary.  It is an "animals of the world" puzzle and fits into the global/travel theme of their room, which Asher is excited to share with his brother (mainly because he'll be getting bunk beds!)

Each puzzle piece is $10, or whatever you feel led to give ($5, $1). When an amount is donated we will write your name, or your family's name, on the back of a puzzle piece.  Once all the pieces are funded we will put the puzzle together, seal it, and frame it in a doubled sided frame.  All the names of our friends/family will be seen on the back like this:

Zachary will then have something of his very own to hang above his bed that represents all the hands and hearts that came together to help bring him home.  I get emotional just thinking about it...

Asher and Laurel love puzzles, so they are going to help assemble it as a gift to their brother, and Asher is very excited about getting all the pieces together :)

If we can get all the pieces funded we will be a minimum of $2,000 closer to our much needed total.  If you would like to sponsor a puzzle piece please click the following link below or the link on the side of our blog, and you can put your information in securely.  Our fundraising is through GoFundMe.  All donations will go directly to our adoption fund.  You can use credit/debit cards.  You are also welcome to mail a check if that is easier.  Also, please let us know in the comments section (on the GoFundMe site or here) what name you'd like put on the puzzle: your name, your family's name, in honor or memory of a loved one, or if you'd like to remain anonymous, etc.

Click below:


It's hard to ask for money, but we know that it takes a village to raise a child- and in this case it takes a village to bring a child home- so thank you!  We do not expect anyone to help us financially, but people have asked.  So if you feel prayerfully led to give, this is a special way to do it.  We can't wait to see how God continues to provide for Zachary through His people.

**Our financial goals are listed on the tab at the top of our blog**

Wooooo hooo!!!!!

We are officially on to the next step!  Today our finalized and notarized home study arrived and was mailed out with our i800a form to immigration.  I am so excited to be on to the next step...which is wait 2-3 months to get our US approval to bring an orphan into the country.

Ha!  Hurry up and wait...the adoption process is a test in patience.

Please pray that our immigration process goes smoothly, that we are assigned an efficient and kind officer, and that our wait is short.  Two-three months is the norm, but who knows!

After we get approval we will be able to send our dossier to China- and that is the big milestone.  Once our dossier is in China, everything goes into motion that will allow us to get on a plane and bring Zachary home.

So yay!  On to the next step.

There might have been ridiculous amounts of jumping and dancing in our house once that form went in the mail :)  It's a great way to start the weekend and another reminder that yes, we are moving forward, and we are coming to get our little boy.

Things are Good

We've been busy, busy, busy!  Busy is good. We've got something going on every night this week.  I've been running all over town getting things notarized, express mailed, avoiding ice storms, getting duplicate copies of important documents, trying to keep sticky baby hands off of important documents, drafting various checks and money orders...whew.  I love it!  This part of the process is wild (let's be honest, the whole thing is wild), but it's the part of the process that I have my hands on.  The hard part is taking all of those documents, papers, checks, and signatures that we've painstaking collected and putting them in a envelope to someone else across the country.  At that point I have no control over what happens to them and I can't help but wonder if they'll get eaten by a rabid raccoon or pummeled by a rain storm before they make it to their destination.

Those papers are super important and it kind of feels like I'm mailing my life away in a flimsy paper envelope.  Surreal!

We are also starting the process of applying for adoption grants to help fund our adoption.  The chance of being awarded any of these is small, but we want to explore every avenue available.  God has called amazing people to create these grants and it is a blessing that they are able to help people with their adoption expenses.  So we are prayerfully applying to some of these organizations in case God wants to help fund our adoption in this way.  It is weird to talk about money sometimes, but the reality of the situation is that adoption is expensive and we don't have an extra $32,000 laying around to cover it.  God has already provided in amazing ways, and we have been scrimping and saving all the excess we have and are being very frugal.  When we decided to move forward with adopting Zachary, God made it abundantly clear that he would provide a way, so we are trusting him with that.  We're already almost halfway there!  We are also hoping to have a yard sale in the spring, so if you have any tips on how to make that a success let me know, as we've never done one before.

I'm attempting to be transparent, because I want our story to give all the glory to God, and also help encourage others who might be thinking about adoption but aren't sure how they could ever actually make it happen.  I'm constantly learning that I can't make it happen, but God can, and he shows up in unbelievable ways.  When you get to the place where there is no way you can do anything to fix a situation, when there is nothing left to do in your own power, that is where God meets you.  He has already meet us there, providing for us in ways I never even hoped or imagined to be possible.  God's people are incredibly generous.  And God is just so so good.

Today at prayer time before bed Asher told God that he was thankful he had a mommy and daddy who take care of him, unlike Zachary.  Then he paused for a second and said, "but soon, when You tell us it's time, we'll go get Zachary and then he WILL have a Mommy and Daddy and Asher and Laurel.  That'll be good."

I needed to hear that.  Things are busy and crazy, and there is a lot still up in there air. Zachary needs food, love and medical care now and we aren't even close to coming to get him.  But we are inching forward.  And God is providing.  And He is preparing us by filling our hearts with love for a child we've never met.

Yes indeed, things are very, very good.

In Your Hands

"But I trust in you, O LORD; I say, “You are my God.  My times are in your hands." - Psalm 34:14

My times are in His hands.

Zachary's times are in His hands.

I needed this reminder today as I was getting impatient with the waiting.  Sometimes it feels like every extra day it takes to get paperwork done, to wait on a form, to send something in the mail...well it just feels like an extra day that Zachary has to spend in an orphanage. And sometimes that thought gets the best of me.

But all of our times are in God's hands.  All of my micro-managing, super organizational skills will not get us to Zachary one day before God has ordained it to happen.  I needed to read that scripture today, and to be reminded that peace comes in trusting God's timing.

The Broken Road

I struggle with adoption.

I love adoption, and thank God for it, I believe in it and the power God gives it to transform lives.  But I struggle with the brokenness of it.

The pain and trauma and turmoil that are manifested because for some reason, whatever reason, a child is not able to stay with their biological family.

I believe in God's sovereignty.  But I will never believe that God desires for first families to be broken.  He does not want death, poverty, fear, addiction, greed, social stigmas, AIDS, apathy, or sickness to prevent a mother from raising her child.  He does not desire that human trafficking, prostitution, or child slavery drive the abandonment cycle.  But he allows it.

That's a theological debate for another day, but the fact is, God allows these things to occur on Earth.  The world has been a broken and sinful place since Adam and Eve took that bite of fruit in Eden.  And only Jesus can redeem the situation we have gotten ourselves into.

He has made us Children of God because of His sacrifice on the cross.  We have been redeemed, adopted by our Heavenly Father.  That is what he has done for us, and that is why adoption is so significant.

Jesus had to walk a messy, painful road full of suffering in order to restore us with His Father.  The righteousness that covers us whiter than snow is His blood.  

Why should we expect following Him here on Earth to be any easier?  Jesus said to take up our cross and follow him.  When you get involved in the suffering of other people, life gets messy.  And that is exactly where God wants us.

Adoption is messy.  It often is the difference between loneliness and love.  Between sickness and health.  Between life and death.

But we have to be sensitive to many things, particularly the fact that the details of Zachary's life are his.  Children living in orphanages don't have a lot of things that they can hold on to as a source of identity.  First and foremost, they often do not have a relationship with their birth parents, so their family heritage and history is lost.  They do not have a room, toys, or pictures to call their own.  They often shuffle through the same clothing that has been passed down from other children in the orphanage.  They truly have very little to identify as their own.

What they do have is their story.  How they were abandoned, what little they know about their birth situation.  The small details of their lives that were fortunate enough to be recorded.  As Zachary gets older it will be his choice if he wants to share these details or not.

We get the privilege of walking that messy road with him- of helping him discover who he is, in Christ and as a Chinese child adopted by an American family.  We pray every day for the grace and wisdom to do this well.  Zachary's life, like all of our lives in different ways, is full of brokenness.  Thankfully, we know the God who heals and restores.  I hope he will too.

~Somewhere Between~

We don't own a TV and don't have a lot of opportunities to see the latest TV shows and movies, but last night we were able to watch "Some.where Between" on my laptop.

It is a documentary about Chinese adoption that follows the story of 4 teenage girls as they deal with trying to find their identity as minorities and adoptees.  It was fantastic!

There was a small section of the film that followed a family on the day they meet the special needs child they've been waiting over a year to adopt.  In adoption culture this is often called the "Gotcha day".  The family was huddled up in their hotel room, nervously waiting for the orphanage director to knock on the door and present them with their child.  The moment was beautiful and painful and surreal.  The amazing love, the joy of an orphan finding a family, the fear and sadness of a little girl being left with total strangers...it was such an overwhelming moment.  The full realization of a family's months of waiting and hope and love.  The terrible tragedy of a child's loneliness, abandonment, and insecurity. All playing out in the most common of places- a small hotel room.

I couldn't help but realize again how closely human adoption parallels the reality of what God did for us through the sacrifice of His son.  The magnitude of His patience, hope and love for humanity. The tragedy of our sin, Jesus' broken body and separation from the Father.  All playing out on the crudest of places- a wooden cross.  Redemption.

We also couldn't help but be overwhelmed with the reality that in approximately 10 months that will be us, waiting inside a hotel room in China, about to meet our son for the first time.

If you have a chance to watch the movie I'd highly recommend it.  I think it is available though Red Box and Net.flix.  It gives such an honest and accurate glimpse into both the hope and hurts of adoption.  It also was a neat look into the culture and people of China.

We are waiting to get final approval to send our adoption request to immigration.  Hurry, hurry, wait! ...that describes this process perfectly.  I am still keeping my fingers crossed that we'll be able to travel before Christmas to get Zachary...but there is a lot left to do and it could easily slide into 2015 depending on how things go.  Please keep praying for us, we appreciate it so much.


**Sorry, we had some technical issues so the blog has been down for a few days, I think it's finally fixed!**