Answers to Prayer

One of our biggest challenges to adopting has been how to pay for the it. International adoption is costly. We have fees to our adoption agency, immigration fees, legal fees, document fees, and travel expenses for two trips to Bulgaria! The decision to adopt was a huge step of faith for us. We know the God who has called us to adopt would be faithful to provide for our adoption! And He has! We pray He will provide and He does! Recently we have had two big answers to prayer about our adoption finances!

First, we have been praying for a better job for me and God has answered our prayers! I had to part-time jobs, one working in a preschool and one babysitting. I just got a new job, closer to my house, with a small pay raise, were I can work full time! This is a huge answer to prayer!

Our second answer to prayer is that yesterday we got approved by LifeSong for Orphans to do a Both Hands fundraiser and for a $3,000 matching grant! We love Both Hands! We are super excited to be able to help a widow and raise funds for our adoption. If you haven't heard of Both Hands, I will try to explain. Think of a 5K for the Cure. People get sponsored to run a marathon and the money raised helps find a cure for a disease. But what if they got sponsored to fix up a widow's house instead? And all the money they raised went to fund an adoption? The video below explains it better than I can. So watch it!

Eeeeek! I can't beleive it! We are going to do a project like this! (Yes I squeal when I get super excited!) The next steps for us include, gathering a team to work on a widows house, finding a widow (we have one in mind), and setting a date for the project! Stay tuned for more news!

"Growing in Our Hearts" Adoption Photo Shoot

Andrew and I just had our family photos taken. (And what a happy little family we are!) We wanted these pictures to express the unique stage we are in right now as a family. We are growing, adding more members. But how could add the adoption element to our pictures? How could we include the children we want to adopt? I found tons of cute ideas for including adoption in family photos. I am sure we will try out all the ideas someday, but for this photo shoot we wanted to express how we feel that our kids are "growing in our hearts." A beautiful, old adoption poem reads:

Not flesh of my flesh,
Nor bone of my bone,
but still miraculously my own.
Never forget for a single minute;
You didn't grow under my heart
but in it.

I want to give a shout out and big thank you to my sister Jamie for helping us document this stage in our life! Check out her work on her Facebook page, Jamie Loray Photography.