Thoughts this morning...

This morning during Sunday School our teacher was teaching out of Esther. One thing he spoke of was how we should strive to glorify Christ in all we do. Well, my mind goes straight to our adoption (specifically our fundraising)- yes, I WAS listening, but my mind wandered for a moment ;). I start asking myself are we glorifying God in all that we do, including our adoption fundraising? hmmm...well, we are raising money to adopt a child into our family and that is a good thing! God loves adoption! He calls us to care for orphans and widows (through adoption, prayers, donation, etc...). However, the Bible also speaks of another adoption. Our adoption as believers. God FIRST loved us. He sent His Son to rescue us...ADOPT us. Jesus came to Earth and took on flesh, walking without sin, pefectly loving God the Father, perfectly loving us, dying a painful death on the cross, buried....RISEN!! ALIVE!! Why?? God knew we needed a Savior, a Rescuer, a Redeemer. We can not earn salvation on our own. Even on our best day, we are sinful. Through our faith in Christ, as we turn from our sins, and trust in Him as our Savior, we become Heirs. We are ADOPTED. Not by our own works, but by FAITH.

"and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him." Romans 8:17

"he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will" Ephesians 1:5

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" John 3:16

"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world" James 1:27

Ok, back to my thoughts in Sunday School. :) I realized that at times, as we work on our fundraising projects, I sometimes lose sight of what this is all about. Oh, I never forget that it is to help us bring home our new little one. I also know our fundraising is good and necessary, but it is about more than that. At times I become focused on getting donation items, how to store items, finding the best yard sale tips, how many puzzle pieces we have, or working on our new crosses we are making. While all of that is good, none of that really matters unless, God is being glorified through all of it. This shouldn't simply be about us. This should be about God, and striving to glorify him through our adoption process. God our Father, who first loved us, as believers adopted us! He sent His own Son to die for us... glorifying Him is what this should all be about.

We have been tremendously blessed by donation items for our yardsale, and puzzle pieces being bought. We are so thankful and humbled. I just ask and pray that when you think of our adoption, or donate items for our yardsale, or purchase a puzzle piece, you don't simply think of us. I pray that you think of our little one, I pray you think of all orphans worldwide (all 147,000,000), I pray you think of God's call to care for orphans, and mostly I pray you see how God first loved us. I pray you see that He wants us to come to Him, and trust in Him as our Savior. I pray you see how we too were once orphans, but as believers, we are ADOPTED, heirs of God, and that He is glorified.

First homestudy date set!!

So, we have our first homestudy planned for this Friday! We are so excited because this makes it feel like we are finally making some real progress! However, our house is out of control unorganized. I've got some major cleaning to do before our social worker comes over. Hey, I'm just keepin' it real folks. :) Somehow I've got to find time to get our little home nice and clean. :) Usually I can keep up with the day to day housework and cleaning, but lately I've dropped the ball. In my opinion time spent with E is more precious than a super tidy house. Oh, the necessities are still getting done, but real cleaning has been getting pushed aside lately, and I'm ok with that. I know there will be a day when I have a perfectly clean and organized house, but it will be a lot more quiet. A clean and tidy house will come, but little hearts that want you to read, drive cars, paint, and snuggle, will one day grow up. I'm going to enjoy it while I can. Therfore, if you come over to our house anytime soon you will not find perfection, but you will find happy and fun! That being said, it will get clean for our first homestudy. So friends, if you do want to see our home really clean and shiny drop by sometime Friday, because it might not last long. ;)

Here are a few pics of our everday...

Practicing our letter "E" in buzz jammies ofcourse!

Swingin' with Daddy

Reading books in our tent one rainy morning

A tender heart

Not really too much adoption news going on to share. We have been playing phone tag with our social worker the last day or so trying to schedule our first homestudy. Other than that we've been cleaning out, decluttering, and pulling stuff to include in our yard sale fundraiser coming up in the end of March (March 23rd to be exact). Let me take a moment to add how BLESSED we have been by family and friends who have offered items for us to include in our yard sale! Wow! We have acutally never put together our own yard sale and we are about to organize a fairly large one. Go big or go home right?! haha ;)  Pray with us for nice weather and good turnouts!!

On another note I just wanted to jot down for my memory sake E's sweet prayer tonight at bed time. God truely blessed us with our little bit who has such a tender heart. While he was saying his "night night" prayers he added at the end, "...and God please don't let my brother or sister, who is far away, be sad or scared. Help us to get there fast. Amen."  Melt a momma's heart! :)  We might not know who our new little one is, but God does and we are all praying for Him to comfort him/her until we can do so. We might not even be close to having a referral yet, but E is already learning and growing into the super, awesome big brother I know he will one day be!

Puzzle Fundraiser update

So, the puzzle fundraiser is off to a pretty good start! It is so fun piecing it together while daydreaming about how it will one day be hanging in our new little one's room. :) If you enjoy blogging please consider sharing this link on your blog, in hopes of connecting us with more readers and in hopes of growing our puzzle more and more! We have some other fundraisers we are currently working on including a yard sale in the spring (probably more than one, since we have been blessed tremendously by friends and family donating items and)! Also, my hubs and I are in the process of working on making wooden wall hangings that we are going to sell (all profit for our adoption). So, between work, school, adoption paperwork, fundraising projects, and enjoying our precious family time we have had lots going on. Friday we have a phone conference with Lifeline and then our homestudy will hopefully get scheduled. We are ready. More than ready.

The started puzzle! Pray with us that it will keep growing and through our friends and family it will one day all be pieced together!

Thankful and blessed! God is so good!

The big 4!!

Welcome to all readers from Kellys Korner! Keep reading the posts further down to learn more about our adoption fundraiser and how God led us to adoption! He is Good...All the time!


Our little bit turned 4 this past Friday. *sigh* :) Four?? Really?? How is that even possible?!! He had been counting down the "night nights" for a week before his birthday. Every morning he'd ask, "am I four today?" and "I can't believe my eyes, that I'm gonna be four!!" He makes me smile- everyday! God truely blessed our lives when He gave us our little bit. He is a miracle and we are truely thankful for him everyday. I never knew how much I'd absolutely LOVE having a little boy, until he was born!! He is the sweetest, friendliest, most thoughful, loving, happy, silly, fast runnin', cars drivin', joke tellin', baseball playin', awesomest (I know that's not a word, but I'm using it anyway- ha) 4 year old around! :) Our lives were changed in the most wonderful way when he was born 4 years ago. I never realized how fast 4 years could go. Hopefully the next 4 won't go by so fast!! Oh, and let me add that he is so excited to one day bring homw his little brother or sister. He talks about how he will help take care of them- all the time. :)  He just plain makes my heart happy!!

So on the big day he had birthday chapel at his preschool. He got to up on stage with the other children having birthdays and tell his name and how old he was. He did great!! After that we had a little party in his classroom for snacktime and then he got to go home early from school. While we waited for time to go meet Daddy at the firestation for lunch ,we went and hung out at Toys R Us. We just roamed the aisles and ofcourse he sat in all the big cars. :) We then took lunch to have with Daddy at the firestation. When we got back home he wanted to ride his bike, so we went on a good little walk. For dinner (per the birthday boys request) we had chocolate chip pancakes!! yum :) Later that evening Granmom, Grandad, and Gammy came over to help celebrate with some presents and a brownie cake!! We had a wonderful day!!

Love you our sweet "little bit" and we are so thankful for you!

2013 brings... our FIRST ADOPTION FUNDRAISER!!

Happy New Year!! I can't believe it is 2013!! I can't believe our little boy will be 4 in less than two weeks (and that his first season of t-ball is right around the corner!). *sigh* :) I can't beileve this month brings the beginning of our first homestudy (this is getting real)!  I can't believe that we could potentially know who our new little one will be by the end of 2013!! Wow! This could be a very big year for us folks! :)

So, with a new year comes our very first adoption fundraiser!! It is going to be a puzzle fundraiser and it will be ongoing throughout our adoption process or until the puzzle is completed. Here is how it will work:

Wes and I have chosen a beautiful 500 pc puzzle with a picture of Noah's Ark on it. For a $10.00 donation (all going to our adoption fees) we will write your name on the back of one puzzle piece. When we have the puzzle completed we will frame it in a double sided glass frame and it will hang in the room of our new little one to be! On the front will be the beautiful Noah's Ark picture and on the back will be the names of  all the people who have donated  to our puzzle fundraiser. I think this will be a wonderful way for our new little one to see how many people loved and prayed for him/her before we even brought our little one home. If you would like to be a "piece to our adoption" please see below for how to donate! :)

How to contribute to our adoption by sponsoring a puzzle piece:

Sponsor One Puzzle Piece for $10 donation 
Sponsor Mulitple Pieces for $10 each
Donate whatever amount you feel led to give ($10.00 is merely a suggestion. No amount is too small! )


You may choose to sponsor a single piece, or if you want to donate a larger amount, you may sponsor as many pieces as you desire.

How to Donate:
*All donations will be placed in a seperate savings account we have made, specifically for our adoption*

• Click on the Donate button on the right sidebar and pay securely through PayPal
• Write a check or donate cash and hand deliver to myself or Wes (Checks can be made payable to us)
• Mail a check to us (email me at htorode@yahoo.com  for our address)

                                             
                                              
                                             Here is the beautiful puzzle we have chosen!!

 

Please help spread the word by sharing this on facebook, email, twitter, or your own blog! The puzzle has 500 pieces, so it has the potential to raise $5000. That would greatly help our adoption fund!

So, this does feel a little strange. Seeking help, asking for contributions from others- it's a little unnatural, but I have been encouraged by others to go forward with and do some fundraising to help bring our little one home. We have and are doing things on our own as well to save for our adopiton including: saving, working overtime hours when available, not vacationing, planning a yardsale in the spring, etc., but the cost of adoption is great (for a China adoption the cost is right at $30,000) and I know we can't do this on our own and I'm beginning to realize that, that is ok. Some of you may ask: Well, why then are they adopting if they can't afford it?? First let me say, being able to "afford" to raise a child is completely different from being able to afford the $30,000 upfront fee it cost to bring that child home. My second answer to that question is: God told us to and we are choosing to obey. No, He didn't bellow down from the sky with audible words, but He did speak to our hearts. For a non-believer that might be hard to understand, but it's the truth. God works in amazing ways and there are times when those who know Christ as their Savior can be completely certain that God is speaking to their hearts. Through prayer, through His word, through simple tugging and nudging on one's heart through the Holy Spirit, God speaks. He placed adoption on our hearts and for that we are certain. :) So, like I've said before, our trust is not in our own finances, but in Him alone. Pursuing adoption may mean that we won't have fancy new cars, or a shiny new house, or an abundance of material things and that is ok with us. We are gaining something far better! Not only will we, Lord willing, bring our new little one home one day, but we are living for Christ and that is the best gain in life!

Wes, Ethan, and I have already been blessed tremendously by amazing friends, family, and community that have enouraged us and are continuously praying for us! It makes my heart happy knowing that our new little one will be welcomed and embraced by all of our friends and family!! Thank-you for sharing this journey with us!

"What country are y'all adopting from...."

Up until now we have not "officially" announced where we were hoping to adopt from. Many people do know and if anyone asked us in person we would tell them where we hoped God was leading us too. We have been waiting until we were officially excepted into the program to announce that.... God is leading us to CHINA to bring home our future little one!! We will be adopting from China's special needs program and are so excited to be moving along with this process. We haven't publically announced it sooner because the China program has many requirements that have to be met and red tape that you have to go through. God faithfully allowed us to meet those requirements.

So, you might now be asking, "why China?" That's a good question! Here goes an answer:
             For several years now, as I have said before, Wes and I have been talking about adoption and how we one day wanted to pursue it. Well, just like when you think about what things will be like when you are pregnant, we thought about what our future adoption might be like.  For years, Wes has always had China on his heart whenever we thought or talked about adoption. That is just how he always pictured it (and let me add that it melts my heart knowing that God placed that desire on Wes' heart first)! We believe that for the past several years God has been tugging on our hearts and slowly preparing us for when He would one day be leading us to China. Now, let me say that when we officially began our adoption a few months ago, we did not automatically know we would be going to China to bring our little one home. We made a couple of detours and struggled with the decision. Why?? I have no idea. It seems so obvious now that China was always the right choice, but it wasn't always always so clear. It was mostly me and my stuggles with, "how do we know for sure where God wants us to go..." kind of a thing. I mean how do you decide where your next child will be coming from and who that child will be?? There are around 147 MILLION orphans in this world, how am I too know from which country will we make it ONE LESS???  How am I too decide who will no longer be labled an orphan?? How am I to decide who will be the one with a chance to hear the gospel??  How am I to decide who will not be a child who "ages out" of the orphange??? How am I to decide who will have the chance to having a loving family to trust, depend on, and embrace??? I did NOT want that responsibility of decison making (I'm the worst decision maker)! But wait a minute, I'm NOT the one making these decisions. Praise the Lord!! Crazy me would sometimes forget that I was NOT the one leading this show. Yep, sometimes I stressed out over how to make these huge decisions. My sinful self would forget that our God is soverign. HE is the One leading this show, not me! He is in control of all things and He already knew who our little one was and which country he or she would be coming from. Comforting indeed. All Wes and I needed to do was to trust Him. After praying a lot, and as we began the adoption process, it slowly became obvious that this is where God wants us to be. There are also some "practical" reasons for why we chose China, that fit into "our" God given desires.

A little about the China special needs program:

In order to control population growth, China implemented a “one-child policy” which has resulted in children being abandoned. China does not allow families to place their children for adoption, so if a family cannot care for a child they may have no choice but to abandon the child in a place where the baby will hopefully be found quickly and placed in an orphanage. (from Lifeline website)

The children available for adoption from China are abandoned with no identifiable blood relatives and no identifying information. (from the Lifeline website)

There are many children with minor/correctable special needs and also more major/serious special needs that are languishing in an orphanage. Because of this "one-child policy" China has, many parents are looking for the "perfect" child. Therefore if a child is born with a "need" they are at times abandoned.

What our adoption might look like:
   We are hoping for a referral of a boy or girl around 18 months when they come home. Our little one will have special needs, likely minor or correctable (cleft lip/pallate, minor heart defects, blood issues, extra digit or missing digit, are some examples of the types of needs we might see). With our financial situation and where we are in life this is what we think we can best handle. We are hoping the entire adoption process will be no more than 18 months from now (that is the timeline they are currently giving us). We will both travel to China for I think 7-14 days and then be able to bring our little one home. China only requires one trip, which is awesome!! (and yes, for those who know me well, know I am dreadfully afraid of getting on an airplane- I'm choosing to ignore the whole 14 hours in the sky fact, until I have to face it. haha In all seriousness, it  really it is a big fear, but I know God is greater than my fears and I'm trusting in Him)!

We are excited beyond words and can't wait to see who God will be bringing into our family!!

Next on our adoption "to-do" list is to schedule our first homestudy!

Please continue to pray for God to fill us with wisdom in all decisions and pray for God to provide for us financially!