Yay! We received our finalized home study! We can now send our Dossier and apply for grants. And even more exciting for this mom's heart - we can send our son a care package and a picture book of our family! He will get to "meet" his forever family. Woo Hoo!
Monday, November 5, 2012
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
We have received our referral! A week ago Thursday evening as Sam was frying up bacon for BLT's and I was getting things together for a Thirty-One party, we got the call! We are getting a son from Ethiopia! This was totally unexpected as we are still finalizing our paperwork and home study. Praise God for His ways are better than our ways and His timing is perfect! We can not give our son's name or identifying information until we have legal custody but wanted to share the exciting news with you!
Monday, September 10, 2012
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Thank you for helping us share the love!
Sam & Diane
Check out our storefront at Just Love Coffee!
Oh my! Almost four months have gone by since I posted on our blog. I have decided I'm not a blogger........but I want to see this through so I can share the joy when our child comes home. First, I want to share about our garage sale fundraiser; we were BLESSED BEYOND MEASURE between the sale and donations to put $8,000.00 in our adoption fund! Thank you to so many that helped us! God is so good!
We have been doing the paper chase for the last four months. We are actually starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. We have two more home study visits scheduled this month and are continuing to get all the paperwork done.
We are having a Dan's Fish Fry Adoption Fundraiser on Saturday, October 27th. It will be held in our church fellowship hall. We'll need lots of help that afternoon/evening setting up, breading, serving, cleaning up and also selling tickets ahead of time. I have to admit, asking for help is not an easy thing for us to do but we continue to remind ourselves that it's not about us. It is about giving a child what every child deserves - a family.
I will try to post again soon and certainly not wait four more months.
Blessings to you,
Diane
We have been doing the paper chase for the last four months. We are actually starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. We have two more home study visits scheduled this month and are continuing to get all the paperwork done.
We are having a Dan's Fish Fry Adoption Fundraiser on Saturday, October 27th. It will be held in our church fellowship hall. We'll need lots of help that afternoon/evening setting up, breading, serving, cleaning up and also selling tickets ahead of time. I have to admit, asking for help is not an easy thing for us to do but we continue to remind ourselves that it's not about us. It is about giving a child what every child deserves - a family.
I will try to post again soon and certainly not wait four more months.
Blessings to you,
Diane
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this:
to look after orphans and widows in their distress
and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
James 1:27
We are having a BIG garage sale!
Today was the first day and it turned out great!
This is our first fundraiser for our adoption fund. We are also settling the estate of our friend Mary that we've had the privilege of helping over the last year. She passed away in March and we are selling her belongings as well. I've posted a few pictures so you can see all that we have. Although I forgot to take them before we opened. These were taken about halfway through the day. We are so thankful for friends that have donated and helped us set up.
I'll post our final results this weekend!
~Diane
Friday, May 11, 2012
July 26, 2009 started out just like most Sunday mornings, little did we know the change it would eventually bring to our lives.
Certainly Sam didn't know how God was going to use his message that morning to speak to me. But let me back up just a little bit....
When we were first married back in the early 80's our pastor and his wife had adopted two little girls from Korea. We decided to check into adoption too but being in our early twenties and only married for a little more than a year we were not eligible. Life went on and over the next several years we had three beautiful children - Nicole, Matthew and Lauren. When our kids were 10, 7 and 5 we started talking about adoption again but it didn't take long to be totally over-whelmed by the cost. Move ahead to 2009, now our kids are 25, 22 and 20 and we've been empty-nesters for awhile. I hadn't thought about adoption for years, I guess I thought it just wasn't God's plan for our family...until that Sunday morning in July. The title of Sam's message that day was "When Jesus Interrupts the Comfortable". At that point in our lives we were pretty comfortable. Nicole was married. Matt & Lauren were away at college and we were getting used to it being the two of us again and we were enjoying it.
Sam ended his message with this question: Will you allow Jesus to interrupt your comfortable routine and consider anew what He wants for your life? As that was resonating in my heart and mind I said, "God, what do you want to do in my life for the next 20 years?" Adoption came to me immediately. My mind was saying "Seriously God, now? I'm 47 years old!" But my heart was already saying "Yes!" Over the next several days and weeks I spent a lot of time online researching adoption agencies, countries, looking at websites, ordering information packets and books I thought I should read, and then hoping they wouldn't arrive in our mailbox on a day that I wasn't the one to get the mail because I wasn't ready for Sam to see them. I knew he would think I was nuts. It wasn't till late September that I finally got up the courage to tell him how I was feeling and what I thought God wanted us to do. Of course he thought I was crazy and as supportive as he wanted to be he was not of the same mind as me. Over the next 2+ years we prayed, talked, waited, prayed more, talked more and waited for God's perfect timing....which brings us to spring of 2012. The end of March we made the decision to submit a pre-application to AWAA as a first step to see if we qualified to formally apply and three days later we received word that we were a good match for the Ethiopia Waiting Child Program. It was during those three days that we had "His Little Feet" an International Children's Choir at our church. The choir led by Mike & Christa Hahn, is made up of orphan children from Ethiopia and Honduras. We had the privilege and blessing of having Jesus, age 9 and Bereket, age 7 in our home the two days of their stay. We know that this was God's perfect timing and our confirmation. Now Sam & I were totally of the same mind, thank you Jesus! We submitted our application on April 13 and we were accepted on April 26! This isn't an easy, quick process. We have a long road ahead but we are excited and ready for this journey and we invite you to follow along with us on our adoption adventure!
Sam ended his message with this question: Will you allow Jesus to interrupt your comfortable routine and consider anew what He wants for your life? As that was resonating in my heart and mind I said, "God, what do you want to do in my life for the next 20 years?" Adoption came to me immediately. My mind was saying "Seriously God, now? I'm 47 years old!" But my heart was already saying "Yes!" Over the next several days and weeks I spent a lot of time online researching adoption agencies, countries, looking at websites, ordering information packets and books I thought I should read, and then hoping they wouldn't arrive in our mailbox on a day that I wasn't the one to get the mail because I wasn't ready for Sam to see them. I knew he would think I was nuts. It wasn't till late September that I finally got up the courage to tell him how I was feeling and what I thought God wanted us to do. Of course he thought I was crazy and as supportive as he wanted to be he was not of the same mind as me. Over the next 2+ years we prayed, talked, waited, prayed more, talked more and waited for God's perfect timing....which brings us to spring of 2012. The end of March we made the decision to submit a pre-application to AWAA as a first step to see if we qualified to formally apply and three days later we received word that we were a good match for the Ethiopia Waiting Child Program. It was during those three days that we had "His Little Feet" an International Children's Choir at our church. The choir led by Mike & Christa Hahn, is made up of orphan children from Ethiopia and Honduras. We had the privilege and blessing of having Jesus, age 9 and Bereket, age 7 in our home the two days of their stay. We know that this was God's perfect timing and our confirmation. Now Sam & I were totally of the same mind, thank you Jesus! We submitted our application on April 13 and we were accepted on April 26! This isn't an easy, quick process. We have a long road ahead but we are excited and ready for this journey and we invite you to follow along with us on our adoption adventure!
~Diane
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