Give1Save1

So last week sometime while I was messing around on the internet working, I came across this website... give1save1.com . Here's a brief description..... (from the site itself)

GIVE 1

every Monday I’m going to ask you for a dollar. i’m going to tell you who it’s going to and what it’s being used for. We’re mostly funding African adoption for the people, by the people. we’re just going to rain down a crazy blessing on a family, organization, orphanage, or project and we’re going to do it every week. we’re going to get huge. and the world will be changed for lots of people because of your generosity. that sounds exciting, doesn’t it?! let’s do it.

i’ll tell you who we’re sponsoring and where to send your dollar. you’ll need a paypal account to play. if you don’t have a paypal account, you just need one. it’s time. so go ahead and set one up and meet me back here. i’ll link a button to the paypal account that we’ll be blasting. then once you’ve donated your dollar spread the word to get some more dollars in here. if you have a voice, an email account, a blog, a facebook page, a twitter account or a pinboard USE IT! the only way we can make a big difference is to make it viral!

SAVE 1

and your dollar will be saving and restoring lives in all kinds of ways. In Ethiopia one in six children don’t live to be five years old. there is a desperate need for basic food, clean water, and medicine. removing a child from an orphanage gives that child a family and a future, something everyone needs. it also frees up a bed in an orphanage for a street child. your dollar will change lives and save lives in ways you may never know.

So cool, right? It's one of those, "Man, why didn't I think of that" kind of ideas. What a great way to support adoptive families and show support for adoption from Africa.

The financial aspect of this adoption has had our stomachs in knots over the past few weeks. Maybe it was hitting #7 on the waitlist or our BOLD prayers that we know God will answer. It's just knowing that our referral of two precious littles is right around the corner....and so is the referral fee that comes with it.

We know God will provide...we do. But we also can't just sit back on our tooshies and do nothing. I've been filling out grant applications left and right...but of course Satan puts that doubt in my head that we wont get any of them. There wasn't really a box that you could check that said, "Had 3 surgeries in one year and the bills to go with them? Check YES here" YUCK! So we'll see. I prayed over each of them as I mailed them. :)

So after reading about the idea behind Give1Save1...I thought I would email and see if our family could be featured. The answer was a quick "YES"! Yippee! I'm very excited. Our family will be featured the week of September 12th. So all week, every $1 donated goes to our family adoption! WOO HOO!!!! I'm so grateful for people like Beth (give1save1) that come up with these amazing ideas to help total strangers reach their goal! What a great example of the "hands and feet of Jesus"!

So mark your calendar and head over to give1save1.com the week of Sept. 12th and donate $1 (or more of course, lol) to help our family bring home two beautiful children from Africa.

Thank you Beth for allowing our family to be featured on your site. :)

Profound Words

Last night in our Life Group (couples Bible study group that meets every Sunday night) we were talking about BOLD speaking.
I am more of a BOLD prayer or a BOLD thinker then a BOLD speaker for sure!

Anyway. One of our questions was, "What is something profound that someone has said to you".
I gave my answer....

but today, while reading "Camp Hoffman" the Hoffman Family's blog.... I read this:

"When invited in and given the freedom to work - it's amazing how fast God can move mountains."

Profound. Indeed.

New Congo Shirts

Shirt Back

Click here for the order form

We are so excited to have finished our new Congo shirt design! We are working toward raising $9000 in the next 3 months in order to have the money ready when we receive our referral!

BOLD, right?!

They will be printed on Gildan Ultra Cotton t-shirts (normal t-shirt fit. No special fit for men/women).

The girls will be a hot pink and the guys will be a dark heather gray. The artwork will be all white.

They are $20 each and we pray boldly that we can sell at least 50. I am working on getting the "Get Your Shirt" section on my blog linked up to the new design, so in the meantime, if you want a shirt...please comment and I'll put you down and when the paypal is up and running I'll email you.

We thank you in advance for your support and love. My blog community has really been such a great source of encouragement and support and I am so thankful for that!


$9000...... We can Do THIS!

:)

Number UPdate!!!

Because I am not a patient person, I went against my "once a month" rule when it came to emailing our agency about the waitlist. It becomes an obsession of sorts. The DRC adoption community is SO much smaller then Ethiopia that when referrals are given out, it's not like you know who or when or how many. Not everyone has a blog (come on everyone...get with it!haha)
So when you want to know if something has changed, you have to email to find out. So I broke down, after only waiting two weeks, and emailed Terri. She let me know that they were reconfiguring the wait list to make it a little more functional and user friendly for them. She said it would change our numbers, but not by much.
So after she said that, I waited a few days for that to take affect. Yesterday I emailed again to see what the word was on the new list numbers. She said that they are now only using one list...not two (before there was a sibling list and an infant list). We are officially number 7 on the list. I was SUPER excited. #7!

That means there are only 6 families ahead of us. Some I know of, some I don't.... and I will be praying for all 6 of them and their children.

#7.... just can't believe we are only 6 referrals away from seeing our babies...our sweet angels that will be the loves of our lives! It's hard to comprehend.

So now for BOLD praying.....
We are members at Life Church.tv (lifechurch.tv) and we have been talking about BOLDNESS over the past few weeks.
A few things that have stood out to me is this:

"What you PRAY reflects what you BELIEVE about God" (WOW, if that's not saying "oh ye of little faith", I don't know what is!)

"Pray for BOLDNESS and pray for MIRACLES" (I'm usually not one to pray this way. I feel that with everything that has happened over the past year and a half, that praying for a miracle or praying boldly is just setting yourself up for disappointment. Not true. Having faith in God and His Will means being able to accept "NO". Infertility was my big "NO"... and I think I prayed BOLDLY for a miracle in that area. But look at us now. We would not be growing in our faith like we are now...drawing closer to God every day. If God said "YES" all the time, when would we ever need to have faith, or patience, or trust in His Will?)


I haven't been praying BIG enough. I haven't been giving fully to the fact that GOD can do AMAZing things! He can change lives, move mountains, heal the wounded, and can bring my family together forever! HE CAN.

So my BOLD prayer is this: that God will provide the finances we need to accept a referral and that He will bless us with our referral in the next MONTH!

HUGE, right?

I like to call it my "Sun Stand Still" prayer. My faith in God to do huge, amazing things.
So that we can then tell everyone what God has done for us. (Acts 4:16-20)

(read "Sun Stand Still" by Steven Furtick if you haven't..it's amazing)

So that's it.... my BOLD prayer for this adoption.

What is yours? Pray BOLDLY and TRUST in God to show up and do AMAZING things....then share your miracles with everyone!

"For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard" Acts 4:16-20

Weekend Happenings

This weekend the kids were with their mom, so that meant we did a lot of household chores. I, of course, logged many hours on my sewing machine...while Clint worked on the nursery installing the second window.
My BFF's daughter turned 13 and requested a large tote bag....so I made her this one.

She gave out headbands as part of her "favor bags"... so i spent Friday night rolling flowers and making headbands.

On Sunday I talked Clint into taking me to pick up this AWESOME tv stand from Craigslist. I have BIG plans for it!! Can you guess??

While "relaxing" on the couch and watching "The Lincoln Lawyer" (which was a great movie)... I made this cute hoop art to hang in the nursery.... I'm going to put these in my Etsy store too!
Here's Clint (and a shot of my hand trying to keep the sun out) putting in the window. This wasn't long before he totally sliced his knuckle on some metal and had to quit for the day. It was BAD! Why wont men let you take them to the ER? He needed stitches but insisted on NOT going....so I had to just bandage the heck out of it instead.
Speaking of nursery, I changed my mind on some of the fabric. So now we are going with the flowers, pink beads and then the zig-zag. No green beads. Maybe for Oliver's bedding..we'll see.

And here was Laynie this morning...... officially an Edmond North softball player! I can't believe she's in HIGH SCHOOL this year!!!!!!

Construction Pics and Numbers update!

With the heat outside climbing up into the 100+ this week, our nursery has been on pause. Clint is thankfully done with the outside of the addition, but even just working inside is exhausting when it's this hot! We have cut off the air to that room so it's a bit of a sauna in there. Next up is working on putting up sheetrock and the getting the additional window put in. Here are a few pics I took today...

Here is the additional window. Before the room only had one very small window. Now we have these two nice bigger windows!
Here's how the outside looks. My hubby did such an amazing job. It looks like it has always been there..not like an add-on at all!

I had to take a pic of the dresser that I bought to redo. I'm sure I have posted about it before, but I LOVE it. For $50 it was a great find! Can't wait to paint it!
On the adoption numbers: I was reading some other blogs that were talking about their numbers with our agency. They had an infant list number and a sibling list number. I never really thought to ask about our sibling wait list number before...so I emailed our amazing caseworker and asked.
Good thing I did because we are officially number....On the sibling list.

and number....
On the infant list.
These are as of August 1st. :)
We are really excited and just can't wait for our referral!!!! All in Gods timing.