Living Life Numb....

As the end of the year approaches I start doing a lot of thinking.  Reflecting over the year and wondering what the new year will bring.  I am amazed at the year we have had, I feel like God has been so extravagant and loving towards us.  He has been gracious and sweet, and I am in Awe of His LOVE!  But somehow I still feel numb.  Despite all the great things around me, the amazing people in my life, the path we have been put on, the opportunities in front of us... I feel numb?

I wonder how can this be?  How is it that in the last year I have only had flashes of feeling "myself", but it seems I have battled most of the year of being in a "funk"???

Then I read another adopted mommas blog and am reminded.... I am numb out of protection for my heart.  I have told myself that this is necessary and have used this as a coping mechanism, but it is effecting every day life. It is keeping me from living life fully, from being fully present.

I have placed this barrier to deal with this adoption process. To deal with what it takes to get through this process... or maybe to NOT DEAL with it.  The times that I have let the wall down have been ugly and heartbreaking.  Letting the thoughts and emotions flood over me of  - where is our child, what living conditions are they in, what brought their momma/dad to have to leave them as an orphan, how long will we have to go before we can bring them home, and love them, and care for them, and let them be united with their brother and sister. What will we be facing in the years to come, how deep will their hurt be, will we be wise enough to handle it in a way that honors the Lord, will we screw them up more or be able to love them through their pain, oh their pain.... it sends me to my knees and what feels like a pit of sadness....

So are these my options - numbness or pain? Obviously I should pray and ask the Lord to work through this with me... I am sure their is a better way, but that would be letting go of control. At least with the numbness I have some control in this situation. In this process where you never know what is going to happen. You never know if you will really get that referral, you never know if and when you will move up the list, you never know if someone will decide if you can or can not bring your child home.

In all of this there are only a few things that I am sure of... That WE HAVE A CHILD IN AFRICA! That they are meant to come home and be in our family where we can love them.  That we will do WHATEVER it takes to bring them home. And that it all hurts... A LOT!!!!

So here I am baring the truth of my numbness... my lack of pain... but also lack of overwhelming joy... I am not sure if other adoptive mommas feel this, I have a feeling some may... but if you feel overwhelmed, if you are living numb, maybe we can take a leap together.  Take down the protective layer and open ourselves up to pain, joy, excitement, opportunity.

My head knows the Lord is bigger then all of this... now my heart needs to catch up....

blessings - Dawn

One Year & Moving Forward

September 13th we hit the 1 year mark of being on the waiting list to adopt from Ethiopia. To celebrate we prepared a traditional Ethiopian meal with family.  It was really yummy, but I must admit I need to practice on my injera skills!

The last year seems quite crazy really.  Lots of things going on with our family, and then we started on a new adventure to move to Manhattan Kansas, now here we are and the adventure continues.  

At the end of this year our homestudy needs to be updated as well as our Dossier (fancy word for pile of paperwork in Ethiopia).  Since we need to update with our move and new job then we will just do this all in one bang.  We will keep our same family coordinator out of Virginia (our agencies main office) and be assigned a new social worker out of KC.  We are working on getting all this rolling so we aren't scrambling to get it in around the holidays. To update everything should cost around $750 (oh the joy of money and adopting)  We also are working on finishing off an installment payment of about $2,500. We have been blessed by all of you in your giving and praying and have already made our first installment payments and first fees.  Once we finish off these payments we will be applying for grants, fundraising, and saving to be ready for the fees that will come with accepting a referral.  

To give you an idea of when we expect a referral... When we were officially put on the list last year we started at number 87, today we are number 46.  So we are moving along!  It still could be close to two years, but really only God knows when we will get that call!  

Because the wait time fluctuates so much and is unkown we are praying about getting pregnant.  We had always hoped to finish our adoption and then get pregnant, but as the wait time increases we are asking God to either bless us with a pregnancy or wait for the right time (so that's exciting!!)

Basically we just wanted to give you all a little update on things.  We are still waiting, we are praying so much for Prather #3! Daily, nightly, weekly.  We pray for safety, for them to be loved, and for their spirit to be guarded by the Lord. We pray for their birth family, and the environment they are living in, and so much more.  We pray for our kiddos at home and their hearts in this crazy process. And for Todd and I and our weary hearts in the process. And we always appreciate your prayers along side of us.  

It will be a wonderful day when we bring home Prather #3 and we all rejoice and praise God together!!!!   we will wait well until then! 

Blessings - Dawn

adoption update 2/26

Talking adoption is both exciting and exhausting.

Exciting because adoption is something so deep and heavy on my heart daily, exhausting... well because adoption is so deep and heavy on my heart daily.  I often feel the need to "guard my heart" with adoption.

 I know that we are in the long haul in waiting to be matched with our child (2-3 years).  I know that as we wait our child will be in an orphanage with many many other children, just waiting for paperwork to process, waiting just like we are, waiting with no parents to love them, tuck them in at night, pray over them, snuggle and kiss them.  In fact many times the ratios are 20-30 kids to 1 adult.  I know that our child with other children will not have access to good nutrition, or medical care.  I know that our little one's road to becoming an orphan will leave them with emotional scars that we will be praying and working through for the rest of our lives.  What I know and what I don't know is exhausting..

This process is and will continue to be one of the hardest things we have done.  But it is also something that is BEYOND AMAZING.  Through adoption we have seen God move in ways like we have never got to personally experience before.  God has moved through us and through others all for the mission of bringing Prather #3 home to us.  I know that when Prather #3 comes home it will not just be a personal victory but a victory of the community that has rallied around us.  I also know that as we raise our child that comes from another country with emotional scars and confusion to deal with, we will have a community that will rise up and fight for our family and our child through this experience.. and that is AMAZING!

I know (we know) that we NEED this community. We NEED you all to hold us up when we can't hold ourselves up. We NEED you all to pray for things we don't even know we need prayer for.  We NEED you to offer support and encouragement when the days seem long and the road seems bumpy.  We NEED this army that God has blessed us with!

Right now we are asking you to consider committing to praying with us and our close family/friends.  We are asking for some specific prayer requests as this road continues.  We appreciate any of you that are offering up just one prayer for Prather #3 or daily/monthly prayer for him/her.  Here are the prayer requests that are on our heart right now  -

First,  I should say that we strongly believe that Prather #3 has been born and is living somewhere in Ethiopia. He or She may still be with their birth parents or may already be in the orphanage just waiting!  In saying that here are our current prayer requests -

*Safety - physically and emotionally
*Health - again physical and emotional
*The Birth Family -  their situation and their hearts
*Those who come in contact with Prather #3 - that they would show our child Love, Compassion, Kindness, and Protect Them
*Protection over his/her heart.
*Wisdom for steps in this journey for us and all others involved

This is our plea and our update.  Yes we are thankful for the financial support (beyond thankful actually) and the financial road for this journey is not over yet either.  Today though we are pleading for this amazing community to join hands with us and send prayers up for Prather #3!

If you are feeling led to commit to pray for our little one, please comment with your name and where you live, we are journaling a list and praying blessings over you and your family as well!

Thank You,
Prayers and Blessings - Dawn <3

We are DTE... ( D T what??? lol)

Well hello blog friends!

Yes its me... back again like a long distance friend who has been busy and finally picked up the phone to make that call to say hello. I will do my best to not go so long between phone calls :) But you know how life can be, we try and reign it in but it can unravel and go passing by at the speed of light.  So here are a few cliff notes to catch you up on our adoption journey!

August - 

The summer had flown by and we still weren't done with our adoption paperwork. We were feeling frustrated and at a stand still. We were close but knew we were short funds to get our paperwork through the DTE process...

sidenote - DTE stands for Dossier To Ethiopia: its adoption lingo for you have completed the first set of 100 hoops and are officially on the "waiting list"

So... back to August - frustrated and unsure what to do we contacted our family coordinator at America World and asked her what we should do. We knew we could either buckle down and finish our paperwork and possibly use a no interest adoption loan to push it through and get on the waiting list, or we could turn our focus to filing for grants and wait to file the paperwork when we had the funds. Our family coordinator let us know our agency would let us borrow the money interest free but we needed to get our paperwork in by the end of the month. So frantically we did everything else to get our paperwork in by the end of the month. Thanks to a lot of help from family and friends and our agency we were able to get our paperwork to Ethiopia and on the waiting list.

September - 

We are officially on the waiting list and go back to working on filing for grants and making plans for fundraising.  Our current goal is to raise $6,500 in the next 12 months.

October - 

Here we are - it is already October (crazy huh?)  We have officially been on the waiting list for ONE MONTH! We have an estimated wait of 20-30 months (sad yes... we are waiting for the families in front of us to jump through the paperwork hoops to bring their littles home). We will countdown each month with some sort of special celebration to keep us hopeful and excited in the waiting process! This first month was really special, we went and tried Ethiopian food! It wasn't amazing but it was a really fun experience -

Now What? 

Now we are fundraising and applying for Grants! As always you can donate via our paypal button over there on the right (If you feel God leading), We are also committing all of our retail profit from our business to adoption fundraising- www.amway.com/dtprather   Our products are amazing and top notch with 180 day money back guarantee. You can email us at dawn_prather@yahoo.com with any product questions.  In November we will have our annual online auction on Cyber Saturday - November 30th. If you feel led you can donate to our auction and keep your eyes out to bid on all our great items!  And as always we greatly appreciate your continued love and prayer support! This journey would be so much harder without guidance form the Lord, and the love of our family, friends, and support from around the world. 

Blessings and Prayers - DP 

"rearranging the furniture and rearranging my heart"

Adoption/Life Update

Well here I am blogging to you a month later... I have serious doubts that I'll ever be a consistent blogger. Let's be honest life gets in the way! That is just the life we lead, trying to plan, but going with the flow! The months of April/May were more like big waves then the flow of a stream... I have been excited to share how God rocked our socks off in April with Adoption Funds, but before I share that I have to share a little blurb about how God kept us from sinking in May!

In the month of May I had 2 surgeries... 2! That is crazy! Here is one thing I realized - God did NOT make our bodies to go through surgery, we are not meant to be put under, cut open, etc... Don't get me wrong I am so thankful for modern medicine/science and know the luxury of medicine and science extending our life and making the quality of our life better... BUT... I do NOT want to ever have surgery again!! You will never hear of this girl going under the knife for elective surgery! There was a time that I thought I might want a "boob job" (lets get real girls we think about these things) and have thought of other options as well.. but NOPE! LOL... Just putting all that out there :)  Without going into unnecessary detail my surgeries were to remove a cyst/fallopion tube (I have had a cyst removed before after Owen was born and also had a cyst when pregnant with Eliana, doc says I am just a cyst producer!), and dental surgery (to get my last wisdom tooth, a couple fillings, and the biggie a gum skin graft done with cadaver skin. ahhh).  Both surgeries went well and everything went as planned, etc, etc... But man did it feel like we were keeping our head above water, even now as the medical bills roll in we feel like we are bobbers out in rough water... We are excited to see how God will provide through this craziness as well as He has thus far in our adoption!

Now on to brighter stories... one paragraph of craziness is enough for me! So I MUST say - God is GOOD!  It is awesome to watch God show up!

I blogged about our next installment of adoption payments and the need for almost $8,000 in the coming months, and God made sure to let us know HE IS WITH US. In the month of April we were able to gather $2,535 in adoption money. God has provided through cleaning jobs, misc work, our at home business success, a donation by Noon Day, friends helping with a garage sale, and AMAZING random donations. It is wonderful the way God provides! With our side jobs I was overwhelmed with the fact that now these people are coming along side us in our journey. They will pray for us, think of us, and lift us up.  The donations from those that LOVE us, overwhelms my heart. We have received $1,000 just from 3 different friends. We KNOW that their giving is sacrificial to them, and that it is by faith that they give generously to us. We are not only grateful but pray the Lord pours blessings back on them for their giving.  And the last of our awesome April giving was a "random" (nothing random with God) donation of $1,000.

Here is the brief version of our "random" donation - It was another day at Ballet Class (For Eliana) the moms sat and chatted about normal life stuff (kids, home school, regular school, summer plans, etc...) like we always do, nothing too deep but we have a comradery amongst us.  This isn't a group I have talked a lot about adoption with. It feels awkward to say "Hi my name is Dawn I have two kids and we are working on bring home our 3rd from Africa, I love Africa, want to talk about Africa?" LOL..... so... the "moms" kind of know we are adopting but hadn't asked many details so I hadn't given many... anyway (moving on before this story gets too long) One mom randomly asks me about our adoption, she asks some pretty in depth questions and is suddenly really interested. This caught me off guard because while we have friendly convo we aren't that close of friends (I mean we weren't even facebook friends yet if that tells you anything, he he). So I gladly tell her everything I can without letting her eyes glaze over, and at the end of our convo she says
"well.... I am not sure what it means but I think God is calling us to give you money towards your adoption."
I instantly CRIED!
I didn't care if they were going to give us $20, or $20,000 in that moment what I heard was  -
"Dawn this is God, just want you to know I am here with you on this journey, a loving reminder that I'm in this with you all."
She went on to tell me that they were praying about it and didn't know what God was asking of them but she wanted more details etc...
A few weeks later (and a long story short) after some communication, lots of prayer, their family felt God calling them to sacrificially give us $1,000! I couldn't believe it when she told me... I was stunned that I couldn't even blubber anything out but Thank You. I went to my car and cried (happy tears).

It is a wonderful wonderful thing when we get money from our family and friends who love us. We know they are sacrificing and honoring the Lord and His love pours out in those gifts.  But there is also something about a practical stranger writing you a sacrificial check for $1,000 that screams God. Or a stranger paying you $50 for your $12 fundraising shirt that screams God. Or a stranger who just wanted their house clean but pays you double that screams God. Or friends unselfishly donating their garage sale profits the screams God. Or an anonymous "friend" leaving a note in the mailbox with $20 the screams God!

When we started this journey we had NO money saved up (not how they recommend you do it.) We had no way to come up with $25,000. We still don't know where the money will come from. But we know that if we hadn't gone on this journey we would be missing out on these awesome opportunities to see God show up like He is. We can only imagine what the coming months will bring.

So yes we have a LONG way to go on this journey, and I am often more weary then not, but the Lord is good. He will not leave us gasping for air in the waves, but He will give us the strength to swim against the current, to Love fiercely, and change the world in whatever ways He calls us! 

Prayers and Blessings - Dawn

Impromptu Fundraiser!

Today I got an unexpected message from a family member, she said "hey I'm doing a little fundraiser for your adoption!" I about cried when I read that message! The blessing of someone wanting to help us with our adoption gets me every time. From people buying t shirts, donating towards our auction, donating money, and offering prayer. It is overwhelming to us (in a good way).  We can't wait for the day when we are helping others (family, friends, and strangers) with their adoption journey!

We have been praying these last 2 weeks for God to show us some ways to raise funds for our next fee payment. Like I posted before we have about a $7,000 payment coming up soon for our Dossier and other program fees. We are working on filing for grants, have a little garage sale planned, and using the funds from our Home Business and Crafted in Grace towards this as well!  So to be in the middle of prayer for this very thing and get an unexpected message was/is wonderful!

All that being said let me tell you about the quick little fundraiser and how you can participate (if you wish).

Our sweet family member Jennifer had a trunk show with the Noonday Collection, and the party will be open as an online catalog party until April 8th.  The products themselves already benefit a wonderful cause, you can read more about that here. Along with the wonderful cause is a way to have a portion donated to our adoption! Sounds like a win-win-win to me :)  So here are the simple instructions -

1- Go to this site - http://www.keriwalker.noondaycollection.com/

2 - At the checkout, choose Keri Walker in the drop down menu as your Ambassador

3 - and at the very bottom of checkout, where it says "Trunk Show" please write (in order to earn the 10% for the adoption, it has to have this important, exact detail) :  Jennifer Downs

So there you have it, easy enough! Please make sure to follow the instructions so that everything works out! If you have any questions just comment or email me - dawn_prather@yahoo.com

I went to the site to pick out some of my favorite things and had a hard time choosing. Here are a few (well more then a few) of my favorites!

I think these products are beautiful!

As always you can like our facebook page to follow our adoption journey beyond this blog.

Prayers and Blessings - Dawn

USCIS

So we FINALLY got to file our USCIS.

USCIS is another paperwork step in the process of our adoption.  The first big step is to get piles of paperwork together and complete your home study.  We were able to do that around Christmas time.  Once the home study is approved then you can file your USCIS and build your Dossier (more on this soon).
Filing the USCIS will give us national clearance to adopt from Ethiopia. We have been fingerprinted here at our local court house and given state clearance, but now we will get finger printed again (most likely in DC) and then cleared. This important piece of the paperwork process was only 3 pages, a few questions, and a money order of $890. Crazy huh???

As we wait for our fingerprint appointment we will work on our Dossier (will post on this soon) and look into grants and more fundraising for our Dossier Fees.

Our Dossier Fees and Program Fee will be $3950 + $4,500 -
      $150 Courier Service
      $800 Dossier Translation Service
      $2,000 Program Second Installment fee
      $1,000 Post Adoption Report Deposit
      $4,500 1/2 International Program Fee

whew... seems crazy, but we are excited to see how God will provide!  So far we have invested just over $7,000 in our adoption and God has been faithful to provide. We know He will be here with us every step of the way as we move forward!

And in moving forward, we celebrated!!! Chic fil a and ice cream :) We can't wait to be celebrating our Dossier in Ethiopia!  But until then please continue to pray for us in this journey, and please please pray for the future little Prather! 

Now off to work on our Dossier ;)

Prayers and Blessings - Dawn

Adoption Update

Hey Everyone - Just wanted to give you a little update on where we are with our adoption process. We were able to make some good process last week and that did my soul good! But was also very emotional!  Since our last update we have had two big things -
1- we had an awesome fundraiser (our online adoption auction)
2- we had our home study visits (and almost a completed home study)

1- Our online auctions was so fun. We hosted it via our facebook page through an album with all the items and bids were made via picture comments. We were blown away by the donations that were given by friends and complete strangers (aka new friends)! In the end through the auction and selling some more tshirts we were able to raise just over $1000!!!!!  We are so very excited and truly thankful for that! The funds we raised went to 2 things - 1: we had to complete some online training and it cost $200 for a couple, so it helped us pay for that. 2: we had a $2200 fee for our home study and the rest of the money went to help with that! Again we say thank you - thanks to those that donated, those that bid, those of you that gave us extra money towards our fundraising, and those of you that prayed for our fundraiser. We pray that you will be blessed back for your givings!  Our plan is to do this auction annually,  that it will be something our friends and followers look forward to and we can use future funds to help other families adopting (if we aren't in the process).   Again thank you!

2- Our home study visits were a mix of crazy, emotional, and good! The idea of a home study is stressful in itself  thinking that someone is going to decide if we are fit to add to our family via adoption. The reasons a home study is necessary makes sense, you don't want people who have evil plans to adopt children, but for the "rest of us" just weird people it feels odd and invasive. Thankfully we work with a Christian agency and therefor our social worker is also a Christian. Our first visit was the family visit that fell on the same day as Eliana's 5th birthday party (talk about craziness). We kicked our party goers out and she arrived 20 minutes later. I was really nervous but all went well, it was like having my grandma over for a visit. The kids of coarse didn't "perform" as I would have liked, especially when the social worker was asking the kids what they thought their brother or sister would look like and Eliana's response in a "duh voice" was - "well they will be black, they are from Africa!"  (goodness)  But when do kids ever do what we want in situations like that!

I was nervous for our first visit, but even more nervous for our second visit. We had to do our second visit individually - she spoke to Todd and then to me and asked some tougher questions. But the real reason I was so nervous was that I needed to talk to her in depth about my past of abuse and battle with an eating disorder. Its one thing to tell someone your testimony but to talk about these things in a way to make sure you are fit as a parent was a whole different ball game. Of coarse the visit went well and our social worker did not feel my past hurts would leave us not allowed to adopt but would help us to be better parents (we agree)!!!  But regardless of the visit going well it still left me emotionally wiped out.  Most of last week I felt emotionally and physically exhausted, the experience left me feeling similar to when I was pregnant :) (kind of ironic I thought) After a weekend of sunshine and 70 degree temps I am feeling much better!

So now we are waiting for our social worker to finish up our home study paperwork. She will get it to us this week, we will read it and review it, and then send it to the agency for final approval. We hope to be done with that all for sure by the end of the month. After that we continue to finalize our Dossier (documents that will be sent to Ethiopia including our home study), we just have a few more things for that to do which is so nice to almost have it done. One big thing we have is to finalize our USCIS that will cost us $900 to file and get more officially "fingerprinted".  After that we will have our Dossier Submission and second program fee of $7700! Whew scary to type that number!   We are trusting the Lord for this money and working on some new fundraisers as well! If you would feel led to give you can email us and we can send you the directions to submit to our agency!

So ya.... exciting to be moving forward, and working to Hurry Up and Wait!!! Hurry up and finish our paperwork so we can WAIT and WAIT and WAIT!!! But all good things are hard work and God never said we would just live this life comfortably!! So here we are Lord, walking behind you, taking this journey, and trusting YOU!

Prayers and Blessings to you all -
Dawn

My heart overflows...

When we were first accepted into the adoption program with America World we knew we would be in for a long road. Along this road we know we want to grow in patience, expectation, and trust through the Holy Spirit. We also know that a part of our adoption journey (and future journeys) will most likely involve fundraising. So I have been thinking that while we wait I can plan... plan t shirt sales, blog posts, 5k's, golf tournaments, etc... So as you know we started by selling t-shirts. Not just for a fundraiser but also for adoption awareness. Todd and I went back and forth on how many shirts to order unsure how many we would sell. In the end we decided to go for it and order 200 and today I had to order more!!!!

 I'm overwhelmed by the generosity from family, friends, and even strangers! We have friends diligently selling our shirts using their personal time to help us with our dream. We have had strangers to our family purchase shirts and shirts already go out across the country (Puerto Rico, West Africa, Seirre Leon, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and on and on....). We have had friends sacrificially give of their own money to help further our dream. I can not put into words how grateful we are. I can not express how loved and supported we feel.  We know the road to foreign adoption and after is not going to be all sunshine and roses, we expect bumps, we expect mountains... But we also expect God's overflowing love, grace, mercy, to flood upon us! We expect him to provide what seems like a crazy amount of money, in fact we expect him to provide beyond that so we can bless an African orphanage, we expect him to continue to provide for our future adoptions and hopefully to help others adopt... We have a lot of expectations... And today my heart overflows as our expectations our being superseded... and we have only just begun!

This week we mailed not only shirts off but our mountain of paperwork off, along with our first agency payment $2000. We began gathering up information to host a 5k from others who have hosted one before or are well versed in the "running world".  And we continue praying for the mother of our child - I can't help but wonder is she pregnant now? What is her situation? Please Lord keep her healthy! What will bring her to have to give her child up for adoption? and on and on....
So with all that... my heart is full over flowing and hoping the love that is overflowing from us will touch others to fill them up!

Prayers and Blessings - Dawn

Hope T-shirts

Friends and Family -

Well we are diving in with both feet and starting our adoption fundraising! Our goal is to raise $10,000 for our adoption (overall cost estimated to be $25,000) and $10,000 to donate to an African orphanage.  One way we are fundraising is by selling t shirts. We decided to start with these fun shirts, for not just adoption fundraiser but for adoption awareness.

The front of the shirt says "4 million minus 1" because we are adopting from Ethiopia and there are 4 million orphans located in just Ethiopia alone. And while one less may not seem like a lot, it takes caring for one at a time!

Lastly we wanted to include this verse - "I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you.  John 14:18" 

T shirts can be purchased by emailing us at dawn_prather@yahoo.com. Shirts are $12 for adult sizes and $10 for youth shirts. There is a $2 shipping fee for anyone outside the Harrisionburg VA, California MO, and Jefferson City MO areas. We accept Check, Cash, and Pay Pal payment forms. Please include an address, sizes, quantities, and payment plans in your email. 

If you were to feel led to give a donation to our adoption there is a tax deductible form through America World Adoption Agency. You can follow this link https://www.awaa.org/forms/payment.aspx click the donation tab and put our full name in the notes.

We are excited for the child God has for us and thank you for going on this journey with us.  We know it will be a long road and are thankful to have all of you to go on the journey with us!

Prayers and Blessings - Dawn

One more step....

These were the words we were so ready to hear and we heard (read) them yesterday!

Dear Todd & Dawn ~

Congratulations on your acceptance into the Ethiopia program!

It was strange yesterday because I was feeling anxious all day hoping that we would hear from the agency. I kept checking my email throughout the day and we received their email at 5:30pm! I feel like this is how the whole process will be - get stuff done and then hurry up and WAIT! 

So now we have PILES of paperwork to fill out, be assigned a social worker to start our home study, and take some informative classes! We are looking forward to all these steps but also know it will continue to be a "hurry up and wait" experience for the next 18-24 months! Please pray for us that we will have wisdom as we move forward in all things and God will keep us wrapped in his love as we work on our patience (well mostly my patience.. lol)

Lastly I do have a favor from all of you reading.... I really need some feedback from all of you. We have been praying about doing some fundraising for our adoption. Our adoption is estimated to be about $25,000 from start to finish. We are aware of some tax write offs at the end of the process (about $10,000) and will be able to get some help from Todd's work since they are adoption advocates ($5,000 per adoption). Which leaves us $10,000 to come up with. I don't know about you all but $10,000 is a lot for us! Plus we hope that this will be one of several adoptions we complete.  We know that God will provide which is why we have stepped out in the process without an extra $10,000 in the bank, but with all that said - we are considering fundraising with the idea that our Christian brother's and sisters will come together with us in prayer and support to bring orphans to a loving family. BUT - we worry that this could be "sticky" that while we have heard from many adoptive parents that their fundraising experiences were received well, we have also hear from a few that it was not received so well :(  So what all do you think? Our fundraising ideas include:

* A t shirt sale that will not just be specific to our adoption but to raise adoption awareness in general

* A 5k and/or a golf tournament. We have thought that these events could be where a portion of the proceeds go to our adoption and a portion to an orphanage.

So that's what on our heart - excitement - and planning for the next steps!!  We look forward to hearing your thoughts as well as going through this journey with all of you!!!!! 

"I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to  you" John 14:18

Prayers and Blessings - Dawn

Adoption Application

Exciting news! We have submitted our adoption application to America World Adoption Agency. We are now waiting to be approved for them to represent us in this exciting process and then will move forward. 

Once approved we will begin the home study process and work our way to what they call a "paper pregnancy"  The whole process we are told to expect to take around 2 years. I can't imagine how my patience will be tested during that time, but I feel the Lord calming my spirit as I begin to worry or over think anything. I pray that it continues to be a peaceful and joyful experience throughout. I am sure we will hit some bumps and frustrating moments, but we are sure this is the path God wants us to take and so we walk in confidence! Of coarse we appreciate all your prayers and support. I will continue to blog about adoption details as we go through the process. I will have plenty of time to keep you informed ;)  Until then I want to leave you with this song that I heard a few weeks ago on a Christian radio station. I haven't been able to get it out of my head and feel like it is going to be our adoption anthem! Would love for you to check out the video and lyrics below. Great song and expresses my heart as we start this journey!!

 You might wanna close your eyes
It’ll take some time adjustin’
Welcome to your life
You’re everything you’ll someday be

There’s a weight off my shoulder
There’s laughter in the air
You are the answer to every midnight prayer

You’re mine to love
We have all been waitin’ on you
You’re mine to love
Come into these open arms
It took some time to wait it out
But I see it now, you’re worth all the dreaming of
You’re mine to love
You’re mine to love

You might wanna take your time
Takin’ all this technicolor, yeah
We’re on your side
Let us be the one you need

There’s a life on my shoulder
Laughter in the air
You are the answer to all those midnight prayers

You’re mine to love
We have all been waitin’ on you
You’re mine to love
Come into these open arms
It took some time to wait it out
But I see it now, you’re worth all the dreaming
You’re mine to love
You’re mine to love

Every time that my heart was broken
Every time that I’ve lost my wings
I forget when I look into your face

You’re mine to love
We have all been waitin’ on you
You’re mine to love
Come into these open arms
‘Cause I’m right here
It took some time to wait it out
But I see it now, you’re worth the dreaming of
You’re mine to love
You’re mine to love
You’re mine to love
You’re mine to love

So you might wanna close your eyes

Prayers and Blessings - Dawn