Moving Forward!

Yesterday our much anticipated AGCI orientation packet arrived at our doorstep! After Jude was down for the night Joshua and I anxiously got to reading! Well I got to reading... Joshua sat there while I read everything out loud to him. He kept asking "Are you seriously going to read every little detail in this packet ?!"... to which I replied "Yep! Sure am!". He patiently listened to me thoroughly read each and every piece of paper in the folder, even if it repeated itself a couple times. Because I'm completely in uncharted territory here I feel the need to soak in every word that's given to me and make sure I understand it 100%. So much so that when it talked about having a "transition plan" figured out before bringing home your child I told Joshua to write down "What is a transition plan?" on our list of questions to ask when we have our orientation call. He politely informed me that it's probably exactly what it says it is... a plan of action for how we're going to transition our adopted child into our home. Not to mention the fact that this isn't something we have to come up with until the final stages of the adoption. Joshua is good for me- so I don't over complicate things and stress myself out. And he's patient, that's good too. (o;

All this to say... the packet was pretty stinking self explanatory, even with my over analyzing eye,  in explaining where we go from here! We'll set up an orientation call to either have sometime this week or the beginning of next to go over the packet and any questions we might have. We'll then sign and notarized the stack of papers in this packet and send it back to AGCI along with our first big check of the journey! $7,390 to be exact. Broken down: $6000 Agency Fee, $1000 Ethiopia Program Fee, $350 Non-AGCI home study review, and $40 Eyes Wide Open workbook. The amazing thing about this is the money is in the bank saved up to do just this! After sending in our $300 application fee we are left with $7,760 to cover this first financial hurdle. This is where I look back over the past couple months amazed at His faithfulness to provide in ways we would have never imagined! This is where I have faith that He will continue to work in ways that can only be contributed to Him!

After AGCI receives our signed and notarized contracts and agreements they'll send us a mega adoption planner packet in the mail that includes all the paper work we'll need to gather for our dossier. We can go ahead and start the home study process as well once we have half the home study fee saved up of $500, which we're just a couple hundred bucks shy of.

Joshua and I are continuing to be as creative as possible in saving money when and where we can. My summer jobs of watching Jake and church childcare are coming to an end this week... but I'm confident that God will bring about other little opportunities for extra money. Joshua is still mowing lawns and has taken on a couple graphic design projects for our sweet neighbor of designing power points for her work. A future adoption funding idea we have is setting up an Adoption Yard Sale in September. We're working on the details and I'll keep you posted. We also have a couple more Africa shirts in the making that my amazing mama is sewing up. She finished mine today actually... that's it in the picture! I'll be sure to post on here when they're complete and we'll auction 'em off!  And our plan is to apply for at least three adoption grants once our home study is complete. I promise that we will do our part to be as frugal, diligent, and creative as possible in bringing this baby home!