Today Was the Start of "Something"

Today was the start of "something". Today was the beginning of an answered prayer. Today God gave me a glimpse into His bigger plan. Today I was once again reminded that if you invite God into the picture, He shows up.

Remember just a couple posts ago how I said that God was up to something? How I felt that this adoption journey was just the tip of the iceberg to what He was doing in our lives? How all I knew was that He was stirring my heart but I didn't know what it all meant?

This past week a gal from church, Nancy, who helps head up the Compassion Ministry, got in touch with me and asked if we could meet for lunch today. I thought to myself, "Hmmm... this should be interesting." Nancy and I have literally met ONE other time at church when I dropped off an Inexhaustible Love shirt to her that she so graciously bought in support of our adoption. You see, we connected through the oh so popular world of Facebook through some mutual church friends a couple months ago. And if you've been sucked into the FB world you know very well that as creepy and in-personal as it might be, you feel like you get to know someone pretty stinking well entirely based on photos and status updates alone. All that to say, without even "knowing" Nancy I knew that we shared the same heart for orphans, and that I liked her. So going into today, I knew He was up to something!

At lunch today, God showed up. I'm just sayin'... I totally felt Him hanging out with us. (o; It was one of those moments where my heart was beating fast, my eyes were teary, and I genuinely felt like another layer to this story was being unfolded right before my eyes. I sat at the table with two amazing ladies, Nancy and Christine (another gal apart of the Local Compassion Ministry), and listened to them share their heart about how orphans and adoption and bringing awareness to both have been heavy on their hearts. How they desperately desired for leadership to arise within the church to help head up an adoption support group or bring about orphan awareness and how they wondered if I'd play a part in that?! I mean, seriously... it was like God was holding open this door and saying "Hil! Here you have it.. I stirred your heart for a reason... THIS moment! Here is need to be filled, trust me, I'll prepare you along the way. Go!"

It's clear that there is a need within our church for an adoption support group and for an outlet for those who have a heart for the orphans to get plugged in. I have NO IDEA how it will all come together, I'm okay with that- and thankfully so are Nancy and Christine. BUT what I do know is that I'll ask God to prepare me and guide me and I'll pray a whole hekava lot that He takes this desire we have to share, and blesses it! I know this burden on my heart doesn't stop with just bringing our child home. I know that I'm suppose to do more with it... and this is a door that I know was opened up by God, so I'll humbly walk through it.

God knows my fears of leadership roles. I give those over to Him. God knows my fears of failure. I give those over to Him. God knows my fears (and so does everyone else that knows me well enough) of public speaking. I give those over to Him.

Here's to the beginning of "something" far bigger than my plans!

Holy Discontent

They sang this song at church tonight. I'm sure I am only grasping a fraction of the "bigger picture"... but oh I pray that as my eyes are opened that I would have the courage to act. I can't even tell you how many times in this whole journey of adoption it keeps coming back to Proverbs 24:12 "Once our eyes are opened, we can't pretend we don't know what do do. God, who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls, knows that we know, and holds us responsible to act."

"Holy Discontent" seems to be the theme as of late. I recently read a post from a new blog friend, and fellow adoptive mama, about this very topic and think she puts it oh so well. Check it out if you get a chance!  Thanks Lara for speaking your heart, I echo your words!

Classic Hilary

Personal mail, not so much bills, and packages at the front door have always brought joy to my heart, so you can only imagine how excited I get to see the UPS man deliver packages when I know it's stuff regarding our journey to our sweet boy! My excitement lead to a slightly funny and awkward little encounter with the UPS man as he was dropping off the package today...

I knew that we should be getting our Adoption Planner (The BIG Hefty) at some point during the day, so I've kept my eye out for it. We have a storm door in the front of our house so I just left open the front door so I could see when it got dropped off. I was in the hallway when I saw the beautiful brown truck pull up and without giving it much thought I hurried to meet the UPS man outside in our entry way. While anxiously waiting for him to meet me and hand off the much awaited package I started to realize he hadn't noticed me yet. He must not have heard me come outside and he was making his way up to my door with a quick little skip in his step and his head down looking at his computer gadget thing. There was that split second where I realized that he was about to plow into me and I just couldn't get my thoughts together to say anything. Literally at the last moment he quickly looked up, startled, and said "Oh! I'm so sorry miss!" to which I felt somewhat embarrassed that it was obvious I was overly eager to meet him outside for this package. So I said, "No! It's totally my fault! I've just been looking forward to seeing you all day!"... He then gave me a strange look, which made me realize that my words came out completely wrong and sounded like I had a crush on the poor guy or something! Sheesh Hil! Then it became this awkward moment of silence and shuffling of feet and I couldn't think of anything redeeming to say besides "Well, uh, thanks!"and I took my package. I chuckled as I walked inside thinking, "Classic Hilary"! I always get tongue tied or things come out totally the wrong way and I feel like it's just typical of me to create awkward moments. 

All that to say... we got our Adoption Planner! Yippee! So guess what we'll be reading and re-reading through this weekend?! We'll have a dossier run through call early next week with AGCI to cover the list of questions that we'll inevitably come up this weekend. Let the paper chase begin! 

Oh and a quick little side note... we will be having an Adoption Yard Sale the weekend of Sept. 25th to help raise funds for this journey. We sent out an email to our local friends asking if they had things they would be willing to donate for the sale, but if for some reason you weren't included in that email and you do live local... let me know if you are cleaning house and have things we could sell! Joshua just recently cleaned out our garage so we have space to put everything until that weekend... want to help us fill our garage and purge things from your house?! 

Remembrance of His Faithfulness

On Monday we sent back all our notarized contracts and paper work to AGCI along with our first, of many, BIG checks! When I went to the credit union to get our check I was filled with a bitter sweet emotion as the gal behind the counter asked how much to have the check made out for.  With my heart in my throat I said, "seven thousand three hundred and ninety dollars"... I kept having to remind myself, scratch that, KEEP having to remind myself, that this is exactly what this money is saved up for! So many stories are attached with every dollar of that $7,390! Each dollar represents a generous person, a creative fundraising event, a random blessing, a hard earned dollar, and truthfully it flat out represents God's faithfulness! So like in 1 Samuel 7:12, where God's people stacked stones as a remembrance of His faithfulness to them, we are looking back over the past couple months as stacking stones in our lives!

So what now you ask?! Well, it's time to get our hands dirty and bust bootie in the savings department for the next BIG check and expenses in between! We have a choice to look at it two ways... #1. A daunting task full of anxiety OR #2. A chance for God to once again prove Himself to be faithful and unfold more amazing stories attached to each dollar raised and saved! I chose choice number TWO! (That is until I have my random freak out moments while laying in bed wide awake at night imagining all the worst case scenarios, while my hubby lays right next to me peacefully sleeping AND snoring the night away... just being honest!). In all seriousness though, I truly think REMEMBERING God's faithfulness is key! He funds His callings. Without a shadow of a doubt I know that He has lead the way so far and told us to trust Him, and so we continue! 

This evening we got a call from AGCI letting us know they received all our notarized paperwork and it's complete and looks great! That means we didn't mess up our first "test" of signing and initialing a stack of papers a mile high! Yipee! Our adoption planner (a.k.a. "the big hefty") is on the way including everything we'll need to gather for our dossier (fancy french word for adoption papers), and our required education courses. 

While we are working on collecting everything for our dossier we will also be doing our home study simultaneously. In order to begin our home study we will need to pay half the home study fee upfront of $425 to the social worker and a one time fee of $200 to the home study agency. So $625 to get that ball rolling.  Our savings is currently at $577, so we're getting there! (A BIG prayer request that our adoption agency and home study agency are able to finalize all the paper work needed this week to officially have the HS agency listed as a cooperating agency with AGCI!).

We will be on a paper chase for both the HS and dossier collecting things like birth certificates, marriage license, passports, medical forms, criminal checks, employment verification, letters of recommendation, financial statements, power of attorney and the list goes on and on! My prayer is that I can be like Jude and just enjoy digging in to the overwhelming mess of paperwork/dirt and have fun!

This whole process of the HS and dossier typically takes families 3-4 months to complete. During that timeframe some significant fees that we'll encounter are:

Adoptive Parent Education (online courses): $170

US CIS Fee $670

US CIS Fingerprinting Fee $80 per adult

Finally, once everything is complete and ready to be turned into AGCI and sent over to Ethiopia is when our next BIG check is due. First off, the remaining $450 will be due to our social worker upon completion of our home study. Then with the completed dossier we owe, big breath:

$4,500 International Service Fee

Well there you have it! We're doing our best to lay pride aside and be as open and honest about this whole process as possible, including all the financial mumbo jumbo that goes with it. More then anything our prayer is that God would receive the glory because we know that financial hurdles like these can only be accomplished by someone far bigger than us! We also pray this is read with hearts that know that in us sharing all these dollar amounts, there is absolutely NO obligation to give what so ever! We are truly humbled, and gracious, and amazed at the generosity that's been shown to us so far and we know that it's been God using other's to write His story in our lives! So thank you for being used by God!

The Intimidating World of Adoption Blogs!

Okay, so ya'll need to understand that this whole blogging world is still entirely new to me and oh so overwhelming at times! Just over three months ago I remember looking at Joshua and commenting on how there was no stinking way I was going to do a blog because after looking at all these other adoption blogs I was completely blown away and intimidated! So I thought it best to not even try... I'm a real winner. (o;  Seriously though, you gals are talented and creative and amaze me at your ability to write so well and design cool templates and yadda yadda!

Well, thankfully I got past the intimidation of it all and decided to take on the challenge and I humbly began my journey of figuring out what a "gadget" or "widget" was and how I was going to design our template (PS when I say "design" our template, I mean find a free blogger template online somewhere- I'm not even going to attempt figuring out all these stupid HTML codes!). I stayed up late night after late night trying to get everything set up so that it was actually functional! I will NEVER be a computer programer that's for sure! (Kudos to my dad who's gone back to school to figure this stuff out- you're a smart man!)

So I must say that tonight I am skeptically proud of myself for thinking that I might just have figured out how to do the whole "Grab Our Button" thing that so many of you bloggers out there have! I am scared to even announce it truthfully because I only think I have it figured out... But feel free to check it out on the right side of the blog under the "About Me" section and let me know if I did it right!

For those of you who are like me about three months ago and are sitting there wondering what the heck a "button" is.. from what I gather, it's just a nifty way to promote your blog. Other's can grab your button and put in on their blog as a way of showing their support. So yeah, it doesn't sound so exciting when I say it like that... but everyone's doing it, so it must be cool! (o; I think I said that in Jr High to my parents as well.

Well, my head hurts from all this copying and pasting of HTML codes to figure out exactly how this thing was to work, so I think it's time for bed- but just thought I'd share! And a BIG thanks to all the incredibly gifted and talented adoption blogging mama's out there who don't seem to judge all the new-bee's that come along and try and copy some of your ideas! (o;

God's Up To Something

God's up to something. I just know it. I'm not sure what exactly, but there's something stirring in my heart and our lives and I'm sure it's God's way of preparing me. Obviously the central theme in our lives right now is our adoption. But I truly feel like there is more to this story that God is writing then getting us to our son in Ethiopia. Like we're just beginning a journey that is far bigger then us. This is just the tip to the iceberg.

Today at church we started a new series on Nehemiah. (Side note... "Nehemiah" seems to be a name that keeps coming up over and over again for one reason or another- I'm wondering if it'll be what we name our boy OR if God is just trying to teach us about the life of Nehemiah and how that applies to our journey? Either way, I smile every time I hear the name!) Anyway... the message today was about the burden and brokenness Nehemiah felt when he heard about the Jews back in Jerusalem and the great trouble and disgrace they were in. When he heard that the wall of Jerusalem was broken down and it's gates were burned down- he wept and mourned. Our pastor talked about Nehemiah's discontent with the news and how it set the stage for an everyday hero to rise. That "for an ordinary person to become an everyday hero they have to come to the aid and need of a situation in a sacrificial way for a nobel purpose." Our pastor encouraged us to figure out what it was in our lives that made us broken, or emotional, or distraught.. what tugged on our heart strings, where we wished we could make a difference... And then pray about it.

So I'll do just that. Pray. My eyes have been captured by the faces of orphans, my heart has been burdened with the desperate needs of Ethiopia... that's about all I know right now- but again, God's up to something!

This is what I know for certain stirs my heart.


Ordinary Hero~ A day in the trash dump in Ethiopia from Kelly Putty on Vimeo.

Bidding Open Until Noon Today

Okay ya'll!! First off, I'd just like to say how incredibly amazed I am at the little bidding wars going on here... bid away, bid away- I love it! For real though, we are so stinking grateful at your all's generosity in buying a shirt to help with our adoption fund!

This is just a reminder that the bidding on the shirts will end today at NOON with the highest bidder on each shirt winning! Again THANK YOU so much for your unending support of all our crazy ways to help fund brining this baby home!