Jewelry Fundraiser Update!

Hey y'all!!  I have every intention of sharing more about our trip to Ethiopia!  I got started on Day 1 and haven't made it past that.  We have been busy over here!  I do want to share about the rest of our trip though.  It is coming soon!  For today I want to share about an awesome fundraiser that we just had!

We have been working on ways to raise money for our last trip to Ethiopia for a little while now.  Our first trip cost WAY more than we anticipated.  Apparently, we flew during the "high" season.  So, we knew that God was going to provide the last trip but we weren't sure how! :)  So, I had a thought one day that I actually don't wear a lot of the jewelry that I own.  I love jewelry, I really do but I tend to stick to a couple safe pieces that go with everything.  Then, I thought well, I could sell some things and use it to donate to our last trip fund!  That's pretty much how it started.  Just me staring at my excess and thinking, "I don't need this....I need to get to Ethiopia." 

So, I made some teasers and got some advice about sales and shipping from Ivey's Momma and from Kate from The Adopt Shoppe. 

Then, I made a cute ad for my sale using my Rhonna DESIGNS app!  I posted it and many of you shared it!  So thankful!

I had all of my pictures of items ready and I had priced everything.  Brian made me a spreadsheet (I am completely illiterate at Excel...so much that he posted on facebook about how i called Excel "the place where you make graphs and use math and stuff.").  Anyway, the day of the sale I was ready to go.  At 4:30pm I went to a local neighborhood to help interpret and invite kids for an after school program that our church does.  We were there talking to people and having a great time and I looked and realized it was 6:30pm!!  Somehow we finished everything in time and I came straight home and managed to post everything pretty close to 7:00pm EST.  I was SO amazed at how many people were buying things!  Everything in the store except for maybe 1 or 2 items sold within an hour, maybe even 45 minutes!!!!  I COULD NOT believe it!!!  YOU ALL have helped in a huge way to help us get to our baby girl!  The amount that we made was around $350!  That would pretty much cover our guest house fees for our housing while we are in Ethiopia!  Seriously, y'all are SUCH a blessing to us and our family!  I can't tell you how grateful we are that you would support us and our journey to bring our baby girl home.

Keep praying for the US Embassy to process her case quickly.  It has been 7 weeks since we passed court in Ethiopia and 3 weeks since our case was submitted to the Embassy.  Our agency told us that almost all the agencies are seeing a SLOW DOWN right now because of new paperwork that was instituted on Sept. 1st.  Thankfully we don't have to complete that paperwork because we were submitted before that but since they are now processing new stuff plus the old style everything is slowing.  :(  We were really hoping to get to Ethiopia this month.  There is definitely still a chance so I'm still hoping!  

OH, AND I have one more amazing fundraiser coming up to finish this whole adoption journey out!  God has been working on this one for 3 years, seriously, 3 years!!!   That's the same amount of time we've been waiting to bring Lucy home!  I am SO excited!  STAY TUNED!!

 

The Call!!

I can hardly believe I'm typing this post!!! It has been 18 days since we got our Referral Call from our adoption agency! We are still pinching ourselves and just staring at her sweet little pictures over and over again. The picture above is right after Isabel and I saw her pictures for the first time together. I wanted to share how it all happened on Friday, May 31! For a good while now I have been checking my phone various times during the day and making sure that my phone is always turned on right when I leave school. We were #3, then #1, then #2 so we really had no idea when it could be. So, on Friday afternoon Isabel and I were heading home after a long week at school. We were listening to music and very close to home when my phone rang. I picked it up to see that a case worker from our agency was calling me! I didn't get TOO excited at first because it wasn't our regular case worker.  It was actually the very first case worker we ever had at AGCI.  We had just participated in a webinar session with our agency and she was leading it.  She had e-mailed me the day before to see if I had any additional questions and so I thought maybe she was following up about that.  Well, I WAS WRONG!!! :)

She said, "Hi Angela.  Are you busy?"  I told her no, that I was just driving home from school.  She said, "Well, I called to talk to you about a little girl."  Right then, I completely choked up.  Seriously.  I couldn't speak!!  I cried and said, "Are you serious???"  She said she was very serious and wanted to know how far away from home I was.  I was super close.  She told me just a few details, had me call Brian, and then told me to call her back when I got home.  I hung the phone up, looked in the rear view mirror at Isabel, and screamed!!!!!  She grinned the biggest grin EVER!!!!!  I said, "Do you know what that was about?"  She smiled and said, "My sister?!?!"  I said, "YES!!!" and we both screamed and laughed together all the way home!!!

I called Brian right away.  He was at work but he answered.  I asked if he was busy and he said no.  Then I said, "Are you ready for this??  I just got a phone call from AGCI and they want to talk to us about a little girl!!"  He was shocked and said, "NO WAY!!"  I assured him that I wasn't joking and I shared with him the little bit that I knew.  Brian wasn't able to leave work but he was able to be a part of the call.  We were able to have a conference call and hear all of the details and even see her pictures at the same exact same time.  Isabel was amazing and found something quiet to play in her room while we listened to our sweet baby's story and learned more about her.  She is absolutely adorable.  When we got the call we found out that she was only 6 weeks old!  We were so surprised about this because our parameters were 0-4 years old.  We felt for sure that we would receive a referral for a toddler.  We are sooo blessed.  We are amazed at all of the details and how the second we saw her little face, we knew....she is our daughter.  She is.

After the call, we had a lot of work to do.  We had 48 hours to contact our International Pediatrician and review details with him.  Then, we completed and notarized documents for our referral acceptance and completed a plan to help us be prepared when we bring her home.

The next week we found out that our case was submitted to the court system in Ethiopia!!!  Our next step is waiting and PRAYING for a court date!!  No one is sure about the exact date of the court closure in Ethiopia....maybe July 6th or maybe August 6th.  We are hoping that we will get a court date soon so that we do no have to wait until October. :(  Pray for our family and other families that are waiting on court dates!

**DISCLAIMER**
While I SO wish we could show you all our baby girl's picture, we cannot.  We would never want to do anything to jeopardize our case or our agency or the relationship they have with Ethiopia.  So, we both carry her picture around with us and if you ask, we will be HAPPY to show you in person.  We will not be sharing many details and definitely not any pictures online until AFTER we bring her home.  Thank you all for understanding and being patient and gracious with us.

Our FDL and an Adoption Fundraiser!

Guess what?!? We got our FDL in the mail today! That's right! I know it's hard to see with the bad lighting and poor camera shot, but it's true! Our Favorable Determination Letter from USCIS. They have approved us to adopt too! We have been waiting on this thing since late November so we were sooo thankful to have it come today. I haven't really been stalking the mailbox or anything but I was wondering when it would come....or if they would approve us! :) It is good to have one more step out of the way. I love that it says, "Your approved advance processing application is being retained or has been forwarded as indicated by an "X" mark below"

X National Visa Center in Portsmouth, NH
X ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA!!! (Isn't that super cool? Yeah, I thought so!)

In other cool news, I wanted to share a fundraiser page that I have been meaning to share for a while on here. Through my friend, Patrice, I met Vanessa. Patrice has been advocating for this sweet little 1 year old boy named Anton for a while because God just laid it on her heart. He has a rare genetic skin disease called EB just like Patrice's son. The difference was that Anton lives in Russia and also that he lives in an orphanage with no parents. Long story short, Vanessa's family is doing everything they can to adopt this sweet little boy. Every day there are all kinds of cool fundraising events going on at their blog. Today is the last day that you can get 30% off of Serwa Chic sales. They have way cute diaper covers, diaper all in ones, nursing covers, and bibs! So, go check it out adoptive moms! Go ahead and follow the blog so you can keep up to date on all of their fundraisers and help bring this sweet baby home!

Chick-fila, Ferrets, USCIS, and Billy Graham

Hahah, what kind of title is that?! Well, it's a synopsis of my day. I have to share about today before I forget because it's just too funny. Today we had our fingerprint appointment with USCIS in Charlotte. Our appointment was at 8am so we took the day off so that we could leave super early and get through traffic. We thought we were doing so well because we left the house at 5:45am. It usually takes about an hour and a half to get there from our house. We were doing great on time so we decided to stop at Chick-fila for breakfast. Brian and I NEVER get up early enough to go out for breakfast so we decided it would be fun this morning and it was! So we had our quick breakfast and hopped back in the car. It was raining but other than that nothing crazy, even though back home it was apparently snowing! Crazy North Carolina weather! Anyway, we were driving along having fun when all of a sudden the traffic started slowing considerably. We kinda expected some traffic so we weren't too worried until we could see that there was a continuous stream of traffic way up ahead. We were stuck Later we heard on the news that no one could ever explain why the traffic where we were was like that. It was a "mysterious slowdown." There was no wreck or construction.

Thankfully we made it to the office, which oddly enough was located in an old shopping/business center, by 8:04am! We went right in and the lady at the desk was very helpful. She told us what form to fill out, what line to stand in, and then where to sit to wait for our number to be called. So, this USCIS office was really like a sitcom. We totally felt like we were in AP Environmental Science again because Brian would always say something that would make me laugh and then our table would get in trouble. I was afraid we were gonna get in trouble for laughing. Let me explain what was so funny but I'll warn you that it could very well be one of those situations that you had to be there to truly experience the hilarity of it.

So the office had a tv set up in the corner on one of those rolling carts. It was just turned on to some random channel. Well, while we were in line we noticed that they were interviewing people about their pet ferrets. People that have tens of ferrets in cages. People that enter their ferrets in contests and win lots of ribbons. We were snickering at the idea of a ferret show being shown here because it probably was deemed by the govnt as the least offensive thing they could find. I mean who would find ferrets offensive? So we went through the line and then they showed us where to sit and wait for our number. At this point a lady was singing a lullaby to her ferret and holding it like a baby. I'm not lying, a long lullaby. Now other people are starting to notice the oddity of it too because the couple in front of us laughed too. We were doing everything we could to hold it in. Then we see the official receptionist that was close to the door look up to see the lady rocking her baby ferret. She gives the TV one of THE funniest looks I have seen in a long time. You know she is thinking, "What the crap is this?" So, she quietly goes over to a desk and fishes out the remote and changes the channel to the news. Hah, we were all relieved.

After that we noticed that after everyone had their fingerprint scan they were given a little piece of yellow paper. Each person carefully folded the paper and then stuck it in a little box that looks like one of those raffle boxes where you enter to win an ipad or a trip to Jamaica. So I jokingly said, "Maybe we'll win an ipad!" To which Brian retorts, "Listen, I worked for the government, they are not giving away ipads. If that's a raffle, then they are giving away something like The Complete Eddie Money Collection on cassette tape." Hah, so of course, I was holding in more laughter. Then, the receptionist lady went to get two brand new boxes of pencils and commenced to sharpening ALL of them. This probably wouldn't be a problem to the normal person but I share a trailer with 3 other teachers and almost at any time of the day one of them will be sharpening pencils. It's maddening really. Sometimes with the electric sharpener, sometimes with the old manual one. So, Brian thought it was great that this lady was sharpening every last pencil for me to hear on my day away from school. Oh, the other thing that happened was that a teenager came in and proceeded to pull out his cell phone while he was in line. I'm guessing that he missed all of the pictures and signs that say, "NO CELL PHONES." Well, about that time, the receptionist lady looked up from her pencils and saw him out of the corner of her eye. She stood up and in a loud voice said, "Oh we got one on a cell phone." So she she headed over to him and pointed at the sign. He remained on his phone and looked at her confused and said, "What?" She then pointed at his phone and at the sign again. He got it that time and put it up pretty quickly.

All in all a very uneventful time at the Appointment Office. Shortly after that we were called up for our scans and then it was time to go after we entered the raffle....that turned out to be just 3 questions about their customer service.

Since we had the day free and it was still early we decided to by Trader Joe's and then to the Billy Graham Library because it was on the same exit and we had heard that it was definitely worth the trip. We had such a good time there. The property is beautiful and peaceful. The actual museum and library is incredible and it's free. It's definitely about Billy Graham but really it's about the many ways that God used him to share the hope and grace of the Gospel with the world. Everything points to God and gives glory to Him. It was so powerful and encouraging. I highly recommend a visit. At the end, we were greeted by some people that work there. They asked if we enjoyed our visit and what brought us there. We told them how we are adopting and that we were just up the street completing some paperwork. They were so thrilled for us and said, "oh can we just pray for your family and your daughter in Ethiopia?" We said, "of course" and they even have a prayer room there to the side. It was the most sweet and loving prayer for our family and our daughter. They said, "Please bring her back her so we can meet her one day!" We all hugged and were so so blessed by our trip there. After that we looked through the library and then had lunch at "The Dairy Bar." The main building looks like a farm because Billy Graham actually grew up on a dairy farm. After you leave the main building, you can tour his family's original house and then walk through the prayer garden and see where Ruth Bell Graham is laid to rest.

It was such a nice day for us to spend together talking and laughing and thinking about our future.

Updates! Look what came in the mail today!

I feel like I have a lot to post so bear with me! :)

Guess what?! Today we finally received our notice from USCIS about our Biometric Fingerprint appointments! We have 8am appointments on March 28th!! Check out the fancy heading on the letter. Isn't it funny that it looks like money? We are super thankful that we finally received something from them because we had mailed our application in at the beginning of January. I'm still not real sure what was happening with it during that time because on the forms, it says that they received it on February 28th. Weird huh? At any rate, ta dah! Here is mine!


Despite the confusion over what exactly will come to pass with the new changes from MOWA, we have seen many referrals and court dates coming through with our agency! Isn't that incredible? God is still working even when we can't see what is up around the bend. He knows and has everything in His hands. I am SO thankful for that. We have not received our official number for March but I will just share that our "unofficial" number is 56! Isn't that nuts? We've come a long way since we started at 93 back at the end of October!
Some of you have asked what we have heard about Ethiopia lately and we still don't really have anything concrete. Here are the points that our agency informed us of that was discussed during the caucus call with the Department of State on Friday.
■Although this change has been supposedly confirmed to have gone into effect on March 10, 2011, there is no information available on what the process could look like moving forward, what cases it impacts, and if and for how long it will remain in effect.
■It was mentioned that cases already registered with the Ethiopian court could possibly experience up to an estimated 12 month delay. It was made very clear by the US Department of State that this was dependent on a number of factors, all of which are yet to be determined, i.e. how many cases are registered, what cases this change will impact, if this change continues to be in effect, etc.
■There is a vast amount of rumors going around related to this change, and none of them are able to be confirmed at this point.
■The head of MOWA has been terminated, effective next week, for unknown reasons.
■We are hearing that there will be meetings between the US Department of State, US Embassy, MOWA, network of ASP Foreign Service Providers, and Ethiopian government offices during the next week. We believe these meetings will begin on Monday, March 14th; however, there is no way to know if there will be concrete solutions that develop.
So, what can we do?
1. We can be in prayer for the meeting that will take place on Monday!
2. You can still sign the petition! They have suggested that we need 250,000 signatures. I just checked and there are like right at 35,000!! So here is a super quick link. You can copy and paste it and send to everyone you know! It takes less than one minute to sign the petition that the Joint Council on International Children's Services has put online. They will deliver this
petition to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, so you need to act TODAY. Through
this simple act, your signatures will provide hope for the voiceless children of Ethiopia.

http://www.orphanpetition.org/

3. We can also just be praying for the country of Ethiopia as a whole. "At least one Christian was killed and others injured when thousands of Islamic extremists set fire to 59 churches and at least 28 homes in western Ethiopia in the past five days, Christian leaders said." This is very tragic. Here is the link to the article.

Last Day to Order Shirts, Ornaments, etc.!!

Today is the very last day to order any Ordinary Hero t-shirts, ornaments, or coffee and tumblers to benefit our adoption! If you're interested, head on over to:

http://ordinaryheroblog.blogspot.com/

Don't forget to click the "Add Special Instructions to Seller" button and add our name!

Thanks so much for your support!!

Link to a great post: Affirmation & Adoption

So, I want to link to a post that I read last night. It was written by a local friend that is also adopting from Ethiopia. When I finished reading her post I started telling Brian about it. She came up with a list of suggestions for how to better support and understand families that are adopting. I completely agree with it because I have felt the same way several times. Many people are not used to talking about adoption so they don't know how it affects our hearts. They might not know that we think about our little girl somewhere in Ethiopia all the time just like I thought about Isabel when I was pregnant with her. We wonder what she'll look like, act like, etc. I know that it is not visible and you can't tell that we are expecting another child. You can't see that next year we will be a family of 4 and not just 3. We will have two daughters. Isabel will be a big sister. Even though you can't see it all happening, we still would love for you to celebrate it with us! We are so thankful for everyone that is cheering us on!

So, here is her post: http://dean-machine.blogspot.com/2010/07/affirmation-and-adoption.html



Much love,

Sweet Gotcha Day Video & Sweet Gotcha Day Fun

This sweet family that adopted with our agency (AGCI) too just posted their Gotcha Day video for their precious son. I dare you to keep a dry eye by the end of it. It is so exciting and encouraging to think that we will go to Hannah's Hope too sometime next year to pick up our little girl! I can't wait!




We also got to celebrate the Gotcha Day of our wonderful friends' son today. He is one cool kid and we are so blessed to get to celebrate with them. Poop in the public pool could not ruin the fun! Isabel had a great time with her friends on the slip'n'slide and the shark pool in their yard. Then we got to go eat and go back to their house for brownie sundaes too! We are so thankful for them. They have encouraged us and cheered us on and continue to do so! Love y'all!!
http://simplysmittys.blogspot.com/2010/07/happy-gotcha-day.html

Amazing Story!!

Another local AGCI family shared this story today. It is soo incredible and I really wanted to share it with you all. I am so amazed at how God has such good and perfect plans for us. He constantly is working to redeem and restore us. This story is about an Ethiopian orphan named Solomon. He is going to be attending school at the College at Southeastern Theological here in NC! Here is the story that she sent:

"Solomon Bekele is 19 years old and has been living in an orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for the last 10 years. He was living without hope or plans for a future and he thought he was forgotten, even by God. He was all alone with not one living relative in this world. The Kolfe Orphanage with boys ranging in ages 7-21 years had not been maintained in over 30 years. The living conditions were tragic, with raw sewage seeping up from the ground, broken windows in all the dorms, and the beds they slept in were trash pile worthy. They only had Injera (their national bread) and soup to eat every day, three times a day.

Then in November 2007, the Mestas family traveled to Ethiopia to adopt a sibling group of three. They were taken to visit the Kolfe orphanage and met Solomon. They became pen-pals and miracles began to happen through the letters to Solomon.

Upon returning home from Ethiopia, the Mestas family started speaking all over the country on behalf of orphans and was instrumental, in just 2 months, of raising over $50,000 to renovate the orphanage. Eileen Mestas started posting Solomon's letters on their family blog www.jobsdaughters.blogspot.com which began spreading around the country like wildfire. How many people get to know a real orphan boy in Africa and hear his cries for help and his heart's desire to be loved? People from all over the U.S. started to visit Solomon at the Orphanage in Ethiopia, and continue the humanitarian aid efforts. When he was asked how many people had visited him he said; "Too many to count". In two short years, the Kolfe orphanage has become famous and is being transformed. Solomon has been instrumental in getting several of the younger boys adopted, and many more of them sponsored by American families.

Solomon failed the Ethiopian Government National School Exam in 10th grade and was considered not worthy of further education. He was not permitted to attend any more government schools or University and was destitute with no hope for a future.

The Mestas family started to financially support him going to a private school in Ethiopia where he graduated in August 2009, as Valedictorian! Out of 400 students he was the only orphan. Through a series of miraculous events, Solomon was awarded a full tuition scholarship to attend The College at Southeastern in Wake Forest, NC.

The president of Southeastern, Dr. Danny Akin, agreed to give Solomon a tuition scholarship if he could get to the United States. This was the greatest challenge of all, since the US Embassy normally does not grant student visas to orphans. It is mandatory for all international students to return to their country after they graduate. All students must prove ties to their native country, such as family, property, bank accounts, and other resources. Typically orphans have no ties to ensure their return. The odds were against Solomon again.

The Mestas family elicited the support of several organizations, such as the Gladney Center for Adoption of Fort Worth, Texas, Open Door Baptist Church in Raleigh and others who wrote letters of recommendation in support of Solomon's application. They also engaged the Office of Senator Kay Hagan, who assisted in the expedition of his VISA approval just yesterday, Monday June 21, 2010!! He received his Visa this morning and is booked on a flight to the USA tonight which arrives at RDU tomorrow, Wednesday, June 23, 2010 at 1:30 p.m.

God performed another miracle for Solomon and he will be living with the Mestas family and joining their speaking ministry for at least the next 4-5 years. Solomon has become the VOICE OF THE ORPHAN!

A crowd of at least 100 people is expected to welcome him at the RDU airport tomorrow. SOLOMON IS FORGOTTEN NO MORE! There are hundreds of others all over the USA waiting for the video to be posted on the blog and Facebook! This is just the beginning of Solomon's journey to greatness!! "