One Year Later

One year later and we have so much to be thankful for.  We don't have new information to share but I want to share how the Lord has blessed us this past year as we wait for our daughter.  James recently wrote the following article for our Orphan Ministry newsletter at church. 

Adoption isn’t Easy

12 months have gone by since we submitted our application to our adoption agency to begin our journey to our daughter.  The past year has been filled with paperwork, fundraising, waiting, praying, and a growing desire to bring our little girl home.  It has been busy and hectic at times and dreadfully uneventful at others.   I wish I could say that we have possessed nothing but good attitudes and patience throughout this past year, but the reality of adoption is that it isn’t easy.  I wish it were.  I wish if a loving family wanted to adopt a waiting child that is longing for a forever family it would be a simple process.  As I reflect over these last months; however, I sense that God has been using this time to prepare us to bring our girl home.  He has been growing and maturing us.

If adoption were easy, I’m sure I would be missing the truth of how special adoption is.   It is too easy to depend on ourselves when something is easy.  This adoption has taught us to depend on God for many things.  When we started, there was a mountain of money required for the process.  We didn’t have it, but God did.  It is 12 months later and we have all the money we need to get our girl.  When we started, we didn’t realize how much our family and our little girl are loved by our friends and family.  It is 12 months later and I’m still amazed at the generosity and support that has come from the special people in our life.  When we started, we thought we’d be able to control the process more.  It is 12 months later, and we realize how much God is orchestrating to bring us to the right time and to the right place to meet our little girl who He has chosen.  If we had been able to get our girl 12 months ago I think we would have missed out on knowing and loving our precious Father so much better.

God never tells us things will be easy if we just believe in Him.  I actually believe He wants areas of life to be difficult.  He wants some things to be beyond us and our power.  When we encounter those hard areas of life that we can’t do in our own strength, then He gets to work at full force.  We are left to stand back and marvel at how only God could have accomplished such an amazing feat.  God uses these hard areas of life to teach us how amazing He is.

So, its 12 months later and we still don’t know our little girl’s name or when we’ll bring her home.  I’m sure we’ll still be battling impatience and frustration in the days to come just like we have over the last year.  I’m sure we’ll have our moments of trying to control things and do it our way.   It won’t be easy.  Even after we bring our girl home, things will be hard, but that’s ok.  By depending on God, we’ll get to stand back and marvel at how He takes care of the hard stuff.

We have a Winner!!!

We have a Winner!  

CAROL LINN  Ticket # 467584

 

A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL OF YOU WHO PARTICIPATED!

 

We want to give a big thank you to all of you who participated in our Beef Raffle! Through your donations we were able to raise $1800.  God has been so faithful to us throughout this process.  We thought one of the hardest parts about this adoption was going to be coming up with the funds but we were wrong.  God is using so many people that we don't even know and avenues that we would have never expected to raise the money.  We are being shown that as we answer God's call, he is always faithful to see it through. 

 

Please continue to pray with us as we wait for our referral.  We get increasingly excited to find out news of our daughter every day.  For those of you who know me well, I have even thought that dresses and the color "Pink" look cute now.  I would have never felt that way in the past.  God is preparing our hearts and we pray that he is preparing "hers" as well. 

 

Thank you so much! 



 

May God Bless All of YOU!

 

James, Michelle, Jonas, Josiah & ? McNutt

RAFFLE TIME!!!

It's been a month since we finished our paperwork and we were officially logged-into China's adoption system.  We are now in the fundraising stage as we wait for a phone call to tell us they have matched us with our daughter.  It was a little hard to hear recently that we should be prepared to wait up to a year for this to happen but we know that everything is in God's hands now and completely out of ours.  We take comfort in knowing that God knows everything we do not as we pray for our daughter. 

We are excited to announce that we are running a Raffle opportunity connected with our blog to help raise funds for our adoption but at the same time bless a family with much lower grocery bill. 
For every $10 (1 ticket) or $25 (3 tickets) donated on our blog through PayPal, you will be entered into the raffle drawing that will begin today and end on October 26th.  We will deliver the meat up to 150 miles from KC as we want many friends around us to be able to be involved.  Please feel free to share this flyer by any means possible. I can also send you an e-mail copy if you would like.  More specific details are listed on the flyer.

May God Bless You as You Bless Another!  Thank you!!

We have a Log-in Date!!!

We found out this morning that we officially have a Log-in Date to the China Adoption Program!  This means that all of our papers have been processed, approved and we are now just waiting for our agency to find a child to meet our application requests.  Of course, they take into consideration others who have been waiting longer first, but Wow!!

What is extra awesome is that this process usually takes 2-6 weeks and it only took 1 week in our case!  First time something went faster than expected :)  Praise the Lord!  We will know who our daughter is soon!

Our Documents are China Bound!

What a relief to say that Lord Willing our documents will be leaving the USA for China on Friday, July 26th and are scheduled to arrive on Tuesday, July 30th!  China will then look over our documents for their approval and then we will receive a Log-in Date to their system.  Once officially approved, which takes 2-6 weeks usually, we will be available to be matched with all children who meets our special needs application requests.  At that point, any day, any time we will find out who are daughter is!

The past two months have been an emotional roller coaster.  It took extra long to receive our immigration approval and so it forced us to certify and authenticate documents in separate packages with unexpected deadlines.  Some documents had to go back to Florida and then to Houston for Authentication while others went on to Chicago on two separate occasions to get proper stickers etc for China.  I'm now quite familiar with Fed-ex and tracking numbers as well as 3 different ladies in Florida, Texas and Illinois who helped walk-in papers to appropriate offices in order to get things done before expiration.  Documents are not allowed to become 6 months old.

Through all of this craziness, we know that God has a plan.  He is paving the way with every slow down or speed up to place us directly in the path of our daughter.  Will you join us in praying for her journey as well? 

Happy Mother's Day!

What a wonderful Mother's Day I have had today.  My day started out with breakfast in bed and receiving wonderful little crafts and pictures from my boys.  This picture that Jonas, our 7 year old, drew for me was such a reminder of our little girl whom we do not know yet.  The boys are so excited to get their sister.  Jonas even colored her skin a little darker and made big beautiful eyelashes on her.  I already miss her and don't even know her yet. 

Our process is finally starting to move forward again.  We received our finalized hard copy of our home study in the mail late last week.  We had been waiting on that for 2 months.  That allowed us to make the next step in mailing off our 1-800A application for applying for immigration approval to adopt a child from China.  Hopefully within a month we will receive approval to be fingerprinted and then be able to move closer to getting documents all ready to send to China. 

This past month has been full of blessings!  We have done 4 different fundraisers and God has been so good!  We do plan to get a raffle up and going soon as well. 

Thank you for your prayers for us and our little girl.  We hope to receive a phone call and be able to share her picture with you very soon.  Until then, I will leave this picture drawing of our daughter with you to pray for.  God's timing is perfect and we are excited to be a part of it!

Officially Waiting

Just before Easter we finished and finalized our "waiting child" application. This means that our adoption agency now has all the information they need from us to begin matching us with a child. It's really exciting to think that we can receive a phone call any day now notifying us that we have a daughter waiting for us! Once a match is found, we are told that it will take on average 6 months before China says it is time to travel.

In the meantime, we are working hard on getting our papers through a lot of processes and delivered to China for their official approval. We have also been overwhelmed by many friends as well as my employer to help raise funds for our adoption. We are so grateful for this outpouring of love and for God's constant provision. He has provided in many ways that we would have never expected.

Stay tuned....we hope to add a Pay Pal Donation button to our page and raffle opportunities in the near future.  Thank you for your continued prayers!

Getting there

Well, we have been working hard the past couple months on training, paperwork, collecting paperwork, getting physicals etc.  This "paper pregnancy" thing is tough work.  Since I've been physically pregnant twice, I must say that my first two pregancies were must easier :)  The hard work is paying off though, we had our last home study visit with our social worker on March 2nd which means we should be done with a home study report very soon.  This will allow us to work on our "waiting child" application in order to apply to be matched with our daughter. 

While doing this we can also begin our immigration approval and finalizing of documents that will be certified etc and sent to China.  We sure can't wait to share with you our first picture of our daughter when we get matched.  God is good!  Thank you for your prayers!!

Happy Chinese New Year!

 

We celebrated Chinese New Year today for the very first time!  What a feast it was with some wonderful Christian friends who have opened their hearts and home by sharing this new tradition with us.  We hope to be celebrating with our daughter next year!  God is so good!



A Blessing for Another

This past week we were so excited to have our first Home Study meeting scheduled and start moving a little further in the paperwork process.  It was scheduled for yesterday and cancelled yesterday.  At first I was dissapointed but then I found out that our social worker is also involved in Domestic Adoptions.  She was helping to unite a brand new baby with their adoptive parents in the Kansas City area.  I felt so happy as I thought of that family snuggling at home as a family of 3 for the first time last night.  What a blessing for them! 

Sweet Moment

Earlier this week I had a really sweet moment with Jonas, our six year old.  After supper one night he went upstairs to his bedroom and emptied out all of his change.  He brought down the handful of money and said to me, "Mom, I want you to have this money to help bring my sister home."  It was awesome to see that he already loves his sister.  He also told me today that he was going to save money to buy her toys.  So, my daughter in China, you have a big brother who loves you very much!

Feeling closer

Just wrote out another pretty large check in efforts to bring our daughter home.  I noticed that this time I wrote out the check instead of feeling scared about the money, I felt tears of excitement that we are one check closer in bringing our daughter/sister home.  It's interesting but I'm beginning to feel "pregnant".

When is our sister coming?

This is the question the boys have been asking a lot lately.  We thought of her often at Christmas time and couldn't help but shed a tear when a song was played by Third Day wishing their daughter in China a Merry Christmas before she joined their family.  At this point we don't know if she is old enough to know that we are waiting for her but we pray for her daily.

We are now in the "paper pregnancy" stage of the adoption process.  I think biological pregancy is easier as I feel like I've signed up for a semester worth of college papers to write and collect.  I believe that God is going to teach me a lot through this process.  Patience with accomplishing all that I want to get done right now, today to be exact, will be the big one.  I am also looking forward to seeing the miracles that God has around the corner in helping us to finance bringing our daughter home.  I know it will happen because God wants this to happen.  Wow!  2013 is going to be exciting!