I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed today with the thoughts of climbing the next mountain financially, yet I know God will bless us. We should get matched next month (April) leaving us a short amount of time to raise the needed funds in order to accept the match. I decided to share some more testimonies because remembering the blessings and sharing them helps me not to feel overwhelmed. I know God will provide.
After our homestudy, we finished compiling our dossier. Our dossier is simply a big packet with all sorts of information with everything from immigration approvals, background checks, a letter we had to write to China, a copy of our homestudy, medical information, and more. It was QUITE a packet to put together and took several months but after being in the process six months, it was finally shipped last week (March 9th)!
Getting it shipped seemed like one battle after another. We decided to take our own passport pictures because, frankly, money is really tight with everything extra going to help bring our child home. At first I thought this was going to be an easy task. I thought wrong :) Thankfully, Richard and Stacey Sanders (one of the best families we could ever have asked God to bless us with as friends), offered to help. Richard takes amazing pictures- yes that's a shameless plug :). He took our passport pictures and although he was unable to print them at his house, I figured going to Walgreens the following day would be easy enough to print them. Normally we would have printed them at home but we were out of ink and I didn't feel as though we were in a situation to spend extra to replace them at that moment. Hah! I was wrong. Walgreen wouldn't let me print them because they wanted to take their passport pictures, I went to a Christina Sinclair's house (she gracefully jumps in with my last minute adoption emergencies all of the time) and we had no luck, went to Walmart and couldn't print them there. I finally ended up at Officemax and although I was able to print them, they were too dark. Needless to say, juggling two kids through all this who were amazing, I was frustrated.
While at Officemax, I made several copies because the dossier requires a copy of everything that is sent. In haste to get home for a lesson, I walked off and almost out the door when a man came chasing after me. Unknowingly, I had left my immigration approval in the copier which had gotten "approved" by both the state department and Chinese Embassy. This took weeks to do and I had almost left it!! Praise God something moved this man to my printer and he was honest enough to bring it to me! HUGE BLESSING!
On my way home, I called Joy Moore because I had a lesson shortly with Becca, her daughter. I was hopeful that she was running late so I could possibly get her to print them for me and bring them with her to lessons. When I talked to her, I found out she was running late because a repairman that was scheduled to be there much earlier hadn't shown up and she was able to print them. Praise God for blessing us again!
The dossier had to be in the mail by six that evening in order to reach Holt in enough time to be matched next month. Thankfully, although I always hate for students to be sick, my 5:00-6:00 students had to cancel and I was blessed with just enough time to get back to Officemax with the pictures and ALL of my documents. It was shipped at 5:54. Since I had visited Officemax twice in one day, I had gotten to know one of the ladies working there and we were able to share our testimony as to why we were adopting and answer some of her questions. Another blessing!
So... our dossier is with Holt where they will, hopefully, approve it this week and send it to China. Once we get "logged in" we will have the ability to matched with a child. After being matched, we may have as much as a six month wait following that to travel. More paperwork and red tape, however it is absolutely worth it. I know God has a special child for us and I have had many experiences confirming that. Thank you to so many of you for your prayers, support and love. When we bring this child home it will have truly been a work of His people, responding to His call.
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