Wednesday

Thanks for joining us on this wild ride... :)

- if you missed it, yesterday we got pre-approval from China on our little girl... :)
- our birth certificates and marriage license copies came in yesterday!

Today, I am working on...
- getting police clearances
- filling out other police/fbi/background check sheets
- doing our autobiography questionnaires
- getting a self employment letter from our CPA
- writing our application letter
- pulling stuff together for our medicals
- hoping some reference letters come in
- hoping our employment letters get completed this week
- work on our financial statement

Also, we have our first home study meeting today... and hopefully our second home study meeting tomorrow so that we can have at least half our visits done by the end of the week.

Yes, this is moving at an incredible rate.  We will still need $25K before we travel.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ok, the next part of this post will probably be hard to read, and please know that Im not downing anyone or pointing fingers or trying to make anyone feel guilty... Im just telling you our experience, so please, please dont leave anything hurtful in the comments...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I put a notice on facebook yesterday about our fundraising starting and got one real response to that.

That honestly leaves me a bit worried.

I am beyond thankful (no words!) for that one family who is going to help us out.... seriously no words.... but I know they cant be the only ones.

With our last adoption, we had so little support - we had alot of backlash and mean comments and ugly speculation... with no family support... so we went through that whole process pretty much alone... I can count on one hand the people who gave towards Wallace's adoption (and our church at the time is not on that list).

I never doubted that God could provide the money.... but it is harder to have faith in His children hearing Him when He says to give it, and even moreso for them to actually do so.

It honestly left Daniel and I very, very jaded against church and Christianity..... and I think its no surprise to anyone that we didnt go to church for a long, long time.

We are just now easing back into church... but I ache (literally, I physically ache) at the thought of going through that process again.  I dont know if I can stand "the church" (as in the body of Christ, not just our physical church) letting us down again.

It is hard to hear people talking about being strapped for cash when they are holding their ipad, while we ate macaroni and cheese and a can of peas for most of our dinners during our adoption period.  It was hard for us to hear "we are praying for yall" from church members and then having to decline their invitation to go out to lunch b/c we were saving every penny.

It was hard.... it was worth it, yes... but it was hard, really, really hard.

And Im aching that we are looking at going down that road again.

I am trying to stay optimistic, especially when I announced it on facebook and there were so many wonderful replies and congratulations.... but the fundraising post didnt even get a small percentage of that.

I know that God has the money... and I know that He will provide.... I just really hope its more through His children this time.