God's Always Provides

Hey there!

Received official confirmation that all is well at the orphanage!  Praise God!  He also provided just the scriptiure I needed this morning for peace in other areas of our life.  God is SO good!  :-)  Please do continue to keep us in your prayers for peace though...as the silence from Haiti concerning is often deafening!

In other news, our home church (Vineyard) has decided to host a yard sale for us on September 29!  This involves YOU in two ways:

1-Do you anything you would like to get rid of?  Who doesn't? Just let us know!  Eddie and I will be happy to come pick up any contributions to our loot for sale!  (Upstate folks, this includes you!  We will be up at least one weekend between now and then.)

2-I don't know specifically where just yet, but the plan is to be a part of the Daniel Island Community Yard Sale on September 29.  Plan to come out and support us!  Just let us know if you'd also like to help out!  I'm sure we will take all the help we can get that morning.  :-)

Let the gathering begin!

Praying for Peace!

Wow!  Sorry I haven't posted since the beginning of the month!  No big news to report yet, but just an update to those of you who have expressed concern about the path of Issac, I haven't heard specifically that Catrina is ok (saddly there isn't really a good way to get in touch with her or anyone from the orphanage), but I have heard that the eye of the storm passed over their town on Saturday morning and other than some missing roofs, everything seemed to have faired surprisingly well!  No known casualties on the island.  Thank you all so much for your thoughts and prayers and for those of you who reached out to me with your care and concern!  This waiting game is SO hard and even harder when things like this happen and you have to await news just to make sure your child is safe!  I'll post again when I know more!

All in all, this has been a particularly hard month and I would greatly appreciate prayers for peace while we wait and Godspeed with the processing of our dossier!

"Adopted" in Christ!

Unfortunately no news yet from Haiti.  The IBESR was supposed to try to have all dossiers cleared through by August 1, but clearly we aren't the only couple who hasn't heard anything.  Still waiting and praying!  May it all come to pass in God's timing!  Also no news on her birth father, still praying for him to feel peace and freedom and the motivation to want to go to PAP to sign off.

As so many adoptive families often have to do, we've gotten a little creative with our fundraising!  If you've been following our blog, you are aware of our "Piecing our Lives Together" puzzle fundraiser.  There are still many pieces available to be sponsored, so ya'll just let us know if you want to be the proud supporter of one of our puzzle pieces (and our adoptive journey).  I'll be posting an update on that soon so you can see how it's coming along.  I am loving how it looks so far!

For our next fundraising option, Eddie and I put our heads and hearts together to design this T-Shirt:

Front View

Back View

We currently have all sizes from S - 3XL (limited quantities of the largest and smallest sizes, so get them fast!) and only available in black with white writing.  We are requesting a $20 donation to our adoption fund per shirt.

For our design, Eddie and I wanted to keep the focus on adoption without being too exclusive.  We decided on this design because it unites us all as children of God.  We are all so blessed to have the opportunity to be chosen as His children. 

One lesson we have truly learned through our adoption journey so far is how similar it is to our own adoption into God's family.  Ultimately it's all about focusing on and learning to trust in Him.

If you'd like to purchase a t-shirt to support our adoption journey, please feel free to use whatever means you are comfortable to contact me (comment here, message me on FB, email, phone, snail mail, in person :-).  You can pay via Paypal ("Donate" button), check or cash.  If you live far away, I'm happy to ship the shirts to you and please consider adding about $2 per shirt for shipping expenses and don't forget to let me know where to ship them.  If you live in the upstate or low country, just let me know and we'll get together so I can deliver them.

Thanks again for all of the support and love you all offer us regularly.  Please do keep Catrina, us, and everyone involved in each step of the process in your prayers.  May God continue to work miracle after miracle before our very eyes!

"Bring Catrina Home" Benefit

WOW!  I don't even know where to begin in attempting to describe what a blessed weekend we had!  So sorry for the delayed post, as I've been pretty crazy the past few weeks, but it is absolutely no bearing upon the outcome of the Benefit!

Despite the fact that the timing was rather close to the fourth of July, we had a pretty great turn out of about 65+ friends and family members.  There was plenty of yummy food to go around, including pulled pork, hamburgers, hot dogs, baked beans, broccoli salad, cole slaw, etc...  It was all incredible, but I have to admit that the desserts took the cake!  HA!  (That was for Eddie...  :-)

We all had a great time dining and socializing to the sweet piano sounds of John Flanagan on piano (Thanks John!), a beautiful duo of duets by John and Rudge, and wrapped up with some fun tunes by the Rowdy Mountain Boys (thanks ya'll!).

John Flanagan on piano

John and Rudge playing Ave Maria

Rowdy Mountain Boys livening up the place!

One other cool thing about this weekend was that we got to attend the closing ceremony of the Pickens View  Overboard Vacation Bible School on Sunday morning.  As always, it was a great time!  Much to our surprise, we were called to the front and told that the children's offerings for the week were going to our "Bring Catrina Home" fund!  Words can't even begin to describe how special this was to us!  Eddie and I have a heart for children's and youth ministry, so to know that the entire VBS had been praying for Catrina all week and taking money from their piggy banks to help bring our sweet girl home was overwhelmingly humbling!  It is SO beautiful to see how God will provide and often in the least expected of ways!

Between the t-shirt sales (more to come on that), puzzle piece sponsorships, silent auction purchaes, general donations, and the VBS children's offering, we raised just over $2100!  WAHOO!  This is definitely a great help!  Thanks so much to Mama, Tiff, Rudge, and Pickens View Wesleyan Church for hosting this great event and thanks to everyone who took the time to come out and celebrate with us!

Thanks for all your prayers and please do keep em coming!

Puzzle Piece Sponsorhip Table

Haitian Adoption News & Father's Day

Since we took our dossier to Haiti, I haven't been nearly as good about keeping up with Haitian news as I should be!  Last week Haiti announced that the Haitian Parliament approved the Decree for ratification of the Hague Convention.  This Decree still needs to be deposited in the Netherlands for it to take effect, and even after it's deposited, it is another 3 months before that happens.  This decree affects ALL International adoptions.  However, we just don't really know how just yet.  Hopefully it's all good changes, but one never knows.  Please be in prayer that this IS a positive change, that we get through IBESR quickly and with all the proper dispensations, and that Catrina's birth father will make the trek to PAP.

So I should have mentioned Father's Day in my last post, but I think it was pretty hard for Eddie.  Don't get me wrong, he had a great day (as great a day as I could give him), but he seemed about as happy as I would have been "celebrating" Mother's Day here.  It was just extra clear that day that someone was missing.  He's strong and he will be fine, but please do say an extra little prayer for him for peace if you think about it.

"Bring Catrina Home" Benefit - JUNE 30

Just before I left for Haiti in May, my Mom and my sister informed us that they were in the process of planning a benefit to help us raise money for our adoption!  How incredibly thoughtful! When going through the many steps of this adoption, it is such a blessing to know we have the support and prayers of loved ones!

For all of you in the upstate, please do come out!  It's a fundraiser, but also a celebration!  There will be plenty of food and live entertainment.  Last I heard there are two music sets:  an amazing concert pianist (I'm not at all partial...thank you John!!!) and a bluegrass band (I don't know any of these guys yet, but many thanks to them as well!).

It's scheduled for Saturday, June 30 at 6:00 pm at Pickens View Wesleyan Church in Pickens, SC.  Tickets are by donation and will be available at the door.  We'll also be having a silent auction to sell some pieces of original Haitian artwork and we'll be selling t-shirts that Eddie and I designed.  We'll also have the puzzle there (we still have many pieces available for sponsorship) so you can see the progress we've made on that and sponsor pieces if you wish.  There are lots of ways to contribute (and all donations made at the benefit will be tax deductible...thank you Pickens View Wesleyan Church!), but most important we are going to have so much fun celebrating this exciting time in our lives and the sweet girl God is bringing to our family! 

Flyer for Adoption Benefit

No news on the actual process.  We've officially be in IBESR 6 weeks now, but no news yet.  This isn't really uncommon...the IBESR is like a giant black box...you put your dossier in and just wait and pray until it comes back out.  We are also still praying that God will change Catrina's birth father's heart and that he will willfully go to PAP to sign off on our adoption.  Please continue to pray with us and if you can make it out to the benefit, we certainly look forward to seeing you there!

Many thanks & much love!

Update on Catrina's Room

So sorry I haven't had the chance to post lately!  We've both been working like crazy people! 

No news from Haiti concerning the IBESR or Catrina's birth father, so please continue praying!  No doubt God already has this worked out and will bring it to fruition in his time.

While we wait...Eddie and I got a good bit of progress made in Catrina's room over the past few weeks, so thought you all might enjoy seeing some photos:

Chalkboard Butterfly on the door :-)



Bed in the corner by the window



Stacked hatboxes for storage

Those paintings are from Haiti

I love those monkeys!!!  :-)

Does the whiteboard/photo holder look familiar?

Still a work in progress no doubt, but it's definitely coming along!  We're ready for our girl whenever God's ready to bring her!  :-)