Final Puzzle Update

We have completed our puzzle!!! Thanks to Becky, Dell and Tara, and Families Outreach, we were able to put the rest of the pieces together.  :)  A $500 grant from Families Outreach this week allowed us to meet and even exceed our goal.  Thank you, thank you , thank you again to everyone who donated funds in the last two months to help Cole and became a piece of our adoption puzzle.  We will get some puzzle saver in the next few days so we can hang it up!

Puzzle Update #2

It has been a few weeks since I showed an updated photo of our puzzle fundraiser.  Here is the most recent progress that has been made.  Thank you René, Kevin and Karen, Terrence, Steve, and the Perez family for becoming pieces of our puzzle.  We have put together more than 20 pieces in the last ten days or so and have made some good progress.

If we do not make our January 1st goal, we will keep this going until it is done and keep you updated every so often on its progress.  You may click here to learn more about it.  We are about a third of the way through with the puzzle and appreciate each of you who have helped us get this far.

TUG

*Disclaimer - This post is a little different from most of the ones I publish.  If you are curious, read on, but please don't say that I didn't warn you! :D

Have you ever had a day (or days), week, or month of discouragement and/or frustration mixed in with a few "Are we crazy?" and "Now what?" thoughts?  Mid week last week, those were my thoughts on the subject of this adoption.  The excitement of our immigration approval was not over, but it had dimmed somewhat in light of the fact that we.were.stuck.  We could not make anymore big steps forward until we had the money to do so.  I have tried not to focus on money on this blog, instead making it more about our adoption journey, but the truth is that adoption is expensive - expensive to the tune of a minimum of $25,000 - $35,000 and money that we, and the majority of adoptive families, don't have lying around.  

By Abe Ezekowitz (My private collection)
[GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) 

On Thursday morning, I talked to our contact at Lifeline and was told that once we have our dossier in Hungary, it usually takes only a few weeks for approval, and we enter the referral stage of adoption.  Referral can be a process that is very fast (within a month or two), or it can drag out for several months.  It is dependent upon a few things, one of them, the availability of a child that is a good match for your family.  While this information came over the phone line, I was thinking "Ok, this is great news! We are getting closer, but we don't have the money to move forward right now, so it still seems so far away."  That same day, we got a phone call from an agency we applied to to get an interest free loan for adoption expenses.  (The year after a completed adoption, an adoptive family is eligible for a tax credit to help offset the costs of adoption.)  Lifesong and We Care For Orphans are partnering together to give us a $5,000 loan.   This loan is given to us now, and we agree to pay them back using some of the tax credit we will receive after the adoption.  Every time it has appeared that we would hit a wall regarding the money we need to move forward, God has brought it in from somewhere.  In this instance, it is more than we needed right now, and will also help us to cover some other upcoming expenses.  We are so thankful that God is using Lifesong and We Care For Orphans to help us move forward now.  We hope to have our dossier in country in the next few weeks.  

By Ryan Child
  

You may be asking still.."What about your post title?  What does "TUG" have to do with this?" When I was a teenager, my pastor taught us to use the acronym TUG for answered prayer.  It means "Thank U God".  No, it isn't the best English, and yes, I know that "you" isn't spelled that way, but I never forgot that and still often use it today to cross off an answered prayer on my prayer list.  I just wanted to say Thank you God for answered prayer!  Thank you also to those of you who have been praying with us regarding the loan/grant applications we have mailed out.  Please don't stop praying!  This was the only loan application we sent out, but there are still several grant applications that are pending.  We still need $15,000 - $20,000 between now and the time we will travel to get our child. Please pray that we will be awarded some (or most) of this money through grants and the rest through fundraisers and extra income.  Right now, we have no idea where this money will come from, but every time we have needed funds to move forward, He has provided them.

I read this week Ez. 37:1-10 where Ezekiel is told to preach to dry bones.  There was no life there, but Ezekiel went forward anyway because he knew that is what God told him to do.  I hope that if you have some "dry bones" in your life that this post about seeming "dry bones" in our lives will encourage you.  If you have no idea how what is happening is going to work out, even though you know you are doing what God has called you to do, may I encourage you to move forward anyway in this thing we call faith.

  Thank you to those who have helped us financially so far.  Our puzzle fundraiser is still going on, and we still need more pieces to be purchased!  Will you help Cole put more pieces of his puzzle together?  To read how