DeAndrea Adoption

We are humbled and amazed at how God is providing for our adoption! My friend, Becky, organized a garage sale this weekend to benefit our adoption. So many of our friends donated items and came and helped organize the mass amount of stuff. We put an ad in our local paper, but they forgot to put our address in the first night, so David called and got it worked out. The next night, not only did they forget our address again, but now also had the wrong dates! We decided to pray that God would bring the people to our garage sale because obviously, the paper wasn't going to. So, here we are, Sunday night, and Becky told me we made around $1,500!!! I think that's a pretty good garage sale! We also had a church BBQ today which turned out to be a VERY HOT event! I think it was over 100 degrees...that's very hot for us coastal people! Anyway, one of our friends let us know that she is going to gift us her airline miles. She used to work for a mission organization and took many trips and has many miles saved. She says she has enough miles for us to both go all the way to Ethiopia and back. PTL! That will save us almost $5,000!! We gathered our kids together tonight to pray and thank the Lord once again for all His blessings in our lives. We started this journey of faith 7 months ago with $200 to apply to our agency. In the world's view it is a very bad time economically to be embarking on a $22,000 adventure with no savings towards it and not willing to get into debt for it. But when we felt God directing us so strongly that you can't get it out of your head, you've got to just take that step of faith and jump out without seeing how it's going to all work together. I'm so glad we did! I can't wait to see what He has in store for us next!

FINALLY! My fingerprints clear and we received our I171-H Approval Notice today in the mail. I sent it off to Holt and we are ready for the next step...REFERRAL! Thank you to everyone who prayed for us through this funny, yet frustrating step in the adoption process. We are now ready to be matched with a child. YIPEE!

We just got word from our adoption agency that we are #6 in line. It seems a miracle since we still do not have clearance from Immigration because of my worn off fingerprints. Please pray that our approval comes quickly! We also got word this week from Lifesong for Orphans that our friends and family have given more than enough for the matching grant. AWESOME! It is very exciting, yet humbling to see how God is working everything out for this adoption. This weekend, with the help of one of my best buddies, we are having a garage sale to help with adoption costs. We still need about $9,000 but it doesn't seem like much since we're down from $22,500!! Praise the Lord! I think this little baby is going to be special to a lot of people...so many have helped in so many ways! Thank you everyone.