Diffiuculty at home

Well I am pregnant and very tired and Gavin is sick. Brought him to the doctors office, and they did a chest x-ray and he has croop and beginning stages of pneomia. So we put him on antibiotics, and a lot of cough, cold medicine. He is a sick little boy who lost his voice. Once we got home from the doctors office, I started having some spotting. This has never happened to me before. I was scared. So I called and they told me to watch it and scheduled a appointment for me for a couple of days later. Well the spotting continued and has now been getting worse. They did some blood work on me, and they are checking my blood levels.
They scheduled me for a ultrasound and more blood work. I had the ultrasound, and it is not looking good. They said I am only 4 weeks along, which is not correct. The ultrasound tech saw a sac but cant see a baby and found a sist on my right ovary. Scary. I am very scared. I cried on my way home for the appt. Today they are suppose to call with the Doctors/radiologist report. So I have been praying for Gods will to be done. Whatever the plan is let it be done. However, I am afraid of whats to come.

A big surprise for 2009

Well on New years day I found out I am pregnant. What a suprise this- but we are happy. It does put a wrench in our adoption plans. I cant go to Guatemala like I was planning on either. What is Gods plan for me? My family?
I have mixed emotions. So confused. Kind of feel like I might let down a child. (our child waiting to be adopted in Ethiopia)
So many questions, just putting my faith in God and know its his will for my life. He is in control and I know he has a plan. So I life my hands and give it to God. I rejoice in knowing he is all Knowing.

Grant Responses - AMAZING

As of Dec. 16, we have heard back from 5 out of the 9 grants we have applied for.
We have received 3 No- and 2 yes. WOW Most of the grants I have not ever heard of and you pray and hope that they see something special in your information.
Of course, I am still searching the web to apply for more- but they are getting harder and harder to find different ones than the ones we have already applied for.

Applying for grants

I started in the summer going online and searching grants. Any type of International/Adoption grants I could find. I must have been on line for hours and hours searching. We had to have our homestudy complete before we could apply for any grants. The first grant we applied for was Shaohannah's Hope. This is Steven Curist Chapmans Grant. Our social worker Linda said we had a good chance at getting this grant. So filled out the many page application, sent a copy of our last 2 years of tax forms, homestudy and statement of faith and sent it in. This was probably in Aug.- Sept. of 2008. Unbelievable the amount of paperwork and questions we need to fill out. I just prayed everyday that God would continue to open doors to help fund this adoption. In the mean time I continued to search the web and found some more grants to apply for. From today- we have applied for 9 different grants.
Many late nights filling out all the information needed for each grant. We received work from one grant that we did not get it. It was disappointing, but we continued to trust. On Oct. 29, 2008 we received a letter in the mail stating that we received a $3,000 grant from Shaohannahs Hope. I could not finish reading the letter. I had tears dripping off my face. ( I think my kids thought I was crazy- I only got the mail :-)
Of course this was all in Gods timing. I wanted to get a grant before we sent the Dossier to Ethiopia- so we didn't have to write a huge check out of our home equity loan- and get really close to the maximum amount we could afford. ( We had to write a $5,000 check that went with the Dossier paperwork for part of the country fee )
God has it all planned, and I know this is part of trusting in him.
This verse came to mind,
I, the Lord your God, will hold your right hand....
Fear not, I will help you.
Isaiah 41:13

A BIG GRANT GIFT- What a Miracle

Today we received a phone call from Lifesong for Orphans telling us that we were selected to recieve a matching grant of $4,000. Because this is a matching grant -we write letters and Lifesong for Orphans will match what is raised. So this could protentially become a $8,000 grant. What a awesome God we serve. We are so blessed.
What a wonderful Christmas gift direct from our King.

Dossier

As we finished out homestudy meetings, Linda gave us this Huge packet of information. It was the Dossier paperwork. She said this needs to be sent to the country of Ethiopia and everything needs to be done exactly as stated. I started to flip through the packet. WOW- what a lot of work. I am a finisher so I was determined to get this done ASAP. The things needed in this packet was new marriage, birth certificates, dr. letters, police clearance, letters of reference, pictures, bank statements, etc. 26 items needed. Many, many pages of stuff. Most of the papers had to be notarized, signed and state sealed. I did finish most of this at a good speed, and we were getting ready to be done. Then we had a gliche. The USCIS paperwork was suppose to be added later to the Dossier. Ethiopia is a newer country for Bethany and Ethiopia changed the rules. They wanted the USCIS paperwork to come with all the Dossier not later. So we had to apply for this from the state of Michigan. This paper work takes about 3 months. I was bummed about this. We were ready to send our paperwork and then we had to wait. So we waited all summer. Part of the USCIS paperwork is we needed to get fingerprinted. Everything takes so much longer that what you think. Once we got the USCIS approval, we got it state sealed and brought everything to Bethany. Within the week they sent it to Ethiopia, and we are in line for a referral. A referral is when they send you information on a child that fits your request. So now we are waiting for this to come. (Oct 2008)

Homestudy

After we got accepted for the Ethiopia country we were excited but scared. This is a HUGE leap of faith. We finished getting our physicals, which included TB check and blood work. The next step was getting our homestudy completed. Our social worker is Linda Okma and we started our homestudy April 2008. We had numerous appointments answering questions on our families and us. Linda came to our home for the last meeting. I was a little nervous about this. I really had no idea what she would be looking for. Come to find out, its just to see what our home and lifestyle is so she can acurately write about it in the study.
As of June 9, 2008 our homestudy was completed. We thought this was a big accomplishment, we were so wrong. The homestudy was the easiest part.