Priscilla and Amazing Grace

OK, I need to pinch myself!  I thought it would be another week or so before we could reveal who we were trying to adopt.  But today is the day!  As you can see in the banner, we are trying to adopt a little girl who's name is something like "Priscilla."  We will be changing her name once we adopt her, but probably retaining her real name as her middle name.  We now have an official Family Sponsorship Program (FSP) and you can see it HERE!  You may notice that I Photo-Shopped her photo for this blog and the Facebook page. I just can't stand for little girls to wear boy clothes!

Doesn't she look so huggable?

So here's what we know about Priscilla.  She is 2 1/2, her birthday is August 5, 2010.  She was born around the time that we usually have another baby (around 2 years apart) if the Lord had blessed in that was after Esther was born.  She was born with a heart defect, which was repaired.  She has some respiratory issues (she's had several bouts with pneumonia) that we are hoping will improve when she comes home to us.  I've learned a few tricks that have really helped Esther through the years.  She was abandoned at the hospital at birth and has had no contact with any family members.  She is left handed, and is beginning to make words and is learning to sit all by herself.   With good therapy I'm sure she'll catch up quickly.  She's tiny - she just a few pounds bigger than our "tiny for her age" 10 month old!

You may also notice that there is a new block in the right hand column.  You can now donate to our adoption funds and get tax credit.  The only catch with this is that those funds will not be made available to us until we have our "referral."  A referral means that we have been approved in her country to adopt her and we have been invited to travel for our first trip, to meet her and confirm that we want to adopt her.  We have a LOT of expenses to cover before then.

But God knows that.  Just this week we were feeling pressure about some bills that had come up (dentist/electrician etc), and needing to pay for the medical physicals that we have scheduled tomorrow.  We also need to purchase some home safety items for the home safety visit (fire extinguisher, carbon monoxide detectors (3), one smoke detector,  a gun safe etc).  Due to a delay in some income that we were planning on we were getting really strapped!

Tuesday morning, Daryl commented that in order for this adoption to work, somebody is going to have to step in and make a difference.  Within 24 hours someone had offered to get our van running again (it needed transmission work done), and then today Daryl got an unexpected bonus at work!  The van running again is such a relief, as the truck I've been using is really at the end of it's life (260,000 miles), and taking 2 - 3 vehicles to church is getting old, not to mention my not being able to take all the kids anywhere if Daryl is at work.  And then the bonus!  While it isn't enough to take care of everything, we can take care of the smaller bills, knock down a few of the middle size bills, and pay off one big bill, and also get the items we need for the home study!  I just crunched the numbers and this bonus added to the tax return we will be getting in a few weeks will make it possible for us to wipe out all our bills and pay for the remaining cost of our home study and possibly pay for our passports.  Amazing

That doesn't mean we are fully funded mind you.  Once our home study is complete and we have to send in our I-800a ($720), assemble our dossier (pay to have every document apostilled at $20 ea), get more fingerprints sent in to the FBI, and get psychological evaluations done.  Then we have to submit the $6,000 with the dossier and have the money for the trip.  Once that is all done, we wait for our "referral."  Then after we return, we have to submit the remaining $4000 for the program fee and another $1250.00 for the home study follow up visits (4 visits over a 2 year period).  The last step is to have the money to travel again once the adoption is final!  So, yeah, God's going to have to do a few more miracles for this adoption to go through!  We plan to apply for every adoption grant that we qualify for, so hopefully we'll get some funding that way.

Oh - and did I mention that Daryl and I will not be going back into debt to do this adoption?  We have paid off all our personal debt (aside from our home mortgage) and business debt over the last 2 years and we feel strongly that we should not go back in that direction.   Hudson Taylor once said "God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supply."