updates, a name & a story about poop

Are you sick and tired of hearing us talk about raising money for the adoption?

Are you rolling your eyes at yet another "fundraising" post?

Yeah, me too!

I promise you my friend, I'm more weary of this "adoption fund raising" than you are.  Trust me.

Here are the facts:

1.  God has given my family a huge and unexplainable (apart from Him) burden for orphans.

2.  God has called Lee to be a pastor and me, a stay-at-home mom.  You do the math on income! :)

3.  The perfect scenario would be for us to have an extra, oh say, $30,000 sitting around so we could completely fund it ourselves.

And here is our prayer:

*That other Christians will heed the command of scripture to care for orphans.  For the Believer, it's not a suggestion, it's a command.  We are the ones to carry the burden for the fatherless.  Not everyone is called to actually adopt, but all Christians are called to do something.  So our prayer is that others will carry the burden with us through finances and prayer.   

So here's an update on where we are with the envelope fundraiser...

The Lord has blessed us in a huge way!!  I cannot begin to tell you how thankful we are for all of you who have claimed an envelope.  We've had 78 of the 150 claimed and that is amazing.  Many of you have taken more than one envelope and others have donated more than what was asked.  It's truly been humbling to see.  

There are still some envelopes out there that have been claimed but haven't been returned, so I can't give you a total yet.  I do know it's over $5,000 and that blows my mind!!

Click here to see details of the fundraiser.  Basically, we're asking you to claim a numbered envelope and then donate the coordinating number.  The numbers are 1-150 so you're guaranteed to not be obligated beyond 150.  Actually, it's lower than that because many have asked for the highest one available.  

We are praying for at least 100 to be claimed so that's just about 22 more!!  Please prayerfully consider claiming one!!

So onto an adoption update:

We will have our home study complete by the 2nd week of December which is a huge relief!  From then, we'll begin working on our dossier.  I'm told this is even more intense than a home study.  I don't know how that's possible, but we'll see!!  (Korea doesn't require one so we didn't experience that with Sam.)

At this point, we're still not sure of a timeline, but here are some things we "know."  (I say "know" because you feel like you never really know anything on this journey!)

*Once all of our paperwork arrives in China (which will probably still be a few months) we'll be waiting 1-5 months for a referral.

*After our referral, we'll be looking at 3-4 months (I think!) until we travel to get him.

*So if you do a little calculation, we'll maybe-possibly-who-really-knows bring our son home at the end of next summer.

And the sweet munchkin already has a name...

Elijah Raith Brown

I get chills seeing it typed out.  I just can not wait to have my quiver full and have my Elijah home in my arms!  Please Lord.

So onto poop...

Really?  Yes.

I must share this story because it's one of my favorites! 

Lee & I began noticing that Sam would not eat brown M & M's.  Just wouldn't do it.  (We used them as treats when he was potty-training.)

He would rather walk away and have none than put a brown one in his mouth.  

This continued for a while and we were completely puzzled by it!

While talking about this one day in front of Ellee, she sheepishly grinned and said...

"I just may have told him that they were poopy..."

That Ellee.  If you know her, then you can see her saying it.  She is truly one of a kind.  Somehow she has her brother fully convinced that brown M & M's are poop.  

We've tried everything to convince him otherwise but he's not buying it.  I gave him a handful yesterday and he ate every one except the brown ones and he threw those in the trash.  

Silly, silly kids.  

And I pray soon that we'll have one more silly kid to add to the bunch!!