Merry Christmas!!

We have seen God perform many miracles over the past year in our lives...  But the wonder of all miracle is still that Christ would come to earth and be born in a lowly manger for us!  We know that He came to earth for us, so that we may have life and have life more abundant... We know that He is the Savior of the World, and we are so thankful for the special time of year to remember the events that happened over 2,000 years ago but are still changing history every day. He has given to us salvation full and free, He has given us hope and forgiveness, each and everyday is filled with His goodness and blessings 

So from our family to yours, we pray that you have a wonderful and blessed Christmas Day!

Me

We are waiting.....

Waiting.....

That is what we have been doing for a few weeks now, or should I say since January.  

It has been rather interesting, things will go really fast that we can hardly keep up and then slow down to the point that we are not sure anything is ever going to happen. You feel so helpless.  The Lord has surely taught me much about patience and waiting on him.  We have seen the Lord do so many amazing things this past year.  We have seen our adoption account go from $500.00 to $26,000 in 9 short months and the Lord did it all he has blessed us over and over again.  So continue to hold us in your prayers, And keep our sweet girl in your prayers as she continues to wait, hope, and pray for a forever family to come and get her and bring her home. Pray for the people in charge (in Ecuador) as they do not even understand what these children and families are going through, and that they will soon assign this little girl to come home.

Adoption Journey

We would like to thank everyone who has prayed and supported us along the way...this has been an incredible and like changing journey for our family and its far from over yet! This is our way of saying Thank you and Please continue to pray and support us as God continues to make the impossible, Possible!

Please feel free to share and pass this one...

Miss "A's Craft Show

Finally all the planning and all the phone and all the work setting up... and the list goes on.  A big thank you to all those that donated time, money, items, food, and buildings.  It is amazing how much it takes to plan these events, the Lord has given me much strength and knowledge this summer.  Skills I am sure will come in handy for future use.

 The sign was given to us and my lovely daughter in-in-law did the writing and my boys hung it up.

 Many donations were given for the silent auction from area businesses, family, and friends.

 Helping hands come from all over, youth group helped serve food and make some of the signs.

Here is the craft show all set up.  There was not alot of activity that day, but the Lord never ceases to amaze me.  When we got home and did all our figuring, we were blown away we added and re added and there was no mistakes.... the Lord once again blessed us with over 1,000.00.  That far exceeded our expectations.  We have to give credit were credit is due.  Thank you Lord!

He continue to make the impossible possible. 

T-shirts

We are a family of 10 and we are working on number 11! We thought our family was quite complete with 2 son in laws, a daughter in law and 4 grandsons! But earlier this year our daughter spent time working at an orphanage in Quito Ecuador. We started seeing the great needs of orphans more than ever before through her eyes and with her prompting we started praying specifically for an 8 yr old girl. We soon were on the trail or adopting and fundraising to be the family that she has never had. We have fallen quite in love with our little Ecuadorian princess and she has changed our lives forever! Its funny how we went from her needing us to us needing her! Its been a long process and its not over yet! But we have raised over 15,000 of the 32,000 required and we are down to waiting for placement. So the time is coming fast and we are trusting God for the difference. He started us down this path and has done many miracle to get us here. We appreciate your love for this little girl and our family.

Buy a t-shirt and we will receive a portion of the proceeds to help with the adoption!

Check out our store! You must buy your t-shirt directly through our page for us to receive credit from your order.

These are the t-shirts that are available through our fundraiser. 

Text reads: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. I Corinthians 13:13”
Text reads: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. I Corinthians 13:13”

Thank you so much for taking time to read a little bit about us and Miss A, please feel free to look around, ask any questions, contact us, or share our story. To see other families adoption fundraisers look here.....

Unanswered Prayer.........

Delays are not denials.....

How do we face unanswered prayer?
We deal with it daily...we struggle with it hourly....no matter the cause, no matter where we are, if we pray, we will have unanswered prayer.

In the adoption game its no different in fact maybe more obvious! for days....for weeks.....for months we pray for things with seemingly no end in sight. We are discouraged, we are tired, we just don't even feel like fighting anymore.....but the battle rages on!

There is no time to give up! We are fighting against time! We can't give up! We are fighting for a life....what limits can you put on that?

Time after time we have seen God answer prayers.....

God worked miracles to bring us through our home study approval....

God granted my dad a passport after months of phone calls, tracking down papers and brick walls....

We have seen paperwork go through faster then it is suppose too....

Time after time God has sent us people to encourage us when we need it most!

Time after time God has supplied and given us far more than we could have come up with on our own.

Time after time God has brought sunshine to our tears...

Time after time God has given us for more strength than lies within us...

He has grown a group of supporters who love and pray for my family and our hearts desire...


But we still have spent sleepless nights....hours in prayer....tears...frustrations.... and many times we walk on with unanswered prayers....


How does one go on when all you have is a question mark?

Its called trust, its called faith, its called GOD.
Casting all your cares on Him for He care for you. 1 Peter 5:7 (If I quoted that wrong please don't tell my sunday school class!) Its crying out at His feet....God I can't do this! But honestly I know you can! I know I can trust you! Just last week I was up late praying for an impossible request and the next morning the answer came....but it was an answer that took months to come. Most of the time God doesn't answer our requests how we think He will, but in ways that are far better! That grow our faith and trust. I'm telling you right now With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible! Matthew 19:26.

How do I know? Because I have experienced it! Just as I know there is a God, because I know Him. I know He saves, because I have been redeemed! I know He is faithful because I have felt His faithfulness. I know He does miracles because I have seen them! I know He does all things well because I have seen it come to pass....in His time.

He hath made all things beautiful in His time, also He hath set the world in their heart so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. Ecclesiastes 3:11

Right now all I can do it praise God and thank Him for what He has brought us through....but our hearts are still heavy with unanswered prayer.

We need over $30,000 to complete this adoption process....since March we have raised over $15,000.
Its amazing and we are totally humbled and grateful, but it leaves us lacking. We have worked hard and God has blessed us far more than we ever could have imagined a long the way! We have reached the point of placement. So when the Ecuadorian committee places us, we will have about two weeks before we need to be over there. It could be as soon as next month but we cannot be sure when it will be. We have paid all of the adoption expenses on this side of the ocean but that leaves our funds pretty well spent with a huge gap.....I'm beginning to think....God my faith is not that reckless....but when I look behind me I know it is! We are standing here thinking whats next? But God, Hes got this whole thing....so tonight we carry on with unanswered prayer but rejoice in what we have seen God do!

Good news & Bad news

Now that fundraising is coming to a close and school is in full swing, I hope to have a little more time to blog.  Remember the good news bad news thing I talked about well.... when we got home from our family day we had two notices in the mail box.  The one was..USCIS approval, we were all so excited.  Then the next envelope was from the dept. of state. we thought we had it all worked out but, I guess they did not think so.  We have been working on Kevin's passport since July.  Sigh.  So now I can send out our dossier, but no passport, sigh....  The Lord is good we trust in him and we wait on him.  We spend the next couple of days making phone calls and searching the web and definitely lots of praying.  No documents are turning up that they want.  Finally one random call and some dark corner upstairs in a church,  lots of prayers going out at this time, the file is found that we have been searching for from an old christian school.  God can work miracles.  Now if only the state will except these.  We again will keep you posted.

T-Shirts

We have raised over $15,000! We are praising and thanking the Lord for His marvelous provision. He has shown us over and over along this long trail that He is going to be the one to provide what we need to adopt the girl He has laid on our hearts.

We are preparing to wrap up the fundraising trail as we are getting wore out and the time is drawing closer and we could be leaving before the end of the year. (Please continue to pray for my Dads passport as we are having considerable difficulty getting it, and its become quite a problem. But we know that God is bigger than this and has a plan even in this!) So we are just going to do a few small things to bring in some more funds. This will more than likely be the last one we do online......so without further ado....

Buy a t-shirt and we will receive a portion of the proceeds to help with the adoption!

Check out our store! You must buy your t-shirt directly through our page for us to receive credit from your order. These are the t-shirts that are available through our fundraiser. After your purchase the t-shirt will be shipped directly to you. You can only purchase your t-shirt online.

Text reads: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. I Corinthians 13:13” Text reads: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. I Corinthians 13:13”

Thank you so much for your continued prayers and support! They mean more to us than you can ever know! Please feel free to share our blog and fundraisers. The more people who are aware the bigger blessing it will be!

A Day Off

  We took the day off work and school to go pick up Brianna at the airport in MN.  Afterward we took a trip over to Como Park.  This is how it went.

It was raining rather hard when we got there, it took a few minutes to find a parking spot, as we watched people coming out of the park soaked to the bone.  We found our spot and decided it was a perfect time to eat out lunch, so we ate in the van.. we are very used to that from past adventures.

 When the rain let up, we headed for the building and decided to look at the conservatory first since it was still a little wet outside.

One of the first things we seen was some huge tarantulas.  And lots of smaller ones.

 Harmony loves to take pictures, this makes up for when we came in August for our Ann, and had no camera with.

Everyone took turns taking pictures of things that they found interesting

 Harmony was having the most fun taking pictures...

 Hope was.... I am not sure what Hope was.

Aaron loved all the huge ferns.

Harmony loved all the beautiful flowers ....

She did not want to miss a single one...

There were so many varieties...

 Each one special just the way God created them.

There was so many things to see, it was hard to see them all.

Aaron was so glad to go, first thing he said was " What could I wear to annoy Brianna" (he missed her while she was gone)

We were all glad to be back together again.

Here is the Banzai Garden.

 

 

 

 

Something is very interesting!

Bath Time ( It was rather interesting, she just kept cleaning and picking and he was trying to get away)

Harmony loves to be in pictures as much as taking them

The polar bear entertained us for quite a while why he just kept swimming in circles.

 watching sea lions get fed

Getting ready to head home, it has been a long day!

One last look!

On the way home we did a little shopping and stopped in Eau Claire at Pizza Ranch (yummy)
Time to come home, Miss A never far from our mind and our heart thinking we can hardly wait to show all these things to her.  When we got home and gathered the mail we found some good news and some bad news..... keep you posted.