Shoe Drive

Old shoes wanted!!!!

We are asking for your help to raise the last needed funds to help bring Micah and Aubrey home to us. This Friday, if all goes well, there will be a court hearing to officially make us the parents of this precious boy and girl. By early January, we should be on our way to get them and bring them home forever! We are so excited!

We are still about $4,700 short of the needed funds to make that happen. Compared to what was originally needed, that is just a drop in the bucket! God has met us at every turn with the necessary funds we needed for every step of the process, and so many of you have been a part of that provision. Thank you for giving as God prompted…we are forever grateful!

So, during our final fundraiser we are hoping to raise the money to complete our adoption, as well as provide a few items for Micah to d Aubrey’s orphanage that they are in need of. We would like to be able to purchase a wheelchair for a little guy who needs one in order to be able to go to school and we would also like to buy some baby food for the orphanage because that is a need of theirs as well.

We are happy to say that we will be partnering with the Kelliher family for this shoe drive. I know David and Julie from my time working at the Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School. They are a beautiful family, serving God, and traveling back to Eastern Africa for a second time to bring another young lady into their family. To read more about their adoption journey visit their blog at http://juliekelliher.wordpress.com/. Between the two families, we are hoping to raise about 30,000 pounds worth of shoes in the next several weeks! It is a big goal but we serve a big God!

Would you be willing to clean out your closet and part with your old shoes? Could you hold a mini shoe drive of your own, on our behalf, maybe by passing along our need to your church, your school, your neighbors, your family, or a civic group you are a part of? Could you share our need on Facebook?

We are hoping to wrap up the shoe drive in early /mid January or as soon as we meet our goal. Our shoes will be sent to CA through a company called Angel Bins, where they will be sorted and sent to various third world countries where there is a great need for used shoes. I love that this fundraiser helps two adoptive families but also benefits people in need of shoes around the world. So much better than ending up in a landfill here!

We have created a flyer (below) that can be distributed to anyone who is interested. It can be printed out or we can get copies to you.

We so appreciate all of the help from our family and friends as we enter this last leg of our journey!

 Blessings!

Erin

Fundraising Update—the Home Stretch

Many have asked about how our adoption is looking on a financial front and how our fundraising is going. Let us just say that we have been so blessed by so many of you! God has met our need in a way that we could not have expected! The funds from our adoption have come from many different places and people, and we are so honored that God has met us at the place of our biggest insecurity about adoption—how to pay for it!

Here is a little recap of some of the many things that have come together to help make our adoption of Micah and Aubrey possible:

v  We started out way back in February of last year, using Craigslist to sell many personal items

Trip #1

An update to our blog is way overdue. I’ve struggled a bit over the last week with several things—jet lag being one of them, as well as where to start in telling you all about our trip to meet our two children. Fair warning—this is a long one.

Adoption is a tough road in many ways. One of the things that is difficult, and I think most adoptive families would agree, is the waiting. There is waiting at every turn. And just when the paperwork and the fundraising seem to be taking over your life and things are seeming just a bit too hectic, you exchange that for a little bit more of…you guessed it…waiting. Honestly, I think I prefer the crazy seasons of paperwork over the waiting because at least in those seasons I feel like I’m doing something to help bring us closer to getting our babies home.

The waiting was long over the summer season, thus the reason that we did few blog posts. Honestly, there wasn’t much to report! Aubrey and Micah’s home country was having some political issues that kept adopting families from being able to move forward in the process. Basically, we lost a little more than two months just waiting for certain people to be given authority there to hold a meeting that we needed to take place, in which we would receive verbal approval to travel. Later, would come the written approval and then finally travel dates would be given.

After so much time, when our travel dates did come, it produced a flurry of activity. The email said that we could choose to travel on August 31 or wait until mid-October. Well, that made it a no-brainer for sure, but that meant that we had one week to get our plane tickets purchased, get plans made for our children who would need care here, organize care for our animals, buy what we still needed for our trip, get the house in order (I hate coming home to a messy house after a trip), and pack everyone up. We made two to-do lists—one for Cliff and one for me—and started tackling things one by one. By the end of the week things were looking good and we were already exhausted before the trip had even begun!

Mountains of Germany

Unfortunately, because we had such short notice, we had few choices concerning flights. We had a terribly long layover in Toronto both coming and going—8 ½ and 6 ½ hours. That doesn’t include the drive time to Pittsburgh, the 8 plus hour flight over the ocean, the two shorter flights, and the two

What is your passion?

Defend the weak and the fatherless Psalm 82:3a

Yes, I was bit by the adoption bug. It bit a long time ago and now it has grown into a passion—a passion that I believe God has put there for his purpose. I think God wants to give all of us a passion to change this world for him. Some will change the world in small ways—like bringing a hurting child into a home full of love, and for some it will be in big ways—you know, like the Billy Graham sort of big. But, I think when considering the passion that God has placed in your heart, it can’t be measured by human standards. To God each calling has significance, big or small, and each serves to further his kingdom here on earth.

Regardless of what your passion is, I can say with almost complete certainty that it probably isn’t an easy thing. He rarely calls us to easy things. He usually calls

Getting Closer…

As many of you know, we submitted our paperwork (our dossier) to Micah and Aubrey’s country at the end of May. Our dossier needed to be translated and then authenticated. After that it would be sent off to be reviewed by the Vice Minister at a meeting in which we would receive a verbal referral for our children. The problem was that there was not VM in place at that time and over the last two months none has been assigned. So, we waited, and waited, and waited some more. Then, last week we heard that the meeting would be held regardless of not having a VM to run it. Our hopes were up that we would get the verbal referral that we were waiting for. The meeting took place on Tuesday and we waited all day for news (despite the fact that we were told that we wouldn’t hear until Wednesday), because it’s just too hard not to check our emails a million times in hope! Wednesday we got word that our dossier had been approved, and we had our verbal referral for Aubrey and Micah! We are so excited!

From here we will wait for another official to sign off on our dossier (called the written referral). We have been told that this typically happens within three weeks of the verbal referral, but the timeline is variable because of all that is happening politically over there. Once we have the signature we will be invited over to meet our children for the first time. So, we are getting closer and closer all the time to meeting our son and daughter for the first time!

Twiddling our Thumbs…

We have not posted in a while because things are at a stand-still on the adoption front for us. Our dossier was submitted in Aubrey and Micah’s country on May 23^rd. That means that by now we should have gone through several steps within the adoption system there, and we would either already be traveling to meet them, or we would at least know our travel dates by now (we’ll need to go over twice—once for a week to meet them and then another week  to bring them home). Unfortunately, their country of origin is facing some changes politically, and the official who signs off on this step of our adoption process has not been assigned.

Car Wash Fundraiser!

As we make our finally push to become "fully-funded" to bring our two little ones home, we will be hosting a car wash this month at Hunter's Inn in Guys Mills, PA.

The best part of having your car washed at Hunter's? You can head on inside while you wait and have some WINGS!

Hope to see you there!

Thank you for your continued support,

Cliff, Erin, Olivia, Sawyer, Collin, Aubrey, Micah, and Makena