Blessed

We are feeling incredibly blessed today.  This adoption process has been a journey of faith trusting God to provide every step of the way.  Due to some recent generous donations, we are 2/3 of the way to our financial goal.  This means that we have raised enough for the next amount due for adoption expenses and for the first trip (hopefully end of February / beginning of March)! So excited to see God's provision come when we least expected it.  We have another 4 or 5 months now to continue to raise the rest of the funds which will cover the final payments due for adoption expenses and take the second trip, hopefully sometime this summer.

I am not just speaking in cliches when I say this has been a journey of faith.  More times than I would like to admit I have suggested to Tony that perhaps we should apply our tithe money to this.  Surely this was as noble a spiritual application of funds as giving the money to the church, just to send it for missions overseas.  This was like our very own mission project.  I was always raised to tithe, and give it cheerfully, but also was raised in enough of a variety of church and para-church organizational structures to also have my own internal conflicts on what exactly counted as "God's storehouse" into which the money should go.  Did it have to be the church centralized, or could it just be giving 10% to ministry "stuff"?

But God has blessed me with a wonderful husband, who is a strong spiritual leader, and he stood firm that the tithe was to go to the church.  It isn't just about "doing good" with the funds.  It is about supporting the ministers and the ministry of the local church as the base for ministry of the body.  Now, I admit some days I am still conflicted about the meaning of tithe...not doubting or complaining about the 10% allocation, but more just wanting control of its application I suppose.   So this was the journey of faith ... we continued to tithe throughout this process.  With me worrying about the amount that could be going toward the adoption fund instead and wondering if we would have saved up enough money to go get our girl in the end.

But God himself knows the tithe can be a testing ground for people.  Did God not say, "Test me in this, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it." Malachi 3:10

So we have continued to tithe, and as Malachi states ... God has blessed.  Something I always knew to be true on paper, but through this journey, I now know to be true by heart.  

Blog Name Change

Hello everyone. We changed the name of our blog to Child of Prayer, it also has a new web address: www.childofprayer.com.   You can use the old blog address link and it will redirect, so whichever way works.

Dossier on its way

We finalized our dossier for the adoption in Bulgaria and sent it out to our adoption agency in North Carolina on Wednesday.  The dossier should be arriving at the adoption agency today.  Yay!

Next our adoption agency forwards the dossier to Bulgaria for translation, presentation to the appropriate governmental officials there, and then we will receive the official referral to go meet our girl.  Can't wait!

We hope that everything will run smoothly and that sometime in February or March we will be making that first visit.  I will keep you updated.

T-Shirt Fundraiser

Hello all! We have set up a store through Adoption Bug to do a t-shirt fundraiser.

The direct URL is www.adoptionbug.com/grubaughadoption. But the quickest way to get there is simply to click on the box on the right hand side of the blog.

We receive a certain percentage of the proceeds from the sale of each t-shirt  to go towards adoption expenses.

With the way the fundraiser program is setup, we only receive a commission on the products we chose to sell on our fundraiser page, so make sure you go directly to our page. You can add additional items to your order from Adoption Bug's regular store, but only those items purchased from our page will credit our fundraiser.

Thank you for your support!

Christmas Party Tomorrow

This blog post has nothing to do with adoption (other things do happen in our lives).  :)

A  couple of weeks ago Tony and I went to Jefferson, Texas for the weekend to see the Candlelight Tour of Homes.  We also enjoy shopping in the antique and junk shops out there.  We found some good items to sell in our booth here ... a Wonder bread advertising sign in Spanish being one of my favorites, even if we will have to wait a while before it becomes a collector's piece.

We also enjoy shopping the antique malls in town. In one of the shops here in town, I found a Betty Crocker Recipe Card Library (in yellow box) in pristine never used condition.  I had to have it as it brought back so many memories from my childhood.

So tomorrow is a Christmas Party at our house.  And I am very ambitious about the appetizers I plan to serve.  I have decided to make most of the food using the recipes from the card library.  (A quick shout of appreciation to my husband here who made the extra trip out to Central Market, because his work was closer to it, to get some unique items not in the everyday grocery store).  Oh, and it you are reading this thinking to yourself, Central Market IS your everyday grocery store, then I am very happy for you and wish I had that kind of paycheck to cover it! Wow, is that place expensive.  But I digress ...

So with a trip to Central Market by Tony, and to Walmart by both of us, I have the ingredients in hand to make these delectables:

Bambinos (Card 25 - Come for Coffee Category)

and from the Crowd-Size Entertaining Category:

Card 13 - Party Sandwich Loaf (this one looks unique and complex ... interesting to see if it turns out)
Card 20 - Lemon - Strawberry Punch
Card 23 - Swedish Meatballs
Card 25 - Crab Dip in Pepper Shells
Card 27 - Cornucopias and Triple Treat Kabobs

Just wish I could have figured out where to find mini-skewers or party toothpicks at Walmart.  That is one of my fairly many complaints about Walmart is that their placement system for items often doesn't make logical sense to me (but that is a whole other blog post someday).

Well anyway, I'm hoping I have time to get it all done, plus get the house ready for the party.  I'll let you know how everything turns out and I'll try to remember to post pictures too.

Until next time ...

Merry Christmas everyone!

USCIS Approval of I-800A Application

"You have been approved." My four favorite words today.

We received in the mail our approval from the US Citizenship and Immigration Service to take the next step in the adoption process. This piece of paper, in official government terms called the I-797, Notice of Action, was the last document we were waiting for to complete our dossier. Now we just have to send it down to the Texas Secretary of State for apostille, wait for its return, make a bunch of photocopies of everything, and ship out our dossier.

For people who might read our blog and are wondering about turnaround time for the USCIS I-800A approval. We submitted our I-800A application on October 23rd. Had our biometrics appointment on November 28th, and received our approval notice in the mail today, December 8th. So from submission date, to approval date, it took six weeks and 4 days. Or if you are counting just in days - 46 days instead of the 90 days projected on the USCIS website. So when the website says within 90 days, that is just a wide range to allow them time to get the job done, not a minimum. So don't give up hope if you are running against a deadline, just keep pressing on!

Our adoption agency said we need to have the dossier shipped out by the 17th to them for forwarding on to the country, or otherwise, there was no point in doing anything until January 2nd as everyone pretty much shuts down things for the holidays. We want to be able to bring our girl home as soon as possible, so I am very, very excited to have the possibility to meet that deadline of the 17th. (I apologize to my elementary grammar teacher for the double adjective in the preceding sentence, but sometimes only a "very, very" will do.)

Praying for godspeed to our FedEx package I will be sending out to the Texas Secretary of State on Monday, and that we will get the apostilled document back by Friday. If so, I can make a quick turnaround of the dossier to our adoption agency on Friday the 14th by FedEx and just beat the December 17th deadline. Not for sure the timeline will work out, but God is good, and I just keep praying.

Until next time ...

Adopt Together site

Hello everyone! We have set up a profile on a fundraising site called Adopt Together.  Please check it out and consider whether you would like to donate to the adoption cause.

Our profile link is here: The Grubaughs