Provision: A Home for our Homestudy, and then some.

I feel like this month has been an absolute whirlwind, but want to write an update.

First…God’s Provision.

Wow. All I can say is Wow.  We have been so blown away by the Lord’s provision in this adoption.  Can I just say that we took a step of faith Feb. 1 and sent in our adoption application.  To be completely honest, we didn’t have the funds to adopt (like really really didn’t have the funds), but felt like God told us to trust Him to provide, so we did.

Job
The next week Josh got offered an amazing job that he wasn’t even looking for, basically tripling our salary overnight.  In addition, that same month I got offered a part-time contract job as a designer for a really awesome company. Score. Did I mention we got to keep our business on the side (which has been doing awesome as of late- and we still get to work together)

Community
We knew we wanted to involve others in this, and so we stepped out again with fundraisers.  Can you believe that people have given over $12,000 in FOUR MONTHS towards this adoption?!

And here’s a little recap…

Still going: Puzzle! (currently at 91%!!… that’s ~$9,000)

8/13/16: Online Art Auction (raised $1500!)

6/20/16 -Paparazzi Jewelry Fundraiser (raised $93)

5/3/16 – Portraits in the Park Fundraiser (raised $720)

So, in just six months, we’ve been able to save and raise 36,000!! That was exactly our goal for Sept.  the largest chunk of the adoption process.  We are confident that we can save or apply for grants for the rest of the funds.

Home
In the midst of all this, we’ve been wanting to move.  For the last few years, and even when we lived overseas we just had a sense that we were supposed to be closer to Madison, in the Sun Prairie Area.  We long to be part of a community that is multi-cultural and even are interested in working with some groups and fellowships that reach out to people in the area.  It also happens to be where Josh’s work and our fellowship is.  I can go into all the reasons, but the point is… we have had a burden to move for some time.  But, we were waiting. We wanted to be careful with money and timing.

At our last meeting with our agent, she made it clear that we needed to either move in the next two months or wait about two years.  So, what do we do? We move!

Well, we start looking at houses, in our price range thinking we’d get a tiny house now and maybe move again later.  So, long story short- God gave us a house we wanted in the area we needed for the price we could afford (coming in at about $39k less than their original asking price).  Crazy, but it happened.  Just as an fyi, this will be our 9th move in 9 years… so not moving again for a while sounds great to us!  And so that means we are ready to move on with our HOME study!!

Next up… Homestudy!

So, as much as it’s been incredible to watch God provide, we are super excited to be finishing up our this fundraising phase and start our home study phase…

We recently sent in a LOAD of paperwork to get things rolling. We should have a couple more interviews and a training in Oct (pray that we can find a babysitter).

We hope to have our home study completed by early December.

After that we’ll just wait for a referral.

We are told this can be anywhere from 2-6 months, and then another year or so before we can pick up our child.

We’re also hoping to apply for some grants at the end of the year, which will help with travels.

There’s the update.