Everybody loves t-shirts!

This is the design for our t-shirts for one of our adoption fundraisers!

We will have them in 4 different solid colors: black, red, green, and pink.  Adult sizes (up to 5x in black and 2x in other colors) and kid sizes (starting at XS).  We are selling them for $15 each, up to 1x, add $1 per x after.  We can mail them to you also! 

Let the ordering......BEGIN!!!!

SUPER SCORE!!!!!

Got some great news from our local Applebee's today!  After finding out they really like to help their communities with fundraising, Jason talked with the GM at our local Applebee's and we have scheduled our first big fundraiser!  Wednesday, Febuary 23rd, 2011, our Applebee's will let us host "Dining for Donations"!

They are donating to us 15% of their proceeds from the entire day!!!  They are also providing us with flyers to hand out to any and everybody.  People must turn their flyer in to their waiter/waitress for us to get credit.  We stole this idea from another blog I read about fundraising for a mission trip she was going on.  (You know what they say....the best ideas are always stolen :) 

Exciting news for our family!!!

Jason and I are excited to say that we have felt God's call for us to adopt!!!  After A LOT of prayer and research we have decided to adopt a boy from Ethiopia!  We are asking for a 2-3 year old boy.  Our agency was very excited to hear we wanted a boy because they say almost nobody wants boys :(  We have just started the process, in that we are scheduled to have our home study on Febuary 9th.  We only have to meet once, so hopefully we will have our completed home study by end of Feb or beginning of March.  Completion of this is our next big step b/c you must have a completed home study to apply for grants.  We have also started collecting dossier papers.  Candace has helped (and by helped I mean pretty much done it all :) us start a blog.  We will update when we know new info, have our fundraisers on here, etc.  We are hoping to have him home by the end of the year.  Since most people do not ask for boys (out of 19 current clients they have only 1 family waiting for a boy, an infant) it could be a matter of days or couple weeks to get our referral after country and agency fees are paid and dossier has been submitted!!!

 

Of course the question we get most, "why Ethiopia"?  We have always thought about there b/c we have a few friends that adopted from there.  But, we still researched about 4-5 different countries, praying that if Ethiopia was not His will that He would change our hearts.  Nothing changed, except perhaps our hearts grew more hurt for what hurts His.  EXTREME poverty (avg income $100/year) is one of the big reasons for the 4.7 MILLION orphans in Ethiopia alone.  Of course there are medical reasons: HIV/AIDS, malaria, and 1 out of 16 mothers die during childbirth and often the fathers don't feel like they can care for the child(ren). 

 

Why now?  I mean, we live in a 1250 square foot apartment with 3 children and 2 dogs!  We have been, and still are, working towards becoming debt free (not much debt, just 2 cars...1 down 1 to go) so we aren't putting much money in savings.  We are going on faith that God will provide, Jehovah Jireh, and are planning on buying a house by August and being debt free by June!

 

Just pray for us as we begin this journey!!!  Pray God would prepare us and our hearts and that He would prepare our son's heart!  The kids, especially Caroline, are very excited.  It has recently really kicked in for us that we have son half-way across the world that we have never met and want to bring home.  If I haven't learned patience in the past, surely I will now :)