Phew! This past month has been a whirlwind! We announced our adoption and were completely overwhelmed with all the love and support we recieved! All of the comments, texts, and calls had us seriously weepy! While we know there is a mountain ahead of us, all of your sweet encouragement helps us to feel like we aren't alone in this. THANK YOU for being a sweet, strong and supportive community! We can't do this without you guys!
We also hit the ground running with fundraising!
Here's a little bit of what's been going on!
My sweet friend, Haley Sylvest, came up with a brillant plan for a fundraiser! She offered to shoot some pictures for Christmas cards for free!! Umm, yes please! We got a sign-up together and did the thing! The day was simply perfect- sunny, not too cold, not too windy. Just plain perfect for a photo shoot. Thank you JESUS! Here's some pictures from the photo sessions!
We also launched our t-shirt fundraiser and our official hashtag #heartandseoul. I'm sure most of you know that Seoul is the capital of South Korea. This is also most likely the city in which we will visit to go get our sweet babe. This is also a play on Matt 22:37 which says "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your SOUL and with all your mind." We are hoping that once everyone gets their shirts, they would send us a picture in them! We'd like to make a collage of all the pictures to serve as a visual reminder of everyone who helped us bring our baby home!
You can still get your t-shirt HERE !!
We are also gearing up to sell some Christmas ornaments that my sweet and talented friends, Julie and Kaitlin, helped us make! My father-in-law sliced up a tree and SHAZAM... you've got ornaments! Here's a little preview of the process! We are planning to use some buffalo check ribbon instead, but you get the gist.
We are also going to be selling some DIY ornament packs. These are blank cedar circles with a predrilled hole in the top! This would be a super fun activity you could do with your kiddos! These could also be cute stocking tags like in the picture below.
For now, that's all we have on the fundraiser agenda but stay tuned for more! Also if you have a fundraiser idea, please let me know! We are gathering all the ideas we can right now!
Now, can we PLEASE talk about this cup?! I'm dying to tell you how the Lord has been so faithful in something as simple as this tiny little cup.
So when Blaine and I first started trying to get pregnant, I spent WAY too much time on Etsy and Pinterest day dreaming about how I would suprise Blaine with the news that we were pregnant. Along the way, I gathered cute little trinkets that I thought might be a fun way to share the news with him! One of the many things I collected was THIS cute little "papa bear" cup. I had hidden these items throughout the house and was waiting until the time was right. Unfortantely, days turned into months and months turned into years and we still weren't expecting a bundle of joy. These trinkets that I thought would accompany a joyful announcement, turned out to haunt me during rounds of spring cleaning when I would unexpectedly run across them. I eventually threw most of them away because it was just too painful to accidentally run across them. BUT for some reason, I've held onto this cup ......for 2.5 years!
Blaine's birthday fell on Thanksgiving this year and I decided that this was the perfect birthday gift, since he is now officially going to be a "papa bear". This announcement and gift didn't go at ALL how I had originally planned but I know it's gone exactly as the Lord had intended.
We all know hindsight is 20/20 but the Lord has shown me several blessings that were hidden in all those painful months of our infertility. Did you know that you have to be 30 years old to adopt from Korea? I recently read a blog about a couple who had decided to adopt from Korea...but they were only 28. So they WAITED for 2 years just to fill out the application! WOW!?
Looking back at our journey so far, I can see how the Lord cultivated both of our hearts towards adoption at the perfect time! We are both just over 30 and I'm so thankful we dont have to WAIT for any more birthdays to be able to adopt!
Someone told me recently that they didn't think they could love a child that wasn't there own. I thought about how strange that statement seemed to me. I realized that again, the Lord has been preparing my heart in this area as well. I have been loving other peoples children for 9 years now as I've been teaching! Each year I get a new group of kiddos to love just like they're my own! Because of this, this idea, isn't foreign to me at all!
Lastly, I've been thinking about how I felt the Lord call me to missions during high school. I thought this meant that I was supposed to be a missionary! I traveled to Tanzania during high school and Ghana and Russia during college. All of these trips continued to cultivate a love for the world in my heart and deepen my desire for people across the world to know Jesus! In hindsight, I can see now that even these steps were ones to prepare my heart for adoption. While I was in Russia, I worked with Buckner International. My team and I visited lots of orphanages and put on vacation bible schools for the kids. THIS is the kind of intentional work our Father does! Opening my heart towards children without families 12 years before I would decide to open my home too! We don't always get to see what the Lord is up to or how His plan works together. But when we do, hindsight is always a blessing.
As we move forward with our adoption, it's my prayer that I would be faithful in the times where I dont have the hindsight to see what's going on. That I would be faithful in the moments where the whole thing seems impossible! A friend sent me a quote recently from Paul Tripp that is so applicable here. It says,
"God asks us to be patient, willing to wait and to continue when continuing is hard."
Why is this so stinkin' hard?! My prayer though is that this would be true of both me and you, friend! Where is the Lord asking this of YOU!? What adventure of faith is He calling you to today?
THANK YOU for being a part of our journey!
