Merry Christmas!

Well, it is almost Christmas....I'm about 15 minutes away from it here! It has been such a busy time of year, as it always is this time of year. The kids have kept busy with sports and we have stayed busy with work and keeping up with the kids.

We got some good news last week and today our official completed home study arrived! While this process has taken far longer than it should have, we know that it is all in Gods timing. It was a wonderful Christmas present that arrived in the mail today! Also, yesterday I received a recent photo of our little guy, I love seeing into his life. I will create an album for him with all the photos that I can find of him from his years at the orphanage, so he can look back and remember his life and see his friends.

We have been in contact with a couple of families that have recently or will be soon going to bring home their sons who happen to be our sons friends. We will definitely meet up with these families once we are home and settled. We are very excited about this!

Our next step is our immigration paperwork, which we already have completed and sent to our agency. So the step after that is getting the rest of the documents needed for our dossier. I think we have most of this done, but I do hope to have any other necessary papers put together before Christmas break is over.

We are still probably 7 months plus away from bringing him home. I hope to get an update and discuss the timing again, but you never know what can happen during the process, there may be other delays. But, I hope not.

We cannot wait to get him home and cant wait to have our lives and his life forever changed. We are so thankful that the Lord led us to our son. Without Him, none of this would be possible.

Please continue to pray for our family, our son, and the many people involved in the adoption process. We appreciate all the love and support from everyone.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

 

Here is the new photo I received. He is the one in the middle with the blue jacket.

Looks like we will be waiting even longer :(

Earlier this week I was very excited to get an email from our adoption agency asking us to call them so we can discuss the next step, once the homestudy FINALLY gets done. I was thrilled to know it was about time to move on and that I would finally have something to do! Then....I was hit with a low blow :(  

I called and spoke with our agency and she answered all my questions and we were discussing the Dossier (one of the if not THE most important document) and then I asked for any update on our timeline. Last we talked I was told 4-6 months after the homestudy was completed. I know the homestudy took longer than expected, but figured we would still have 4-6 months, so April-June? Nope! She said we will have ATLEAST another 9 months after our homestudy is completed. I was shocked! I questioned it and found out she told us the wrong amount of time last time we discussed this. So...I had a pretty upsetting evening. Tried to hold back the tears, but I couldnt. Thank goodness I have a sweet and loving 5 year old who knew mommy needed some TLC. She helped me get through the evening.

Today I spoke to the supervisor at our adoption agency and yes, the 9 month plus wait is correct. She will do what she can to help us along the way cut time, but I dont think there is anyway possible she will cut 3-4 months off our wait.

I just want our little man home! I want him to get to the doctors, get the treatment he needs. Get to know his mama and dada and loving big sisters and brother. I want to hug and kiss on him. Read him books and play with him. I wanted the whooooole summer for all of this. Now...we will be lucky if he is home before next school year starts.

That just means that our son must sit and wait weeks, even months more than we expected, in a large orphanage. I know it probably isnt a big deal to him, that is all he knows. But, man, it would be so good for him to be with his family, getting the love he deserves.

I know it is not in our control at all when our son will be home. The Lord has led us to him and is in control of this journey and that is the hardest part for me. I am having a horribly hard time making myself see that. I know it, I just dont want to acknowledge it.

Please pray for our son. Pray that he is being taken care of and his little heart is preparing for this family to love him! Pray for his health as the winter will be hitting China soon. Pray for us, as we continue to wait until we can go get him and bring him home. Pray for us as we continue to raise funds, apply for grants and look into loans. Pray for all the other children, those who do not have mamas and dadas waiting for them, those who will live in the orphanage their entire childhood.

November is orphan awareness month, lets pray for the millions of orphans around the world. I know I cant make a huge difference in the millions of orphans but I can make huge impact in one special, sweet, cute little guys life!

Hurry up and....wait!

Time has slipped away from me somewhat quickly. I really wanted to keep this blog updated all the time, but as you can see if you look back at the date of the last update, Im not doing real great at that. School started, along with work, the kids are all in sports, so we are on the run a lot! But, enough excuses!

Of course, we had the benefit! It went very well, we had many local businesses pull through and donate some wonderful items for the silent auction. We had many friends and family show up throughout the day showing their support to us! We appreciate everyone who helped make the fundraiser such a sucess!

We did get the update on our son as requested. He is still rather small for his age, but not too small. It states he is a stong-willed stubborn boy! It states that his main delay is the weakness in one leg, he is able to walk but cannot run and jump like the other children his age. He is in Preschool and is learning well. He can do many things on his own such as dress and feed himself. And we got a picture of him with his friends. We found out that his best friend is being adopted from another family in Illinois! We have made contact with them and they have since brought him home!

We have completed everything that we can, with the exception on one training that is 8-10 hours online. We will tackle this training within the next week or two. Right now we are waiting on the homestudy report to get completed and our social worker is waiting to complete it until she has our clearances. She got an email that clearances are backed up and she will probably not get them this month. This is upsetting to us as we have already had to ask China for an extension to hold his file while we wait on the homestudy. We still hope to be able to go get him sometime between March and May, but it really depends on how quickly the homestudy gets completed at this point.

Once the homestudy is done, we will once again be busy. As much as I didn't enjoy all the paperwork in the beginning of this process, I much rather have paperwork to be doing than have nothing to do. I feel like we hurried up all summer to get through as much as possible for nothing. We have been waiting for a few months now, doing nothing much new.

I know it is all in the Lords timing and I know we are not in control, but of course we want things to get rolling faster. The faster things go the sooner we can bring him home.

The other night I had a very vivid dream, our family had packed up and decided to go to Hong Kong Disney and decided we would just stop by the orphanage and see if they would let us see him. ( I didn't say this was a realistic dream!) Anyways, we got there and they happily allowed us all in and directed us to where he was laying in bed. They are telling him who we are as we are walking in the room and he says " I want to see mama" and I just lost it! In the dream we got to hug, kiss, cuddle and play with him. I woke in the middle of the night after this dream and thanked God for the dream. Although it wasn't real, it was nice to feel that close to him for just a little bit of time. I feel so distant from this adoption lately, like it doesn't even seem real. I think about it and pray about it everyday, but not having anything to do, it just doesn't feel real lately. I remind myself, by this time next year, we will be sitting here with our son and this will all be in the past.

We ask that you continue to pray for our family and pray for our son. Pray that the Lord continues to guide us on this journey He has pulled us to. Pray that He continues to provide for us emotionally, financially, and physically. Pray that He works within the hearts and minds of all the people who are involved along the way. Pray that the Lord begins to prepare our sons heart and mind for his family. Pray that our son is kept safe, warm, fed, and loved while he is waiting for us. We have came a long way and have a long way to go still.

We appreciate all your love and support!

Here was our new photo sent from the orphanage. Our son is in the middle. His best friend is to the right of him.

Upcomming benefit

It is only 1 more week until our benefit! We have had some wonderful donations for the silent auction. We are wrapping up the plans for the meal and have also had some desserts donated! We are hoping to have a wonderful turnout!

I talked to our adoption agency a few days ago and asked  for an estimate to how much longer until we are able to bring our son home, I was told 6-8 months! It is getting closer!

If you would like to donate an item or have any questions, feel free to email me at disney_mom82@yahoo.com

Thanks!

Here are some new photos we received!

 

He is the cutie in the middle. We were told the boys on each side are his best friends!

 

He is so cute!

Upcomming Benefit

There will be a benefit on September 8th at Salisbury Church, in Charleston, IL from 11am-7pm to help raise some of the needed funds for the adoption. We are so appreciative of the local businesses and individuals who have donated for the benefit. There will be lunch/dinner, silent auctions, and more! If you are available that day, please come and join us for a good time. If you would like to donate an item or service, visit our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/#!/events/254946614617663/ and leave a message or email me at disney_mom82@yahoo.com. We look forward to the event and hope to see many familiar and new faces!

Good news!!

     I'm sorry we are a bit behind on posting, but we did get the good news a lot earlier than we expected. We got PA, which is pre approval from China to adopt our son!! We are all so excited and thrilled with how quickly everything is moving at this point. We are now just waiting, to be honest I don't know what we are waiting on, but we do not have any more paper work at this moment. We met with our social worker and had our Enrich assessment last week, all went well there. Our social worker will come to our house one last time before the adoption in August.
    Just a couple of days ago we got an email from our adoption agency that we can now send him a package and ask a few updated questions about him. We have been preparing a little box to send him, right now we have a cute soft blanket, a light up bouncy ball, a package of plastic cars, crayons and a coloring pad. We are going to add a photo album of us, a disposable camera and a few things for the nannies there.
    We bought our first few shirts and bottoms for him, which  is exciting to me, its been too long since Ive been able to buy little boy clothes. We are not going to buy much until closer to the time we go to get him, that is the hard part, not knowing what size to get him. According to his medical records, he didn't gain a pound between 18mo and 33mo, he is now 39 months old, and we hope to see an updated height and weight soon.
   We are able to post a picture of him, so I will post a picture of our beautiful son! We are still debating on his name, we want it to start with an H, feel free to post some ideas! He will keep his Chinese name for a middle name.
   Please continue to pray for us, we appreciate the support. We got our first donation from our blog this week, from my Aunt, thank you so much, everything helps and is so appreciated! If you wish to make a financial contribution to help us with our costs, please feel free to use the Paypal link to the right or email or if you scroll down to the June 1 post, you will find our bank address. 

He is such a doll!

Look at that smile!

Today was our home visit from the social worker. It went really well! She was nice, talkative, said everything was fine at our house, etc. Our next steps are to get our fingerprints this week and then we have training to go to Thursday and Friday. There is so many papers to fill out, it gets a little overwhelming, so I have to just look at one group at a time. Im getting a binder so I can keep copies of everything, never know when you will need it again.

As of last week, H was still available for adoption and the agency will call them on July 4th for us and see if he has been transfered to the list where we can be matched with him. If so, we will request to be matched. We feel this will go fine, if he was never on the wrong list, we would have never seen him in the first place. Now we have even more of our home study going, hopefully it all works out the way we plan. We know we are not in control, but feel confident this is what has been planned for us.

Not much for an update here, but hope to have good news soon! Please continue to pray for us.

Rollercoaster ride

Well, I talked about the roller coaster this process can be, we have been experiencing just that this past week. I wont go into all the details, but the short version is that the original agency we were working with, that said we would be matched with H later retracted those words and became very hard to work with. After doing some praying and talking, we decided that it would be best to find a new adoption agency. The day that we decided that we were going to change agencies, we got an email letting us know that H was no longer available through the original agency, he is now on a shared list (open to all agencies) and his category level had changed, we would now have to have our home study completed. We called and spoke with the agency that we were originally wanting to work with and they did a little researching for us. They were told that H was put on the wrong list originally, which is the list that enabled us to see his file and request his information. China has now moved his file to the shared list and he is suppose to keep his current status on there for 3 months. The new agency explained our situation to them and they let the agency know that they are going to count his 2 months that he was on the wrong list, so he has to be on this list until July 5, IF he is not matched with a family that is further along in this process than we are, then we can request to be matched with him. (Yes that is the short version)

Had he not been on the first list we would of never seen him and now he is on a shared list so the new agency can ask for his file when we are ready. We feel this is Gods will and He is in control. We will follow wherever he leads us and prepare our family in the case that another family is matched with H, but we do hope and pray that he will become our son. If it is meant to be it will be, if not, we feel like God has used him to lead us to adopt from China.


Please continue to pray for us, we appreciate all the thoughts and prayers!

Also remember our puzzle piece fundraiser.

We are doing our first fundraiser!

The fundraiser is a puzzle piece fundraiser. What you can do to help us is pay $10 per piece of the puzzle. You don't get the actual piece of the puzzle but you do get to tell us what you want us to write on the back of the puzzle pieces, such as your name, a Bible verse, inspirational word, etc (something short). Once the whole puzzle is "sold" we will put the puzzle together and frame it in a double sided frame, one side you will see the puzzle the other side we can see all of the wonderful messages and names that are helping us bring our son home.


To purchase a piece of the puzzle you can do one of the following:
1. Click on the Paypal link on the top right side of this screen and pay from there. There will be a section where you can add a special message, that is where you can tell us what to write on the back of your piece(s).
2. You can mail a check to our bank and email us what you want on the puzzle piece. Our bank address is:
First Federal Savings and Loan
800 West Lincoln Avenue
Charleston, IL 61920
In care of Beck & Brock Paul Family Adoption Savings Account
The email address is disney_mom82@yahoo.com


You can always donate without being a part of the fundraiser and you can purchase as many or as few pieces as you wish.


We received LOTS of paperwork this week. We will have a phone conference this afternoon to explain each part of the paperwork and to answer any questions we may have. It is a lot of work, but really, I am glad to know that they require so much out of each adoptive family. They want to be sure of who we are, where we live, work, etc to ensure that each child will have a loving and supportive family. As much as I wish this process would go faster, I know this is necessary.


Brock started organizing the extra bedroom. It has been storage since we moved here, so there are many things in there that we will be getting rid of soon. We hope to have a couple of rummage sales this summer to both clear our items we no longer need and to continue raising money for our adoption. Averie, our 4 year old, has stated that she wants to have lemonade stands all summer to help raise money! She came up with the idea on her own just after we started this process. I have promised her we will definitely let her have a lemonade stand at the rummage sales!


We thank everyone for reading our blog, supporting us on our decisions and praying for us. God is definitely in control of this situation and so far we have had a pretty smooth process. I am bracing for the bumps as I know adoption is not usually smooth sailing, I just pray that God will continue to guide us and keep us strong during that time. We are giving this all up to Him and will follow wherever He leads us.


Here is a picture of the puzzle we are using, I think it is very cute and will look great on his bedroom wall!

One last thing, on the right side of this screen you will see a music video, if you click on it you will be able to hear the song Brock was talking about on the last post.

Donations

As many of you may know, we are not ones to ask for help. Not many people like to ask for help, even when they need it. As we are going through this adoption process, we will continue to have many fees and expenses along the way. I have faith that God will provide for us and have not worried too much about the financial aspect of this process.

If you would like to make a financial contribution to help us with the adoption, you will see a donate button on the right. This link will take you to Paypal where you can make a donation to our adoption savings account. You can donate any amount, no amount is too big or small. We really appreciate all the support we have had already, whether it is words of wisdom, prayer, donations, etc. We are very appreciative to everyone!

We will be having a local fundraising event on Saturday September 8th (the weekend after Labor Day). Please pray for the planning and preperation for this. We will post more information as it gets closer to the event.

More good news!

     It has been a busy week, Brock and the kids are off for the summer now and the older kids have several camps they want to attend along with being in baseball/softball and soccer, swimming at the pool and more!
     We have had some good news so far about our adoption! We have talked to the adoption agency and have been told that once they receive the paper for us to commit to H and they approve it, we will be internally matched with him. Which means they will still show his photo on their website but they will have a label stating he is in process of being matched and they will not give other families his file. We faxed that letter in yesterday!
     We have our first visit with the agency that will be doing our homestudy on June 7th and we have let her know our urgency in this process as we are concentrating on a specific child already. We will be doing our marriage assesment when we meet her along with bringing many of the required documents. Then, she scheduled our home visit for June 15th! I was very happy about this as I didnt think we would get a date for another month or two. We are also attending a training at the end of  June. She said since we are able to cover many of the necessary steps in just one month, hopefully it will speed up the process of the homestudy!
     We appreciate the continuation of prayers and support and will keep things posted on here as much as we can.

Beck
   

God's plan

Everything happens for a reason…. And GOD is always in control.  It is just easiest when we allow for Him to be the ruler of our lives and live out His will without struggling.  This is easier said than done.  This leads up to what is happening in the lives of the Paul family at this very moment. 

Beck has felt the Lord’s calling for us to adopt for quite some time now.  This has drawn her closer to GOD than she has been for a long time!  I perhaps was the biggest skeptic and ignored this myself until lately.  After much thought, prayer, and listening to what the Lord has planned for us.... I am not ignoring God’s plan for our family .  The Lord has led us to a little boy from China.  He recently turned 3 years old and he is a cutie!  He does have some problems with his right leg, but it just adds to his character and the doctors  here in the states should be able to help improve this condition. 

Many of you know I can be pretty easy going, but those closest to me know that I can be a worrier….So this had me worried the other day and had me once again being a little skeptic of God’s plans.  Yeah, kind of questioning God.  Not good huh?  At that moment while I began to doubt and worry, the song “Who will love me for me” came on the radio.  OK, God, I will quit worrying about what you have laid ahead of us.  Plans for us and our new to be family member to prosper and grow!

Now backtracking to even a more miraculous GODLY event that should have eliminated any doubts or questions.  I had drug my feet about opening up our adoption savings account.  AKA this won’t be cheap and we don’t have the money. So we will need to raise most of it!  I opened it on Tuesday May the 8^th.  I deposited our first $100 dollars to begin this account.  Keep in mind that it cost $3600 to get the ball rolling for the home study we would need and initial application fees.  We felt a reasonable goal would be to raise this by the end of the summer! 

That next morning, Beck was visited by a former computer student.  An older lady whom she had in previous computer classes who was aware of our possible adoption and an obvious prayer warrior who had been praying for us.  This woman explained to Beck that we had been the focus of her morning devotion and prayer time and after lengthy prayer and meditation with the Lord, she was told to donate a significant amount of money for our adoption. This voice was from the Holy Spirit, and this woman didn’t question or doubt and explained that was why she drove to her work.  The generous gift from the Lord through this woman was the exact amount needed for our first steps of the adoption.  So, it was then clear what GOD had in store for us and that we were supposed to bring this little guy home.

This is a very timely and expensive process in which we will need support of all kinds from our friends, family, and acquaintances.  Not everyone is called to support these types of situations with a monetary or gift donation, but prayer and or moral support.  Please know that we were nervous and scared to begin with, but this IS GOD’s WILL and we are not to question this.  Know that the last month has not been circumstantial, but God’s perfect timing and planning.  Please pray for us on a regular basis and know that all of our family appreciates it but no one more than this 37 month old. 

He may not know us yet, but we know that God is working on him and his heart to prepare him for us as well.  We hope to soon be matched with him internally through the agency, and eventually through the country of China.  We were told that nothing is for sure until he arrives in our home hopefully within the next 9-15 months.  We are certain that he is the one that God has for us and pray that this is carried out.  We understand and accept that we are not guaranteed him until we have him in our home, but we will do our best not to question God’s plan again.  We are jumping in head first for a very long swim, and if you are reading this, please help us swim, or feel free to swim right along with us!