"In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved."
Ephesians 1:5-6
Today, we had our fundraiser at church.
But before any fundraising started, we were blessed with
a beautiful message by Pastor Paul Anthes.
What was so refreshing about his message was
that his emphasis was NOT on how important adoption
should be to us Christians...
It was about how precious, undeserved,
and true our OWN adoption is
IN CHRIST!
(you can listen to it here)
We have done nothing in ourselves to
merit our adoption as sons and daughters of The Father.
However, at GREAT COST, He still adopted us
and gave us an inheritance!!
All of this to the praise of His glorious grace.
Our RESPONSE to this should be very natural!
So our motivation for adopting a precious,
helpless, homeless orphan is
NOT our desire to care for him.
It is NOT our desire for another child.
It is NOT our desire for a beautiful African baby.
It IS our desire to glorify Christ
and LIVE the Gospel!
We are doing this for Him and in response to
what He has already done for us!
Such a precious reminder to us this morning.
May we always stop and remember this
any time that we start relying on our
own strength and initiative.
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| Noelle was really paying attention... |
So with that as a start, I believe it prepared our people's hearts.
We had a lunch,
some q&a time with Paul,
and then some fun DUNK TANK time!
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| My dad in the tank! |
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| Chris goin down! |
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| Joy dunkin Daddy! |
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| Noelley having a turn |
Through it all, we raised over $1,300!!!
We only needed $200 to send off our I600A,
so I've got that all ready to mail in the
morning!!
Now we'll have a head start on paying
for the next steps.
BTW, once we get this form back (3-6 weeks),
we'll be able to be matched with a child!
Meaning, we will have a face and name to our son.:)
We are beyond grateful and looking forward to
what The Lord does next!
We still need about $10,000 more.
We're currently researching other ways
to come up with that!
So we wanted to share our excitement
and gratitude to our Lord
for what He has done so far!!
Stay tuned for more updates!!
Watching your blog, hoping to hear of your I600 approval and your referral SOON! Thinking of you as you wait.....
ReplyDeleteSelina, I was JUST thinking of you!!! We have our biometrics appointment scheduled for the 27th...so hopefully soon after that we'll be approved!! Did you guys decide to purse Compassion for Congo?
DeleteAngie---we spoke to Paul and are ready to move forward, but we are held up by our 2011 tax return. We adopted last year, and the tax credit returns get audited, so it's already been 4 months of waiting.....as soon as we get that money, or GOD provides another way, YES! we want to move forward. :) Did you know that you can walk in early to the fingerprinting, then call your officer at UCIS and tell them so you can be approved faster? We did this with our China adoptions....
Deletehow exciting!! Didn't realize that they get audited! That's something to look forward to :/
DeleteI didn't realize that we could walk-in for our biometrics...I'll look in to that!!!
Definitely walk in for the fingerprinting. It can take a week or two off of your approval time!
DeleteWe have done our testimonies and the adoption survey, both sent to Paul. Ready to start our homestudy when the money is available. :)