Back To School!

Melanie Writes:

Wow! I can't believe it's that time of the year again! Summers go by way to fast! Here I am sitting here updating our blog when I should be getting ready for my class tomorrow. I had an opportunity to meet my students on Friday and I'm really looking forward to this year! I have a lot of nice families and the children seem sweet and energetic! After I take a class picture I'll post it so you can all see!

On the adoption front, we still are working on getting everything apostilled. We have just sent in James' birth certificates to California to get them official at $20 a document. I'm so thankful we live in Illinois! It's only $2 here! Thank Goodness! The rest of our documents are all Illinois issued. We plan to apostille the rest in September and will hopefully be able to turn in our dossier in October!

OUR FUNDRAISER!
The Lord is good! After receiving our matching grant from Lifesong For Orphans we are a little more at ease. We know things will come together, but sometimes it's just hard to trust without anything tangible to hold onto. We have currently finished up our support letter and hope to have those mailed out sometime this week with the help from my precious and hard working mother! Thanks Mom! Deciding who to send the letters to is becoming another hard thing to do. We don't want anyone to feel left out if they didn't receive one and we don't want anyone to think that we're being pushy if they did receive one and feel that they shouldn't have. Does this make sense? Any ideas for us? I suppose that if you don't receive one and want one, please let us know and we'll gladly send one to you and if you receive one and don't want it then just toss it. (No hard feelings here!) I hope this reasoning works!

Thanks again and God's Blessings to all of you! We Love You!
(O.K. now I suppose I better get to work for tomorrow!)

Answered Prayer!

Well, things can certainly go faster now if we want them to. For the first time since we've started, the "ball is in our court." We are working on getting all our official documents more official (otherwise known as apostilled). Then we will be able to turn in our papers (or dossier) into Poland. This next step is a big milestone in the adoption process, but also a very costly one. God has promised to take care of us if we followed his calling to adopt and he is certainly starting to come through! Praise God! Just last week we received a phone call from Lifesong for Orphans telling us that they had accepted and approved our application for a matching grant! We were awarded a $2500 matching grant! We are hoping this is just the beginning of many miracles yet to come. Thank you for your prayers and support! Now that school is starting up again, our time is becoming very thin and we still have so much left to do! Please pray for patience and faith. Through family, friends, and Lifesong for Orphans, God has done so much already and we can only be thankful!