Shirts of Hope

Our "Shirts of Hope" fundraiser is up and running! 45% of the profits of all shirts sold will go towards our adoption. Please help spread the word about adoption by wearing your shirts proudly. You will also be helping to bring our children home and we will be forever grateful!

Here is the link to follow and purchse your shirts:
 www.adoptionbug.com/BurdenedForAdoption

Here are your shirt options chosen by us (The Bulgarian one is my favorite!):

Homestudy...Check

It has been a while since my last blog. I have felt like nothing is happening, we were still working on the same thing and not getting anywhere... until now!

We started working on our homestudy 4 months ago. We had our interviews back in January. Since then, we have been gathering tons of paperwork, and doing loads of adoption education. Finally on Tuesday, April 3 our homestudy was approved and finalized!!! This is a huge accomplishment. We are getting so close. The next process is the NBC approval and finishing the dossier. The NBC approval is basically the government giving us permission to bring our foreign child/ren into the country. This can take up to 3 months. We are also starting to get our paperwork translated so it can go to Bulgaria. This can take from 4-6 weeks, but it is being worked on at the same time as the NBC approval. So hopefully within the next few months our dossier (all the paperwork) will be sent to Bulgaria and they will start deciding who our children will be! Basically, after all this waiting, we are just a few months away from the "waiting stage".

In the meantime, we are applying for adoption grants. We have applied for HelpUsAdopt.org, they give grants between $500 and $15,000. We are also getting our documents together to apply for the Show Hope grant and the Lifesong grant. Lifesong will give us the opportunity to receive donations which will be tax deductible. My previous blog explains the fundraiser that we are also applying for with LifeSong, "Both Hands". We are doing a fundraiser with Show Hope and Adoption Bug starting next week, Shirts of Hope. We will have our own online store where you can purchase adoption t-shirts and 45% of the proceeds with go towards our adoption. A small portion also goes to Show Hope and helps other families adopt as well. You can wear your shirt proudly, promoting adoption and knowing that you helped bring our children home. (We will share the site address as soon as we get it.) We will be working on some other fundraisers as well. The next fees we will have to pay will be very large (about $10,000), and this is not counting our travel to Bulgaria twice. {I have posted links to all of these grants and fundraisers on the bottom of the blog.} 

One of the most amazing things that we have been blessed with was meeting a family who is also adopting from Bulgaria. A few weeks ago, we had the privilege of meeting a family that lives just 5 minutes away. Amazingly enough, they have been working with the same adoption agency and adopting from the same country for the last 4 years. they are a lot further along in the process than we are, in fact they have already travelled to Bulgaria once and met their son. It was such a blessing to meet them, they can answer every question we have about the entire process and even the country where our children are. God works in wonderful ways! When we moved here in January 2011, we didn't have any plans to start the adoption process, but God knew that we would and He knew that we would need help and encouragement. I have no doubt that He put us this close for a reason. How cool will it be, when we finally get our kids home, that they will have a friend just down the road who shares the same home country with them? We have also been in contact with a family about 40 minutes away that are also adopting from Bulgaria. There are about 5-6 families in our area who have finished the process or are still in the process of adopting from Bulgaria. We will be able to have wonderful get-togethers, where our children can interact with other children all from Bulgaria... it's just too amazing for words!

Thank you for all of your support and encouragement! We love encouragement, we can't get enough of it. Please don't hesitate to send us a quick note letting us know that you are thinking about us and/or praying for us. We would also be happy to answer any questions that you might have. Please continue to pray for us! Please pray that the NBC approval will be a quick process. And pray that we can raise and save all the funds that are quickly coming due, pray for the grants as well. Of course, continue to pray that God will grant us the patience to continue in this long process. We have both gained so much trust and faith in God, but pray that we will continue to strengthen our faith and our relationships with our Saviour.


Links to all of the grants and fundraisers:
http://www.showhope.org/AdoptionAid/AdoptionGrants.aspx
http://lifesongfororphans.org/adGrantLoans.html
http://www.adoptionbug.com/shirtsofhope/?ref=SoH

Better-late-than-never Update

Okay... so I haven't been so good about blogging. I meant to write a blog at least every 2 weeks to keep everyone updated, but we have been so busy with paperwork and that is not much fun to write about. We have been working on our home study. The home study, like I mentioned, consists of a lot of paperwork. It is also about our background information. We have to get clearances from every state that we have lived in since we were 18. We also had to do three interviews with our social worker. For the first, she came to our house for a walk-through to be sure that it is a safe environment to bring children into. Then she interviewed us together. We basically went over what we expect, what we should expect, and how we plan to parent. The second and third interviews were individual, we drove 3 hours to meet with her and then had to answer tons of questions about ourselves (a timeline of everything we have done since we graduated high school), how we met, and what we love about each other. We really thought that the home study would be scary, that they would ask us hard questions that we don't know the answers to. But it was all just about getting to know us, who we are and where we came from. Our social worker will be writing a report that will go to Bulgaria, they will then choose which child/ren is best for us based on this report. So, it is important that this report truly reflects who we are.

Where we are now:
With the interviews over, we are pretty much just waiting. We have some online learning that we have to do in the meantime. It will take 3-4 weeks for them to get all of our clearances back and finish the report. Once it is written, we get to read the first draft. That way, we can make sure that all of the information is correct and we are comfortable with everything written in it. Once that is finalized, things should really start moving.  We will be able to start applying for grants and fundraisers at that point. Then we will be finishing up our  "dossier", this seems to be a fancy word for "more paperwork". It is just a lot of forms and notarizing and verifying.  We have to be finished with that by the end of May, which will then bring us to the referral process. This is a long, intense waiting game. We will basically be waiting for them to send us information about and pictures of our children. I can not wait for this, it is what we have been waiting years for, to finally see our child/ren's face(s). :)

Finances:
We have a few agency fees that will be due  when we finish our dossier (by May), which will total $6,000. Then once we get our referral, we will need to pay international fees which will be about $10,000. That's the big one! Of course, if we do get siblings, we will have extra fees due, since we have been paying fees based on only one child so far.  We have plans for several more fundraisers and are still saving, saving, saving!

There is one fundraiser that we are really excited about. It is called Both Hands and it is basically embracing the command found in James 1:27 "Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world." The point of the fundraiser is to help out a widow. We would get 10-20 people to volunteer to help us. Every volunteer (including us) would send out letters to family and friends to sponsor them (just like you would for a 5K or something similar). We would all spend an entire Saturday helping out at the widow's home, doing anything and everything that she needed done: landscaping, cleaning, fixing things, etc. Then 100% of the funds raised  (which will be tax deductible) would go directly towards our adoption. We would be helping a widow with one hand and an orphan with the other, and fulfilling God's command with "Both Hands". We still have to be approved to do this fundraiser, we would love to do this, so please pray that it works out. Also, if you are interested in helping us out, please let us know. Obviously, we don't have any dates yet, but we expect that it would be sometime in May. We would love to have all of the volunteers lined up and we can keep you posted. Here is the link to the website if you would like more information: http://www.lifesongfororphans.org/bothHands.html
There are also other grants that we plan to apply for, but there are no guarantees that we will be approved.

Please continue to pray for us as we go through this process. It seems that patience is going to be badly needed during these next several months. Also, please pray that the finances would come in. We know that God will provide, we just don't know which avenue He will use.  We have leaned SO much so far and wouldn't trade the experience of going through this process for anything. It is a true eye-opener to God's provision, grace, mercy and love (amoung many many other things). And has taught us so much about faith and trust in our wonderful Saviour!

"Faith and worry don't mix."

I am a worrier!! I worry about everything, literally. I can't even watch or push a child on a swing set because I worry that they will bump into another child or hit the wooden supports or fall off or... You get the idea.  The adoption has brought on a whole new set of worries! One of the biggest worries (there are many) that we have had is for the finances. I know I have mentioned it before, but adopting 1 child from Bulgaria costs at least $33,000. We would like to adopt siblings, which means it would be closer to $45,000. That is a lot of money. Thankfully, we don't have to pay this all at once. We pay smaller fees at a time and they are spaced out. However, it is still $2,000-$4,000 at a time, which is nothing to sneeze at. Right now, we are working on our home study and dossier. They are both a ton of paperwork. The home study also consists of interviews. Suprisingly, I am not worried about the interviews. God has called us to adopt and we already have a child/ren in Bulgaria, we just have to make it official. :) But we have to pay a home study fee before our first interview (January 23) and we don't have all of the money yet. We have had this issue before and God has provided everytime. After His provision, my faith and trust levels are always boosted higher and I can't believe that I didn't just trust God to begin with. Then, we get to this point again and all the worry comes back. I finally had a mini-meltdown last night. It is so hard to just wait and trust God to provide. This morning, I read out of my devotion book (I haven't been reading as often as I should, this will be a New Year's resolution!). The devotion, amazingly enough, was about not worrying. Here is part of the scripture that was used: Matthew 6:25a & 33-34 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life... But seek first His kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." God is always listening and watching and providing. Worrying does nothing! The last sentence of the devotion was "Faith and worry don't mix." I need to remember to trust God to provide for this adoption. I don't know how He is going to do it. And I don't need to know, I just need to trust. Please continue to pray for us throughout this process. Pray that we would keep our faith and trust in God and that He would provide financially. Pray that God would continue to prepare us all to be a family.

Candle of Hope

Justin and I have found the most amazing church, Radford Baptist Church! The people are great and the preaching is straight out of God's word! I absolutely believe that God brought us to this church and at the exact right time. Everyone is so encouraging and super supportive of the adoption. This is exactly what we needed to get through this process and of course, God knew that. He is an awesome God!!

We were so blessed to be asked to share our adoption story this past Sunday. We lit a candle for hope(and lit it again when it blew out) and this is what we shared:

(Kathy) "We have both had a strong desire to adopt for a long time. We knew before we got married that we would adopt one day. And we actually started praying then that God would prepare us for it. Our plan was to have one or two children first, then adopt. We started trying almost 3 years ago.  Obviously, we weren't getting pregnant, we just didn't know why. Almost every month, we got our hopes up just to be let down. Something that was so easy for everyone else, seemed impossible for us. We started wondering what was wrong with us, or what we had done wrong and why God didn't want us to be parents.

  "Jeremiah 29:11 says, "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future." God had a different plan for us than we had for ourselves. We realize now that if we had children when we first started trying, we wouldn't be as focused and motivated to adopt now. Pastor karl has been talking about giving thanks for everything. As hard as it was, we are truly thankful for our struggles getting pregnant, because God has used that to prepare us for adoption and fill us up with hope and faith, and love for a child that we haven't even met yet. We started the adoption process in August and have seen God's guidance and provision every step of the way so far."

(Justin) "After hearing Kathy tell you our story, you probably think we would want to talk to you about our hope to have children. The real hope we want to share with you is the hope of the orphans here and around the world. The hope that someone would open their hearts and homes and adopt them into a forever family, just as Christ has adopted us into his Eternal family.

  "Ephesians 1:4-5 says, "Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him, in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will." Without Christ's sacrifice we would still be orphaned, lost and hopeless. Our sin caused us to be orphaned from God our heavenly and eternal Father. Earthly orphans have done nothing to deserve separation from their families.

  "In James 1:27 we are told: "Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world." When I read this verse as a young man I knew I wanted to adopt, to give someone a chance that might not otherwise have one. After all, Christ adopted me and gave me hope when I had none.

  "Our hope is that the body of Christ, starting here at Radford and spreading throughout the world, would embrace James 1:27 and be a picture of Christ to all orphans. Giving hope to the hopeless, visiting them in their trouble, and adopting them into their families. Sharing the greatest hope that we have, the hope of eternal life in Jesus Christ. 

  "We have just come through the Thanksgiving holiday, a time when we focus on family and give thanks for them. Please remember to pray for those who have no family. As we look forward to Christmas and celebrating the birth of Christ, who came and brought to us the Hope and assurance of eternal life and being part of His Eternal family, please pray about how you can bring hope to orphans around the world. maybe it will be to adopt, give of your resources, go on a missions trip to an orphanage or just be a prayer warrior for others.

  "Pastor Karl has been talking about turning our world upside down. I truly believe as a body, we could turn the world upside down if we would allow ourselves to be moved into action by the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. In fact, I believe we could bring hope to all of the 143 million orphans and see all 143 million adopted. Ultimately being that selfless picture of Christ who adopted us into His family even though we were undeserving. Also, if the world saw us move to that kind of action for Christ, I believe we would do more than just give orphans home, but we would see many lost souls come to know Christ.

  "Please pray for Kathy and I, and all those who choose to adopt, for strength and perseverance, financial provisions, and that God would keep all orpans from harm and send the Gospel to them. Finally, pray that God would do a great work in His body and that we would all embrace James 1:27."

Thanks to everyone who listened to or read our story. But most of all, thank you God for choosing us to adopt and giving us the opportunity to share the burden of adoption with others.

It's a learning process

God is teaching me so much through this process! Of course I am learning to be patient. (God has been trying to teach me that for the last 3 years!) He is also teaching me to trust Him. I know that God has called us to adopt. So sometimes I wonder why it is so hard. I got my answer: If God only asked us to do things that are easy, then we wouldn't need to trust Him. He is teaching us to trust Him by giving us a problem and not giving us all the answers. I was very discouraged about the finances for our agency fees. I would look at our savings and crunch the numbers, I just couldn't see how it was humanly possible for us to save/raise that much money. That's because it's not "humanly" possible! We couldn't do any of this without God.

"I can do everything through Him who gives me strength." (Phil 4:13)

We are contracting with our agency at the end of this month and our first agency fee is due. Based on what we have saved/raised, we are almost exactly $1,000 short. The month seems to be going by so fast and I just couldn't see where that money would come from. So I gave up! I gave it to God. I asked God to help me to trust Him and know that He will provide somehow. I thought maybe we would get a surprise donation check in the mail or one of us would get a bonus from work or... I didn't know how He would do it, but I wanted so badly to trust that He would. It is so hard to give things over completely to God. Then I received an e-mail yesterday from our adoption agency. In honor of Adoption month (November), they are providing a fee reduction of up to $1,000 to anyone who contracts by the end of the year. Tears filled my eyes as I read this. My prayers were not only heard, but answered! I am so amazed by the power of prayer! When you see God work in your life like this, you can't help but be awestruck. There aren't enough words to describe how awesome my Saviour is!

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." (Phil 4:6-7)

God has opened every door for this adoption. He hasn't made it easy, but He has made it very clear that this is what He wants us to do. God is truly changing our lives through this adoption and I couldn't be more grateful! Please continue to pray for us. Pray that we have patience throughout this process. Pray that our finances are met. And most of all, pray that our trust in God continues to grow.

"Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." (Mark 11:24) 

Get your Christmas shopping done early! Order Pampered Chef for your friends and relatives. It also makes great Teacher's gifts, and all the proceeds go to a great cause! :) But hurry, all orders have to be in by November 30!



Pampered Chef Teacher Gift Ideas under $15

Adjustable Measuring Tools (starting at $8)

“Thanks for making a measurable” difference in my child’s life!”

Apple Wedger ($13.00) (with apple on top, all tied with a ribbon)

“Any way you slice it, you’re a great teacher!”

Bamboo Collection ($4-15.50)

“Your classroom is an “island” of learning!”

Cutting Board/Bar Board ($9.50)

“No matter how you “cut” it ...you are a great teacher!”

Creative Cutters ($11.00)

“Thank you for your “creative” teaching!”

Easy Opener ($5.00) / Jar Opener($11.00)

“Thank you for “opening” up our kids to learning!”

Measure All Cup ($10) (filled with candy, of course!)

“No matter how you measure it...you’re the best teacher!” or “No one can measure up to you!”

Micro-Cookers ($8.50-11.00)

“Here’s for cooking up some holiday cheer!”

Mini-Serving Spatula ($5.50)

“Thank you so much for ‘serving up’ great lessons this year!”

Peelers (citrus, avocado, vegetable, julienne - $1-10.25)

You’ve made learning very “a-peeling”

Quikut Paring Knife ($2) –

“I’ll make it “quik”, you’re a great teacher!”

Recipe Books ($1-14.75) –

“You are a great teacher...you have all the ingredients”

“Hope you cook up some fun over the Holiday break!”

Rubs ($4.50)

“I hope this doesn’t “rub” you the wrong way, but we think you are a great teacher!”

Small Stainless Steel Scoop ($14.50) or the Ice Cream Dipper($15):

“Here’s the scoop: You are a great teacher!”

Small Batter Bowl ($12.00)

“You’ve “bowled” us over with your great teaching!”

Spices & Sauces ($6-12):

Hope your Holidays are full of "spice"!

“Be sure to “pour” on the fun this Holiday!”

Spreaders (all purpose, small & large $5.00-9.50)

“Start “spreading” the news...we think you’re great!” “Thanks for “spreading” your knowledge!”

Suds Pump ($11.50):

“You’ve pumped me up for learning!”

Twix-it Clips ($5.50)

Thanks for keeping your teaching “fresh”

Here’s how you can order and help us bring home our child:

You can simply go to our Web site at http://www.pamperedchef.biz/ruthiescookin, go to the Our Products section, select the link below the products you would like to purchase, and enter my first (Kathy) and last (Hansen) name in the fields provided.