Are we crazy?

We received notice that we would have to submit a Psychological Exam as part of our adoption process.   (The requirements in international adoption can change quickly.) Oh the labor pains on this one :)  So we made appointments to have our heads examined.  We got our #2 pencils and began a 567 question test.  Yes, you read that correctly 567 questions to figure out if we are crazy!  I felt not so ebullient by the time I was finished (and a little crazy, ha).  But good news, we passed!  After I received my letter of clearance, I just had to laugh at one comment that was used among other comments such as: made eye contact, no evidence of thought disorder, no mental health concerns, etc.

(A shout out to my 'quality' breakfast friends!)

On another note, March is a referral month.  So we should be getting our new number very soon.  We are currently number 11 and should be down to single digits very soon.  Our program averages between 3-6 children referred to families every 3 months.  However, for some reason, last referral month didn't have any children :(  If the numbers in the coming months are large, we will learn who our daughter is in September.

Thanks for following our journey to give our daughter her forever home!  

Updates in the New Year

So it turns out that boys names are much easier for us to pick!  We have several names we are considering but haven't quite found the perfect combination yet.   For fun I did a F*cebook survey of everyone's favorite names.  Here are the results in no particular order...  Please feel free to add to the list in the comment section.  Your comments are fun and help make some memories while we wait!

For the month of December, Jamie decided that we should add a new element to our advent time. Each night, we prayed over our same request.  Guess what my request was?  I prayed for another adoption donation.  And, guess what God did again?  Yes, he faithfully answered.  We had two donations made to our Lifesong Account in the month of December!  We are getting closer to bringing home our daughter.  Thank you, thank you, thank you to so many!!!!  I confess, I really get giddy to see that thermometer rise.  God's provision has been miraculous.  I (we) feel so humbled to be on this journey.

   

And, here is our new number.  We are expecting a December referral!  

Please pray for our daughter as she most likely has been born.  Oh, how we long to meet her!

I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.   John 14:18

Modern Day Miracles

Our adoption journey has been full of amazing twists and turns.  There have been many long hours pouring over paperwork, grant applications, fund raising work, conversations, and much more.  To be sure, there have been times of frustration and unrest.  We have learned that adoption is not for the faint of heart.  As many of you know, adoption is costly.  We have invested our savings, sold jewelry and many other personal items to raise funds. We have had small and some not so small donations along the way.  Our homestudy, dossier, and I-800A are all filed.  To date we had been able to meet all our financial obligations for the adoption.  And if you missed the last post, we are officially on the waiting list. :)

When we said yes to adopt, we knew this would be an act of God to provide financially.  Last week, on Sept 20 to be exact, we received our second decline (read rejection) in the grant process.  I was really upset by this news and cried out to the Lord.  I asked the Lord if I had misunderstood what He wanted for us and to reveal Himself to me.  I also prayed if He really did want us to adopt, to allow money to start coming to us.   Yes, I was doubting and afraid and fully acknowledge I looked like an Israelite.

Later that day Jamie shared with me that a pastor friend had called and his church would be taking up a love offering for us.  "That's great." I replied.  Did I remember what I had prayed?  Then that night I received  a phone call from a friend stating that her and her husband would be sending us $500!  I immediately stopped and shared my prayer with her.  My prayer had been answered (doubly) the very day I prayed.  How kind of God to confirm His plan to me before I went to bed.

Now this is where the story gets REALLY exciting.  The picture below is from 1997 at Camp Patmos when I was a camp counselor.  Before I had met Jamie, before I had ever thought about adoption, God was at work writing this story of adoption.  My path crossed Stephanie's who was also on staff.  We recently reconnected on Facebook, and she too is a pastor's wife and has a heart for the orphan.   Six days after my prayer, Stephanie called and shared her church would be giving us $10, 000!  Look at all those zeros!!  Now here's what is really, really incredible-the church is 75 members strong and in the last year and a half they have given $58, 300 dollars to adoption!!!!

We are overwhelmed by God's grace and glorious provision in our pursuit of our little girl.  We are so thankful that a small church in CT and an old friend from student camp (15 years ago) have a heart for the orphan.  All of this has collided in our life in an miraculous way! It has been 2 days since receiving the news and we are absolutely floored and praising the One who has adopted us in Christ.

With a cooperative effort from so many (our church family, a small church in CT, and many friends) the thermometer continues to rise!  Check it out!  The remaining amount just seems like change... To God alone be the Glory!

We are so thankful a huge mountain has been moved. The next group of referrals will be in December. We are moving up on the wait list- we're currently

We are excited to tell our little girl one day 

all the marvelous stories of her homecoming!

Dossier Complete!

Whoohoo our Dossier is completed and our agency will ship it to Thailand TODAY!! Here's a glimpse into the process... We followed a huge to do list and finally we were able to take it to our state house for a seal.

Next we hired a courier service to obtain our seals from the Dept of State and Thail Embassy in DC.  We used a trackable service to send the dossier, as many many hours (months) of work was in that package.  I was slightly obsessive tracking our package :)

 The boys helped me ship it off after swim lessons.  I had just had my passport photo taken.  The woman gave me instructions not to smile with teeth.  Before snapping this shot, Aaron asks:  Can we smile with teeth?! (Don't you just love it!) And yes, I was every bit as obsessive tracking this package too!

So what's next?  More paperwork!!  And no, I'm not kidding.  On this round we'll be working with United States Citizenship and Immigration.

But now we are officially on the wait list for our little girl. Our number is:

We still have a long way to go--about 3 years till we bring our sweet heart home. But today we are celebrating that we didn't make any mistakes in our paper work, that nothing was lost in the 2x it was in the mail, and that we are one step closer to our baby girl.  And that friends, feels pretty amazing!

The Results of Our Garage Sale

We decided to have a garage sale to raise funds for our adoption.  Our church family blessed us with some fabulous donations.  As we were gathering items for the sale, Jamie announced to Aaron that he hoped we would raise $800 dollars.  Honestly, I thought that sounded a bit ambitious...  Prior to the sale Aaron prayed the sweetest prayer.  "Dear Lord, please help us to make hundreds, thousands, even millions of dollars!"  (I loved it because a few weeks ago we had worked on place value.  I said a quick "Thank You Lord" prayer that he had learned something from his not so great teacher!)

Here's what things looked like on TH morning:

We began pulling things out of the garage to sort and people began pulling in our drive way asking if we we're having a garage sale or just cleaning out our garage. (They must have thought we were hoarders!)  Our sale was not advertised to start until Friday.  Finally we had so many early shoppers that I told Jamie to put a sign out so I could stop repeating this:  "Yes, we are having a garage sale that starts tomorrow, but you can shop now."  

We posted this sign at our sale:

We sold the majority of items on Friday.  This is what things looked like at the start of Saturday:

I'm telling you this sale was of epic proportions! Several friends from church came to help organize, keep both of us sane, and organize some more.  We couldn't have managed with out these great helpers.  We are so, so very blessed.  Are you ready for the grand total?  It's more than I thought.  And it's more than Jamie thought.  It actually is double what Jamie had hoped for.

That's right we raised $1, 600 !!!!
Have you ever heard of a garage sale doing this well?  (I guess Aaron had!)

Thank you for the many who prayed for a successful sale :)  Thank you Lord for answering our prayers.  I stand completely amazed.

You are my God, and I will give you thanks;  you are my God, and I will exalt you. Psalm 118:28 

What we put in our Home Study!

Over the last 6 months adoption has permeated our household discussions.  One day Aaron announced that we should name his sister Madison.  Rivaling his brother, Luke declared that her name should be Addison.  The boys have made a fun game of jokingly teasing each other.   Often at bed time, we tell the boys stories of the future when their sister will be home with us.  (We all love her so much already, and we don't even know if she's been born yet!)  On one of the stories the boys declared that we should just adopt twins. Yes, we certainly have enough love for two... And after all, we have a mini van!  I spoke to our agency and was told that twins in our program is very rare.  Nonetheless, we have stated in our home study that we would like to adopt twins!  Of course it may never happen; however, you never know.

In the meantime, we are hoping to finish our dossier in the next couple of weeks which will officially place us on the waiting list for a little girl (or girls).  Additionally, we have applied for two grants and have two more to complete.  We remain excited about this chapter in our lives, all the while knowing that our journey has just begun while we trust in His faithfulness.  

Psalm 36:5

Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens,

your faithfulness to the skies.

Making some progress

It's been busy at the Woodyard house!  December is flying by! On top of Christmas festivities, Jamie received his Master of Divinity degree (a 93 credit hour program) from Southern Seminary in Louisville.  We traveled to Louisville to celebrate his graduation with family and friends.  Additionally, we also celebrated our 12th anniversary, and had our home inspection and interviews as part of our Home Study.  If your not familiar with the Home Study,  it is basically documentation that declares you are not crazy parents and you can provide the most essential and basic needs of life.  (Funny how no one came into our home with our biological children to do this...)


I'm very blessed to have a tidy husband and when it came to cleaning for the home study; it was a bit humorous to watch him.  I've never seen him dust so much in all my life!  I shared with him that no one would say,  our home is too dusty and therefore find us unfit as adoptive parents.  I did some extra cleaning as well, I admit.  But then I slightly panicked.  We had a problem with our well and we didn't have water.  Water is pretty much a basic need.  The same weekend as our water trouble, Jamie's sermon was on contentment, not worrying from Matthew 6.  I think God has a sense of humor!  We were able to get the situation remedied before our interviews.  (And our social worker never even checked the bookshelves for dust.  Too bad they were spotless.)

We still have a few missing pieces of our home study, but it's coming together.  I'm excited for our Home Study to come to completion.  The conclusion of the Home Study will then allow us to apply for grants and loans.  Then our next step will be to submit our Dossier or in-country papers.  After our Dossier is in Thailand, we will officially be placed on a list for a little girl!  We have a long wait ahead, possibly as long has 3 years.

We are excited to celebrate Christmas.... It is always a unique time for our family to reflect on the mission of our Savior.  We take each evening to share the different portions of the Christmas narrative by candle lights while the boys create a nativity scene with some laminated clip art.  (I got this idea from Noel Piper's book Treasuring God in our Traditions.)  The boys love taking turns blowing out the candles when we are finished.  The first night after blowing out the candle, a spark floated to the Bible and Jamie had to prevent the Bible from catching on fire.  The boys loved it!  Sometimes the best memories are those that are unexpected and lack perfection.  May your Christmas be filled with unexpected joy, peace, and rich memories!

-KW