Ready for the New Year

Merry Christmas! We enjoyed a wonderful weekend with four of our six blessings. Some year I hope we'll have them all together in one place, but that has been elusive these last few years. Daughter #2 has a new baby this year, so wasn't up for traveling across the country (sadly they live far far away from us). Daughter #3 was here for a visit two weeks ago, so spent Christmas in Wyoming with her boyfriend's family. We enjoyed the weekend at Daughter #1's home, with her, her husband, Son #1 & #2, and Daughter #4. It was a houseful - full of joy and good cheer as we celebrated God's gift of Christ Jesus.

PA

We received our pre-approval (PA) from China for the adoption of Faith! Now we must gather all the documents that are needed for the dossier. We have two months to do this and get a new homestudy done. The next step is "DTC" - documents to China. Aiming to have this done by the middle of March.

Memorial Box Monday

Some weeks ago I was moved to participate in the 'Generous Life 90-day challenge' - to tithe for 90 days and see if God doesn't heap more blessings upon you than what you have given away. Payday was Friday. On Sunday I put my first tithe in the church offering plate.

Here you need a little background...
My husband has been a stay at home dad to our two young children since early 2009. Earlier this year, after a year of being home with her Dad, our youngest started pre-school and hubby started looking for a new job. He's been looking without success for 7 months. Money has been really tight for us with just one income. We sold our house and moved to a tiny duplex so we could live on just my salary. We cut back and cut out to stay within our smaller means. Adding a tithe to the monthly expenses was really a leap of faith. But felt God nudging me to trust Him. And so, back to the story....

So on Sunday I put my tithe in the offering plate. On Tuesday my husband received a job offer. God multiplied my tithe more than I can even calculate! I gave God my meager tithe and God gave us a 100% new salary where there had been zero. How incredible is that?! In just TWO DAYS God poured out generosity upon us. Our God is an awesome God!

Letter of Intent

Our letter of intent (LOI) was sent to the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) last Tuesday. Now we wait for China to send back preliminary approval (PA). Once we have that we will officially start the paper chase, including updating our home study and gathering all the documents that are required for the dossier and USCIS. Last time we were able to get everything together in about 10 weeks, which would put us DTC (documents to China) in late February. Here's hoping!

Wow