Hi Friends,
We hope that you had a wonderful Christmas and a happy new year! 2016 is
already shaping up to be the best year ever and we cannot wait to see what other
treasures God has in store for us!
Around Christmastime, we found out that my family business can now provide
health insurance for both Michael and I, which means that we can finish our home
study!! Hallelujah!! God is so good! So many prayers have been answered in the
last couple of weeks and it’s amazing to see God’s hands at work!
After receiving our glorious news, Michael and I have been working hard to
update all of our paperwork with ECAS (our Minnesota agency) as well as getting
the ball rolling with ICF (the agency that works with Burundi). ECAS is
responsible for completing our home study as well as any post placement visits
when our kiddos arrive home while ICF handles everything else.
Everything was going great until we ran into a little speed bump. In figuring
out what we owe ICF, I added the wrong two numbers together and we actually owe
$3,800 instead of the $650 I thought we owed. Unfortunately, we don’t have that
much saved up yet since we owe $800 to ECAS for the completion of our home study
as well as $300 or so for our passports, but we weren’t about to let that get us
down.
We started praying over the matter and I had an idea that I believe was God
inspired. I contacted a client that I’ve been working with awhile now and
explained our situation to him. I told him that we were $2825 short of our first
payment and asked if he could give me an advance. I was willing to sign a
contract and just asked for whatever amount he was comfortable with. He emailed
me the next day to let me know that a check was in the mail for $1,400 and to
let him know how things were going because he might be able to help more later!
I just started crying folks! That is half of what we needed! God is SO good
friends! He really is!
That leaves us with $1,425 to go! We are still selling t-shirts and really
praying that we will see a movement there. That people will want to be a part of
what we are doing! Some of our friends have actually purchased a shirt, taken
pictures of themselves wearing them and then shared their pictures on Facebook
to help us spread the word, which is absolutely amazing! We just feel it in our
bones that God is going to do something amazing with these shirts and we cannot
wait to see the end result. God is going to do raise the funds that we need and
we just give Him all the honor and glory!!
Thank you Lord that we are on this journey and that you have greatly blessed
us with amazing friends and family!
Blessings to you & yours!
Carey & Michael
