Blessings upon blessings...

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

And the number is…

Drum roll please… $650! That’s right friends. Between our goodie fundraiser and new t-shirts, we have raised an additional $650 to help cover our adoption costs, which brings our grand total up to $2,290. Hallelujah! Glory to God! He continues to amaze us and we are so incredibly grateful to all of you that have stepped up to help us bring our kiddos home!

So what’s next? Good question! It has been a crazy year for us and I think we need a little break from all of this fundraising, but we have some Africa shirts left that we’ll be selling over the next couple of months. Beyond that, a dear friend from church has offered to host a fundraiser for us this coming spring. We’re thinking of having all of our friends come together that sell various products like Jamberry Nails, 31, and maybe a few others. Along with that, I think it would be fun to have a bake and craft sale too! I love baking and my mom has already offered to make some of her beautiful creations for us! If everything comes together as planned, it will be an event that you don’t want to miss!

I also wanted to provide a little update on the adoption. As far as the home study is concerned, we are still on hold since we must have health insurance that will cover our future children before we can complete that stage of the process, but we’re using this period of waiting to get ourselves ready for whatever is next. Michael is actively searching for a new job every day, which can be overwhelming at times since he works full time. He has a job on hold for him, but we have no idea when it will come available. So, we keep searching and interviewing until something pops. We’re also using this time to fundraise like crazy and read as many books as we can too. Michael and I just want to be as prepared as we can be when our little ones are finally here! We’ve had the privilege of seeing some of our friends’ families grow through adoption this past year and it’s such a beautiful experience! We cannot wait to experience that day for ourselves! We know it’s coming! All in God’s perfect timing!

Well, it is getting late, so I should probably close. If we don’t get a chance to post another blog before Christmas, we pray that you will all have a blessed holiday season!

Merry Christmas!
Michael and Carey

It’s Fundraising Time!!

That’s right friends! Michael and I are so excited to announce that we have 2 fundraisers going on in the month of November!! The first is some yummy gourmet food that we are selling until the 20th! Foods include COOKIE DOUGH, popcorn, candy, nuts, trail mix, meat and cheese spreads. Everything will be delivered on December 17th!! Just in time for Christmas!! If you would like to place an order, you can view the catalog at the below link and email your order to togethermc@gmail.com. Thank you in advance for your support!

http://www.thegoodiesfactory.com/frozen-food-fundraisers/gourmet-delights/view.html

The second one will start sometime next week when our new t-shirts arrive! We were so blessed to have a friend from church design them and another one is printing them. Our shirts range in size from medium to 5x and can be purchased for $20. This money covers our expense for creating the shirts and the rest will go towards are many upcoming adoption expenses. Our t-shirts will be available from here on out! Just give us a call and we will get you a shirt or two!



We need everyone’s help to bring our kiddos home. Thanks friends!
Love,
Carey & Michael

GOD IS GOOD!

Okay! I just have to share of couple of stories about God’s goodness! Some of you know that we have been praying for a couple months now asking for God’s guidance as we choose a continent/country for our adoption. I was sharing with our small group 2 weeks ago that I was frustrated because we hadn’t received any signs yet. The very next morning, I sat down to do my devotionals and it was completely about Africa! I looked towards the ceiling, smiled and said “Okay, God! I am in!” Later that night, I shared with Michael what had happened and asked if he felt that was a sign. He smiled a huge smile and said “yes honey, that was a sign”! We are adopting from AFRICA! Michael and I are leaning towards one country in particular, but we want to do a little more research before we officially announce that! Stay tuned for more information on that.

Alright, onto the next story! Michael and I try to do a weekly devotional together to keep our marriage strong, God-centered. We just finished a devotional, so we started reading the new book by Francis Chan “You and Me Forever”. Michael was reading the 2nd half of the introduction to me when Francis writes this direct quote! “Why not default to action until you hear a voice from heaven telling you to wait? For example: Why not assume you should adopt kids unless you hear a voice telling you not to? Wouldn’t that seem more biblical since God has told us that true religion is to care for the widows and orphans (James 1:27)?” Talk about a zinger! I instantly felt convicted! That we weren’t supposed to wait around for a divine blue print. We have the basics and now it’s time to get to work!

Now fast forward to Saturday when we arrived at church to volunteer at Elevate, which is the 1st to 5th grade kid’s program at EBC. I decided to share my story of God’s goodness with the group of volunteers and our leader asked what fundraisers we had coming up. We shared that we want to design a t-shirt to sell during the end of August, but we needed help designing the shirt. Right away, one of the volunteers mentions that her husband is into graphic design and would love to help. Then our leader chimes in and says that we should have the whole volunteer group where the shirts when they are finished to help spread the word in our church about our adoption! To say that we were blessed would be an understatement! We were/are completely blown away about the great people we are getting to know at our church! God is so good! To top everything off, a family friend is going to print the shirts for us and another friend has offered to do a 31 fundraiser in September! GOD IS SO GOOD FRIENDS! If you are going through a struggle right now or a long time of waiting, hang on! God is moving even if we don’t see it!

Have a great week friends!
We love you all!
Carey & Michael
(f)

Jobs, Homes & Kids! Oh my!

We’ve had a lot of friends asking how things are going, so I thought it was time for an update. On the job front, Michael has had 5 interviews so far and they have all gone very well. He hasn’t received any offers yet, but we keep getting new leads everyday! God is so good & we know He will bring us the right job.

On the new house front, we have been in touch with a mortgage broker and his team recommends that we submit our paperwork by the end of July to meet our goal of moving in September or October, so that is the plan! Hopefully, Michael will receive an offer by then, but we’ve decided that we are moving one way or the other. Our apartment complex has gone downhill since we moved in and they switched owners, so it’s time to move on. We don’t have an intended area yet as we are hoping the new job will point us in a particular location, but it will be closer to the cities to make Michael’s commute a little easier for him.

Finally onto the subject that has most of you on the edge of your seat! The adoption! We’ve narrowed our country list down to about 6 or 8 countries: Bulgaria, Burkina Faso (Africa), Burundi (Africa), Ethiopia (Africa), Haiti, Peru, and Poland. I am in the process of contacting other agencies across the U.S. that work with these countries to ask questions and narrow down which ones would be able to help us. We’ve raised over $1500 now, so we can submit our final payment for the home study as soon as we get our health insurance situation figured out which will hopefully be taken care of by the fall. In the meantime, we are trying to come up with a summer fundraiser, so stay tuned! We’re hoping to do something by the end of July or in August!

Have a great summer everyone! Stay safe!