Happy Autumn Friends ~
Michael and I pray that you are all doing fabulously! Summer was extremely busy for us this year and so many amazing things have happened since our last post that I felt it was definitely time for an update, so here goes...
As most of you know, Michael and I moved into a beautiful new townhouse on Memorial Day weekend and we absolutely love it here! It's in a great neighborhood, we have a playground next to our complex and plenty of room for Snickers to run and play! A total Godsend! We'll post some pictures soon! :-)
In June, I started researching and applying for various adoption grants which was definitely more work than I expected, but I was determined to do whatever I could to help bring our kiddos home. Once they were submitted, I left it all in God's hands, but I honestly didn't expect to hear from any of them since I have heard from friends that grants are very hard to come by. On August 3rd, we received a phone call from an organization called Pure Gift of God and were told that we were accepted to receive a grant from them in the amount of $5,000. WHAT!?!?! We were completely blown away!
The next day we received a phone call from our social worker with news that there was a mistake on our case and we had been matched with the twin 9 year old girls that we are currently sponsoring, but what should have been great news wasn't good news at all. The girls' status was a lot more heartbreaking than we had been previously told. They were sexually abused their whole lives and had began acting out in a very serious manner that had everyone concerned. Our social worker felt we could handle one child with this level of special needs, but not two. In fact, our agency has made the decision to remove them from the adoption program until they have more time to heal. As much as our hearts broke for these girls, we both felt that God was saying to us not yet. That He has our children all picked out and we just need to be patient! The good news from all of this is that we discovered we had been given some bad information and that we don't have to have our large invoice paid off before we can be matched, so right now we are at the top of the list and could receive our referral any day! We are beyond excited! Our hope is that we will be matched by the end of the year, so we can travel down to Africa to meet our children! Praise the Lord!!
On August 8th, Michael and I attended a meeting at EBC to learn about an organization called Safe Families and how we could help. Safe Families is an incredible organization that comes alongside local families in crisis and matches them with vetted Christian families that can provide support in a variety of ways! We loved the idea and are in the process of being vetted right now. Our role will be to host children while their parent or grandparent take a respite, search for housing, have surgery, enter rehab, etc. Michael and I have gone through the necessary training and are almost ready for the home visit. Once that is done, then we can start picking up needs that are emailed to us, which is so exciting!
A couple weeks later, I received an email from an organization called Families Outreach stating that we had been selected for a $2,000 grant and the funds were sent directly to us! Normally, grant payments are sent straight to the adoption agency to prevent the funds from being used for something other than an adoption, but this organization was different. The crazy thing about it is that I had been praying that God would bring some extra money in to cover our upcoming immigration fee of $890 as that is a payment that doesn't run through our adoption agency and He totally did it! God is SO good my friends!
So what's next on the adoption front? Good question! We are hoping to finish the immigration form this week and get that off in the mail since it can take a little while to process. Once that is complete, we will send the remaining grant funds to pay down our 2nd invoice and then start our dossier, which I can only describe as a crazy amount of paperwork! From what I understand, it will take us some time to get everything together that we need and to have all the necessary documents notarized, but hopefully that will be the last huge amount of paperwork that we will have to do for the adoption. In the meantime, Michael and I will continue fundraising as well as applying for more grants. We just finished our first garage this past week and raised over $600! Woo Hoo! Our hope is to launch another fundraiser this fall/winter, so keep your eyes open for that! :)
That's it for now!
God Bless,
Michael & Carey
Monday, September 19, 2016
Monday, June 27, 2016
God's Not Dead!!
Hey Friends,
I apologize that it has taken us so long to share a new post with all of you! There has been so much that has happened since our last message! In late February, we received official word that Burundi was not going to work for us after all. Even though, we asked upfront about all of the regulations to adopt in the country they somehow neglected to tell us that any long term medications were not allowed and I will be on asthma medications for the rest of my life. It hit us both pretty hard, but the enemy really did a number on me. For about a week, he raked me over the coals and filled my head with lies. Thankfully, God never left me! Even when I was at my lowest, He was there with me every step of the way. After crying out to Him, I felt this power rising up from within me like I was a warrior and I needed to put on my armor to kick the devil's butt, which I did! Satan really doesn't want us to adopt our kiddos, but nothing is going to stop us now! We just can't wait to wrap our arms around our children and love them forever!
Okay, now on to the good news! Our agency recently launched a new pilot program in Sierra Leone and we qualify for it! YAY! We also finished our home study in April, so that is finally done which allows us to start applying for grants. Praise the Lord! We've applied for about a half a dozen so far, so please be praying that some of them come in. If we can get our first invoice paid off within the next couple of months, then we will be matched with our kiddos and we can hopefully travel down to meet them by the fall of this year! So exciting!!!
Well, it's getting way past my bedtime, so I should close for now. Our summer fundraiser is coming up soon and you will not want to miss it! For $5, you can help us create a sweet memento for our children that will serve as a reminder of all the people that helped bring them home! More details to come! Stay tuned!
Blessings to you all!
Love,
Michael and Carey
Monday, January 11, 2016
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
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
Thursday, December 10, 2015
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
Saturday, November 7, 2015
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!
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
We need everyone’s help to bring our kiddos home. Thanks friends!
Love,
Carey & Michael
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