Our Homestudy is Finished!!!!! Yay!!!!!

Found out Thursday evening that our Home Study was approved and it is Finished....Yay!!!!! I will be getting it Monday and will be filing our USCIS paperwork Tuesday!! Again we would not be able to file the USCIS paperwork, but MANY of you gave, A HUGE THANK YOU!!!!

Now what we need are prayers, for God's perfect timing!! We are praying for God to help us get there in April....Please also pray that God will protect Brian and keep him healthy while we work hard to go get him. God is so good, we praise Him for His provision, we praise Him that we will be able to file our USCIS paperwork!! We serve an amazing God who is in control!! Our God loves Brian more than we could ever understand, we are so thankful that God has called us to raise Him up for God's glory!!

To our Precious LORD and SAVIOR, be the glory, He alone is worthy of our praise!!

For Our Little Man

Paperwork, paprework, and more paperwork. Our homestudy is in final review, our dossier has only a few more items to do and we now have the funds to submit our USCIS form when we have our homestudy in hand. The reality of us going is so much more real now. Point-in-case, while grocery shopping at Coscto today, Sheri seen this outfit and thought it was perfect for Brian, so she bought it. It is such a cute outfit and goes perfect with the little duplos car we have had for him.

A HUGE Thank You!!!!

First we want to thank our Lord Jesus Christ, for He alone is worthy of our praise!! God has revealed Himself many times during this adoption process, we know that He has ordered our steps and He is with us on this journey, we praise Him for all that He has done for us!! To God be the glory!!
We want to Thank the Browning family for all that they have done so far, and they have said that they will continue to help....We appreciate them so much, they are an amazing family and we cherish the friendship we have with them!
We want to thank all of those who participated in the auction, those who made bids, to help us bring that little man home and those who donated items, many which were a labor of love, all items given with a heart full of love for our little Brian, words could never express our gratitude. We know many of you are there for us during this journey.
We also want to thank those who have bought items from the FB mini auctions, thank you too!!
We have also had many donations to our chipIns and our RR page....and from one very special Sunday School Class, You have all helped.........Thanks to each and everyone of you............

!!!!!WE HAVE THE MONEY NEEDED FOR OUR USCIS FEES!!!!!

Helping to Bring Brian Home

I have the same story as many other Reece's Rainbow families, we found RR, when some dear friends of ours shared their heart, they were in the process at the time to adopt Mathew and Ivanna. I will never forget the look of love that they had for those two sweet children. So I began looking at RR and the Lord started working on my heart. Every time I went there Brian really touched my heart I began to pray about him, I felt like the Lord wanted us to adopt Brian. I finally shared my heart with my husband, he said "let's go get him" Wow!! My husband also felt like we should adopt him also, we prayed about it for a few days and fell in love with Brian =) So we began our Journey to Bring Brian Home. We started strong with our fundraisers, but recently had a time of discouragement, we prayed and cried out to God we needed some encouragement.....God is so good!! Immediately we had people telling us they are praying,  I had a new friend from the DS community on Facebook teach me how to post my blog stuff and she taught me to post our RR page on FB we've had some donations, we learned of a Sunday School class that raised some money for us...Wow....and now our dear friends the Browning Family are having a Blog Auction to help us Bring Brian Home!! God answers prayers!! Please take a look at her blog: http://anextraleaf.blogspot.com/

Help us Bring Brian Home. Thank you to all for your prayers and your help,

We Are Blessed

As we prepare to bring home our little Brian, we are "chasing" papers for our Dossier. During this process I have had many people ask questions about our adoption...as I explain everything I have had several, that when they find out he is a special needs child, that he has down syndrome....they begin to say things like "Oh that is so good of you" "what a great thing you are doing for him"...... I have learned to say "that it is good for us" or "we are the ones who are blessed", then I explain that I know in my heart, that he will be a far greater blessing to us, that we could ever hope to be to him. I am so excited and longing for the day, that I can hug my little man and tell him that I love him!! I praise the Lord, that He chose us to bring home little Brian. What an amazing God, that he is using us in this special way. God is so good to us!!
In our last post we were in a time of discouragement....God has once again blessed us...we have had many of you tell us you're praying for us and give us words of encouragement!! He also used a Sunday School Teacher and her class in an amazing way, they have truly touched our hearts....just when we needed it most!!
To God be the glory!!!I also have a very special friend who is working hard to help us, she is having an auction on her blog to help us bring that little boy home. I will add a link to her blog when the auction begins. Please pray that we will be able to get our paperwork done quickly, that we will be able to get the fees needed to file our USCIS paperwork. Also pray that the USCIS process will go quickly....it is our desire to be able to get our Dossier there in Feb. We are trying to move quickly...so we can get there asap. He is at risk for being transferred to an institution, where he may not be adoptable. So please pray for God's provision of the funds we need, and for God's perfect timing.

They Gave What They Could....

My husband and I worked on our last blog post together, trying to share our heart. We are in a season of discouragement. We shared about fundraising and other things...We said that during our blog auction and our yard/bake sale(we had with another RR family) that we had bargain hunters...Please don't anyone take that the wrong way, we meant no offense. God is good and will bless the use of that money to help us every penny helps! When we had the yard/bake sell, we were thankful for everyone that stopped by...some did not buy a thing, but we were able to give them info on Reece's Rainbow, and it was a blessing to talk to them. Some things did happen behind the scenes with our blog auction that know one knew about, not necessarily bad things just things we had to deal with. God has been good and we will get our little boy, God is faithful!! I guess I decided to write this post because I did not want anyone to feel bad at all. We had a comment on our blog....someone said "they gave what they could" I did not want things to be negative so I removed that comment...but it was not really negative, it was good, she was right. I am not sure who it was, but I realized that they did give what they could...YOU ALL GAVE WHAT YOU COULD, and we appreciate you all very much and we are very thankful for all those who can not give, but have supported us in your prayers...We appreciate you all. As for the post, like I said before, my husband and I were just sharing our heart, we have received encouragement from many since then, it helps to know there are many that are praying...and many who do care and some that are in the same situation with fundraising for their adoptions. We are feeling better about things...but still have a long way to go.....we still need to raise money for our USCIS fees about nine hundred ...and about eighteen thousand more for travel. PLEASE PRAY....all the timing in this rest with the USCIS paperwork...we have not filed yet, we will when we raise the fees, but we are almost done with our Dossier, we had hope to be able to send it in February, but not sure when all that will happen, please pray that we are able to get our Dossier there ASAP...God is in control, God has encouraged us and God will provide....to God be the glory!!

Philippians 1:2 Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Preparing For Rain

Leviticus 26:3-4, If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them; Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. God opened the door for our adoption of Brian. He made it possible for the funds to be available when we needed it for the commitment, and for our homestudy. But as we have tried to do fundraisers for our USCIS fees and various other cost to get ready for the adoption we have had little success. Our blog auction ended up with a bunch of bargain hunters trying to get a deal, our bake/yard sale with another couple who are trying to adopt also was basically rained out. There has been many distractions that have taken our attention off of the main purpose of why we are adopting and this has been very discouraging. As the scripture tells us, we need to keep Gods commandments and do them and he will give us rain in His time. So we are stepping back and getting out the way of God in this adoption. We are going to prepare for rain, we are going to continue forward in the things that we can control such as completeing the homestudy, working on the dossier and getting everything ready to send out as soon as possible. Finacially, we are a long ways away from where we need to be to travel, but we believe that God will provide. We are not going to dwell on broken promises, but believe that our Glorious God who opened the door will provide and we will be prepared for it when he does. We want to make sure that God is Glorified in all that we do for this adoption. What our friends, family and those of you that are following our journey can do is pray for us, pray for God's provision, and for us to stay out of His way. Let us know that you are there praying for us....send us a comment. It will be an encouragememnt to know there are people praying.