Casting Stones

Psalm 55:22 “Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you.” 

Lately we have had a few “cares” hanging a bit heavy on our hearts.  

Yesterday we had some WONDERFUL news!  Our letters seeking confirmation that we will commit to adopt both girls (LOA) came from Ch*na!  And we are sooo very excited about that!!!  But with those letters came a few “cares”.

 

In other words… big agency fees.

 

These wouldn’t necessarily have been cares.  Well, they weren’t previously!!  You see, we expected some money to be here that did not come.  So what we thought was all okay, became a “care” unexpectedly.  More on that later.

Aside from that and above all else, we know we are following the Lord’s leading with this adoption.  But, as most people who have adopted or are in the process to adopt internationally could tell you, when you follow His lead and step out in faith to bring an orphan home, many times you are met with trouble.  Whether it is financial trouble, health issues, your car dying, your basement flooding and all your appliances ruined, nay-sayers telling you that you shouldn’t be doing this because you don’t have the total cost of the adoption saved up ahead of time, trouble getting your homestudy and/or paperwork done (or what have you), there is just usually trouble of some kind!

 John 16:33 “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world”.

It doesn’t really matter.  The enemy will try to attack you.  ANY time you follow the Lord–you WILL be met with nay-sayers.  (And sometimes unexpected leaky sinks and broken dishwashers.)  There will be trials. There will be troubles.  Almost every time.   When you are doing something like trying to bring an orphan home to a family, the enemy just does not want to let that happen!!

 

So he attacks.

There have been so many things that have happened during this adoption process that have confirmed for us that we are following God’s will and that these girls ARE chosen for us by Him.  But our process hasn’t been without its troubles.  I don’t take that to mean that we shouldn’t be doing this.  I just try to remember that the enemy is attacking.  But sometimes all these things (attacks) are stacked up and a person starts to get overwhelmed from it all.  That seems to be where we are a little bit.

.   

The girls have been sick.  I’ve had two on oxygen at the same time, one with pneumonia and one who got a small head cold and had to go on O2 full time because her little system just couldn’t handle it.  We had xrays for that same little girl because she couldn’t walk for about 5 or 6 days for some unknown reason.   Now she’s walking again and fine, praise God!  One of the boys had a broken arm.  And we had some big emotional trauma for one of our oldest sons (some bad things just seemed to keep happening to him for about 3-4 weeks straight).

 

Trouble.

We have had some successful fundraisers for this adoption, but we have had a bit of trouble with some matching grants we were promised.  Without going into too many details, we recently found out that we will still get the matching money, but it will not be coming until possibly late June.  We were expecting it this month, and we were counting on that money to pay our final set of agency fees that we knew would be coming with our LOA when it finally arrived.

Now that it’s here (thank you Jesus!!), and our funds are not, we are finding ourselves about $1200 dollars short of what we need to pay those fees.  Yes we have some funds set aside for the adoption that we will use, but it wasn’t the full amount we needed for our agency fees.   Like I said, we expected our matching grant to be here, but it isn’t so we are having to scramble a bit.

We are trying to raise some funds quickly. 

This is a beautiful ceramic piece my niece made for the girls after we came home from Ukraine with Anna and Victoria.  It has Grace, Faith, and Hope written in Chinese on it because those are the middle names of our girls.  At the time, we did NOT know we would be adopting from China. 

Faith

Like EVER!

Hope

We knew that God was in this when we found out Hailey’s Chinese name means “Love”.  We knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was our daughter!!

Grace

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”   1 Cor. 13:13

That is also why we changed the name of our blog.  But I digress…

ANY time you follow the Lord–you will be met with nay-sayers.  And sometimes unexpected leaky sinks or broken dishwashers. There will be trials and troubles.  Almost every time.

So how should we respond to this? 

Psalm 55:22 “Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you.” 

So here’s the deal…  

We are trying to come up with a  way to raise some funds quickly.  Because we need them right now, we cannot have them donated to our Reece’s Rainbow FSP.  We don’t have access to those funds until we travel.  So we have started a Chip-In.  

For every donation of $20.00 to our chip-in on the side bar of the blog, we will send you one of these worry stones (we are choosing to call them Blessing Stones) that have Faith, Hope, or Love written on them.  Sending them to you will be like a physical act for us to remember to cast all our cares upon Him, and to remember to have faith and hope that He will equip us and provide for what He has called us to do.   

Also, it helps us remember how much our Heavenly Father loves the orphan!!!

The stone you receive will also represent the ripple in the water that you are creating with your donation to help us bring our girls home.   

As Mother Theresa said, “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”

And as a bonus, we will have a giveaway.  For everyone who shares this fundraiser on their blog or facebook or some other way, you will be entered into a drawing for this awesome necklace.  If you decide to donate and share, you will receive 5 entries in the giveaway. 

We were BLESSED with this necklace by one of my very special blog readers.  She offered it to me when she won it in another giveaway.  I have gone back and forth with wanting to keep it for myself because it is very special to me.  I LOVE this necklace. But  I think that maybe someone else could be blessed by it.  Maybe you know someone who is waiting for their special little one in China.  Maybe YOU are waiting to bring your child home.  Regardless, this necklace is just beautiful and we are willing to part with it if it helps us get our daughters home.  

We would really appreciate it if you would share about our fundraiser on your blog, or on facebook, twitter, or by word of mouth that might lead to a donation to help us out.  We really need to get the word out quickly!!   Then let me know where you have shared about it so I can enter you into the giveaway!  

Remember...please share share share!!!  THANK YOU!!!  

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.  1 Cor. 13:13