Saturday, October 10, 2015

He is Good.


Where do we even begin? As the new song goes, “to tell you my story is to tell of HIM!” (Listen to this song HERE.) There is so much to cram in to update everyone so we will do our best to hit the highlights! Here is the latest highlight reel with Team D Adoption (and general life stuff too!):

We….well GOD just raised $25,000 through our Youcaring site! Our puzzle is complete and each one of these pieces has a name on the back representing all those who have helped our dream come true. We will forever cherish this puzzle which will hang in our house. We cannot believe this happened 14 days ahead of the October 23 deadline. Once again, we are reminded that God is in charge and when He puts something on your heart, He will finish it! The morning that this was completed was the same morning that Nathan read the words “God funds what He favors.” (Thank you Scott Oatsvall for sending us the book!) God did it! We are reminded of scripture when Luke 18:27 says, “What may seem impossible with man, is possible with God.” We knew that raising $25,000 would be tough but with so many friends and family believing and praying alongside us, we knew that God could handle this. He loves the impossible because He gets to show up! This money will be going toward our agency fees and lawyer fees for the placement of the child. This is our largest expense by far and we can’t say thank you enough. “In all my prayers, I thank God for you.” Phil. 1:3. We love you! We are so honored and humbled that so many of you would trust us and support us in this endeavor. Knowing we have a huge village ready to love on our son is an indescribable gift. You have heard the call of James 1:27 and listened. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts! Now celebrate with us this weekend as we praise God for the way He does the impossible! He always been and always will be faithful. This song by Sara Groves has been ringing in our ears the past few days and we hope you will claim it as your anthem this week-- He's always been faithful.



 
This journey brings with it a myriad of emotions. A couple of weeks ago we thought we had a potential birth mom match. She was laid on our hearts immediately after reading her application and we were excited to be presented to her. In this process there are 2 major steps. The first is for us to agree to be presented to a potential birth mom. The next is once presented to the birth mom she has to say Yes to us! We have a book that tells all about us and shows who we are and what we are all about! We are proud of this book. We knew that we might not get picked but the competitive nature of us wanted to “win”. Well….we lost. She chose another family. Now hear us clearly, we know we really didn’t lose. We know God has the perfect child picked out in advance for our family. We are pumped for that day! BUT it still doesn’t take away the fact that we got our hopes up. We had already let our minds go to the January due date and got a little excited about this sweet baby Boy! After this mom picked another family (she chose another family because she didn’t want her child to be in family with a family that had a biological child already—which we totally can understand) we realized that this is an emotional roller coaster! After the last 2.5 years of infertility we have been riding this roller coaster for long enough. But we know that God has called us to this place. We know we must be patient. We must rely on Him. We must trust that He knows what boy would be the best to be a Daniel. So we continue to pray for strength as this is a process. We are waiting for more birth mom applications and we pray discernment for us and her! Will you join us in this prayer? We will continue to update you along the way and hopefully soon will have good news. We don’t know any timeline. It is all a surprise!

-          We are still selling raffle tickets and t-shirts for the adoption. After we get matched with a birth mom, we will have birth mom expenses. The t-shirt sales and raffle tickets are covering those. At first, we had a hard time understanding birth mom expenses but after talking with the agency and other adoptive families we realize how important this is. We want our future birth mom to be fully taken care of, to be healthy, and to feel safe during her pregnancy. We want her to feel loved and provided for. Many have asked how they can give even though we have met our online goal. The YouCaring site is still up and running and you can give there. Another way is to stock up on raffle tickets and tshirts! If you are interested in buying a raffle ticket in hopes of winning a yeti cooler or a go-pro, you can purchase via paypal by giving $20 a ticket to ntdaniel123@gmail.com. If you are interested in ordering a t-shirt for you and your kids, please go here to do that www.dreaminwithteamd.com We will draw the winner on 10/23 at 10:23pm -- may the odds be ever in your favor! J We cannot thank you enough for your continued support. As you wear the shirt, please pray for our sweet birth mom wherever she may be! God loves her and she is not alone. And neither are we! He is so good.



As for our daily life around here, we are doing good. Fenley is loving 3rd grade. She is excited about a sun and stars presentation on Monday and she informed us at dinner that Daddy better help her do a good powerpoint because she told her class, “My dad is like a scientist.” I guess teaching physical science the past two years and physics this year makes Nathan a scientist. Fenley is about to start swim team next week which makes Becca super proud! Nathan is in the middle of football season. This is a crazy time of year. We are enduring a building year…another term for losing a lot of games. The redeeming factor to this is we are focusing on loving these boys. We are trying to have them over for dinner some now that we live close to school. Becca’s mom was here this week and she did a great meal in “Momma Donna” fashion and the boys loved it! Tater tot casserole and banana pudding were both a HUGE hit! Becca is still loving her work at church as the director of connections and is about to start working with the “No Makeup November” campaign with RAVE. God is good and we loving being along for the ride! While we anxiously await a new member to our family, we want to live in the here and now. We want to live a life where we are in the present and don’t miss opportunities that are right in front of us. “I came so that you can have life and have it to the fullest.” John 10:10. We want to live a FULL life and that means living in the present. But don’t worry; we are so ready to have this sweet boy join us!


PRAISE. This needed its own paragraph. God is good. He is so good. We serve a Good, Good Father! This song has been our anthem this week and we hope it blesses you. Good Good Father by Chris Tomlin. We know that this blog isn’t a place for a sermon. Nor do we want it to be too long but we also want you to know just how incredible our God is. Four short months ago we weren’t even sure we wanted to adopt, we lived comfortably in a condo in Destin, and never thought about raising $25k. And here we are! Nothing can say it better than 2 Corinthians 9:15, “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift.”

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