Sunday, April 16, 2017

Happy Easter | Reece's Rainbow

Today is Easter! I'm currently waiting for our turkey breast to cook, and just finished making our cherry cheesecake!  I'm busy prepping a nice dinner for our crew and I'm truly thankful for each one of them, thankful for Jesus and the sacrifice He willingly made, and praising God that Jesus rose on the third day, defeated death, and broke the chains that would have bound me for eternity!  But if I'm honest, I'm struggling a bit to find joy today.  I keep thinking we should have had seven kids getting baskets this morning.  Two beautiful little girls rather than one, with their five brothers.  It's an odd feeling, to miss a person you haven't met, and yet here I am. I keep thinking of "Mila" and how she didn't have a mother this year to put a bow in her hair and take her to church and tell her about Jesus and his Resurrection.  But I'm SO thankful this is the last year she'll be in a crib instead of around a table, enjoying Easter dinner.  Next year, she'll be celebrating Easter as a daughter. <3

It's been a couple weeks since I have updated, which is maybe odd considering so much is happening right now! We have everything we can possibly do, back from the apostille now. Our homestudy and agency licenses came back. Our FBI clearances came back and rode along with another family that was traveling, so they're already in country. Actually everything is in country minus our homestudy and agency licenses and, of course, USCIS approval.

It's been two weeks and a handful of days since we had biometric fingerprinting for immigration, and we are still waiting for an officer.  This isn't abnormal at all. It can six weeks, on a normal basis, but of course we are hoping for sooner.  What this does mean is that we are not being expedited stateside.  At first I was a bit bummed about that. We want our girl as soon as possible, and every day we wait is another day she's in an orphanage.  But once we are submitted, things will move very quickly, so maybe it's okay that things are still moving at a more steadily slow pace for now.  It gives us more time to fundraise our tail's off, and Lord knows we need it!  We still have approximately $10,000 to feel like we are fully funded!

I've still been applying for grants.  Most say they take 60-90 days to notify winners so I'm not sure we have time to be approved for even one before we travel, but I'm really hopeful.  I know that God is going to work out the details, regardless.  It may be that He works it out in the form of a high interest loan that we pay on monthly, and honestly that would really stink for us.  We aren't exactly rolling in the dough and bringing home a child with special needs isn't going to improve our financial situation, lol.  But if the Lord wants us to be willing to pay for her monthly in order to bring her home, well, He knows we are happy to do so.  She is, after all, priceless.

So that's about where we stand.  We are waiting on one more paper -immigration approval- and once that comes through, we are ready to submit to country.  We could travel in as soon as a month from there!  I'm so, so ready to go.


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