Some Exiting News!

We can finally see something happening!  On Sunday we learned that we got a $3000 matching grant from lifesong!  We are so exited!  We definitely did not expect to get a grant this early in the process but we sure do need it.  We are not completely sure how it works yet.  Our church is partnering with Lifesong so it works a little different for us than it does for people who are going only through Lifesong.  I am pretty sure that we will collect addresses and give them to Lifesong.  Lifesong will then send out letter explaining the grant and that we are trying to raise money.  All of the donations will be tax deductible.  Then Lifesong will match up to $3,000 of what we make.  How exiting!  I will give you guys more information on how it works as soon as I know.  In the mean time, if you want to be on the list of donors and I don't have your address, please e-mail it to me.  My e-mail address is on the contact page of my blog.

How much do we need to raise now...you might ask.  I know it gets a little confusing.  I announced on a recent blog that we were only $1700 short of what we needed to submit our dossier.  Well "stuff" happened and we can no longer put in the $3000 of our money we thought we would be able to.  We now need to come up with $4700 just to submit our dossier.  It was a little disappointing at first but it is just more proof that God has complete control over this situation and wants us to have more faith than we ever thought possible.  These situations he brought into our lives that are using up all of our extra money are all things that he aloud to happen for our good and His glory.

But wait!  We have some more exiting news.  We got our immigration approval in the mail yesterday!  This means that we are ready to send our dossier to the secretary of state for him to certify.  This takes about 10 days.  Then we will be paper ready to submit our dossier.  The only thing we will be waiting on is the money.

The thought of finally being at the point where we are waiting for a referral makes me feel things I can honestly say I have never felt before.  I have been crying, laughing, and reminding myself to breath.  It feels too good to be true...too official.  I feel like this next step makes the whole process so real.  O my goodness we just can't wait.

We are planning a yard sale for the second week of September.  If you have anything you can donate for us to sell, please let me know.  While you are waiting for the next update, please pray for financial provision.  More specifically pray for a great turnout at this yard sale.  We need lots of traffic so we can sell lots of stuff.  Also be praying that God would speak to peoples hearts about helping us with this grant.