O My Goodness!!!!!!

This whole adoption process is such an emotional roller coaster.  We never seem to know what is going to happen and we just LOVE all of God's surprises! We had some bad news yesterday and today we got some great news!  I talked to our program manager for the first time today since we are getting closer to submitting our dossier.  We started talking about the different fees that we have coming up and the time frame for getting that money.  She then asked me when I think we will have ALL of the money to finance the adoption.  I of course have no clue....it all depends on God's timing.

She then went on to tell me that we will want to have it together pretty soon because there is a good chance that once we get our dossier sent in, we will recieve our referral!  She explained how in the past few months, their Ethiopia program has been really slow and once we get our dossier sent in, we will be number two on the list!  She is already looking for children for us!  We are so exited we could just burst!

Yes this means we will need like ALL of the money in a very short period of time.  Yes it does seem impossible.  And Yes, God is so powerful he can provide it all in a matter of weeks.  Just a few hours ago we were thinking how awesome it will be to watch God bring us over $25000 in the next year.  Now we can't wait to experience how he amazes us by bring us that much money in a matter of months.  It seems impossible and that's because in OUR power it is impossible.  God loves to take impossible situations and show us His strength.  Impossibility is the perfect atmosphere for a miracle.

So then how will we come up with the money?  I have no clue.  We have spent every penny we have on this adoption thus far and our account is pretty much running dry at the moment.  We have applied for every grant we could, we are fundraising like crazy, and we have basically done everything that we can do.  We will not borrow money to fund this adoption.  God makes it very clear that borrower is slave to the lender.  We don't want to be servants to anyone but our God.  God does not need us to go into debt to adopt these kids.  All he needs us to do is diligently work towards the goal....he WILL take care of the rest.

Here is what we are looking at financially...
Turn in our dossier- It costs $12,000 to turn our dossier into Ethiopia.  We are $2100 short.  We are hoping that our yard sale goes great and we can use the money we make to submit.  Please be praying for a successful yard sale.  $2100 would be more than we have made in any yard sale up to this point.

Other fees that go with the dossier - When we pay Ethiopia, we also need to pay our adoption agency.  We will owe them $2750.  I am going to ask how much is in our Lifesong account on Thursday.  We only need people to have donated about $1200 to be able to pay our fees.

Referral - We will have a couple of weeks of waiting while they translate our dossier.  We will then get our referral.  There is no guarantee when it comes to international adoption but they are telling us our referral will come in a matter of weeks.  We are expecting we will get our referral 4-6 weeks after we send our dossier to Ethiopia.  Once we receive our referral e-mail, we will have one week to accept or deny it. This also means one week to come up with whatever money we are lacking.  We will need $9,595 to accept the referral of both children.

Travel - Shortly after we receive our referral we will need to travel.  We need to make two trips and we do not get to choose when we leave.  We will be told only days in advance which does not give us any time to shop deals on plane tickets.  Both of the trips together will cost about $10,000.

So basically we need prayer for God's provision.  Pray specifically that he supplies all the money at exactly the right time.  Pray for our family as we prepare to add two children to our family much quicker than we imagined.  Praise God for how awesome he is!  Families wait years and years for their children.  He is blessing us beyond belief with this speedy adoption.  He is changing our hearts for Him and we are so grateful.  God is the same God today, yesterday, and for eternity.

We counted our change today.  We had $300 in change. Wow!  

**If you want to help us out financially there are a few ways you can contribute.  We are selling T-shirts and coffee.  All of the info about this merchandise can be found on the right hand column of the blog.  You can also donate money.  We currently have a matching grant with Lifesong so whatever you donate will be matched penny for penny up to $3,000.  These donations are tax deductible and 100% of the money goes to our adoption.  If you want to donate to our Lifesong account, here is how you do it.  You can also e-mail me by going to our contact page on this blog and I will send you an official Lifesong letter in the mail.   We love you and are blessed by your support!

Check made payable to Lifesong for Orphans

On the memo line write Pehl/acct#2989

Send to:

Lifesong for Orphans 

P.O. Box 40

Gridley, IL 61744

Kinda Bad News.

Today I got an e-mail from our dossier coordinator.  She explained to me that the fee schedule I had been given at the beginning of this process is outdated and it is going to cost more than we thought to submit our dossier.  Basically we are having to pay fees that we thought would wait until we got a referral right now.  This includes the fee for the second child of $4900.  So basically, we are $4900 short of what we need to submit.

I am not going to lie....I am a bit frustrated.  Once we got on the list we would have 6-8 months of waiting time to come up with that $4900.  It just does not make sense to me that they are going to hold us up and prolong the whole process for this fee.  I am thanking God for his sovereignty today.  He has ALL of his children right where he wants them...including us.

On another note, we are super busy with life right now!  Gavin has had lots of work which is wonderful.  It is really helping us pay for this adoption.  We are doing another yard sale this weekend so come by and shop or donate items.  Also, please pray that the yard sale is a huge success.  Maybe $4900 of success:)  Also keep your Lifesong letters in mind....we have never needed the money as much as we do now.

We love you all and love your prayers and support.  Please pray for peace in our lives as we trust God to carry out His plan and try to find joy in our waiting.

Birth Certificate....Check

I don't know how you guys feel but I have been waiting on the edge of my seat for my birth certificate to come back from The Secretary of State.  I was beginning to get concerned that it never got to California.  It took so long to get back to me. Today I got it in the mail and the actual words that came out of my mouth were Praise Jesus!  Just one more thing I don't have to think about:)  We should have the other document back next week and then we will have our dossier in the mail....maybe;).

Waiting...and Waiting....and African Hair?

I am starting to really "feel"  the waiting part of this adoption.  We have only been at this for about eight months.  In the adoption world that is nothing.  People wait years and years for their children to come home. We received our document back from the AZ Secretary of State with a note attached telling us to completely re-due the document.  I am a little bit heart broken.  I thought for sure that this was the week we would finally be able to say that all we are waiting for are children.  I am ready to be on the list!  I want to know that we have a file in Ethiopia that says we can accept children whenever they have them available for us.  I have to daily remind myself that this IS all happening in God's perfect timing.  He knows when our kids will get here and exactly when we need to submit our dossier.  Right now it is just killing me that things keep coming up...and then keep coming up.  This is the third time I have sent this document back to the Secretary of State.  Please pray that this time it will get authenticated.  I need to be using this time to draw close to God and praise him for caring about us so much that he is having us wait on His perfect timing.

Meanwhile I have been studying how to do my little Ethiopians hair which only makes me more exited to get them home.  There are so many cute ways to do African hair and I am so exited to get started!I did look up a few different hairstyles and watch a couple tutorials on youtube.  For the most part, I just wanted to get a good idea of what I need to do when they get home.  So I studied a one year olds hair care regiment.  Most of the time when the kids come home from Ethiopia, they have shaved heads due to lice.  If they do have hair, it is not healthy to say the least and there is not much you can do with it except get it healthy and start trying to grow it.  Here are some things I will be doing to make sure my childrens hair is healthy and moisturized.

Wash it - Either with a moisturizing shampoo or with a conditioner weekly.  I will do an apple cider vinigar wash once month.

Condition it - With a deep conditioner.

De-tangle it - With a leave in conditioner

Moisturize it - With coconut oil or Shea butter

Style it - With a styling cream of my choice.

This is a lot to do on a babies hair!  I am so exited to get started!  The cute styles are endless.  I did try to practice a couple hair styles on Irelyn which did not go to well.  Her hair is too soft and slippery and fell out of every style I tried to do.  I am going to make a practice board which I found on my favorite chocolate hair/vanilla care blog so I can practice before they get here.

I am trying to stay busy and trying to keep my mind off of the wait.  Thankfully I have a very active little girl who takes up a lot of my time.  I dont know how parents who have no kids wait for their adoptions to finally take place. At least when you are pregnant you have an exact time frame.

Love

As we get deeper and deeper into this adoption experience, I have become incredibly amazed by the very concept of Love.  First of all, the way God loves us is absolutely indescribable.  He has shown himself so real and so powerful in very obvious ways during this process.  He has given us exactly what we need emotionally, physically, and spiritually to get us through the rough patches.

Then there is the love that we feel for our children.  I always wondered how we would feel about them before we even know who they were or even after we see there pictures.  I wondered how it would compare with how I felt when I was pregnant with Irelyn or when I saw her face for the first time.  Let me tell you....it is exactly the same!  We love these kids with the same kind of passion that we loved Irelyn with while she was growing in my belly.  The only difference is that God has chose someone else to protect and care for our children in the womb.

Next, there is the love that others have shown to us by praying for us, offering an encouraging word, donating yard sale item, and donating money. Some of them have been close friends and some have been people that hardly know us.  Generosity is such a beautiful thing.  It does not come naturally to us in the flesh so it must come straight from God.  It is so easy to see God's love for all of us when someone gives of their time or money to help someone else.  God is truly getting all the glory!

Last but not least is the love that I have for my wonderful husband.  It is amazing to watch him chase after God not knowing where it will take him but having complete faith that God is God.

Delays and lots of letters.....

Everyone told us to expect delays during he adoption process.  Of course we will expect delays...nothing ever seems to go as we plan.  Our dossier seems to keep getting delayed.  When our fingerprints got delayed, it was not big deal.  When our home study was taking forever to get approved I just went with the flow.  Well I am so exited to submit this dossier and things just keep coming up!  I know I should not be surprised that God's plan is different than mine....it is starting to get a little rough waiting.

When we got the dossier back from the AZ Secretary of State there were two things that needed to be corrected.  First I needed to send my California birth certificate to California to be certified(my bad).  Second, our financial info worksheet was not certified correctly.  I scanned the financial document and sent it to my dossier coordinator to make sure it was incorrect.  She said yes and I need to get it done again.  So I called the Secretary of State office to make sure that my document was correctly notarized before I sent it back.  They had me e-mail it to them and confirmed that it was their mistake.  So I sent it back.  About ten days later I got it back in the mail saying that the notary was done wrong:( Really?!?!?   So today I got it corrected and sent it back to the Secretary of State.  Please pray that it comes back certified.

So to sum it all up, I am soooo ready to submit our dossier to our adoption agency.  I get super nervous every time I get a document pertaining to the adoption that someone is sending something back to me to do again.  And I am still very exited about God's plan for this adoption.  It is such a comfort to me that God is delaying this part of the journey for our good and His glory.  It does not get better than that!

While I wait, I am sending out Lifesong grant letters! They turned out so beautiful and I have actually enjoyed sitting down in the evenings to address each letter by hand to our friends and family.  It is nice to be so busy while we wait for paperwork to come back to us.    We are sending out about 160 letters!  I see God blessing this grant already by simply supplying addresses for us to send out letters to.  I am so exited to see God work through His people to help bring His children home.  God desires for the ENTIRE body of Christ to care for the orphans in one way or another and He has blessed us greatly since we decided to obey him.  I am exited to see how He blesses others when he moves their hearts to be a part of this adoption.

My work station.... that's a lot of envelopes! 

Most likely if you are reading this blog, I have your address and you will have a letter in the mail in a few days.  If you don't receive a letter and would like to help bring our kids home, just let me know via e-mail.  I will make sure to get a letter to you.

Matching Grant

We just received new information about how to move forward with our matching grant.  We will soon be sending out facebook messages and letters in the mail.  This is for all of you that have been sitting on the edge of your seats waiting to be able to help bring our children home.  We officially have an account with Lifesong and can begin collecting donations.  All of the donation are tax deductible and will get matched penny for penny up to $3,000!  Praise God for this awesome gift!  We have an unofficial deadline of November 5, 2012.  Although funds can still be received and matched after this time, LifeSong likes to provide a deadline so that the fund will be available for us to use.

Mail checks to: 
Lifesong for Orphans
PO Box 40 
Gridley, IL 61744

On the memo line write (preference Pehl #2989 adoption)

Please prayerfully consider supporting us.

What we do besides adoption paperwork.

It may surprise you to know that us Pehl's do more than just fill out paperwork and organize fundraisers.  Although this does take up a huge portion of our time, we have a lot of other things going on.  I thought I would fill you guys in on how our family is really doing.  To put it in one word I would have to say we are BLESSED.  God is showing himself to us in ways we could have never imagined and we are loving it!  He is providing for everything we need as well as so many things we want.

Gavin is very busy with work....Praise God!  Busier than he has been since I met him.  He was made to work and is loving having so much to do.  The money is helping out so much with the adoption. . We are thinking about selling our house sometime in the future and building a new one.  We hope to be pretty close to mortgage free when we build the new house so as soon as we can sell our current house and make a decent profit we are going to do it.  The only problem is we still have not completely finished the house that were in.  So on top of how busy Gavin is with work, he also needs to work on the house.  I wish I could help him more but I am somewhat useless at putting up trim and landscaping the yard.

I am a busy mommy!  With Irelyn just turning one, she seems to be getting into everything!  She is teething and not handling it well.  It seems like it has been weeks since she has been herself.  Not only is she teething but she has had a number of really bad diaper rashes as well and roseola in the past few weeks.  Poor thing just cant catch a break.  God been providing new furniture and appliances for us lately.  These things were all given to us and we could not be more grateful.  I have been re-organizing everything!

As a family, we are taking "Entrusted with a Child's Heart".  We are very exited to see what God has in store for us this year through this study.  I am on the worship team and loving it.  There is nothing quite like worshiping God with music.  This puts Gavin on daddy duty for a whole weekend.  We are also getting heavily involved with a new orphan care ministry at our church.  We are so exited to see what God has planned!

This is just some of the stuff that is happening in our lives besides adoption.  We try to get out and have some fun once in a while....not that this isn't all fun....we just like to have to kind of fun where we don't have to think sometimes.  Most of the time it is hard to believe what God is doing in our lives.  When we let God fully take the wheel in our lives, he begins to bless us beyond our wildest imagination.