We really have had an incredible few weeks. Since our last
post we had the remaining $2,835 gifted to our adoption fund at Small World.
This means that as of last Thursday when I posted the Dossier to our agency we
are now waiting on a referral from Lesotho. In adoption this is known as the ‘waiting
game’ because you really have no idea how long this will take. The ‘referral’
is the actual file of a child/ren available to be adopted. This will be the
first photo we will get to see. We have been encouraged by the news from our
agency. Mid February we received an email from the director of the Lesotho
program who said:
“This has been an exciting week for
Small World’s Lesotho program. This week we received our first referral
from Lesotho! There are a few things we learned from this referral
process. First, this family received their referral just over 4 months
after their dossier was submitted to Lesotho. That is a good referral
time and encouraging. We must remember though that the more families that
are in a program and the further back in line a family is, the more chance
there is for families to wait longer for a referral. Second, we learned
that this match was made by the Lesotho Central Authority in December. It
took almost exactly 2 months to receive the referral documents. Of course
holidays were mixed in that time and could account for some of it.
This has been wonderful news and
encouraging about this pioneer program. We recognize that this is one
case and not all cases are the same, but we remain optimistic about this
program”.
As you could imagine that email was super encouraging for
us. We are so thankful for our wonderful agency and their care for the process.
Many of you are aware that our FB page has been blasted with
another shirt/hoodie fundraiser. We did not intend to do another one of these
but we had so many people asking for them that we decided to give it a bash. I
have even had strangers within our Spring Hill community purchase them. We have
been blown away with how much these shirts have helped us. If you have not got
yours yet, there is still time. The fund closes on March 4th. Click
on the t-shirt on my (or Cam’s) FB page and you should be directed to the
online store. Thank you to all of you who have supported us! We love the idea
that people in the United States, Australia, Singapore, England and Colombia will
be wearing our shirts. We would love you to take a photo of you in your shirt
and post it on our FB page and tell us where you are!
This Friday, we meet with the director of Both Hands to
discuss a fundraiser. I love the idea. In short it is an Orphan Care project
that raises funds for orphans while serving a widow through home improvement
projects. All of the materials are donated and our team of volunteers request
sponsorship for their day of work. All the money raised goes toward our
adoption. We are hoping to do this in the spring before it gets crazy hot here.
Stay tuned…
I have also recently decided that we will do a MEGA-you-won’t-believe-your-eyes
Garage Sale. It dawned on me the other week when I was talking with a friend
who is trying to sell her house and has loads of stuff that she wanted to give
away. I thought ‘hey – I’ll take it off your hands and do a garage sale’. Cam
did enjoy the news as I was driving to fill our van up with stuff J.
So – if you have things lying around your house and ready for a spring clean-out,
let me know and I will be more than happy to take them off your hands for our
MEGA-you-won’t-believe-your-eyes Garage Sale. I know you want to be there!
While all this has been happening I have completed seven
grant applications. Some grants have a number of deadlines throughout the year
so we won’t expect to hear from some for quite a few months. Others wait until
you have a ‘referral’ before they make a decision and others are matching grants,
which means that they approve to match any gift that someone gives.
It really has been quite a busy period and now that the
large amount of paperwork period has passed we keep looking forward to what is
before us. We still need to remain focused on raising the remaining $36,000. Please
join us in prayer about this. Though we do not know how this will be provided
we know the One who does and in this we rest.
Again, thank you to so many of you who are sharing the
journey with us. We are so thankful that we are not alone. If you would like to
support our adoption, please contact us. We soon may have matching grants
available which would be a quicker way to get to the finish line.
Until next time,
Taryn (& Cam)
