Getting there . . .

I just wanted to update you all on our progress to getting little sister home. STILL don't have Acceptance to Korea yet, but we are getting closer. This past week we have mailed out letters to our friends and family asking them to help in any way possible. Last Tuesday, Lifesong called and granted us a covenant loan for $4000 and a matching grant for $3500. Woooohooooo! We are THAT much closer to getting the funds to send our paperwork to Korea!!!

THEN, I got an email today saying that we have been granted $2000. This was totally unexpected that literally fell out of the sky. I'm not kidding. I knew if we were obedient, that God would provide, He always does.

Here is the letter we sent out, just in case you were not blessed to receive one. ;) Only kidding.

Hoping this letter finds you enjoying the New Year! Sorry we didn't get Christmas cards out this year. It was a busy ending to a busy year. Speaking of busy, our lives are going to get a little busier. As most of you know, we brought home Joye last June from South Korea. We have enjoyed her so much and she is such a blessing to our lives. After bringing her home, the Lord began to stir up thoughts of adopting again. We rationalized and talked, prayed and doubted. After we finalized in court with Joye, we finally bit the bullet and signed on with our agency, again. We were told to expect a 3+ year wait. Well, Our Heavenly Father had other plans.

We told our agency that we would accept a child that had special considerations. After many emails, phone calls between our agency and us, there is now a little girl in Korea that is waiting to become a part of our family. It’s a leap of faith. It's super crazy, but we know that this is what God has intended for our family.

The biggest mountain that we are facing is the finances to get her home, about $20,000+. We KNOW that God will provide. He provided every penny for Joye's adoption. However we had two years of praying and waiting. We don't have that long with little sister. She turns a year old on July 1, and we want to get her home as soon as possible.

So we will just get to the point . . . We have partnered with an organization, LifeSong, that helps out adoptive families financially. We have received a generous Covenant Loan for $4,000 and a matching grant worth $3,500. Please pray about giving to our fund. I am not asking for money. I am asking that you search for His Holy Spirit and genuinely ask about partnering with us and LifeSong, to help us bring home a little girl that needs a loving family. Everything that you give will be matched dollar-for-dollar. Whatever you felt led to give, will be more than we have right now. I know that many have fallen on hard times, and I am in no way discounting that, Chad and I felt led to just ask, and see how God mightily moves our gigantic mountain.

Chad and I have been called to adopt, and by stepping out in obedience, we know that God will meet us. If you can't give, please know that we understand, and we ask that you would consider praying for us and our new little one. Prayer is just as important, if not more important than money. You praying for us is a huge help and we appreciate every one.

Please send your donations to:

Lifesong for Orphans

P.O. Box 40 / 202 N. Ford St.

Gridley, IL 61744

Be sure to put Baxter/#1901 in the memo line to reference it to the right account. Thank you!

May God richly bless you all!

I have omitted her name (for the blog), but have added that you can also pay through Paypal. You can do that here. Just make sure you enter in our name and account #.

Thanks again!

Kinda Wordless Wednesday

Fake smile.

Fake Smile.

There's the real one.

Is it just me, or does this girl have natural beauty? We're gonna have to keep her locked up during her high school years. ;)

She was coming near me (while talking) because she wanted to see the pictures. Far cry from the 'camera scrunch' she has had in the months prior.

새해 복 많이 받으세요!!!!

새해 복 많이 받으세요(saehae bok man-hi ba-deu saeyo) or for us Westerners - HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

Today is Seolnal or Korean New Year. It's also Chinese New Year, Mongolian New Year, Tibetan New Year and . . . you get the picture.

I can't help but wonder what Tootsie was doing this time last year. Obviously celebrating the New Year with her Foster Parents, but what were the actual activities that she witnessed and took part in? Did she wear her Hanbok? Did she get money? I bet they had the traditional meals. How different her two worlds are today.

We will be doing our own celebrating tonight. No hanboks, no money. But we will have a Korean dish for dinner that I just happened to have on-hand. Beef with noodles. Korean noodles. We will be thinking of Tootsie's beautiful birth country. The people that we have fallen in love with. Wondering what our New Year will look like next year when we celebrate Seolnal.

So HAPPY NEW YEAR, from our American-Korean family to yours!

새해 복 많이 받으세요(saehae bok man-hi ba-deu saeyo)

Radical Craziness

What I didn't disclose in my last post, as to why I haven't been posting much, is that right after Joye's finalization we felt called to adopt again. We rationalized, prayed and tried to talk ourselves right out of it. We just brought Joye home and were dealing with bonding, tantrums, boundary setting, tantrums, sleeping issues, tantrums. You get the idea, and the place we found ourselves.

Since November, I have been in contact with our agency. For various reasons. Stuff to get Joye's Birth Certificate, and loose ends to close her case. Among those conversations, we asked how long the wait was for another little girl. We were told to expect 2.5-3 years. Ok. Well, if we got on the list now, then once our other little bundle arrived, we would be nice and prepared. So we got on the list.

Wait . . . there's more. Hang with me.

We (our agency and I) have had subsequent conversations since then. One in particular referenced a little girl that had some background information that could invoke some potential problems later on. (You catch my drift)

When God placed adoption on our hearts again, he also mentioned that minor special needs is something that we need to be open to. Really? So we filled out our little sheet of what we would accept, leaving it all open. (i know, crazy. right?)

So back to this little girl. We inquired about her from an email, and there was a list of families wanting to view her file. So I thought "oh, well, she will be placed. She's not meant for our family." Or so I thought.

A couple weeks later, our agency called asking if we wanted our post-placement retainage to be cut to us, or to just minus it off the fees due for the next adoption. We chose just to have it go towards the next adoption. She then mentioned that the little girl we had inquired about still hadn't been placed. My heart sank. My stomach flipped over. "Are you still interested in taking a look at her file?" she asked.

After a weekend of prayer, and much peace, we are adding this adorable little girl to our family. That's right. You might want to read it again, to let it sink in. Radical. Craziness.

We have not. one. dime. saved. All the assignment fees are due NOW. Our homestudy has to updated, fingerprints re-done, paperwork galore. I can't share her picture, tell much about her, because we haven't sent our acceptance to Korea yet. All the above HAS to be done before that. I just wanted to keep you all updated and ask for your prayers. The girls (oh ,wow, that sounds weird - GIRLS) will be 14 months apart. Yikes!

Like I said, we have total peace about this. We know He will provide the money. We know His timing is perfect. We know that He is in all of this. It makes absolutely NO sense. But what does when you are following Him? Right? Everything points to this being right for our family.

Radical.


Craziness.

So if you find yourself thinking of us. Would you do us a favor? PRAY. Pray that all the balls that are now in the air, will fall into place, so we can get this little precious peanut home to her forever family.

Thank you. We appreciate every one.

Where'd you go?

I totally forgot I had a blog! I had a feeling that something vital was missing, but just couldn't quite put my finger on it! (Just kidding)

I have had every intention of updating, but just couldn't find the time.

Wow, what a break!

Many things have happened since we last chatted.

Abram turned 6. We spent the day (Dec. 1) out and about just doing everything he wanted to do on his special day.

Kaleb turned 9. I know, I can't believe he's going to be a decade-old next year. I have to purposely block out that he's more than half-way to his drivers license. Yikes. *Blocking it OUT!* We spent the day (Dec. 27) out and about doing what he wanted to do for his special day which was watching the new Narnia. FAVORITE! It's my favorite-by far. It's going to be hard to top that one!

Tootsie had her first Christmas. She LOVED it all. Loved the presents. Loved the attention. Loved the busyness of it all.

We went through puppy training . . . with Tootsie. She had a bad habit of throwing temper tantrums at the drop of a dime. So we had a couple rough months, being consistent with her on what was allowed and what wasn't. Did I mention it was rough? Well it was. Really. Rough. Whew. But the cloud has lifted (for the most part) and we are back on track.

We've gone back and forth with the sleeping thing. Have good weeks, bad days. She's still learning to trust. Getting more comfortable. Laughing more. Talking a bit more. Communicating more.

We had our last post-placement visit. It was really good to get that done and to answer some lingering questions. Get some positive feedback. I want to reiterate - I LOVE OUR SOCIAL WORKER. She's awesome.

Joye's Birth Certificate is on it's way. Like blogging I slacked MAJORLY on that, and now I'm scrambling to get it here so I can get her SS card so we can get our taxes done. That's a mouth-full.

Well, I better start on supper. I am going to try my hardest to keep up and get back to blogging. Be patient with me, it's on the bottom of my long list of to-do's. I'm sure there are many that can relate. :)

Journey to Joye Montage

Adoption Truth #1

In light of National Adoption Awareness Month, I felt led to share how adoption has touched our lives and correct some misconceptions. I really don't know how many "truth's" I plan to do this month, but this one has been lain (very heavily) upon my heart and I would like to get rid of it, so to speak.

I don't believe that everyone is called to adopt. There are some that are meant to adopt, and some that are meant to pray for those who adopt and some are meant to financially support or help those that are called to adopt. All are beautiful.

I feel many are called to adopt, but discount that calling. Many things can pop up and steal the faith that it takes to start the process. One of those things is . . . the money. Everyone needs money. You have to have it to survive. Some people have a lot of it and some don't have enough. One lie that most believe is that only those who have a lot of money can adopt. NOT TRUE. Does it take a lot of money to adopt? It can. Depends on where you adopt from.

Now, I know nothing about people's circumstances. All I know is our circumstances went against the "only the rich can adopt" theory. We are self employed and live a VERY simple life. We didn't have the money laying around to start Joye's adoption. In fact, we put the first fees on our credit card. Which was about $4,000. Was that smart? Not entirely. Our CC company hiked the fees and made it really hard to pay back. However, I can say with certainty that we no longer have that Credit Card and that it was paid off. Not sure how though, I don't remember. (I am not advocating going into debt to pay for an adoption - just stating our journey and how it all worked out.) We then opened up a savings account and got to work praying daily for God's Mighty provision. We did a few fundraisers. Raised about $4,000 and were touched so deeply by our community who helped out A LOT. Where did the rest come from? I have no idea. Our savings account just kept growing and growing and growing. When we received the phone call that changed our lives forever, all the money was in there to accept Joye's referral. Actually, we had a whopping $.69 left over.

Then we were wondering if we could afford to go to Korea. All we had was $.69! Again, by the time we were ready to travel, we had saved enough to go and pick up our baby girl. To recall, I really don't know where the money came from. I know we saved here and there, used a tax return or two, but does it make ANY sense that we (we didn't; HE did) had accumulated $20,000+ in a little over a year? Not one iota.

But God.

He knew.

He knew, right down to the nickels and dimes.

I know that if you step out in faith and trust Him, he will provide. I know it!

So that is my Truth for today. If God calls you to adopt, trust that He will provide EVERYTHING you need to get you through. Because He will. I promise. If you read any of the Gospels you will see how enamored Jesus is with the act faith. It's the only thing that shocks him! The Bible says "you cannot serve two masters . . . you cannot love both God and money." (Matt. 6:24) Who are you going to believe and love more? I LOVE the verse that is just a few above, which I think is eloquently placed together with the money verse, "store up your treasures in heaven" Matt. 6:20. You can't take money with you to heaven, it's no good there. But you can take some beautiful children. Amen?