Chicken Rancher Seeking Son Gets Help! Deut 14:29

Thanks so much to all of you that have already participated in our most successful fundraiser yet! We "dressed" the chickens last week and have sold all but 8 of them since!

Deut 14:29 - give it to the...orphans... so they can eat and be satisfied. Then the LORD your God will bless you in all your work.

Our family is praying that God does bless you because of your cheerful giving; and when He does, I hope you'll share how with us as an encouragement to all. Your story may be the spark that one of your friends needs to support another adoption from somewhere else! Isn't God's economy awesome - too big to comprehend how it all works together for His good.

I don't think I've done very well in communicating to everyone that has helped us out thus far that your donations / chicken and tile purchases / other assistance goes so much further than just helping our family get Liam.

We're raising the $5,000 needed for the orphanage donation. This will be the money that we hand to the orphanage director upon arrival the day we first meet Liam. While this is directly associated with our adoption, the money will actually impact the kids that are not leaving with us that day. While it breaks our hearts (probably like most) that we can't take 10 or 12 of them home that day - we know that the kids we aren't able to provide a home for will be a little better off because of the money (from you) in the donation. We are grateful for the past donations made by other families that have had a direct impact on Liam's life - providing clothes, sheets & blankets, food & kitchen supplies, new bottles & nipples for the cleft babies, maybe even an occasional toy for the little guys to occupy their time and give them some stimulation.

So I wanted to say thanks to all of you that have helped us thus far - your giving does a great deal more than what you may have thought! God Bless you and may God Bless the donation when we offer it to the orphanage that it would be used to benefit the kids that haven't found their families yet!

Our package is on it's way to Liam

We just received this picture of what we will be sending to Liam from Red Thread. He should get it on Monday and then the orphanage will know Liam has a Mommy and Daddy coming to bring him home. This will also help prepare him for leaving everything he has ever known behind. It is all becoming real to us now and we are all excited to be adding another blessing to our family. He is only one of the many millions of orphans around the world that so desperately need a family,but Liam's life will be changed forever and so will ours.

I am following a blog now of a family bringing home two older girls and they got the most amazing letter from one of their daughters. You can read the letter here. Adoption has changed us as a family and we need to advocate for these precious children who don't have a voice. Praying more people will open their hearts and homes to orphans and lives will be changed.

Red Thread Care Packages

We just found out about a great way to send a care package to our little guy waiting in China for us. Visit here to check out what they can do. We're sending a picture book that Ann will put together for us from emailed pictures, she'll translate a letter for us and even call the orphanage to ask specific questions about our little Liam!!! Hurray!

We hope the orphanage answers the phone and is in a talkative mood. We're trusting that God will allow us to find out what He wants us to know in His time. We still have a lot of "unknowns" concerning his medical condition - we're praying that God is growing him up big and strong - he looked so little in both pictures that we got from when he was 6 months old.

Pray for an encouraging update!!!

The Pediatrician

We had to get health certificates for everyone in the house for our home study - standard practice for the US. So we loaded everyone up and went to our superappointment - this was in Sept, I think. If my boys hadn't been there, Grace (now 5) would have easily been the oldest child there. So Hadyn (13) and Eamon (11) were definitely standouts in height and age. And I'm sure my reaction to my paper toga, was remarkable as well. I wasn't in the room with them and I couldn't pull off getting a picture of either of me; but the ped's comment was something like, "you aren't used to examinations, are you?". There was a lot of hand pushing and "Oh my's" from me, that wore two pairs of shorts and some sweats. If that weren't enough, Rylan and Curran met us there after some college classes. I think the receptionist thought they might have been applying for a job or something. I was able to get pictures of them in their paper togas - Curran had the rubber glove on his head for a while, then made a balloon for Grace out of it. What a trip. Yes, doctor, they've had all the shots they need.....

Christmas Pictures

We had some great weather for our Christmas pictures. Our in-house photographer (Curran) set everything up for some great shots. I'm glad these kids look like their mother! We had a birthday party for Grace (5) and Hope (3) yesterday, so I put some of them in there as well.

We just started sending this blog out on facebook and via email- we're very excited to have started the process and are actually getting through the steps so much quicker than we were able to when we were in Germany. Overnight mail actually gets places OVERNIGHT when you're in the US! What a concept! It's great.

And everyone we had to call while we were in the looking phase was awake the same time we were. Looking through the lists of waiting children is always the same - regardless of where you are or what time it is, but calling an agency to ask a question or lock a child in is an entirely different story. For Hope's adoption, the list of children came out while I was on a retreat with the older boys - around 10pm! That was a memorable drive home that night!

Getting back into that "phase" of the process, it was great to see from one day to the next that some kids were not still on the list when we'd check back. Sometimes even the kids with the "unknowns" associated with their special need would drop from the list - finding their forever families. Heartbreaking when sometimes they would show up again - there are so many kids on the list that need to be adopted - some almost perfectly healthy, some needing minor surgeries and some that have some more unknowns or even some pretty significant known issues. It seems like there are so many more SN kids on the list than there were before - over 2,000 kids right now! I guess Liam was on his list for more than a couple months when we found him. I guess God was still working on me with some more of my "issues", and now that we've found him, we're comfortable with his specific needs. We had some research to do and found that, yes, we could handle his special needs and now we know that he was meant to be ours all along! God just had to grow me a little more. He's got a VSD (heart) and some other issues that can be repaired with some specialized surgery that isn't available in China.

Here is another little picture of Liam - I can't yet figure out how to get it into the header with the other one. I'm going to have to break down and 'read the map' or ask directions pretty soon. Now that we're getting through the process (home study complete, I-800 application filed, matched with baby) I have some things to blog about -rather than saying "we stood in line for 2 hours to get a form signed". More to follow - maybe I'll write about our trip to the pediatrician...

Tile Coasters - Christmas is coming!

We got a great idea for Christmas presents from my very artsy sister-in-law. Painted tiles that can be used as coasters for drinks. What a great idea - no more using 10 glasses per day for each person in the family. Now, we each have a coaster with our name on it, so we know which glass is mine the next time I want to take a drink.

We've got all the supplies ready and are standing by to make your Christmas presents for you. If you'd like a set for your family or to give as gifts to the people you know that use lots of glasses (everyone with more than 1 kid), just send me an email and let me know how many you'd like, what letter(s) you want on them and which color you'd like for the letter(s) and the border (if you want a border). You can get the same letter on all of them like a last name monogram - OR - the first letter of everyone's first name in the family like we did.

Tiles are travertine with little, fuzy, felt feet on the back to prevent scratches on your furniture and the ink is Stayz-On so it will not run or bleed. Ink color choices are red, blue, green, brown, and black; letter choices are A, B, C, D - I think you get the idea!!!!!!

Our cost is minimal, and shipping is about $1 per tile - any amount donated would be great - if you'd like to use PayPal, just use the "Donate" link at the top right and send me an email (to: gettingliam@gmail.com ) and tell me what you'd like - you can get of any number of tiles. Thanks a lot for taking a look! Thanks also if you make a donation - we are so blessed to be able to open our home to another precious little image bearer and we thank you for being a part of this great journey.

Oh yeah - don't tell any of my relatives about this - they're all getting these for Christmas!!!

Help Fund Liam's Adoption

After the first two adoptions, we're pretty much tapped out. While I can add to our adoption fund a little via our monthly budget, we've decided this time around to raise funds through several different avenues. We are selling coaster tiles that we make ourselves - see the picture and get an idea of what they look like. Set of 4 is around $20 at the craft websites.

We're also raising "essentially organic" broiler chickens. We're hoping to sell them to local healthy-eaters - we'll have 47 of the 8 pound birds ready for pickup in a couple weeks. We'll keep you posted on what the proceeds look like from that venture! Maybe I'll add some pix of all the "fun" the boys and I have been having as chicken farmers. Maybe not.

Lastly, I've added a button in the top right corner of this blog for people to make straight donations via the DONATE button. However you choose to support us - with prayer, with financial support, or by passing our blog along to your email/ facebook/ other friends - know that you'll be directly contributing to getting Liam home as soon as possible. Praise God for your support!

Our goal is to get Liam home quickly and to ENCOURAGE other people to adopt. We're hoping that by being totally transparent about the finances involved in this adoption, it will encourage other people to do what we're doing and allow all the people that aren't specifically led to adopt a child into their home still help support the process by providing the funds necessary for the people that are able and ready to open up their homes. One of the main stoppers for us this time around has been the financial aspect of it. While funding an adoption one chicken or one set of tiles at a time may seem like building a skyscraper with Legos, I believe in a big God and I'm excited to see what big things He has in store for us all. I'll report His faithfulness here on the blog so please check back often.