Overflowing of Love

What blessings we have to report on!!!  God is working financially through our adoption once again! 

First, we need to thank an anonymous person from our church family.  While I don't like not knowing, I will (try to) rest in joy from the gift!  But thank you to that special person/people!  Let me share with the rest of you our story of blessing!  We received a BEAUTIFUL note - one of true encouragement, verses of truth, and inspiring words from friends!   In the gift, this person left us 50 Bruster's (our local ice cream shop) coupon booklets that can be sold for $20 each.  You do the math - yep, that was the same jaw-dropping reaction I had!  A possible $1,000 towards our adoption!  We are going to wait and sell these in the spring-time when its a little warmer out!  We are grateful for you friend(s), whomever you are!! 

Second, I had another friend at church ask if she could do a fundraiser for me!  All she wants me to do is show up and have fun looking at jewelry and other accessories!  She is taking care of the invites, the refreshments, the hosting, everything!!!  This company with whom she is organizing a fundraiser with is Noonday - it is special to my heart because it was originally based off an adoption fundraiser.  The jewelry is beautiful!!  They also have other items such as handbags, headbands, scarves, etc.  The items are made in different countries like Peru, Ethiopia, Haiti (yay!!), Rwanda, Ecuador, and various other countries.  It is a great company that I am excited to learn even more about! 

As you can see, the people from our church are have been so supportive us of along this journey.  We are grateful for each and every prayer that goes up for our family as well.  Thank you brothers and sisters of SAYSF Bible Church for your love and support!  We cannot wait to introduce you to (more of) our children!  wink, wink! 

A third update is our Amazon link that people have been using!  My goal was to get up to one plane ticket to bring a child home (around $300).  We are almost there - we are currently at $245!!!  How exciting!  Thank you for taking the time to shop this way!  A person close to me is hoping to get 2 tickets with this link!  Keep up the shopping and if you have no clue what I am talking about - see earlier posts on this blog. 

As far as news on the adoption front, we are a little over a month into our 6-8 month l.o.n.g, quiet wait!  I pray daily for a gentle, quiet spirit in this time when I can pray for my future kids and all that they are dealing with on a daily basis and all that they will deal with when they finally come home!  Join me in prayer, would you?! 

Sense of Humor!

He says, "Be still, and know that I am God;

I will be exalted among the nations,

I will be exalted in the earth."

Psalm 46:10

 

It has been really quiet on the news of our adoption recently!  Quite frustrating for a mama's heart, but I have determined to Be Still.  I am not the "stillest" person in the world, so this is hard for me.  However, that is a command from God.  The same God who already knows how many hairs are on my children's head (Matt 10:30), the same God who knows when our file will be submitted to IBESR (Job 34:21), and the same God who will make things happen at exactly the right time (Act 1:7). 

 

So as I was typing this - an email came in from our agency!!! 

 

OUR DOSSIER WAS

SUBMITTED

TO IBESR TODAY!!!!!

 

Doesn't God have such a great sense of humor!  Here I am trying to convince myself of His word and somewhat having a pity party for myself - and He gave me a spanking!!  I must be STILL and listen to His leading and to His ways!!  Uh - sorry God!! 

 

So what does this big news mean?!!  Well, now we wait (again!) 6-8 months for a formal referral from Haiti.  This referral will have a picture and other important information included and we have 14 days to accept the referral and give our proposed travel dates for our 2-week bonding trip.  Yikes - 2 weeks away from my kiddos here!  We aren't sure yet what we are going to do with them for this amount of time, but ideas are flying through our minds.  We are excited to let our minds get more serious about this step! 

 

What I originally got on here to blog about was our news about our fundraising!  We sold all 190 pizza cards in 2 1/2 weeks!  That's amazing!  Our kids rocked these cards!!  Our kids had expressed raising funds to help with adoption from the very start (exactly a year ago, actually!).  We told them all profits from these cards would totally be their contribution to the expenses.  And they did it!  They raised $3,050!!  A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!!  We are proud of them and can't wait to share with our Haitian children how their siblings helped bring them home!! 

 

We are still praying for our matching grant through LifeSong as well as our Amazon link to use to raise funds.  If you need any information about either of those, just let me know. 

 

Thanks God for uplifting and encouraging news right when this mama needed it!! 

Another quick, AMAZING update!!

More provisions!!

We got a letter late last week that we have been awarded a grant for $500!  Praise Jesus!!  We are astounded at how quickly God has built our account back up, ready to pay the next upcoming installment.  

We had a Chick Fil A spirit night and we received quite a bit of money for that easy fundraiser!!  A huge thanks for those that were able to come out and eat some yummy chicken for us!!  We had a blast doing it and look forward to doing another one this summer!!  

We received our Papa John's pizza cards on Thursday and we had already sold enough to pay back the bill in less than 48 hours!  It came within $10 of the total bill!  God has such a humor sometimes!! He is showing me to let go and let God!!  The boys went out on their bikes tonight (with Daddy, don't worry!) and sold another chunk so we are officially in the positive!!  If you are interested in one of these awesome cards, let me know!!  Every time you purchase a pizza, you get a second one free! It isn't just locally, and they are good for one year!  (You should hear my H do his sales pitch, he's too stinkin cute when he does it!) 

We stand in awe at how God is leading our journey!  While the furthering of our package in Haiti seems so slow to us, we know that in His timing we will know and visit our children!  We also covet your prayers for health for the kiddos, as well as provisions until we can bring them home!!

Romans 15:13

 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace

as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope

by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

 



So much joy to share and be thankful for!! 

 

This story starts about three weeks ago.  We sent off one of our biggest payments for the adoption. This large payment was going to be paid to our orphanage which we thought was already decided.  (However, we found out this morning that we will be using a different orphanage now because of various reasons.)  This pretty much depleted our nest-egg of savings that we had put aside.  We were feeling rather anxious as the account was near $0.  We decided that August was going to be a Super-Super Saver month (you can ask later if you want to know what we do for those months!) so we knew that money would once again be trickling in.  However, uneasiness, doubt, and worry were rampant in our hearts and minds. 

 

Last week, as we were on vacation with Ryan's family, we got an exciting phone call!  For Hudson's football team, we were supposed to sell 10 raffle tickets, however, we decided to take the easy way out and just buy them ourselves because of lack of time.  Well, we won the grand prize of $1,000.  Yes, you read that correctly - $1,000.  We were so shocked as we forgot all about the drawings being held since we were out of town.  We laughed at ourselves because we let the doubt crowd into our minds.  We were (sadly) ashamed at our doubting and forgetting Who is in control of this whole journey!!  We were once (AGAIN) reminded that God can work in any way for good!! 

 

Then this week....yes, the story continues!!  We got a phone call from one of our grant applications saying that we had been accepted for one of the Matching Grant opportunities.  What a blessing once again!  We are continually blessed by God.  This grant (LifeSong) is a matching grant up to $2500.  If you feel led to contribute to this grant - see details below. 

 

We want to give God all the glory for leading us on this journey - He has never left our side and what joy He has given us these past few weeks as we wait to find out what children He has hand-picked for our family!!  Please rejoice with us!!! 

 

LifeSong Grant Information:

Please make checks payable to: Lifesong for Orphans

In the memo please note our name and Family Account Number (4780)

Mail checks to:

Lifesong for Orphans

P.O. Box 40

Gridley, IL  61744

 

Or if you wish to give online, go to www.lifesongfororphans.org/give/donate

Select Give to an Adoptive Family

Complete online form and fill in Family Account Number (4780) and Family Name Fields

Please note that PayPal will charge an administrative fee (2.9% + $0.30 per transaction).  The donation will be decreased by the amount of this fee. 

Amazon Fundraier

A new kind of fundraiser.... if you already shop at amazon.com - this one is easy!!!

We have become an Amazon Affiliate - a small amount of any purchase you make from Amazon using our Amazon Link will be deposited into our account. 

Think about all the books....

All the music...

All the toys...

The site won't look any different than what you are used to - but it will make a big difference to us in the end if we have a lot of people participating. 
Happy Shopping!!

Amazon Adoption Link

Please feel free to share and spread to others!! 

They stole our hearts.....

It tugs at my heart strings to look at these pictures!  While none of these kids are able to be adopted, I still would take all of them home in a heart beat!  We truly enjoyed our time in Haiti and cannot wait to go back and meet the children that God has picked out for our family.  The children pictured above are well taken care of, loved on immensely, and being taught about God's love daily! 

In other news - our adoption is well....moving along.....I guess!  This journey is looonnnnggg folks, and I'm not gonna lie - sometimes discouraging.  However, since I follow an omniscient God, He knows the path our family is to take and just how long it will take.  We have been receiving good news that "things are moving" for Haiti.  Our agency (again, let me give a shout out to AWAA!), really our Country Program Coordinator has asked other parents who already have their children to share a small part of their journey.  While I am jealous (I know, I'm working on that!), I know that God's time for me will come.  These families have been encouraging to me - and I don't even know them!  I will continue to hang in there and wait for my appointed time! 

We have received word on 3 of our 10 grants we have applied for and have unfortunately not gotten selected for them.  Again, the devil is at work and throwing discouraging darts at me when I think about the cost of the next payment (the next one is the BIGGEST one!)  It's a scary, scary number but I hold on to Philippians 4:19.  The payment is no surprise to God and no surprise on how He's going to pull that number off in our bank account!  So we are gearing up for more grant writing and thinking about possible fundraisers.  So if you need me, I will be at the computer or copying machine applying for 7 more grants that we have learned about. 

We would appreciate prayer on other financial areas - we are struggling with the fine line of staying out of debt, applying for interest free loans, etc for this journey.  We are having difficulty distinguishing His will and having complete surrendering financially.  So I guess I'm asking for loud and clear guidance as to where He wants us to go from here.  We still have 7 grants out there that we are excited to hear about, so please keep praying for those as well! 

As always - stay tuned.....

Long Over due . . . I know, I know!!!

My how life has raced ahead!  I haven't blogged on progress lately, because honestly, I didn't think there was any progress being made.  However, God was making progress and (once again) has corrected my attitude in waiting for His timing! 

Progress is being made and we didn't even know it!  Our Dossier (the package that goes to Haiti) was submitted in late April.  We had a few more documents to get certified and authenticated so we waited, and waited, and waited.  I am learning this adoption journey is all about patience!

So we got an email this week stating that our Dossier was out of translation!!!!  Say what??!!!  We didn't even know it had been sent so we were very excited about this.  In that same email we got directions to call our main contact (who is by far the BEST EVER!!!) from our agency concerning the next step.  So don't you know, we were on that phone faster than anything!!! 

That brings us to today - a very exciting day in the Batchelor house - yes, we are leaving another teaser out there.  But until details have been made firmer, our lips remained sealed!!  Just know that your prayers are being heard by our Almighty Planner!  We will share more details when we can!  Pray hard for us the next several days as decisions will be made and our lives will be changed forever! 

On a side note - we are going to Haiti (completely separate of the adoption) for a mission trip.  We leave this week and couldn't be more excited!  It's funny to know that I will actually be in the same country as my kiddos here soon - no, I don't know them by name yet, but somehow I will be closer to them and hopefully they can feel their mama's love even stronger!  God, please protect my kiddos and let them feel your love even though I can't hold them in my arms for awhile!