Tortilla Tuesday!!

Next Monday we will be kicking off an exciting 10 day blog-a-thon to spread the word about what's going on at Lifesong Honduras.  We will be sharing personal testimonies from changed lives, peeking into everyday Honduran life, and giving some tools to spread awareness in your families.
One of these tools is a little something we like to call (da-daDAAA!):

Tuesday, March 29th we will be dedicating 1 meal to eat what the children in Honduras eat on a daily basis... and we want you to be a part of it!  We will also provide some great topical questions and discussion guides for you to share with your kids on what life is like for children in another culture.


Would YOU join us?

We'll share more as we get closer to the 29th, so mark your calendars, get your camera ready and head to the store to get tortillas, rice, and beans for the whole family!

Honduras Blitz from Lifesong for Orphans on Vimeo.

What if every time you gave a dollar to orphans it became one more?

One more dollar towards food, education, shelter?

One more dollar towards sharing the Gospel and providing Biblical mentorship?

One more dollar towards changing the life of a child?

I love to use this platform to advocate for those in need... and thanks to a generous donor every dollar given to Lifesong Honduras will be matched… up to $120,000! We praise the Lord for this amazing gift and invite you to be a part of it.

Over the next 10 days we are teaming with Lifesong and are hoping for 100 1-year commitments of $30 a month. Just think, for about $1 a day a life in Honduras can be forever changed.

Partnering with Tree of Life Missions in Honduras, Lifesong for Orphans is able to work toward providing hope to the hopeless, help to the helpless and healing to the hurting. TOLM reaches kids through a program called Plan Escalon. (Escalon is translated "escalator" and is used to describe the children's escalator out of poverty/brokenness.)
Through this program we strive toward:

• Providing an education to the poorest of youth


• Providing food to the poorest of youth


• Providing vocational training & micro-business opportunities


• Providing free medical and dental clinics to those in need


• Training young people to give back to their communities


• Reaching people in the jungles of the Mosquito Coast

Stay tuned for stories, personal testimonies, and fun ways to spread awareness and instill a heart of giving in your kids!

Our goal is:

Will you help us? 100 commitments in ten days is no small feat, but with God it is possible. We have seen Him move mightily in His people to serve orphans and we pray that this ten weeks will be a testimony of that! Together we can make a difference in the lives of these kids! Together we can do more to bring joy and purpose to orphans!

Contact Lifesong at info@lifesongfororphans.org to make your commitment AND be sure to tell them that we sent you from our blog!

Hear personal stories & follow the progress on our blog all this week!

Check back often to hear personal stories and get updates on the progress. Please join us in prayer as we ask the Lord to raise up 100 commitments!

sickness

Aidan, Iona, and I have been swapping sicknesses since Christmas break. It's all, thankfully, been respiratory, but it still stinks. We've had to skip activities, homeschool co-ops, and lots of church as we take turns getting better. Both kids are mostly better now, and my cold is getting worse. The weather is supposed to perk up this week, so I hope we can get outside for some Vitamin D. For the last couple of big snowstorms, the kids were too sick to play out in the snow. Boo.

School has been rough going with all the sickness around. We've been able to basically keep up, but we've definitely had some lighter workload days. I'm just glad we can keep moving forward even when sick. A few of our subjects are due to finish within the month, so pushing those back a week or two is not a big deal.

Grants and loans

Last week we found out we received a $2500 no-interest loan for our adoption and a $3000 matching grant. We are so thankful to God! Here is the letter we are in the middle of sending out:


Dear Family and Friends,

“A father to the fatherless…God places the lonely in families” (Psalm 68:5, 6)

Many of you know we have felt called and directed by God to adopt another “fatherless” child into our family. We adopted Iona from Ethiopia in 2008 and brought her home when she was 6 months old and only 11 lbs. She is now a fierce 2.5-year-old bundle of energy and full of joy. Aidan and Iona adore each other, most of the time.

We have stepped back into the adoption journey and are pursuing Brendan, a 4.5-year-old boy from China. We have decided to adopt through the “waiting child” program in China, and we only waited 1 hour to be matched to our son. He, however, had been waiting one and a half years for a family of his own. Brendan has a special need called bilateral strabismus, which means he will most likely need glasses.

Why China? That’s a long story, and one we would be happy to talk more about in person! Basically, the Lord led us to pursue an older child for this adoption, and the Lord had long ago laid an Asian child on our hearts for our family. He orchestrated an amazing set of events in the past year to direct us to China, and we are excited to meet our son soon!

At this point, our dossier (portfolio of documents) is almost complete and should travel to China within the next month. We can’t share Brendan’s photo here until our dossier has been received in China and officially approved, but we carry the photos around and love to show him off! We are hoping to travel to China sometime in the fall of 2011 to bring Brendan home.

There are so many things God has used to prick our hearts and move us to adopt; here are a few:

Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress (James 1:27)

So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.” (Romans 8:15)

The biggest challenge for us is not opening our hearts and home to another child, but it is in finding the finances to make this happen. We estimate our total cost for adoption fees, document preparation, home study, airfare, travel, attorney fees, etc. to be $27,000. That’s certainly money we don’t have, but we know God is faithful and is leading us to trust Him. By God’s grace we’ve been able to pay the initial $10,000. We honestly had no idea how that would all work when we began, but little by little, as we have needed each part of the funds, it has been available.

There are two ways you can help:

1. Prayer—Please pray God would tenderly care for our son in China until we are able to bring him home, that God would prepare Aidan and Iona for the upcoming changes to our family, and that God will give us wisdom, discernment, and insight as we raise our children to know Jesus Christ. Please also pray for our first months home as we learn to communicate with Brendan and meet his needs.

2. Financial support—Will you please consider making a tax-deductible donation to help us pay the remaining $17,000 in adoption expenses to bring our son home?

Lifesong for Orphans (www.lifesongfororphans.org) has graciously given a matching grant of $3,000 to help pay the “ransom” to bring Brendan home.

If you would like to be a part of this adoption, you can send your tax-deductible gift between now and April 10, 2011 to the address below. Lifesong for Orphans is a trusted organization administering the funds on our son’s behalf and will pay adoption expenses out of funds received.

1. Please make checks payable to Lifesong for Orphans and put “Juvinall Adoption” in the memo section of your check.
(*Note: In following IRS guidelines, your donation is to Lifesong, which retains full discretion over its use but intends to honor the donor’s suggested use.)


2. Mail checks to:
Lifesong for Orphans
Attn: Juvinall #1766 Adoption
PO Box 40 / 202 N. Ford St
Gridley, IL 61744

3. You may also give online via Paypal at http://www.lifesongfororphans.org/donation.html and clicking on “Make a Donation.” Please put “Juvinall #1766 Adoption” in the item line.

Thank you for investing in the Kingdom through prayer and finances—it will be an investment with an eternal return (Matt 6:20)! We’ll send you our new family photo when we return home. Please pray this entire process will glorify God and fulfill His purposes!

Make Pete's Playlist! adoption fundraiser

Hi friends! I have so many posts in my head and I'm not sure when I'll get them all up here, but for now, we are putting together another adoption fundraiser.

On April 30, Pete will be running the Illinois Half Marathon. This is his third half marathon and he's hoping to break the 2 hour mark this time!

You can help make his music playlist for the race! For $10 each, you can choose a song for him to run to that day. If you would like to pick the last song, the one he crosses the finish line with, it will cost you $100. If he runs out of room in the playlist, your song choice will be included in his final 10-mile training run before the race.

You are free to hand us the money or pay via Paypal. With Paypal, please include your song choice in the Notes field. Thank you!!

Song options

each song $10.00 finishing song $100.00

We still have our adoption t-shirts for sale and we are keeping the price at $20 to try to get them out the door. See this post for more info.

referral!

We received a phone call on Friday, Dec 10 with a possible referral!

On Monday of that week we submitted our application for the waiting child program, and on Friday around lunchtime we had a phone interview to clarify our specific requests and answer any questions we had.

ONE HOUR LATER, we got the CALL!

He was on the shared referral system and not yet reserved for our family, and we were able to take the weekend to talk with doctors and pray and consider him for our family. On Monday the 13th we indicated to our agency that we wanted to pursue him, and by Thursday the 16th our electronic acceptance was submitted to China. On Thursday morning we also received an update with answers to questions we asked about him.

We are delighted to welcome Brendan into our family! (We are keeping his Chinese name as his middle name and can't post details until our dossier is officially accepted in China.) He is 4.5 and will turn 5 in June. His special need is called bilateral strabismus, which basically means he probably only needs glasses.

Today we received a BUNCH of new photos of Brendan, as the original ones we received were over a year old. SO CUTE! Can't wait to show you!

Next steps:

• We just recently submitted our I-800A to USCIS and hope to receive the all-important paper from them by February.
• We are working on certifying and authenticating the rest of our dossier so it's ready and waiting.
• Once the USCIS paperwork is received and we notarize, certify, and authenticate it, our dossier will be ready to go to China...hopefully still in February.
• Possible travel dates? August or September we think, though with adoption, all things are subject to change without prior notice.

T-shirt sale thru Dec 14

Hi friends!

From now to Dec 14, you can order our Simply Love China t-shirt for the low price of $20, including shipping! Do you have any Christmas gifts to purchase? Please consider one of our t-shirts, and your Christmas shopping will also help with our adoption expenses!

Sizes

Men's M Men's L Men's XL Women's S Women's M Women's L Women's XL

We are running very low on Women's M, but you can swap it with the men's version if you want. The men's shirts really could be worn unisex. Thanks for shopping!