It’s been 61 days since we last updated this blog. Have no fear; you didn’t miss much, at least
not on the adoption front. I’m sure you
all were as busy as we were (if not more so) with Thanksgiving and Christmas
and what not. We were fortunate enough to
spend Thanksgiving (and Christmas evening) with some dear friends that also
weren’t traveling out of town and didn’t have family in the area. It was so nice fellowshipping with our
brothers and sisters in Christ. We hope
your holiday was equally enjoyable.
This is Nate by the way, not Julie, if you couldn’t tell
already. She’s making me write this
one. Anyway, we have some pretty big news to share this time!
The first tidbit is
the opportunity to be a featured family on the
give1save1 blog. Here’s the deal, Steph, the author of the
blog, features 1 family for an entire week.
The family creates an adoption video with the goal of securing $1
donations from people that want to help them save one orphan. One family raised $15,000!! Check out the blog and go ahead and donate $1
to the featured family this week. It’ll
be good practice if/when we get featured and they could use the help. ;) Anyway, we decided to give it a go and asked
our very talented cousins, Adam and Squeeze Willis to help us with the video
(click
here for a link to Squeeze’s
photography business or
here
to see some of the video work Adam does).
They drove all the way up here a week or so ago and we got tons of cool
footage for our video. To say we are
STOKED about the finished product would be a
minor major
understatement!!!
Would you all believe me if I told you that wasn’t even the
best part of this update?! NOT. EVEN.
CLOSE.
If you’ve been following our journey so far, you know that
on 2 November we received a call about two children, a boy (3) and a girl
(almost 4). On 21 December we received
the packet with all the details about the children; where they came from, why
they’re at the orphanage, the whole nine yards.
On Christmas Eve, our attorney in Uganda made one last attempt at
identifying family willing to take these children in. At that point it was another 30 days before we
had to give an answer. If you have your
calendar out, you’ve already figured out that today is the 30th day!
SOOOOO after much prayer and seeking wise counsel and more prayer and more wise
counsel we decided to say YES!!!! This
feels so weird to say, but as of today, our children, Malachi and Macy (like
their names?), have been removed from their orphanage and placed in a foster home
where they will receive additional medical screenings and more
personalized care (due to a significantly lower child to caregiver ratio). The caregivers will be speaking to them in
English and will have pictures of us very shortly to begin helping them
associate our faces with “mommy” and “daddy”.
I’ve been telling people that I have a feeling our lives are going to go
from “pause” to “fast forward” very soon.
I was right; after saying yes this morning we’ve been inundated with
things we need to do to prepare for our trip (we’ll probably be traveling in
March sometime), overwhelming to say the least.
You may have noticed my comment about their names; Malachi
and Macy are not their birth names. We
discussed keeping their birth names but in the end we decided to change them,
partly because we liked Malachi and Macy better but more importantly we were
reminded of the many occasions in which God chose to change a person’s name in
the Bible to signify life changing events (Jacob to Israel, Abram to Abraham,
Saul to Paul, you get the point). I
think it’s safe to assume their adoption will be a life-changing event. Come to think of it, maybe Julie and I should
change our names too! J
I know what you’re thinking, “this is awesome news; how can
I help?” I’m glad you asked. J
First and foremost, we desperately covet your prayers. Please pray for a peaceful process, that it
will go smoothly and quickly (maybe a nice balance of both, actually). Pray that Malachi and Macy will attach to us
once we are united, that they will accept us as their primary caregivers and
transition quickly to becoming a part of our family. Pray that Abigail and Madelyn will accept these
children into our home and love them like they do each other (they are pumped
by the way, but it’s hard to explain to them that it won’t always be fun). Pray that Julie and I will adapt well to
doubling the children in our home overnight (woah!) and make the transition
from man-to-man to zone defense well. J Pray for travel mercies, a hedge of
protection around Malachi and Macy, that the time between now and being united
with them will go fast. Pray for PEACE
through this whole situation.
Second, we have been overwhelmingly blessed by the
generosity of our friends and family.
You all have freely donated your time, talents and treasure to help us
get to this point. Whether that’s
volunteering to sew giraffes, helping with the garage sale, offering your photo
(and video) skills or opening your wallets to support us financially, we are so
humbled by your generosity. We are SO
CLOSE to our fund raising goal! If (and
only if) you feel led to contribute financially here are a few opportunities to
do so right now;
1. We still have plenty of giraffe taggie blankets
to sell (if you don’t know what these are, ask your wife, if she doesn’t know,
google it, cuz I’m still not sure I know what they are). $10 buys one for you
and sends one with us to give to an orphan in Uganda. Our goal is to take 250 of them with us
(which means selling 250).
2. We still have (some) puzzle pieces to sell. $5 gets your name on the back of a puzzle
piece. Once all the pieces are sold we
will assemble the puzzle and hang it in the kids’ room so they can turn it over
to see all the people that helped bring them home. (pretty cool, huh?)
And two
opportunities for later (hopefully):
1. We have plans for a fund-raising dinner of some
sort. Depending on interest level, we
would serve dinner and tell everyone a little about our adoption story, what we
know about Malachi and Macy and answer any questions you may have. If you’d like to attend or help out, let us
know cuz we’re going to need it.
2. Finally, assuming we are featured on the give1save1
blog (you can pray for that too, btw), we need you all to help make the video
“go viral”. The more views we can get
the more likely people will be to donate $1 to our cause. I’ll be asking for commitments from you to
share the video EVERY DAY of the week we are featured. Too easy, right?
Ok, that’s it! We
hope you all are as excited as we are (not likely). Hang on tight and try to keep up, we’ll do
our best to keep you all in the loop. We
love you and can NOT thank you enough for your support.
Your adopted brother and sister in Christ,
Nate and Julie
