Making Progress!

Here are some updates for everyone!!!

1. The Garage Sale was a HUGE success! We were able to raise almost $1,400 towards the cost of our adoption. Thank you to everyone who donated items & tables, sorted items, and shopped! We still have an entire garage full of stuff, so we plan on having another sale this summer :) For a few days we felt like hoarders! It was amazing how much stuff was donated to help us out!

Michael & my dad organizing the garage (the entire driveway was covered with stuff)

Our garage was packed full. We also filled our neighbors garage with stuff, too!

My mom helped sort clothes

This is basically what our whole house looked like!

Boone just laid in the piles of stuff (I'm sorry, we really love our cat...)

These are our church friends, Laura & her hubby Jason. They bought an entire car full of stuff!!

I am kicking myself that I didn't take more pictures of everyone who was involved in the process. For everyone who helped out & came to the sale, THANK YOU!

2. Shelley, the AMAZING go to person from our adoption agency, contacted me last weekend and let me know that all of our apostilled documents made their way safely to her. She sent everything in to our adoption country to be translated.

3. Our USCIS application was received. We are waiting on Biometrics dates (fingerprints) and then it should be a few weeks (maybe more) until we get the pre-immigration approval. Once we get the approval, we will send it in and our entire Dossier will be submitted. Then....we wait.

____________________________________________

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!!!

We are having a HUGE Barn Dance/Silent Auction for our adoption fundraising. The raffle prizes and silent auction items are AWESOME. Come on out for a night of fun! 

WHEN: June 13 6pm - 10pm

COST: $10 per adult and $3 per child

WHERE: 17313 Cherry Tree Road, Noblesville, IN 46062

NEED MORE INFO?: E-mail me at mmperry611@gmail.com 

*Find me on Facebook and I can add you to the event. We have more details posted.*

______________________________________________

PRAYER REQUESTS:

1. Please continue to pray for a quick timeline for our adoption. We would LOVE to be able to travel on trip one at the end of July/beginning of August. We recognize that this may not look possible on paper, but God is capable of anything :) We trust his timing. 

2. Please continue to pray for our fundraising! 

3. Most of all, please pray for our son-  may he be held, loved, nurtured, and comforted. May he know deep down that his mommy, daddy, family, friends, and even strangers are fighting hard to bring him home. 

4. Pray for the many many children who do not have forever homes yet. Pray that families will feel led to adopt!!

God continues to amaze us with his provision and the people he is bringing in our path. We met some amazing neighbors during our garage sale. Many of them had personal stories of adoption and were quick to donate to the cause. We are truly humbled by the generosity of our friends, family, and even complete strangers. All glory goes to God! We pray that our adoption story can bring people to know God personally. Some may think this is a crazy journey- but we wouldn't want it any other way. It has been amazing how God has shown us that if we just say "YES" to his call, he will guide our every step. Our trust and faith have grown exponentially throughout these past three months. 

God Moves & So Does our Paperwork :)

As I write this today, my heart is just smiling at how God really is involved in even the smallest details of our lives. Here are a few ways that he has been answering some of our specific prayers over the past few weeks:

1. Michael and I are having a HUGE garage sale during our neighborhood community garage sale in Cherry Tree Meadows (off of 171st & Cherry Tree Road) on May 15-16 (8:00am-? both days). We have been asking people for item donations, as all of the proceeds will go towards our adoption. We've been blown away by the generosity of our friends, family, and co-workers. Last week, my friend prompted me to post our garage sale and donation request on our work advertising page. The day I posted the donation request I received the following e-mail:

"My family and I have been collecting garage sale items in our house throughout this year.  Our neighborhood garage sale is this weekend, however, due to sports schedules we will be unable to participate.

I've been praying for an opportunity to use these items toward a good use, as I did not believe I should take them to goodwill.  Only 2 days of praying, your opportunity has been offered :)"

Isn't that so cool?! I love how the Lord works! We have been so humbled that people we don't even know are willing to donate their items towards our garage sale. Thank you so much! As of now, our garage is COMPLETELY packed full with furniture and garage sale items. We have started to fill up our friend's garage, too. Thankfully she lives in the same neighborhood! Please come out and shop!!! We will have the updated pictures of our little guy at the sale, so you can also see what he looks like now! (Sorry, we can't post these on the internet)

2. A few weeks ago our fundraising was going a bit slow. We had some bigger costs coming up with the USCIS application and started praying that God would provide us with a donation every day for at least the next week. Our fundraising started to take off the day we began praying for more donations. We did in fact receive donations every day for that week. Thank you for donating! We are almost 1/4 of the way towards our goal!

3. We were praying and asking others to pray for my passport to come in, as we needed it for our USCIS application and dossier paperwork. My passport came in three days before we were given the notarized copies of our home study. PERFECT timing! We were able to send in our USCIS application on Tuesday of last week and our Dossier paperwork the following day. I love how God is moving and reminding us that HE is in control. HE gets all of the glory for this adoption. HE will provide, even with the smallest need. He just wants us to ask and to come to him with every little detail of our lives. Sometimes he may not answer how we want him to, however, he promises that if we draw near to Him, then he will draw near to us. We are totally in awe of how he has been moving in our lives with this adoption :)

Thank you again for all of your support, encouragement, prayers, and donations. We could not do all of this without YOU! I will be posting pictures of some of the items for our garage sale soon if possible! Please come out and shop!!

SILENT AUCTION & BARN DANCE JUNE 13th

HUGE FUNDRAISING EVENT!!!

MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR JUNE 13th 6pm-10pm. 

$10 Per person

Barn Dance with FOOD, a SILENT AUCTION, and RAFFLES!!!  

More information to come SOON! 

Maggie's Passport is Finally HERE!

Thank you to everyone who was praying for my passport to come!! It finally arrived in the mail today :) Can you tell that I am a little excited?!

For those of you wondering why we needed my passport to get here, I have to send in a copy of my passport with all of our Dossier paperwork. 

Here are the next steps we will be taking in the adoption process:

1. We will send in Dossier documents to be apostilled (higher form of notarized) hopefully on Monday or Tuesday of next week. We are waiting to get the notarized copies of our home study. 

2. Once everything is apostilled, it will be sent away to get translated!

3. When we get our notarized home study next week, we will also submit our USCIS application to get immigration approval for our little guy (can take up to 90 days). The USCIS approval is the last document needed for the Dossier. 

4. After all Dossier documents are in country and translated, they will be submitted for approval. This can take a chunk of time.

5. Once we are approved, we will be given travel dates for trip one. 

Overall, we are definitely looking at a few months before we will get to travel on trip one. Again, we are praying that everything can go quickly, as we would love to be able to travel at the end of July/beginning of August to be able to celebrate our son's birthday with him. Will you pray that this could be a reality? Though it seems like that could be somewhat of a stretch to travel so soon, we are praying and asking for others to join us in prayer for that specific travel date window. We understand that nothing can be predicted or expected with adoption, so we are not getting our hopes up for any specific travel dates. However, we will still continue to pray :) 

Thank you to all of you for your support and generosity with helping us bring "Royce" home. We are hoping to hit the $5,000 mark soon with fundraising! That will help us to be 1/4 of the way towards reaching our goal! In terms of some fundraising events that are coming up:

1. HUGE garage sale on May 15&16 at our home in Noblesville. We are taking item donations for things to be sold in the sale. All proceeds will go directly towards the adoption. Please e-mail me at mmperry611@gmail.com if you have any items you would like to donate. 

2. Barn Dance/Silent Auction June 13. Stay tuned for this fun event. There are going to be some AMAZING items in the silent auction!

3. Our T-shirt sale is still going on until we sell all of the shirts. We need to sell about 50 more t-shirts in order to hit our goal of 75 shirts sold. If we sell 75 shirts, ALL of the money will go towards our adoption, and we do not have to pay for the cost of the shirts. WOW! That's $1,500 directly towards the adoption! Will you consider buying a t-shirt? They are super soft :) If you are interested, check this blog post about how you can get one! 

Thank you again! We love all of you and can't wait to bring our son home to such an amazing community of people. We couldn't do this without you!