We had our first fundraiser in August! God was so gracious and blessed my family. Our friends, family, and church family really went above and beyond and made our sale a huge success. We were blessed with so many item donations. So many of our friends and family dedicated countless hours to help set up, run the sale, and tear down. I was blessed to tears on numerous occasions at the love and generosity of God's people. He did huge things that week and brought in $4,000!

The sale allowed us make our first payment towards the adoption! One step closer to our daughter!

We are now preparing for our home study and putting together our dossier... and our second payment, which is due in March.

We stand firm on God's promise that He provides for our needs. He has called Matt and I to adoption, so while we see HUGE mountains in our path, God sees needs that He will meet.

Our next fundraiser is this weekend. An amazingly sweet photographer friend has sacrificed her entire weekend for a mini photo session for friends and family. Every cent goes towards our adoption! A huge thank you to Chrissy for volunteering her weekend and to all the friends who signed up!

My mom has been a major support and help. She has planned a couple fundraisers coming up soon. She came up with a turkey dinner raffle! We will be selling tickets to raffle off an entire Thanksgiving dinner, that we will make and deliver on Thanksgiving. The only catch is that we will only deliver within a 20 mile radius. So if you are local and don't want the hassle of making Thanksgiving dinner, then you should definitely purchase a couple tickets for your chance to win! It's going to be delicious!

My mom is also heading up a Cookie/Craft Walk the first Saturday in December. She has some amazing ideas for goodies and crafts. We'll be super busy gettin' our craft on really soon. You can get involved in this fundraiser by either volunteering your time to help us craft, donating homemade cookies and candy, or stopping by the sale on December 5th.

Father, Lead Us

First off, I'm not any sort of writer. But I would love to share my heart with anyone who wants to hear our story.

It's really humbling to look back over the years and see how God has prepared us for this journey to our daughter. Matt and I had specific hopes and dreams for our family. I'm so very glad that God took those hopes and dreams and molded them into what He wanted for us. 

So often, as Christians, we set our plans and then ask God to bless them, instead of asking Him to lead us. If we are being led BY Him than our plans will most certainly be blessed by Him as well. 

Proverbs 16:9 "The mind of man plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps."

Over a year ago, God placed a desire on my heart that I could not ignore. I believe He started to prepare my heart for that desire long before He placed it there. For those who don't know us well, we struggled with infertility for 8 years year. It was 2 years ago that Matt and I felt our infertility journey was done. It was a huge burden released from our hearts, yet the end (or so we thought) of our hopes of having more children. So when God placed this new desire in my heart, I was thrilled! Matt took a little more work. :) We started praying about adoption together in August of 2014. Slowly, ever so slowly, God started to place the same desire in Matt's heart! I may or may not go into more detail about how hard it was for me to wait on God and my husbands heart... that'll have to be for a different post.

We felt God leading us to Africa, so we started looking into Christian adoption agencies who partner with them. I don't know if you know this or not but Africa's a pretty huge continent. It was a daunting process, we desperately prayed for guidance. Again SLOWLY, God started to draw our hearts where He wanted them. This led us to Burundi. See if you can find it on a globe... It's a tiny little country right next to Tanzania. 

We started attending Kulture Church last October. This church is... AH-MAZ-ING! If you've never been there...come... you'll never want to leave. We sing this song:

Watch it... I'll wait for you. 

This is our family theme song. I would belt this song out every Sunday. 

Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders 

Let me walk upon the waters

Wherever You would call me

Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander

And my faith will be made stronger

In the presence of my Savior.

Burundi. God has called us to Burundi. He's leading us to a place where our trust is without borders. Deeper than our feet could ever wander. Burundi, where our faith will be made stronger, in the presence of our Savior. We know we will be in His presence because He's leading us. He promises to go with us. 

Deuteronomy 31:8, "The LORD is the One who goes ahead of you; He will be with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear of be dismayed."