Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Don't forget!

  The big car wash is Saturday!! 10-2pm We have been so blessed with volunteers to wash or make signs and borrow buckets. We are praying for great weather and to spread the word about adoption in general. If we can show God's love to a stranger we have had a successful car wash!
  No real big news otherwise just waiting for the phone call. On a side note and in an effort to be truly transparent. We will be leaving next week to go on vacation. We planned and paid for this vacation in January before we even dreamed we would be adopting. This summer we looked into cancelling or being able to transfer the reservation to another family (so we could do an adoption give away) but we were not allowed. It is a use it or lose it deal. In late June, Joey's company told him he could not go on our vacation due to the travel that would be involved with the adoption. I was so very upset. I look at this trip as the last family vacation before life gets very hard. Our four wonderful biological children have been amazing through this journey but they deserve our time and attention as well. We will be traveling out of the country for a LONG time and afterwards much of our attention and time will be spent with the new little boys. Anyway....I prayed and prayed that God would allow a way for Joey to go on this trip. Well....He did:) In His own mysterious way! So we will be leaving for a week to Florida spending a few days at Disney and a few days just relaxing.
   As I stated before this trip was pre-planned and payed for no money we receive goes to any of our "family" expenses. We have a separate account set aside for donations that are given directly to us, our FSP is controlled by Reece's Rainbow and our Lifesong Grant is controlled by Lifesong. Just wanted to be clear!:)

Monday, August 19, 2013

God is the great Provider!!!

 Huge Thank you to Ryan Merryman for claiming us as friends!!:) We have been approved for a matching grant with Lifesong for Orphans through Family Christian Bookstore for $6,000!!! Ahh, this grant is a matching grant so for us to receive any of the money it needs to be matched. Which makes giving so much more fun!:) If you give $50 we get $100! If you give $500 we get $1,000! If we receive the full matching grant we will have raised $12,000. Thank you so much for all who have prayed regarding our funding this is a huge step in reaching our goal of being fully funded. If you would like to give to our adoption in this way see below! 

Please make checks payable to Lifesong for Orphans
In the memo please note your gift preference with 
Family Number #3911 and Family Name: Breakfield. Please mail checks to:
Lifesong for Orphans
PO Box 40
Gridley, IL 61744

Thursday, August 15, 2013

SUBMITTED SUBMITTED SUBMITTED!!!!

 We have made it to this point and honestly I don't know how we did! (Well I do God, Who sent the awesome support of family, friends and strangers) We were officially submitted today in our boy's country. We are now only waiting on travel dates, one amazing phone call that will tell us what day to be in Eastern Europe. We still have not heard anything back on the two grants but we have our car wash coming up on the 31st. I feel like our adoption has reached full term, I went to 42 weeks with my fourth baby so I know there is a wait ahead of me but we are still so close!!:) Praise God we are submitted!!

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Car Wash!!

  We have been busy this past week planning a car wash! We are so excited that Terry Hawley has graciously offered to let us use his Dairy Queen location. We are joining with the Middle School Pastor Kyle Kelley and his wife Becca who are also in an international adoption. If you are local and around on Saturday August 31 come over and enjoy a blizzard while we wash your car!:) It feels so good to have our paperwork done and we can now focus our attention of preparing our home for the boys and raising money for travel costs. Continued prayer request are timing of our submission and DAP appointments, fundraising, health and safety of the boys, and childcare arrangements while we are out of the country.

Saturday, August 3, 2013

The Home Stretch:)

   Can't believe we are here! We received our I171H (our immigration approval) in the mail yesterday evening. It is now notarized and ready to head to Richmond on Monday for apostille. Then off it goes to Eastern Europe and we are done. There is a possibility of our whole dossier being submitted on Thursday!! Eeekkk! Your submittal date is one of the big ones. It means paperwork for the time being is done and in country. After that we just wait for our travel date known as our DAP appointment. As I might have mentioned before we will be one of the first families submitted with a new form requesting expedited DAP appointments for special needs children. We are hopeful that it will decrease our wait from submission to DAP. The current wait without the expedited form is 9-12 weeks. So I guess now our current prayer request are safe and speedy travel of our documents and quick submittal and DAP.
     Also as we are so close to the end I am staring to feel panicky about raising the $18-20,000 we still need before we travel. When we knew we still had time it didn't feel so big but now that time is running short we are really feeling the pressure. God knows and sent an angel today straight to our door with a handful of cash. He only said God told me to give this to you! Asking for money is such a humbling thing but what has been so amazing about this process is for the most part the people that have given are not the ones we have asked! Which just further shows us that God is working and He definitely works in mysterious ways:) Last prayer request is I have started my pumping schedule to induce lactation and so far have no results but I am determined to work hard at this and give it a full effort. I am slightly thankful for something to "do" every 2-3 hours while I patiently wait for our DAP!:)