kids size adoption shirts

We are so excited about all the interest in kids sizes of our adoption shirt! Around 20 shirts have been requested so far- that will be around $400 for our adoption!!! Praise the Lord! (We're still about $6000 short for those who are wondering.)

 Leave a comment on this post or email me {@ mrsmeach1@gmail.com} if you'd like us to order one (or ten) for you! Just tell me what size(s) and color(s) you want. (We can order any color you see listed (as long as they're currently available), we just have to order a minimum # of shirts.)

 

You can donate the $20 per shirt to our adoption online via our ChipIn button (on our left sidebar) or by mailing a check to us. We will distribute the shirts as soon as they come in. We're going to order them Thursday and they said they'd be ready in 2 weeks. If you live near me I'd love to meet up with you somewhere to give you your shirt(s), but if you're out of town please add $3 to cover shipping costs (and make sure I have your mailing address!).

 

this shirt comes in 2T,3T, and 4T- http://www.handsonoriginals.co/Toddler-Heavyweight-Cotton-Tees-p/toddlerheavyweightcottontees.htm}

 this shirt comes in youth XS-L in lots of fun colors http://

www.handsonoriginals.co/Youth-Cotton-Blend-Tees-p/youthcottonblendtees.htm}

 

We're going to try to order the kids shirts by Thursday of this week, so please let me know by then! (After that I can't promise we will have the size or color you want.)

 

We are so excited that we are IN COURT right now in Congo and should officially be baby R's parents ANY DAY now! And we're praying that baby girl would get a court date as soon as they have her birth certificate in hand mid-March!

Please continue to pray with us that God's hands of protection would be wrapped around our son and daughter, and that they would be home with us very soon! We're placing our trust in God's timing and also trusting that He will continue to provide for the financial costs of rescuing our babies. We just found out this week that we owe an extra $2400 for the court process to get our kids birth certificates. Boo. But nothing is impossible for God right? He will help us complete this adoption, but we do appreciate your prayers for provision and for us to not fear or worry about HOW we're going to pay all these bills. Please pray that we would rely on Christ alone and not our own strength to do this! We fall short, but our Heavenly Father holds us and our children in the palm of His hand and cares deeply for us. We know that He called us to adopt and that He has chosen these children for our family, and we CAN'T WAIT to have them home!!!!!

 

Baby R and baby girl's Mommy in Waiting,

Come Home Soon baby brother and baby sister!

We got some very exciting news yesterday from our agency!!!!!

...........

???

We started the first phase of ADOPTION COURT on MONDAY the 20th!!!

What does this mean?!?

Baby R and baby girl should OFFICIALLY be OUR kids in the next week or so!!

{Well, our agency is checking to see if this court is for both kids or just baby R. We know we've gotten his birth certificate, but we haven't heard about baby girl's yet.}

Hallelujah!!! Praise the Lord!!

I can hardly believe it is finally happening!!!!

We are only 6-8 weeks from meeting our children face to face and bringing them home!!

It is extremely humbling for me to receive this long-awaited answer to prayer. Why would the God of the Universe ever bother to listen to me or anyone else when we pray? We are sinners, we have all turned aside and gone our own way, put ourselves in the place of God thinking we know what it best for us, and we have broken his law countless times. We have lusted, coveted, and worshipped idols like money and comfort instead of believing that the true and living God is the only true source of joy.

So why would the perfectly just and holy God who created the world and every person who has ever lived on this earth listen to us? Why does God tell us in His word that He listens to Christians when they pray? Because He is an amazing Heavenly Father, and He gave His only Son Jesus so that all who believe in Him and trust in His sacrificial death on the cross and His resurrection to atone for their sin and imperfection have become children of God. I am an adopted daughter of God. He has adopted me into His family. Not because I am or was "good enough" to deserve His love, but because He first loved me (John 14:18)! He tells us that He is our Father and he delights in giving good gifts to His children! He wants us to come to him and ask for the desires of our hearts and he delights in answering the prayers of His children for our good and His glory! Ahh.. I adore my Father! And I am THANKFUL beyond what words can express for Him adopting me, for plucking me out from the deep pit of sin that I was living in, opening my blind eyes to see my need for a Savior, and showing me the grace and mercy found in Christ alone. Since I cannot express my gratitude fully in words, I give him my life. I want to live for the glory of God, and I want to be used by God to expand His family.

 As Elisabeth Elliott wisely said, "The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian. But the fact that I am a Christian does make me a different kind of woman. For I have accepted God's idea of me, and my whole life is an offering back to God of all that I am and all He wants me to be."

NEW T-shirt Colors and Sizes available!!

{I am pictured above wearing size Small in all 3 shirts. You'll notice the pink shirt is a "women's cut" shirt and fits slightly different than the rest of our unisex shirts.}

Current Colors & Sizes Left as of 2/15 2/18:

Smoke Gray: 51S, 2 1 L, 2 XL, 1 XXL

Light Pink: 5 4 S, 4 M, 1 L, 2 XL

Mocha Brown: 3 S, 5 3 M, 2 L

Navy: 2 L, 1 XL

Contact me @ mrsmeach1@gmail.com to reserve your shirts today! This will probably be our last batch of shirts, so hurry to get the size and colors you want! First come, first served. Once they're gone, they're gone. 

We're asking for a minimum $20 donation per shirt (add $3 if you need them shipped to you). These are great quality "fashion fit" shirts! Jon & I made the design ourselves. If you're local, shoot me an email or facebook message and I'd love to bring your shirt to you or meet you somewhere.

You can DONATE $20 per shirt to our ChipIn account online (on our Fundraising Tab) using PayPal. Just make sure you let me know what Size & Color shirts you want in the COMMENTS section! (And please add the extra $3 if you need me to ship it.)

If you don't want to use PayPal email me at mrsmeach1@gmail.com and we'll work out a different way for you to make your donation for your shirts!

We hope you enjoy wearing your nice, comfy t-shirt and each time you do you'll know you helped us get one step closer to bringing our children home and you'll be a walking bilboard for orphan care! Thanks for helping us spread the word about the 147 million orphans that need a family, God's heart for orphans, and that ALL Christians are called to care for them in some way!

We're praying God will provide for our last $6,550!

Care Packages for our kiddos

We have the opportunity to send care packages (again) to our children!

Only the children we are sending them to are different. It makes me sad remembering that the last time we sent care packages they were for our little girl Leseli Joyce and a baby boy (we had lost our referral for our 6 month old lil boy and we were waiting for a new referral). God's grace has carried us through these last six months. While we may never fully understand them, we do trust in God's plans for our family, and that right now He is leading us to baby R and baby girl in His sovereignty. 

We are filled with hope that these care packages will arrive in the hands of our children at the end of this month. We are so thankful that two people from our agency are going to see them and are kind enough to let us send a little something to them. It is something tangible to tell them "WE LOVE YOU!" until we can get there and tell them in person.

{I honestly stressed way more about what to put in the bags the first time. And they didn't make it to our children. The exact whereabouts of our first 2 care packages are not really known at this time, so we sent these. But I am still hoping that they will find the other 2 and both will make it to our children. We shall see. Either way, it's nice to send donations to an orphange in the DRC. This time we sent a photo book/frame, clothes, shoes for baby R since he's 1, socks, bottles and cloth diapers for baby girl, and small toys/books.}

Picture frame for baby girl

While we don't know much about baby R, we do know that his caregiver speaks French, so we tried to make his photo book bi-lingual so she can read it to him. =)

The most exciting part of these care packages to me is that they will be HAND-DELIVERED by our agency!! They will get to SEE our children, check on them for us, and they said they will try to take PICTURES and even VIDEO for us!! Do you know that we only have a couple pictures of baby R from 6 months ago and that he is ASLEEP in every single one? I cannot wait to see my baby boy and how he has grown, although I'm sure it will make my heart somewhat sad realizing all that I've missed with him in the last six months of his life. We got to include a sheet of questions for their caregivers and I can't wait to hear what they say! (I think they're going to videotape their answers.) We are so thirsty for ANY information on our children since we have so little. I am trying to still my heart and pray without ceasing for our children, trusting that they will be home with us in God's timing. But I sure am excited to see new pictures of their beautiful faces!!!!


Love from their adoring Mommy,

Did you know?

I made this blog extra using a combination of Photoshop and Illustrator with the info I saw on 147millionorphans.com.

 I want to share it with you (totally free) so you can help raise awareness of the global orphan crisis.

{Just right-click on the size you want, Save to your computer, and "add a picture gadget" to your blog's sidebar, or include it in a post. Use it however you like, but Please just leave a source link back to my blog.}

 Together, let's pray that WAY more than 1% of Christian families will adopt!

small

medium (recommended)

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I'd love to create a custom blog extra for you!

Want to display a favorite scripture verse? Need a new blog header? Need to advertise your fundraisers in an eye-catching way??  

Go to www.blogdesignbybethany.blogspot.com to support our newest fundraiser!!

I'll create a custom design for you and EVERY dollar goes directly to our adoption expenses!

time for shots: Preparing to Travel to the DRC!

We are SO thankful that we are finally getting to the last leg of our adoption journey that we didn't even mind that it was time to go get our pre-travel SHOTS. Neither of us are a fan of needles, but we looked the other way and survived! The tiny prick of the needle wasn't even the most painful part, it was definitely the BILL. Shots for international travel ARE NOT covered by most insurance, so we got to pay those lovely bills straight from our own pockets. {On that note, if you're ANYWHERE in the process to adopt internationally: you should talk to your doctor about getting up to date on routine vaccinations NOW, because many Insurance companies DO cover those. That will save you money down the road!}

I am going to share our grand total in hopes that you families following behind us can adjust your budget and be better prepared than we were!!! We budgeted $700 for shots for BOTH of us, but it ended up being more like $800 PER PERSON. Yes, that's right. $1600 total. {Just saying it out loud feels like a major punch in the gut.}

But, keep in mind that this is just what we chose to do. The only shot we HAD to get was the Yellow Fever (it is REQUIRED to enter the DRC). That shot was only about $120 each. But we decided that, for us, we'd rather get the vaccines now and NOT get yellow fever, polio, malaria, hepatitis, tetanus, meningitis, etc, etc. in a third world country with very poor medical care. Not to mention that it would put a major damper on bonding with our new children! So we weighed the costs (financial, physical, etc) and made our decision. But you have to decide for yourselves. Here are the recommendations from the US Center for Disease Control (http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/destinations/democratic-republic-of-congo.htm#vaccines):

I hope that is helpful for someone out there. We just didn't really think about this part of the adoption journey much until it fell in our laps. If we had been up to date on routine vaccinations before we went to the local international travel clinic we may have saved a decent amount. Lots of vaccines have changed or expired since we were kids, so it's worth asking about.

And I will warn you that we BOTH had flu-like symptoms (headache, achiness, low-grade fever, and general yucky feeling) for a little over 24 hours after each round. (We split our shots over 2 visits.) Not fun, but certainly not as bad as having yellow fever or whatever! We sent Jonah off with the grandparents for a night so we could just both lay on the couch and rest.

We are thankful for God's intelligent design of humans, and that he allows us to benefit from modern medicine. But we trust ultimately that God is sovereign over all things, and HE is the one who will protect us from harm and disease in the DRC. (As He has been protecting our children every day!)

Praying to hear some good news about court soon! (And excited to write a post soon about the Care Packages we sent to baby R and baby girl!)

baby R's 1st Birthday!

Today is our lil guy's First Birthday!!!
{Ok, well we don't know when he was actually born since he was abandoned, but today marks 1 year since he was found in the marketplace.}
 So we CELEBRATE!
We celebrate that the Lord preserved baby R's life one year ago and every day for the past year!
We thank God for the kind stranger who took pity on our baby boy one year ago today and brought him to the orphange, which is our gateway to him in our lives!
We thank God for his birthmother, that she gave him life and left him in a place where he had a good chance of being found!
And we look forward to
We praise God for healing him from the severe case of malaria he had back in September!
And we look forward to holding him in our arms and giving him lots of belated birthday hugs and kisses in just a few months!!

We celebrated his birthday with our parents and surprised them by putting his picture on the cake (this was their first look @ their beautiful soon-to-be-grandson and granddaughter! We decided to guard their hearts after losing our sweet baby Leseli in August. We told them they'd have to wait until we passed court and he was "official", but we thought this was a fun way to surprise them & just couldn't wait.)

{Sorry, we can't show you his beautiful face yet, but trust me HE IS A-DORABLE! A very handsome lil guy!}

Happy Birthday Baby R!
LOTS of Love,
 Your Soon-to-be-Official Mommy, Daddy and big brother =)
{And ALL of your extended family too! They can't wait to meet you and baby sister!}