DTE!!!! DECEMBER 2nd, 2011!!!

I know... I know.. it's the 14th.. but better late then never!!!   Plus if any of you are my friends on facebook and the AWAA yahoo group you've already seen the post..  but as of Friday, December 2nd  our Dossier was shipped via FedEx to Ethiopia and it arrived the following Weds, December 7th.  We are finally officially in line!    What a strange feeling of release and blessing.  The release of almost 9 months of paperwork..  and for those of you who are just starting the journey of the paper chase  most are an average of 3-6 months-- Our time frame dragged on due to being self employed (needed more paperwork), living in Florida (over a 2 month wait for physicals due to the snowbirds being in town) and God's perfect timing in providing our finances.  The blessing of seeing in the past 9 months the Lord working in amazing ways and bringing people into our lives at just the right moments in our journey to help in our decisions and to confirm our calling of adoption.    

 Deb Gangemi- if you are reading this post..  We are coming up to the one year mark of when Josh and I came to your home in Sarasota to put soapstone in your kitchen.   Tears are flooding my eyes at the memory.  You breathed encouragement and hope into my heart that day.    The words of the Lord that you spoke are coming true everyday..  He is providing every penny and we know that this is His will!!!  Thank you for being so kind and so sensitive to the Holy Spirit!   I pray for the Lord's blessing on you and your beautiful family this Christmas!  (we also completed the MAPP class through the Florida Baptist Children's home back in October..  WOW!! What an amazing class and it touched our hearts in so many ways.   We are  praying about the future and the possibility of adopting through the Foster Care System.)

We hope that by next Christmas there will be 2 less!!!!  

BLESSINGS BLESSINGS BLESSINGS

Wow!  Where to start?!?!  Last week I had the wonderful privileged of going on a Missions trip through Orphan's Heart to the Guatemala Malnutrition Center in San Juan with my mom and Jon and Tricia Gadomski.    The trip was wonderful!!!!  The 79 children were absolutely beautiful and just beyond precious in so many ways.   I changed diapers for the first time in like 16 yrs.... and I didn't gag!!!     I was so thankful for all the DVD's that I had ordered from Show Hope on attachment and healthy play.   Right off the bat I went into the Pollo's group (Twelve 2-3yr olds that all but 2 were walking) and a small 2 yr named Lois Fernando was screaming when they put him down.. I went to pick him up and he arched his back, avoided eye contact and wanted nothing to do with me.   By the end of the week he was reaching upward to the sky for me to pick him up and holding onto my fingers while he walked around the room.  There was not enough of us to love on each one individually the whole time we were there.  But the center was a glowing place of God's love and provision during our time.  These beautiful children only see a group come through on average of 2 times a month.   Tears come to my eyes at the thought of those children that never have interaction in their orphanages or on the street.    I pray for my future children and all the children with out parents that they are being held and loved like they need to be.   The little girl that I'm holding in the picture came to the Center over a year and 3 months ago and looked like a skeleton 

Sunday, Pastor Jim has been preaching a series on the names of God and this Sunday was on Jehovah Jireh.   (The Lord will Provide)   and today as I received a letter from Show Hope I said those words before I opened the letter.   We were blessed beyond measure on being accepted for a grant!!!   Huge answer to prayer!!!

Dossier off for review

Well the paperwork on our end is (hopefully) done!   One original Dossier, one copy (no staples or paperclips) and some passport photos, Hague certificates and a lot of prayers are in the box to go in the mail tomorrow to America World.     The BIG day of DTE (Dossier to Ethiopia) is hopefully going to happen in the next 2 weeks and I know I'll be posting all over facebook and all over everywhere when that happens.

It's super quiet in the house right now..  Josh is on a field trip with Shay Shay to the shop to work on some tiles and I'm sitting here with the River with no distractions..    No music playing somewhere, no tv with some Food Network show on mute. For those of you who know me well  that's a rarity. I even gave River a chewy so he's surprisingly quiet.   It's a nice time to just reflect and praise the Lord for this journey.   It's not over yet.. and we have no idea when it will be over.

It was almost a year ago that we went to the AWAA seminar in Orlando.  We got up extremely early to drive 3 hours to a very small town outside Orlando.   We arrived early and walked through their Saturday morning farmers market.   It's funny what you remember... but I just had a flash back to goats and Chris Tomlin..    There was a small group of teenagers who were playing a praise songs as the "entertainment" for the farmers market and they started singing How Great is Our God..  I remember going.. oh cool a praise band and then I saw the GOATS.  Talk about product marketing.  This farmers market maybe had 20 vendors.  But one of them was a lady who sold goat milk products.  She brought about 3 or 4 goats with her and they were in this little pen.   I was sleepy drunk and I just was like so surprised.. (I have no idea why) to see Goats at a farmers market.  This story isn't going anywhere funny or spiritual.. but now all I can think about is that song " I don't want to be Goat, nope... I don't want to be a Goat, nope.. cause a Goat don't got no Hope, nope.. I don't want to be Goat, nope"  anyone who worked at High Point camp in the late 90's knows that song..

So anyways.. back to the seminar.   We walk into the basement of the church, sign the clip board, get the name tag and the binder and had our hearts broken.   Two couples came up and gave their stories.  Both unique and both were told with an amazing love for the Lord and the children they adopted.   They  introduced their beautiful children, a video was shown, a process was explained and we left with confirmation to our calling.

This weekend America World is holding another Adoption Seminar.   It is WORTH checking out.

FL Seminars

FL

First Baptist Church Orlando
3125 Bruton Blvd. - Suite B (The Center for Pregnancy)
Orlando, FL 32805

WEBSITE•REGISTER•DIRECTIONS

Saturday
October 29, 2011
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Seminar at 'The Center for Pregnancy'

If the Lord has placed even a curiosity in you heart  GO!!!!!   and then email or call me if you have any questions.  We love sharing about the journey.

Paracord Bracelets for Sale!

We FINALLY are able to offer our extremely  popular Paracord Survival  Bracelets for sale!  
Custom made just for you PLUS 100% goes towards bringing our children home!    Below is an order form.  If you go to our church, play at the softball fields or are just local friends.  Print it out and chase us down and we'll make sure to turn them around in 24 hours.   If you are our out of the area friends and family once you click on the Donate Now Button make sure to fill in the Comments box with the size, type, colors ect..  If in doubt shoot me an email at mimischaefer@gmail.com.   We'll mail them out priority mail again within 24 hours.

Post Yard Sale Report

First off a huge thank you to all who gave items for the yard sale and to all of those who help us with logistics, set up, the sale itself and for just coming to buy and support us this week!   We are still in awe over the whole event.   Over $2400 were raised towards the adoption!!!    It was an amazing blessing to Josh and I to see the generosity to those who gave of their wonderful stuff as well as their precious time.  

Making Bracelets! ! !

John, Tricia, and Nate came over and helped out making bracelets.  John ended up with blisters, we ended up with tons of para cord bracelets to sell!  John and Tricia are machines. . .   Big thanks, what a great Sunday! ! !  More info to come on ordering your own custom made bracelet!!!  Help support our adoption!

YARD SALE TIME

Wow where to start..  One week ago Josh and I had our appointment for fingerprinting down in Fort Myers.   We're almost ready for Step 2.   Step 1 would be the paper chase or the collection of documents for our Dossier.   Next is the submitting of the Dossier to Ethiopia.   Now I'm starting to get the butterflies and excitement that this is really truly happening!   I'm sure some are confused but that.. but I have really kept my emotions in check.. sure I weep and sob at watching our friends adoption stories...but I keep thinking that its such a far off dream and slowly and surely we are moving forward!  

To help us get through to Step 2 we are required to have payments made before the dossier can be sent to Ethiopia.   To help offset those costs we are having a Yard Sale!   First off THANK YOU!! to all our friends and new supporters of our adoption at First Baptist Church who have donated items for our sale.   The amount of stuff in our garage, spare bedroom and warehouse is growing and growing!  We have been blown away by the generosity.

The Yard Sale will be Sept 30th- Oct 1st.   We'll be accepting donations til Sept 29th.   We have a truck so we will be more then happy to come and pick stuff up.   We're also making Survival Bracelets as a fundraiser.   More info to come!    Thank you again to all who love and are supporting us with your thoughts and prayers.

A Taste of Ethiopia

So Mimi and I had a chance try out some Ethiopian food.  The flavors were exciting and vibrant!  I learned that Ethiopia has some great coffee, and the honey wine is definitely unique . . .lol.  Next time Mimi and I thought we may try the vegetarian dishes as most of the food we leaned toward on this platter was the veggies.   We had a good time. . . can’t wait to be eating in country! ! !

Paper, Paper EVERYWHERE!

So we are nearing the end of the Paper chase or some call it Paper Pregnancy.  Basically how the adoption works is you pick your agency.  For us it was America World Adoption Agency www.awaa.org   We did a ton of research and after hearing the testimonies of personal friends that had adopted through them we felt confident in our decision.  

We then reviewed all the countries that we could adopt from and after much prayer we decided on Ethiopia.   I'll have to share later why we decided on that country.    We received our welcome email and the paper pile started!    All adoptions require paperwork.. international ones from what I gather require a lot more!   From background checks, medical check ups, financial records..(all of which need to be notarized) our government and the government that we are adopting from want to make sure that we will responsible, loving, stable parents.   We have been working pretty steady on this paperwork since February.   What I thought would take 3 months has taken a bit longer...  We're at 6 months currently and we submitted 2 weeks ago the I600A  which is a federal document that is required to pass embassy and legally bring our children back to the US.   We still need to be fingerprinted and are waiting for the governments permission to do so.  So I'm hoping this will be wrapped up in the next month.  

All of this paperwork is referred to as the Dossier.   The  Dossier is submitted to our agency and after an installment payment is made is then shipped off to Ethiopia.   Once in Ethiopia it is reviewed (which can take months and months) and then per our requests children are then matched to us.   This stage is called the Referral.  We receive a file of information on the children and pictures.  We then prayerfully will make the decision to move forward or to wait for a different referral.   Upon acceptance, another payment is made and then we wait for a court date.  Once a court date is set, Josh and I will travel to Ethiopia to meet our children for the 1st time!!  We will be in the country for around a week and upon passing court the children are legally ours.  But then we go back to the U.S. WITHOUT our precious children to wait 6-8 weeks for our embassy date.   We then fly back to Ethiopia to pass embassy and bring them back to the U.S. for good!  There is a process called readoption that takes place once you return to the U.S... but I'll save that for when that happens since I don't know too much about it all yet.   I'm putting together a timeline and will put it on a side post in the future.

'He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance to his pleasure and will."-Ephesians 1:5

Beginning

It was over a year ago that Josh and I mailed our application to America World to officially start our journey of starting our family through adoption.    Five and half years ago we pledged our love to each other in the presence of 80 orphans in Acapulco Mexico. Hopefully soon we will pledge our love once again to our children in the land of Ethiopia.    

Family and Friends are constantly asking questions about our adoption process .  We hope that you all will enjoy reading about our journey as well as learn about the staggering need for adoption throughout the world.    We chose to adopt as our plan A for our family.   While most people are shocked by this. We know that God has called us to do this and here are some of the reasons 

The statistics are overwhelming. Per UNICEF  in 2004 over 143 million children are orphaned by 1 or more parent.     Per the ABBA fund  approx 80 million are adoptable.     What would it take for these 80 million children to find permanent loving Godly homes??????  6-7% of Born Again Christians to open their hearts and homes and obey God's calling to adopt.    He is the Father to the Orphan... and He is our Heavenly Father by way of Adoption.  

Romans 8:15 ' For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba, Father!" '