“The family is the first school of living, and the influence received inside the family is decisive for the future development of the individual,” said John Paul II.

Just liked the sentiment...

Also liked the following:

If orphan children never experience a family's love, how can we expect them to comprehend God's love?

Not all are called to adopt, but anyone can love and minister to orphan children by helping other families adopt.

1st Fundraiser - CANCELLED

We're about to launch our first fundraiser on June 8th. We'll be holding a murder mystery dinner with a luau theme. Besides being able to participate in solving the mystery, we'll also be having a 50/50 drawing and a few other activities.

I can't say enough how grateful Jeff & I are to our friends here in Colorado who are helping us with these events.

Check back after the 8th to see photos...

Campaign

If just 1,499 people donate $20 each, we will achieve our dream of becoming parents.

Dossier

Our dossier has been sent to Poland for translation and approval. Once this is done our last hurtle will be fundraising and waiting. They'll start looking for a match for us and set a date for travel once we accept a referral.

We are meeting with several very special and wonderful ladies on Thursday 2/21 to have a discussion meeting on holding a silent auction. As this will be our biggest fundraising attempt, so we're asking for prayers for success and abundance.

Stay tuned for more info....

Exciting Step

We just sent our "dossier" packet out to PA today, which means in a few weeks it will go to Poland for translation. How Exciting! Pretty soon it will just be a matter of waiting for our match. We can't wait to bring our son & daughter home!

Disappointment

Now that the excitement and panic has waned I can tell you about our disappointment. Last week we got a call from our agency saying they had a brother and sister available for adoption. We panicked because we don't have the money even to make our first trip. So we asked for an extension on our travel date and were going to decide whether to take another leap of faith and rely that God was going to take care of the funds. Our intent was to have a silent auction and a major garage sale between now and April. However, the very next day we got the second call saying the judge in Poland didn't want to hold off so long to get the kids adopted. I can understand that, and it took away us having to decide whether we could accept the referral or not due to money. I don't ever want to be in that position again, where money is the deciding factor.

We are now in the process of proceeding with figuring out where, when and how to hold a silent auction.

All prayers are welcome!

We're Approved

We're approved! We just got our USCIS approval, which we've been told is the most important piece of paper to have because it's immigration's approval for us to bring orphans home to the United States. Yipeee! 2008 is going to be our year!