Fall Festival Fun

Last weekend was jam packed with Fall Festivities!
On Friday night, two awesome ladies came over with their awesome baking skills and helped me make delicious treats for our bake sale at the Faith Family Fun Fair.

Saturday we volunteered at our community fall festival. We walked around the festival selling raffle tickets. (Really Kelsey sold the raffle tickets. I learned that Trey and I are horrible sales people. Thank goodness we brought Kelsey along...lifesaver!) All proceeds from the festivities went to Helping Hands and the local food bank. It was definitely a good cause and I'm glad we were able to be a part of it.

After that festival we were off to prepare for the Faith Family Fun Fair. We had a booth for Treys business (Barfields Appliance & Parts) and we were raising money and awareness for our adoption. We participated at the festival both Saturday and Sunday evening. It was a blast! We did a bake sale, sold Kindle tickets and had an appliance smash off. :) The smash off was the biggest hit. For each donation a person gave they got 2 hits on a variety of appliances. The boys were loving it, even some girls!

We had wonderful volunteers to help!

Thanks you guys!

Even the cutest Spiderman ever came out to help raise money for baby Kade!

We also had our tree at the event. It's starting to bloom with fingerprints!

Between donations, festival earnings and selling our garage fridge, we ended up raising $1,000 last week!! I'd say that's a successful week. Thank you Lord for providing!!

We now have enough to pay for our agency application and home study!! Yay yay yay! I am actually mailing our application today and will be dropping off our completed home study paperwork on Monday! God is so good! One step closer to Kade.

Our next fee of $2,416.33 will be due upon acceptance of our application. So that will be very soon. Please pray that the funds will be provided quickly. We have faith!

Thank you for reading my blog! I would love to hear how you found the blog and any thoughts you have about the adoption. I absolutely love reading your comments, so feel free to leave them. :)

Yes, My Son will be BLACK

I didn't expect any less when we announced our decision to adopt a child from Ethiopia.  The questions from family and other concerned acquaintances began pouring in, overwhelming me with statements and accusations that downright shocked me.  I want to directly address some of the concerns that have been presented to us regarding our future multi racial family.


1. God separated us into different nations. Why are you going against that in building your family?


Yes, that is true. God did divide the nations to speak different languages.  He did this to prevent future unified opposition to Him. Genesis 11:1-8 talks about the Tower of Babel where the people united to build a tower as high as the heavens.  This displeased the Lord so He confused them by giving them different languages. This prevented them from being united in building the tower.


We are not bringing a child of a different nationality into our family in order to create opposition with God. We are choosing for our family to be multi-ethnic in order to bring glory to God and be more pleasing to Him.




2. If you adopt a black baby, will you be okay with Kipton marrying a black girl or Kade marrying a white girl?


YES! Despite us living in the south and the cultural mindset being that interracial relationships between blacks and whites is wrong, that way of thinking is not biblical.


God did not forbid marriage based upon skin color or nations, but He forbid marriage between a believer and an unbeliever. It's true, God did forbid the Israelites from marrying other races, but if you study scripture the reason for this was not color, but that the marriages would cause the Isrealites to turn away from the one true God. (2 Corinthians 6:14, 1 Corinthians 7:39, Joshua 23: 6-13 and Ezra 9:1-2, 10-14)


Scripture does not forbid interracial marriage, only interreligious marriage.


Examples of Interracial Marriage in the Bible:
-Moses married a Midianite woman. No where in scripture does God condemn Moses for the wife he chose, even though she was likely BLACK! In Numbers 12, Zipporah was described as an ETHIOPIAN woman. She was a "Cushite". Habakkuk 3:7 shows "Cushan" was an archaic term for "Midianite" (the heritage of Moses' wife).


-Boaz, son of a Canaanite woman (Rahab), married Ruth, a Moabite.


-Solomon's mother, Bathsheba, was the former wife to Uriah the Hittite.


Example of Interracial Adoption in the Bible:
-Moses was floated down the river in a basket by his birth mother only to be adopted by an Egyptian woman.




3. Why Africa? Why don't you adopt from China or Russia etc?


Each time I have heard this question or statements that are similar, it really breaks my heart. The real issue that people are having with our adoption is not that we are going to become a multi-racial family, it's that we will have a black son. Peoples perception on the the black skin color is so skewed. In the end I realize that it's not that they look down upon adopting, it's that they look down on one race. As Christians, we are called to love others and be Christlike. Well, let me tell you, Christ does not see skin color. "God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart" 1 Samuel 16:7

As a child, my grandma sang a song to me that can be very relatable in this situation.

Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world.

Red & Yellow, BLACK & WHITE, they are precious in His sight.

Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world.

Please search your heart and really question why you have the beliefs you have regarding race? I challenge you to give those thoughts to God. Look to his word as the foundation for your beliefs, not to the ideas, culture and racism of men.

Fundraising Update

A little update on our adoption funding...


We have several fundraisers lined up that we are very excited about.

• Oct 22nd is the Crowfield Fall Festival and 5k Run/Walk. We have our information in 1000 of their goody bags!
• October 22nd & 23rd we will be at the Faith Family Fun Fair. We will have our fundraising tree and a raffle.
• November 5th & 6th is our adoption garage sale at Barfields Appliance. (We are still looking for donated items.)
• November we will be fundraising through our church ministry Genesis.
• December 10th All is Well Pet Store in Summerville is letting us hold a Dog Wash. Bring your dog out and we'll give them a beautifying bath for just $10!
• January 14th we'll be hosting a pancake breakfast at Applebees. Yum! Tickets are $6 for all you can eat pancakes.

I also want to include a breakdown of our adoption financial goals. I would like you to feel included and know where your money is going if you have donated. I have broken our adoption down into 4 different goals. Each goal gets us to the next big step in the adoption.

1. $7,500 -This will pay the first of our agency fees, cover our home study, and allow us to get all the necessary documents for our dossier.

    2.   $4,500 -This is for our second agency fee and fees to complete our dossier and have it sent to Ethiopia. After this step we will officially be a waiting family!

    3.  $9,700 -This will be paid upon acceptance of our referral. We will receive Kade's picture and all medical/background information the agency has. I can not wait to see his sweet face!
   
4.  $10,000 -Our last financial need will be going towards our travel. We are required to fly twice to Ethiopia, once for court and then to bring Kade home. Airfare its not cheap, but he is so worth it! :)

Thank you so much for following our journey to bring sweet Kade into our family!

Kindle Giveaway

We are raffling off a Kindle!

If you would like to participate for a chance to win a Kindle, tickets are $2 for 1 or $5 for 3.

To purchase tickets online, click on our donate button to your right and buy as many tickets as you would like. In the "note to seller" section, write that your donation is for the kindle raffle. Once we receive your donation, we'll put the amount of tickets you bought in the raffle jar with your name and email on each one. We will draw the winning ticket on November 1st. The winner will be contacted via email to arrange delivery method. If you are outside of the Charleston area we will ship the kindle to you via UPS.

Anyone and everyone can participate!
If you love orphans...buy a ticket. If you love to read...buy a ticket.
If you will be giving a Christmas gift...buy a ticket.
If you are breathing...buy a ticket! :)

Please share the Kindle Raffle with all your friends on your blog, email, facebook and twitter.

Waiting

While we are waiting to meet our 1st financial goal ($7,500), we are basking in the glory of the Lord. He is so good! We are worshiping Him through and through, every minute of this process. His timing is perfect, so we will wait patiently each step of the way.

But I trust in you, Lord;
I say, "You are my God." My times are in your hands
Psalms 31:14-15

This song says it perfectly.

Since we have started this journey, God has been revealing himself to us in many ways. One way that has made such an impact on us is the new people God is bringing us in contact with. Last night we had Peter Hyatt as a guest speaker at Genesis. He and his family are adopting a little boy from China. They're on the last leg of their adoption and should by traveling to bring him home around January. Peters words on adoption were filled with wisdom and passion. He is such an example of letting God lead, not only in adoption but every aspect of life. You can check out his adoption blog here. We've also had the pleasure of meeting with some staff from WAY-FM. They are just flowing with ideas of ways to help us succeed in bringing Kade home. Each day this process humbles me more and more.

Please continue to keep us in your prayers and share our story with as many people as you can.