"Seeing Double"

So we just "officially" began our adoption journey a little over a week ago. By "officially" I mean, submitted our application to the agency and began the contract and homestudy "phase". This is something we've been praying about for 5 years and began planning last summer. And it's a good thing we took the time to "pre-plan" because once we jumped in...it was with both feet for sure!

We had been planning to do a yard sale for about 2 months to kick off our adoption fundraising. It was a good way to clean out our house, raise a little money to go towards our adoption expenses and start telling people about the adoption and future fundraisers we are planning. As I began to tell people about the adoption and the yard sale we had several precious friends and neighbors offer to donate items for us to sell. To be honest, I was so grateful for their support but I didn't really expect this "fundraiser" to really raise many funds:) I have limited experience with yard sales but have always heard they are a lot of work without a lot of results. I just wanted to get some of our "stuff" out of the house and thought this was a great way to do it. Our attitude going into the adoption was "we are going to take it slow...we aren't in any hurry." (Which is code for, "We have to come up with $45,000 so the longer we drag our feet the better" :) ) So a yard sale seemed to be the perfect, low-key first step.

The Monday night before the yard sale we got a call from "our agency". They had called both Dustin and I several times that day so we were concerned something was wrong. They were calling to see if we were fleixble about our program. Specifically, would we be willing to switch to Russia. Now this was something we had already discussed together. We decided a few days prior to this phone call that we were not going to limit God in this process. So we were going to be flexible about almost everything...just as long as we ended up with at least one boy:) That, of course, was Dustin's contribution:) So if that means God provides us a child from Russia, then we will go to Russia. After I finished explaining our "not going to limit God" approach, the lady on the other end says, "Well, we have 10 month old twin boys available in Russia right now." I immediately felt myself limiting the situation...TWINS, RUSSIA, NOW? Really God? How? We left it at we are going to be very diligent in getting our paperwork/homestudy ready and then if these little guys are still available, we can make a decision.

Of course, we are too early in the process to be able to give an immediate answer. But in that one phone call we went from being nervous about adopting one child in Serbia in possibly the next 12 months for $45,000 to totally "okay" with adopting twins in Russia in 4-5months for $80,000.  There's no explanation:)

The urgency for raising money and awareness of our adoption increased with the knowledge of the twins. We are praying for God to show us clearly if these babies are our children. I believe this will be answered in the next few weeks. If it does not work out for us to adopt the twin boys, then I do feel like God has shown us our easy acceptance for two for a reason. So now we know regardless, we have A LOT of money to raise! As the yard sale approached I was a little nervous that maybe we should've been working toward something more "productive" in raising money. I set a "personal" goal. I actually told God the night before that if we could just make $500 at this yard sale than I'd find that encouragement enough to keep working to get these twins.

The yard sale was this past Saturday. We had a great day! It was beautiful! We had wonderful items donated to sell and several of our Fellowship friends and Haddington neighbors came over to support and encourage us. (I can't tell you how much you all mean to us!) We met some really nice people and were able to share our adoption blog and even had some fundraising suggestions given to us. It was a very humbling and special day. While we were packing up, Dustin took the money inside to figure out how much we had raised. We had run out of garbage bags so I was heading to the store, but just before I left, he told me we had made just over $1200! I was really excited but focused on getting the day finished so I jumped in the car and headed to Walmart. A few minutes down the road...in that quiet, calm drive I felt the Lord say, "I doubled your goal because I doubled your adoption."