Approved!

Just minutes ago I got off the phone with LifeSong for Orphans. They have approved us for an interest-free adoption loan! Praise God!!!!!

The amount we will receive will not cover the remaining expenses though. It will leave us short by $3000 plus travel fees. So, please keep us in your prayers for these final amounts. Donate if you can, pass our blog along to family and friends who might be able to help, host a fundraiser, help us get creative and find ways to come up with the remaining costs.

Still no LOA yet. Any China families out there receiving yours recently? Any clue of the current wait times? As you can see by the ticker above, we're going on 3 months and everyday I expect the call from my agency.

Still no bites on the house either. More showings but no offers. It will only get harder come wintertime. We've had contractors in to estimate paint and trim work for the basement that we finished ourselves. I feel like my realtor wasted his time by talking to the contractors for their suggestions when nothing they would do would add any value to my home. Besides, we don't have the funds to pay for the work anyway. My mom is retiring soon and she has offered to come out and help me paint a couple of rooms to make them more neutral. I need a buyer who can look past paint colors. Keep praying because this gets more trying by the day and I'm physically and emotionally exhausted. I need this to end or I'm going to lose my mind!

Thank you, God for the blessing of an adoption loan! You continue to provide everything we need for the daughter You designed for us. Thank you! Amen.

1 Week - Keep Praying

One week behind us and still no word on the adoption loan I mentioned in my previous post or our LOA.  So please keep us in your prayers for both this week.  Pray for God's favor on our adoption finances and that He would provide every penny we need so our daughter can come home without delay!

Also, still no house sale yet.  We've been super close 3 times but the clients always choose the other house.  Maddening!  Living in limbo is getting really difficult and stressful with the approaching holidays.  Have you ever had a conversation with someone, and they are talking and you are listening and what they say takes you off guard and makes you stop in your tracks because what they are saying might just be the truth, the crazy truth, something you hadn't thought of yourself?  I had one of those moments when I called one of my best friends in MN to tell her about our referral.  She said to me, "Brooke, maybe this is why your house hasn't sold.  Maybe your daughter is coming home first."  Whoa.  Mind blowing.  Maybe she's right.  As these weeks and months drag on and on with no sale, the more and more convinced we are that our sweet girl is the priority, not the house.

A friend from our new church said to me recently, "Wouldn't it be just like God to work things out so that one of you needs to be in China picking up your daughter and the other [spouse] will need to be in NE packing up and closing on your house?"  Again, it was a stop-dead-in-your-tracks kind of statement.  I don't know if God is speaking through these 2 friends, but perhaps, just perhaps He is.  And if that's the case, then we could be just 2-3 months away from traveling to China and selling our house at the same time.  We'll see how He has it all unfold.

Keep praying, people!    Oh please, keep praying!

2 Weeks - A Call to Prayer

This morning I received a phone call from LifeSong for Orphans, an organization that provides grants and interest-free adoption loans.  They are processing our application for an interest-free loan and they had questions about our application.  I spoke with the gal for 15 minutes or so and fine tuned the numbers and dollars and timing we are facing.  She said in 2 weeks they will make their decision about our application!

Will you add us to your prayer list for the following two weeks and ask God for His favor regarding this loan application and that He would provide us the funds we need?  Our remaining expenses are:

$555 - US Consulate Fees - due upon receipt of LOA
$7367 - China adoption Fee - due upon receipt of LOA

It would be my prayer that LifeSong would provide a loan to cover the 2 costs above because they will be due when we receive our LOA from China, which should be arriving ANY DAY NOW!

After that we will very quickly owe travel fees which will be near the amount of $7800 per person.  We'll climb that mountain when we get there.  In the meantime, you can still donate!  Click on the donate tab above to find out how.  Above all...

Please pray for God's favor on our adoption finances by providing us with this interest-free loan from LifeSong, enough to cover the LOA fees above.

Thanks to one and all for praying our daughter home!  You are all a part of her story in a major way!