Grant Letter

Dear friends and family,               
   
Paul and I have had an interesting and exciting year in 2012. We hope that you all are well and had a good year as well.  After much prayer about our family, we feel that God has called us to adopt a child. In April we started the process of adoption.

We will be adopting a little girl from Ethiopia. She will be between the ages of 1-3 and we will name her Adeline. We have been approved for the program and have finished our home study papers. We are finishing up our papers that will be submitted to Ethiopia. Our papers should be in Ethiopia by the end of February if all goes as planned. Then we will begin the wait for a profile on our daughter. This wait could be up to 2 years, but we are hoping sooner. The cost to complete the adoption is approximately $25,000.

We have been fundraising and saving money monthly to pay for the adoption. So far we have had two yard sales, a bake sale, a haircut fundraiser, sold flower bulbs, online coffee sales, and I have tried to sell crafts. We also had a coffee, dessert, and silent auction in December that had a great turn out. And since then we have been selling Chik-Fil-A calendars and will be planning a spirit night with them as well.

The cost of adoption is daunting and in this economy it is difficult to raise and/or save the amount needed.  We have been given a matching grant through our church New Life facilitated by Lifesong. The grant is $2500 matching dollar for dollar, so total we will get $5000. Our goal is to have the funds raised by March 14th, 2013; however, donations will still be accepted after this date.  If you would like to help us with offsetting the cost of our adoption you may make a donation to our grant fund.  The information is as follows: checks can be made payable to Lifesong for Orphans with preference in the memo section Brown #3299.   The address is as follows Lifesong for Orphans, P.O. Box 40/202 N. Ford Street, Gridley, IL 61744. Your donation will also be tax deductible.   We appreciate your support, both financially and prayerfully in our endeavor to bring Adeline home
                           
So our year has been busy working on the adoption process, taking care of Belle, who is such a joy and so delightful, and Paul changed jobs. So that essentially has been our year! Belle is growing up too fast, but we are enjoying every minute of it! We also cannot wait to get Adeline home and complete our family!

Please pray for our family as we go through this process, it means a great deal to us! We would appreciate prayers for our daughter in Ethiopia, her biological family, and us as we wait to find out who she is and wait to bring her home.

We hope that you have a wonderful year ahead and thank you for your prayers and support!




With Love,
Paul, Tiffany, and Belle


“to look after orphans and widows in their distress” James 1:27

New year, new routines

So for the new year I made some resolutions and goals. Some of which I am doing okay with meeting and others still need some work. So my goals were to spend more time in deep prayer, spend time playing with Belle on my days off, exercise three times a week for 20 min, and only eat one sweet a day. I need to do these things to not only be healthier physically and spiritually, but also for my mental health. I sometimes get anxious about things like money and chores. Silly to some people but that is how I feel. So I am doing fairly well, I have been trying to watch what I do put into my mouth and I have been exercising on my days off except when I hurt my knee recently. I have been doing 20 min on the elliptical and sit-ups, push-ups, and planks every night as well. I am feeling better now that i am making healthier food choices and exercising. I know I need to do it for my heart and to just maintain healthy weight. Which I am at a good weight but I would like to lose a little. Not much, but just to feel better and have my jeans fit the way they used to!

So as for what I have been doing, it's been caring for Belle obviously, cleaning, cooking, and putting Christmas stuff away. We kept our stuff up until after January 7th to recognize the Ethiopian Christmas. Next year we may do more on that holiday to get into the habit of celebrating that holiday for Adeline. We want to include some of her culture in ours. She needs to know where she came from and how they do things!

So speaking of Adeline and our adoption, we had a oops moment. We sent our USCIS stuff right before Christmas but the check was written for the wrong amount! :-(  So it was sent back but we sent it back right away with the proper amount on the check. It appeared as though they had processed our papers mostly and just needed the money, so we are hoping this didn't hold us up much! We have a few more papers to be notarized and certified, then a few state certifications and pictures and a few more changes and we should have all of our documents ready! We also got our grant approval yesterday!! We have a $2500 dollar for dollar matching grant to help with the cost!! This will go toward our dossier submission and we will need to come up with another $1000. So we are praying and trying to trust that God will provide the funds we need! Prayers are appreciated! I will post our letter later.

Today I was supposed to work, but Belle is sick again with a fever and runny nose. Poor thing! So I am just going to chill and catch up on a few things! God is good and I am so thankful for my husband, daughter, and the rest of my family! They are all awesome!