Birthday Shirts

One of my favorite things about this little business of mine is that I can easily do things like this. These are birthday shirts for the precious children at Love and Hope Children's Home in El Salvador. I look forward to sending these every couple of months. Love and Hope does a great job of making each child feel special.
(If you are worried they can't read them b/c they speak Spanish...they take English classes so I try to use a font that is easy to read)

More on WHY

We get so many questions about our adoption so I will try to answer as many as I can...

1. Why El Salvador?

After literally countless hours of research over the last few years, we have chosen to adopt from El Salvador for a few reasons. Besides the fact that God has pulled our hearts toward that country, some of the other realistic reasons are:

- Travel was doable considering we have three other children. We are hoping to have some miles saved up from my American Express business card to pay for our airfare. Depending on how old Jake is, we may take him with us.

- There are many orphans in El Salvador who need homes due to extreme poverty.

- We fell in love with the children at Love and Hope Children's home and are learning so much about the country and people from them.

- The fees are substantially lower in El Salvador. Instead of $30,000 to 40,000 they are around $20,000. This was not quite as overwhelming to us.

- Our child may actually come to us from foster care which would e nice opposed to coming from an orphanage. The people are very loving there and would take good care of him while we wait to bring him home, which is a comfort to me.

2. We were asked why we don't just give the money to an orphanage as opposed to adopting.

For starters, we don't have $20,000 sitting around. We are working our tails off trying to save and raise the money to bring this little guy home. But, if we did have it, we would not do that because we believe that children should grow up in a home with a family NOT an orphanage.

3. We have been asked how we could love someone who is not "ours biologically"-

That has never crossed our minds. I hope it doesn't. God loves us unconditionally and He loves each of our children. We will too.

4. How old will the child be...

Our request is to adopt a child that will be the youngest in our family. Abby will be about 3 1/2 when he comes home so he will hopefully be 0-18 months.

5. How are you going to pay for this?

Honestly, I (Jeni) ask God this question all the time. I don't know. I don't know how we paid for all of Abby's and my medical bills the last year and a half. I don't know how we paid for new flooring to help Abby's asthma. Some things just weren't in the budget, but they were paid for. God has provided for us faithfully over and over.

Our goal is to come up with as much of the money as possible without taking out a loan. I am working very hard with Carabella's. It is a young business so there are a lot of expenses, but it is growing and we are excited about that.

We are going to apply for as many grants as possible and we are going to save as much as possible. We are open to any fundraising suggestions too. Basically, we will do whatever we need to do to bring our little guy home.

That's it for now. If you want to read a great book on adoption, our current favorite is "Fields of the Fatherless." It is short and easy and it is awesome!!

Cuties from El Salvador

Knowing that we most likely have 2 long years to be in this "process" we thought it would be neat for our family to sponsor a child from El Salvador. There is a great home that I have posted about before on my blog and also on my business site called Love & Hope Children's home. God is doing neat things there. Abandoned children, some whose parents are dead, are being raised in a home with parents and siblings. They are being nurtured, educated and loved, and most importantly, they are learning that Jesus loves them and has a plan for their lives!

The home has a sponsorship program. For $25 a month they are able to meet their basic needs. They also encourage sponsors to visit their children at some point. Jeremy and I thought it would be so cool to get to sponsor a child that we would someday get to meet when we pick our little one up. I hopped on the website and picked out an adorable little boy. Jeremy of course, picked a cute little gir. This is typical for us so we decided to sponsor both. Their pictures are on our fridge and as a family we pray for them and are eager to send them things (letters and such). We wish that they could join our family, but they are not considered adoptable so we will just look forward to meeting them.

Why We Want to Adopt

I can't say it any better than this video below. There are too many children who are growing up without a Mom and Dad, without a family to love on them and take care of them. We want very badly to bring a child into our home to be a part of our family. We don't know where, we don't know how, but we know that God is bigger than us and He has a heart for children.

Hidden Treasure

We had disappointing news from our agency this week. It is not looking like El Salvador will work out. We will likely have to start over with a new agency unless something big happens. Pray for us that God will help us to be patient. Another difficult thing for me this week was reviewing the file of a precious child in Taiwan. I didn't think that it would be a fit for our family, but reviewed anyway. That was my first file to go through and some of the things I read made me deeply sad. I called Jeremy and said, "Do you realize how much we don't have to deal with." We have three very healthy children. We love them and take care of them. They wake everyday knowing they are loved and they go to bed at night without fear for the next day. God has blessed us more than we even understand.

I know this will be a life changing journey. I don't know that I was quite prepared to venture into what the world can be like for an orphan.