Acacia Village Fundraiser

Many of you have been keeping up with our fundraising efforts via e-mail updates. Our goal is to raise $10,000, via our blog and e-mail loop, to donate towards the building of a children's home in Ethiopia.
Christian World Foundation, an arm of Christian World Adoption, is committed to providing humanitarian aid to the countries where they have adoption programs. One of the greatest needs in Ethiopia is a place where children can live safely, be provided with adequate food and medical care, and be prepared for their adoption to the states. The 1st phase of Acacia Village is a children's home that would offer hope and shelter for the needy children in Ethiopia.

At the beginning of 2008, Phil and I began praying about what we could do to help the children in Ethiopia. God laid on our hearts to begin fundraising for Acacia Village. We realized that our contribution, alone, wouldn't make an impact, but "our" combined donations could make a difference. We sent out our 1st e-mail to 100+ contacts in our address book and have been blessed to see over $6,000 raised for this effort. We need to raise $3,590 more to reach our original goal of $10,000. If you haven't made a donation or if you have made a donation and would like to contribute again, please consider clicking on the Chip-In button and making a donation large or small. Each donation is fully tax-deductible, and you will receive a tax donation letter from Christian World Foundation.
Following are a few photos of the beautiful children that Phil met when visiting Ethiopia in January, 2008:




Please help us help them.

Adopting AGAIN!!..this time from Ethiopia.

We are requesting 2 girls under the age of 10 (preferably one will be an infant/toddler...but we'll see who God has planned for our family.) It's so exciting to know that God had our daughters picked out for us before the foundation of the earth!! We can't wait to meet them.

Now comes the paper pregnancy...the updated homestudy, the I-600a, the fingerprinting, the ordering of birth certificates, marriage certificates, the divulging of tax returns and bank statements and the months of waiting. Praise God we're veterans now at the paperchase, so it doesn't seem so daunting. (Remind me of this in a few months!)

Please pray with us that God will protect our girls in a country that is in the midst of another famine. Pray God will prepare both our hearts and ALL of our girls' hearts as we prepare to expand our family. Pray for God's provision of the necessary finances to pay for this adoption. After an international adoption and 2 open-heart surgeries, in the last year, the finances seem a bit daunting and yet we are at peace that God will fund what He has called our family to complete!!


No this isn't a photo of one of our daughters. This is just a sweet baby that Phil had the privilege of holding when he visited Ethiopia in January of this year.

Gotcha Day, A Birthday, and a Trip to Visit Family

Just when you think I've given up blogging completely....I'm back!! Our computer crashed several weeks ago. Despite repeated reminders to myself that I needed to back up our computer which holds not only all our important documents but also ALL of our photos from 2007 and 2008, I didn't back it up. So yes I was in crisis when a storm took our computer down. Thanks to a wonderful IT wiz at Phil's school, all of our data and our computer are recovered. Thank you Joyce!!!

While off-line we celebrated AnnaGrace's 7th Gotcha Day. (A celebration of the anniversary of the 1st day a Chinese nanny put AnnaGrace in my arms!) In honor of the celebration she picked Chuck E. Cheese as her restaurant of choice. We gave her a Jade cross necklace, from China, to remember this special day.




We also made a quick trip to South Carolina to visit Phil's family. Sarah Mei remembered Uncle Joel & Aunt Penny from our summer beach trip and exclaimed "yippee" when they walked in the door. Somehow we left the beach without a photo of Aunt Penny and Sarah Mei together. We rectified that oversight on this trip!



AnnaGrace posed with Uncle Sydney (Phil's dad's brother). Uncle Sydney will be celebrating his 90th birthday this week!


And in October we celebrated Michaela's 13th birthday. It's hard to believe we have another teenager in the house!! Her birthday was complete with the requisite Disney princess on her Baskin Robbins ice cream cake.