Prayer Requests and Needs

It has been such a whirlwind, and God answered so many prayers before we were even able to make them public!!!

For one, we got our official acceptance of our sweet Ellie after only 2 weeks!!! The typical wait time is 1-3 months. We couldn't believe it!!!

We would love to travel on or really close to her first birthday (Oct. 20)... it is not totally out of the question, but it would take a huge miracle by God!!! You see, from this point on, things are really out of our control. We are waiting on different entities...Dept. of US Homeland Security, Chinese Consulate, China's travel acceptance, and for a travel group to be heading to China during that time.

Like I said, it is not totally likely, but it is not out of the question, so we ask for prayer that everything will move quickly and that we could possibly travel in October.

Here's some prayer requests:

1. Now that we are at this stage, we have been given a more clearer estimate of what the rest of the expenses will be for this final stage. It looks like we probably need around $3000 more... we can't believe we have made it this far!!!! God is soooo good (all the time!!!), and we are so thankful to all of you who have helped bring her home!!

Please pray that we will be able to raise the rest of our finances!! We will be having an upcoming Bunko fundraiser again (like last year), so be on the lookout for that flyer. :-)

If you still would like to contribute towards Ellie's adoption, you can either send us the money, or you can contribute to our "Eternal Family Fund" through our adoption agency. Please contact us for more information.

2. Please pray for God to be preparing a great travel group for us!!! Again, we would love to travel in October, but everything has to fall into place first. Pray that we will be traveling at the right time and with the exact group of people God would want us to be with!!

3. Please be praying for all the rest of travel arrangements to go smoothly and that we will not have a problem obtaining our visas.

4. Pray for God to be preparing Ellie's heart to be part of our family!! Pray that she will know somewhere deep down inside of her that we are her family when she meets us for the first time.

We also thought we would throw out a couple of initial needs that we have right now...

1. We are in need of a small dresser for Ellie. For right now, Ellie will be staying in our room, and we don't really have enough room for a large dresser for her, but if it were a small one (or skinnier/taller one...we don't have the width space, but plenty of height space) we could definitely use it!! We just thought we would see if anyone had one that they no longer needed, or if you are a Saturday morning garage sale "nut" :-) and you find one...please let us know!

2. If you are a seasoned "International Traveler" and happen to have voltage converter devices for electronics and other devices in China that we could use, that would be awesome!!!

3. If you have also traveled to China and can recommend (not recommend) airlines that you have flown on, that would be helpful. Our agency does all the travel plans, but we have to list our airline preferences.  

I know there will be more needs/prayer requests as we get closer, but we are so thankful for such a great team of prayer warriors and supporters!!! We love and are so thankful for each and every one of you!!!