Progress Report

Friday afternoon I came home from a lunch with some of my dearest friends (side note: Spending time with women of the Lord can be SO refreshing and energizing even in casual conversation!) to find a packet from CAS (our adoption agency). I jumped up and down in the street a couple of times, did a little dance, then ran (literally) inside to bring Luke the envelope.
Much to my relief it was exactly what I thought...OUR SIGNED & NOTARIZED HOME STUDY!!! Woohoo!!
The packet also included instructions for our next steps. We need to have a meeting with the agency director since she is the liaison between the pregnant families and prospective adoptive families. She wants to be able to know us on a personal level before she can recommend placing a child with us in her conversations with the mothers.

Now we are full steam ahead on our photo book. (This is a printed photo album that the agency will use to show the mothers as they try to decide on placing their child for adoption or not.) We plan on having it completed for approval by Friday the 8th. We have made significant progress on it this past week so I have every confidence that we can make this self imposed deadline. (digging through all these old photos is pretty fun)

We are also now working pretty hard to fine tune and submit our grant applications. It is certainly humbling to ask for $15,000 but God has used this as another way to grow us in sanctification. We are learning how to ask for help raising money, help organizing this yard sale, help actually running the yard sale (emails have not yet been sent on this front), help for items to sell at the yard sale. As I said, humbling. I have been a bit overwhelmed by the magnitude of this yard sale that we've planned, but the Lord has brought along several brothers and sisters to use their various gifts and help bear this burden. I am probably sounding like a broken record lately, but God has been so incredibly gracious!!

I am getting more excited every day thinking about the child/children that the Lord has ordained for the Henderson family. I just can't wait to see who He has in store for us!

(first time walking into our McDowell town home)