Our precious boy's 10th birthday was at the beginning of the summer. Leading up to his birthday I was getting pretty sad. As you may know....I LOVE my children's birthdays! Steve jokes with me that they just don't have a birthDAY...they have a week long celebration!! To make it worse, this year was our guy's big 10....double digits. Knowing that we were going to miss another birthday, we were all getting bummed. When we were waiting for Ellie we missed her 2nd birthday. It so diffictuly to be away from your child on their birthday. However...God made Ellie's birthday magical for us. You can read about it here.... http://loveneverfails-gautreaux.blogspot.com/2011/11/happy-2nd-birthday-ellie.html
Even though it saddned my heart to not be with our birthday boy. I was overjoyed when we received this picture of his birthday celebration with his foster family. He is so loved at Little Flower. We are so thankful for them!
Since we couldn't be with him on this birthday we wanted to do something to celebrate him and the beautiful life our Lord has given to him. We thought it would be fun to throw a party in his honor. As we continued to think and plan out the idea, we thought a fundraiser would be great too! We would hold a fundraiser for our adoption expenses and for his medical needs foster home, Little Flower. What started as a small idea....blossomed before our eyes. Through the generous donation of Backbay Bounce and More we had a huge water slide for all of the kids to play on. They even donated a snow cone machine to use at the party to cool off with in the afternoon. It was a really great time for everyone.
I cannot wait to share with him how very loved he is already!
He has so many friends that cannot wait to meet him.
Many friends and family attended our Celebration of Life for our precious boy. During the party we gathered all of our party guests around and "introduced" them to our son. Through pictures and stories we shared a glimpse of the amazing child we are working so hard to bring home. We also shared a look into the tremendous work Little Flower is doing for so many children. If you would like to read more about Little Flower, and see for yourself how they are saving precious little lives every day, go here...
http://chinalittleflower.org
Please keep them in your prayers as they work each and every day caring and loving so many medically fragile babies and children.
After our presentation, we had a big announcement.....we told everyone our son's name.
His name is Jerry! Stay tuned for the story behind his name...that post is coming...eventually!
We were so very blessed with Jerry's party. We were able to raise a grand total of $900. So we have shared half of our donations with his medical needs foster home. We pray that this amount that has blessed us will continue to bless others.
Adoption can be costly. It will cost approximately $33,000 to bring home our son. So far we have paid $13,500 in adoption expenses. A wonderful organization, Reece's Rainbow has a grant for us to use just for Jerry's adoption. Before we even started the process, several adoption advacates were praying for Jerry. They were worked hard to raise money to help his future family. Since we have the priveledge of being that family, we are able to use the $9,686 Reese's Rainbow raised to help with our adoption expenses!! Wow...can you believe that???
So....since the party we are now at $23,636. We still have a ways to go before we are "fully funded".
Our Lord has graciously provided so much already, and we trust that He will continue to provide the rest of the journey.
If you would like to donate towards our adoption expenses. Please go here....
http://reecesrainbow.org/93393/sponsorgautreaux
or the button at the top right of my blog for Reece's Rainbow. If you go to this site, you will see that his name is "Sulley". This was his "advocate name". For the safety of the children their real names aren't used while they are waiting to find their family.
Another birthday blessing that we received this summer was our dossier being sent to Ch*na. Our dossier is all of the paperwork and homestudy we have been working on since February. In fact, it was sent over to Ch*na on Steve's birthday, what a great gift!
How close are we to bringing our son home??? Well we get closer every day. Right now we are waiting for Ch*na to issue our Letter of Approval notice (LOA). This wait is very unpredictable....it could be as early as 3 more weeks, or another 2 months. Once we have our LOA, the wait is more predictable. It is usually 10 weeks to travel from the issue of our LOA. We are still hoping and praying to have him home for Christmas!
I have been trying to keep up this blog. But if you would like more frequent updates, you can follow our journey our on Facebook page here...
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1466832850299736/
Please join us in praying for our Jerry's heart to be prepared to leave Little Flower and join our family. Please pray for all of the orphans, especially the ones in the care of Little Flower and New Hope.
As always thank you for following and praying along with us.
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