Fundraiser
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Waiting....
I'm getting so impatient! Waiting any day for the new photo list to come out and hoping I'll just "know" when I see her face, that she's the right one. We all pray every night for her, even though we don't know her yet, and I pray that God will show us the right one. It's so scary and yet so exciting. The waiting is killing me, and I keep telling myself this is just a little taste of the waiting game I'll no doubt be playing in the future! Ughhhh in the meantime I'm trying to busy myself with researching Latvia, the country, the language, and the Orphanages there. I set up an appointment to have my fingerprints done today. I don't have to do it until after I chose a child but figured its one more thing out of the way!
Saturday, August 17, 2013
In the begining...
This is the first of many posts I will make to my new blog. If you want to read a bit about what brought me to this point, click on "about me". I'd be glad to share more about that if anyone has questions, but since I want this blog to be about our future and our adoption, I won't start off by talking about my past.
Right now we have decided to use a International Hosting Agency to start our journey to adoption. What this is, is an organization that goes to different countries and interviews and selects children from orphanages to come to America for a period of time (usually 4-5 weeks) and live with a "host" family. The family may be interested in adoption or may just want to advocate for others to adopt this child while they are here. Either way, these orphans get a chance to experience love, family, America, and many other things that have never experienced before. At the end of the host period, the child must return to their country regardless of the family or other families intentions to adopt. One criticism of these organizations is that is seems cruel to give these kids a taste of what life could be like and then send them back. The answer is simple, it gives these orphans a CHANCE and it sends them home with something many of them are completely without....hope. Most of the host families do end up adopting their host child or through word of mouth or other means, finding another family to adopt them. Another thing about these organizations is that they advocate for older child adoption. Most start from age 6 and go through age 15. When I first heard this, I wasn't sure it was for us. My dream has been to have a BABY, I mean my loss of not being able to have a baby was about a BABY, getting to this point and giving up the dream of holding a newborn in my arms again seemed odd. However, it seems so clear to me now that God has had a plan in everything that has happened since the day I sat in that doctors office and was told I would never get pregnant again. I believe he had a hand in this too. In what seemed like an instant I no longer craved that newborn as I have for the past 7 years but it suddenly seemed very content to add a child 6 or older into our family. The thought of changing diapers, buying all new cribs, highchairs, toys ect (bc I gave everything I had away a long time ago), waking up all night long to a crying baby, really didn't interest me anymore lol. Let's face it, Im 7 years older, and so are the boys. A six year old would be just as if we had gotten pregnant when all this happened and fast forwarded 7 yrs! It sounded perfect to me and also to Danny and the boys which just convinced me even more, we are on the right tack. The more I learn about older orphans, the more my heart goes out to them. After the age of 5, a child has only a 20% chance of getting adopted and obviously that chance decreased with each year. At age 16, the state no longer takes care of them. The Orphanage (the only place some have ever known as home) puts them out and says good-bye. Most turn to drugs and prostitution to survive.
Now that Ive told you what hosting is, I will tell you where we are in the process. We have pre- registered with a few different organizations, we are waiting for the new photo listings for the winter hosting to come out which should be within the next two weeks. Then we search through pictures and bios of kids and choose one that we like! In the meantime we pray that God shows us the right one!! Then we put a deposit, fill out a ton of paperwork, get fingerprinted and criminal background checks, put down more money and then hopefully by around mid December we will pick up our little girl from the airport. Needless to say I will be posting updates on here each step of the way! I think this is enough for my first post and hopefully gives everyone a good idea of where we were, and where we are going! One more thing I want to add, international adoptions are very expensive. The name of our blog A-Wing-n-a-Prayer kind of sums up how we are doing this! We have set up an adoption fundraiser to hopefully raise some money to add to our savings by the time we are ready to proceed with the adoption. You can purchase cool t shirts on the site and a percentage of the proceeds go to our fund! Here is the link www.adoptionbug.com/mullen Please check it out, and buy a t shirt or share our link with others! Most of all PRAY for us!! We are going to need it!! :)
Right now we have decided to use a International Hosting Agency to start our journey to adoption. What this is, is an organization that goes to different countries and interviews and selects children from orphanages to come to America for a period of time (usually 4-5 weeks) and live with a "host" family. The family may be interested in adoption or may just want to advocate for others to adopt this child while they are here. Either way, these orphans get a chance to experience love, family, America, and many other things that have never experienced before. At the end of the host period, the child must return to their country regardless of the family or other families intentions to adopt. One criticism of these organizations is that is seems cruel to give these kids a taste of what life could be like and then send them back. The answer is simple, it gives these orphans a CHANCE and it sends them home with something many of them are completely without....hope. Most of the host families do end up adopting their host child or through word of mouth or other means, finding another family to adopt them. Another thing about these organizations is that they advocate for older child adoption. Most start from age 6 and go through age 15. When I first heard this, I wasn't sure it was for us. My dream has been to have a BABY, I mean my loss of not being able to have a baby was about a BABY, getting to this point and giving up the dream of holding a newborn in my arms again seemed odd. However, it seems so clear to me now that God has had a plan in everything that has happened since the day I sat in that doctors office and was told I would never get pregnant again. I believe he had a hand in this too. In what seemed like an instant I no longer craved that newborn as I have for the past 7 years but it suddenly seemed very content to add a child 6 or older into our family. The thought of changing diapers, buying all new cribs, highchairs, toys ect (bc I gave everything I had away a long time ago), waking up all night long to a crying baby, really didn't interest me anymore lol. Let's face it, Im 7 years older, and so are the boys. A six year old would be just as if we had gotten pregnant when all this happened and fast forwarded 7 yrs! It sounded perfect to me and also to Danny and the boys which just convinced me even more, we are on the right tack. The more I learn about older orphans, the more my heart goes out to them. After the age of 5, a child has only a 20% chance of getting adopted and obviously that chance decreased with each year. At age 16, the state no longer takes care of them. The Orphanage (the only place some have ever known as home) puts them out and says good-bye. Most turn to drugs and prostitution to survive.
Now that Ive told you what hosting is, I will tell you where we are in the process. We have pre- registered with a few different organizations, we are waiting for the new photo listings for the winter hosting to come out which should be within the next two weeks. Then we search through pictures and bios of kids and choose one that we like! In the meantime we pray that God shows us the right one!! Then we put a deposit, fill out a ton of paperwork, get fingerprinted and criminal background checks, put down more money and then hopefully by around mid December we will pick up our little girl from the airport. Needless to say I will be posting updates on here each step of the way! I think this is enough for my first post and hopefully gives everyone a good idea of where we were, and where we are going! One more thing I want to add, international adoptions are very expensive. The name of our blog A-Wing-n-a-Prayer kind of sums up how we are doing this! We have set up an adoption fundraiser to hopefully raise some money to add to our savings by the time we are ready to proceed with the adoption. You can purchase cool t shirts on the site and a percentage of the proceeds go to our fund! Here is the link www.adoptionbug.com/mullen Please check it out, and buy a t shirt or share our link with others! Most of all PRAY for us!! We are going to need it!! :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)