Update- Numbers and Chads Wedding

Brad and I were sitting on the couch the other night and we were like, Oh shoot we forgot to celebrate one month waiting on the waiting list, haha! Luckily this month has flown by and we have been busy, it makes it go quicker! Our unofficial list was updated the other day. Some families have joined our Yahoo Group since we were DTE, so our number haven't changed much. We are #16 for a boy, #17 for a girl, and #7 for siblings. Some of the sibling requests are for 2 of the same sex, so who knows what will happen!! We rest assured God already has it all figured out, so we don't need to!! (I have to type that for a reminder for me too!)

One of the main reasons we have had such a busy month is that my little brother Chad married a wonderful girl Emily. We are so excited to have her in our family. Emily is always so sweet, kind, and positive. Emily's maid of honor described her as a person who is a great example of a person who loves people just like Jesus loves us. What a compliment and so true at the same time! Chad is a lucky guy to have a great wife! She is from the Philly area so they had a Philly wedding and a reception in IL for our friends and family. Both were beautiful and fun weekends! Here are a few pictures:

Bride and Groom eating and dancing

My sister Amy, brother Chad, and me

Brad and I

Amy and Kylie
Amy, Emily, and me

Chad and Em in IL

Aunt Tara with Kylie

Africa Cards

As most of you know, our largest fundraiser has been making and selling hand-stamped cards. So far we have sold over $3,000 of cards. This AMAZES me!!!!! When we started this, I thought I'd be thrilled to sell a couple hundred dollars worth of cards. So many people have offered to sell cards to their friends and family. Thank you to everyone who has helped!! God hasn't stopped amazing us throughout this whole process, I just didn't know how big to dream. Brad and I assumed we'd be taking out a loan for a big part of the adoption expenses, but so far God has provided just what we needed just when we needed it. Don't ever doubt how BIG our God is!!!



I wanted to share a new set of cards I have for sale. I just got a new Africa stamp, so I've begun to stamp some new cards with it. For now, I am making a simple card:

Since this card is simple, using only white cardstock, I will be selling a pack of 16 cards for $15. I have been using these thank you cards as thank you to people that have helped us in some way and the blank ones I have sent to other Africa adopting families.

If you would like to order any, please email me at tara_mowen@yahoo.com. We can work out all the details then!!

Thank you again to everyone that has helped us in any way along this process. God has used you to help bring our children home!!!

Like Dandelion Dust

This week our church showed a screening of the movie Like Dandelion Dust (based on Karen Kingsbury's book). This book/movie tells the story of a domestic adoption and the sacrificial love the birth mother had to give her son a better life. It really made my heart ache for these birth mothers who love their child enough to give them up so they may have a better life. Another adoptive family told me that if times were tough they would live in a cardboard box with their kids before giving them up. Which is so true, I would do the same thing. The decision to give a child up would be so hard and something most of us are fortunate enough that we don't even have to consider.

When I started thinking about adopting a child I assumed that these birth parents didn't want their children or the birth parents had died. I wondered how this would effect the children in the future. But as I have talked to more and more adoptive families, almost all their children's birth parents sacrificially gave their children up so they could have a better life. WOW! What love! God did the same thing for us, He gave His Son so we ALL could have a better life. There aren't many people in the world that have had to sacrifice something so special, but boy are we glad that God was willing to sacrifice His Son so we have the chance to be forgiven and live our eternal life in heaven!!!!! Believe it and embrace HIS wonderful gift!!

DTE!!!

Today our paperwork got sent by FedEx over to Ethiopia!!! Praise God!!! WOOO HOOO!!! So today is our DTE (Dossier to Ethiopia) date!!! Our yahoo group keeps an unofficial waiting list, so I think we are something like number 17 for a boy, 19 for a girl, and 5 for siblings. The average wait time is 4-6 months. We are obviously hoping for the shorter end of that. So if all goes well we will have a referral by the middle of November and maybe meeting our child(ren) by Christmas!!!! I feel like we have been talking about one day it will happen and now there is an end in sight!!! AHHHH!!!
Our official request is either gender for all- one 0-6months, twins 0-12months, or siblings 0-12months and 0-4 years!!
Let the real wait begin......

Our I-171H has arrived....finally

Today we received our I-171H in the mail!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHH!! So excited!!! When I opened the envelope my eyes were seraching it all to make sure it was the real thing. On June 5th we received a letter from them saying they needed the orginial letter from DCFS, not the copy that was sent to them in May. I thought it would say I-171H real big across the top, no- its teeny tiny down in the corner. After I realized that this was the paper we have been waiting for since we applied for it back in February, I started to cry. I felt like we were never going to get to this point in the process, so that we finally had all the papers we needed and we are able to send our Dossier in made it all real to me. I don't even know how to describe all the emotions I was feeling this afternoon. I was so overwhelmed with a wonderful feeling and felt like we were moving in the right direction-forward!!!! Something of ours will be in Ethiopia soon!!!!!

So I sat down to make sure all the papers were in order and ready to be mailed off. I realized that we needed a copy of the orginial notarized, so I rushed off to our church to get it notarized- thank you Wilda!! I was crying all the way there and thought I needed to get it together before I get to church, ha!

Here are all the papers we needed to submit our Dossier. We have been collecting these and waiting for different pieces to be approved and come in since the begining of January. We are happy to let them leave our house!!

Brad has come home everyday for the last month checking the mailbox for an envelope from USCIS, but today Brad was coaching volleyball this afternoon, so I checked the mail. I sent him a text message that said , "Hurry home...I have an important job for you to do." He thought I wanted him to clean up a mess from our cat or dog or something...lol. He said once he pulled into the driveway he thought it might be about our I-171H. He came in was so excited that it was here and that he didn't have a mess from an animal to clean up!!! He made the last copies we needed then took the box to UPS while I had to go coach tennis. We sent the Dossier to AWAA overnight for $48.84...wasn't expecting that. Oh well its been submitted and it feels great!!

Finally tonight we celebrated with pizza and a walk and we keep talking about how excited we are to finally get our Dossier all turned in and that we are that much closer to our child!!!

So now we wait to hear from AWAA if it was all approved and then it will be translated and sent to Ethiopia within 1-3 weeks. Then we will get our DTE (Dossier to Ethiopia) date and be on the waiting list to be matched with our child(ren). Our request is an infant 0-6 months either gender, or siblings-one an infant 0-6 months and one under 4years old, or infant twins 0-6 months. We will just wait to see who God has planned to be a part of our family!!

Happy 4th Anniversary Babe!

Ok, this is operation surprise Tara! If you don't know, Tara is someone who can find out anything and it is VERY hard to surprise her. So as you are sleeping tonight Tara, I have logged into our blog to surprise you with an anniversary blog. We are not doing anything "big" for our anniversary because we are trying to save money for our adoption, so this is my gift to you this year.
I can't believe it has already been 4 years since we have been married! It seems like yesterday we were getting on the plane for our honeymoon. What a great time we have had together. I could not ask for anything better than the last four years we have spent together as a family. I am excited to see what God has planned for the next 50....if it were up to you, I know that it would include a huge house packed full of at least 10 kids...I say we see what God has planned for us :).
The last 4 years, God has spent building a foundation for our marriage that is unbreakable. He has been preparing us so that we can be the most incredible parents that our children could possibly dream of. Babe, if you are only half the mother than you are a wife, our children are going to be the luckiest kids in the world. I am excited to see you be a mother (even if it is to 10) because I know how good of a wife you have been to me! Thanks for all you do and even yet to do for our family. I thank God for you everyday!
God,
Thank you for putting Tara in my life. Thank you for watching over her and keeping her safe. Thank you for making her beautiful, caring, thoughtful, loving, intelligent, and confident. God, continue to bless her life. Continue to have her grow closer to you and be a woman of Faith. Continue to bless our marriage and family. God you tell us this in 1st John 4:18-19 "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because He first loved us." God I give you thanks because your love endures forever!

If you are reading this, will you say a quick prayer for continued blessings over our marriage? We know that a solid marriage is the foundation for the rest of our lives and are always thankful for people praying for us.

-Brad

Waiting with a Purpose

I knew starting this process that we were going to eventually become parents and bring a precious baby into our family. I had no idea that this would be such a faith building, heart changing, and eye opening experience. I read on someone elses blog (sorry I don't remember who) that they said, the greatest treasure in this journey is drawing closer to our God. How true!!

I am so glad that God chose us to experience the adoption process. There is this whole other world of support and friendships connected through adoption. God has designed each of our families in the way that HE sees fit. I'm so thankful that HE saw it fit for Brad and I to experience this. Now don't get me wrong, the waiting is driving us CRAZY, but we know it will be worth it in the end!

Here are a few verses that I like for this time in our lives!!

"He told them, 'You don't get to know the time. Timing is the Father's business.'" Acts 1:7 The Message

"Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails." Proverbs 19:21 NIV

I also like the same verse from The Message- "We humans keep brainstorming options and plans, but God's purpose prevails." Proverbs 19:21

"Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord will personally go ahead of you. He will be with you; he will neither fail you nor abandon you." Deuteronomy 31:8 NLV

Just Love Coffee

Did you know that Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee? We have started another fundraisier to help us pay for our adoption expenses. If you like coffee, check out: http://www.justlovecoffee.com/mowen
I have heard that these are some of the most popular flavors: Ethiopian Harrar, Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, and Goodnight Moon.
From this wesbsite you can purchase coffee and we will recieve a portion of each purchase.
A family started Just Love Coffee to help other famlies with their adoption expenses, help Ethiopian coffee farmers, and help Ethiopian orphanages.
Thank you to everyone that has helped us along the way! We apprecaite it more than you know!

Illinois Approval

After a 9+ week wait, Illinois and DCFS approved our homestudy. That means today our approved homestudy will be sent to USCIS (US Immigration) to join the other paperwork that was sent to them on Feb 1st. They are estimating a 30 day wait from USCIS to send our I71H to us, but since we have already been fingerprinted we are hoping its shorter. As soon as we get that we will send our Dossier to Ethiopia and get on the waiting list. We are so excited!! After 2 months of almost nothing happening, we finally feel like its moving forward a little bit more!!

Lucky Illinois and fundraising

From what I have heard, IL is one of the only states that requires your homestudy to be approved by DCFS before submitting it your agency. We have been waiting for over 2 months now for the approval. We were told it would take 6 weeks at the most. It is frustrating not being able to do anything to help along the process. But again we give it to God and know that its in HIS hands!

So we continue to wait.

In the meantime we have been able to get some more fundraising done. We had our 2nd yard sale at the church last weekend. Between the sale at our house and the one at the church we made a grand total of $2,926.37. This has been AMAZING. We are so blessed with wonderful people in our lives!! Thank you to everyone who has had a part in helping us!! We are sooooo thankful! We have also sold almost $3,000 in cards. We are getting close to having all $8,000 that we need to send in our Dossier.

It's amazing that we aren't going to have to take out a loan for this portion. Going into this we thought there was no way that we could save/raise all the money up to this point. God has been doing awesome things in our lives and putting amazing people who support us along this journey. We are definitely reminded not to put limits on our God!!

Yard Sale Pictures

We had our yard sale fundraiser on Saturday. Boy were were tired when it was done!! It was a lot of work to get ready for it, and luckily we had lots of help! Both of our moms and lots of our friends were around several days last week and even for the sale. We couldn't have done it without you guys-thanks SO much!! We were able to raise over $2,300! Praise God! This was such a blessing to us!!
Several people that came by said this was one of the largest yard sales they had ever seen. Thank you again to all the generous people who donated items to help us!! Here are some pictures....

Here are pictures right before we started taking things down, and actually we sold all the furniture you still see here, some people were coming back with a truck later.

After we put all the stuff that didn't sell, this is all we had left. Remember the last pictures had boxes all over the basement and also a full garage. Now we can park in the garage, we just can't use the couch downstairs yet. We will be having part 2 of our yard sale on May 1st at our church.

Yard Sale Fundraiser

We have been collecting items for a couple of weeks now for our yard sale this weekend. All proceeds from the yard sale will help support our adoption. Family and friends have been so supportive in donating items. Some friends have been over spending HOURS with us organizing and pricing the items too! Thanks Marie, Stu, Lindsey, Larcy, and Dan-we really appreciate all the hours you have put in this week so far and will put in later this week too!!

I thought I'd share a few pictures of what our house looks like now too....

this is the two parts of our basement

and here's the garage

Thank you again to all those who have donated and helped! We really appreciate all the support!!