Puzzle Fundraiser

Some Exciting News...

OUR PUZZLE IS FULLY FUNDED!!! Praise The Lord!!

What an incredible amount of support we recieved during this fundraiser. In only 5 days we had family, friends, and strangers come together to purchase every piece of this 1000 piece puzzle.

                                                       Here is the completed puzzle!!! 

We feel sooo blessed to be posting this sooo quickly.  Also we drew for the gift card that was part of a giveaway if we got the puzzle funded.  Jayne, Grant, and Isaiah Litton were the winners of the gift card!!! 


In other news, our paperwork left for BG at the beginning of this week. We are truly hoping to get a referral next week..fingers crossed!  We also applied for 3 grants this week. These will be vital for us to fund our second trip and all of the fees associated. We always appreciate prayers and will keep everyone posted.

Lets all pray that our next post contains a referral and travel dates...wooo hooo!!!!

Blown Away!

 When Dustin and I decided to do this puzzle fundraiser, we expected it to be a challenge to get all 1,000 pieces funded. Never in a million years would we have guessed we would have the response that we've had.  I know I said I would update every 100 pieces but with the events of the last 48 hours that has been quite impossible.  The support has been incredible and we are completely blown away. I'm going to post a couple of photos that were taken all in the past 2 days.

                        

                   The first picture we were able to take was of 242 pieces. This was  yesterday evening

Then this morning after some more donations we took this picture of  328 pieces.

And as of right now we can post this picture....

638 pieces!!!!

Let me say again we are BLOWN AWAY by the response!  I know there is a little boy who I can't wait to share this experience with.  He is obviously already loved by soo many people!

My favorite picture will be of the puzzle completely together with all names on the back!

  

Updates, Set Backs, and Celebrations

Lets start with updates first....

We have been matched with our son for 2 months now and are sooo sooo close to traveling to meet him. 

Our first trip is Fully Funded!!! We are now working on that second trip which is more expensive than the first.  To be completely funded we need roughly $10,500 more. At this point that seems like a mountain but truely it is a drop in the bucket to what God is capable of. We are standing on solid ground and have complete faith that He will provide!

In Fundraising news we are almost to our first picture of the puzzle!  We are at $60 thanks to some very special families!!  We can't thank each of you enough for your generous donations!!  We want to post our first 100 pieces so we only need 40 more pieces sponsored!!

We would truely love to have the puzzle fully funded before we leave for our first trip!!!


Now for some Set Backs.....
We knew when we were matched to our son we would have to change some paperwork with USCIS. We had originally been approved for a girl under 4 and well he obviously isn't a girl or under 4 so we had some paperwork to do.   We submitted all of that and a couple weeks later got "pink-slipped".  They wanted more information, updated background checks, and some things from our original homestudy.  That took us about 2 weeks to get together and sent it all back off again!  We were expecting everything to come in last week and when it came in I was soooo excited.  Well as I sat down to read it, the only update that had occured was the increase in age.  The approval still stated female and none of our son's needs were listed in the approval.  I called USCIS and so graciously explained to them what was wrong and after a couple of phone calls they agreed to correct it all, admitted the mistake on their part, and said they would get it right in the mail.

Now for the Celebration....
Saturday we received it.  This is our final piece of paper we needed to send to BG before receiving our official referral and travel dates. WAAAHOOOOO!!!

I'll be making one more trip to Frankfort to get everything apostilled and then off to BG it goes!

Dustin and I are making some estimates and are expecting to travel the middle of march.  This is exciting but we are sad to miss our son's 6th birthday which we were certain we would get to celebrate with him.The important thing is, this is the last birthday he will have in an orphanage without a family! Praise God!

We understand and knew going in to this process there would be setbacks and mishaps, and we have been so fortunate that we truely haven't had any to this point.  With that being said, we believe that God has His hand in every situation and circumstance and knows exactly what He's doing by delaying us a couple of weeks.  We are thankful for God's provision and even though we don't understand it at times we can have peace in knowing it is what's best for us and our son.

NOW BRING ON THE PUZZLE SPONSORS!!! WE'VE GOT 940 PIECES TO GO!!!!