Nothing More and Nothing Less

It's hard to believe we are only 4 days away from flying back to Bulgaria to bring our son home! His bags are packed (maybe a little too full) but we are trying to be as prepared as possible! My excitement level is finally started to outweigh my nerves and I am focusing on Gotchya day instead of the flight over (this helps me not get so nervous to fly). Every evening that Dustin and I sit down to spend time together we talk about how things are about to drastically change. We won't have quiet evenings to ourselves anymore. The TV will be overrun with cartoons and our house will probably not ever be as clean as I'd like for it to be again. Then we talk about how exciting it is that these changes are about to take place. I mean this time next week we'll be parents. It seems so surreal to think about, almost as if it's all a dream. When you spend 2 years working toward something, it doesn't seem possible for it to come to an end. But thank goodness it is!

I never knew it was possible to love and miss someone so far away, that I knew so little about. Having spent only 3 short days with our son, the love that we have for him is as if we've known him for all 6 years of his life. We hurt for him, knowing that the situation he is in and the life he's endured has not been easy. We pray for his heart and healing daily, knowing that he is about to endure a terrible loss. His small world is about to be turned upside down and we are the cause for it. It's not something a child can understand at such a young age, but we pray that he clings to us in this time of turmoil. We want him to know how loved he is. Not just by us but so many people that are just as excited as we are to bring him home.
Easton is going to have to learn how to be a part of a family. He'll have to learn how to be dependent on us for his needs. He's going to have to learn trust, affection, and love. We would be silly to think that these lessons will come easy. We just pray that they come!

Yesterday we received our expense report for in country cost and they were way more than we expected. At first I stressed out, we had not prepared to see those kinds of numbers for an expense. We knew it would be a little more because our trip has been extended but we were still in shock. I pulled together our adoption fund, remaining grant funds, and our safety net to realize we had just enough. Nothing more and Nothing less. Isn't God good? I am reminded of the Israelites during their 40 years in the desert. Each day God provided manna. Just enough. Nothing more and Nothing less than what they needed. What an incredible way to grow your faith. Yes it takes away our safety net for medical expenses once home, but when it's needed we fully believe God will provide.

Dustin and I often worry about our ability to parent. Once again I think to the Israelites, God's chosen. Easton is one of God's beloved. Just like the Israelites, it is God who is providing for Easton. He chose us to be his parents. We will be nothing more and nothing less than what he needs. We are trying our hardest to live in this truth!
It is our hope that we can update daily during our time in Bulgaria, but we truly do not know what the coming weeks will hold. Will you pray for us? Pray for Easton. Pray for the workers that have cared for him for the past 6 years. Pray for our family. Pray for traveling mercies. Pray that we can turn to God for guidance in every situation. Pray that Easton grows up to become exactly who God intends for him to be, Nothing more and Nothing less.

The Countdown has Begun.

Short and Sweet here, but nonetheless EXCITING!
Our travel dates have been confirmed and our airline tickets are booked!
We are 18 days, yes 18 DAYS, from leaving to go break our boy out of that orphanage forever!
We leave on November 16th and will arrive back home on November 27. The day before Thanksgiving. Which is the absolute most perfect holiday to spend together for the first time. Afterall we do have SO much to be thankful for!

Oh Happy Day!!

I know I'm a little late with this post, but as the title says, we had a happy day!!!  We passed Court!! Easton is our son! No longer an Orphan! His ransom has been paid, and he's been declared set free!!! 

We absolutely can not wait to bring this little guy home! Right now we are waiting on our judge to sign a decree, which should take place at the end of this week.  Then his new birth certificate will be issued!  Right now we have been given tentative travel dates of Nov 16-27. These dates are soo perfect for us because we get home right before Thanksgiving and Dustin will have 5 days home with us before having to go back to work.

We are so excited to be a family of three! We are preparing for travel, and probably waaay over thinking everything!  We are trying to think about things to keep Easton occupied for 12 days in an apartment while it's cold outside.  Parenthood is a scary thing when it's new, but it's even scarier when you are in a foreign land.  We are praying for wisdom and guidance, because God knows we will need it. We can't wait to get him in our arms.

We hope these next few weeks go by quickly and we are able to break him out of the orphanage as soon as possible!!

 

About time for a little Sunshine!!

My last post was asking you to pray. This one is not much different!  Last time I was asking you to pray that we would get a court date toward the end of September. Well it didn't happen. We didn't hear anything.  In fact my last ray of excitement diminished that week.  It's getting hard. Harder than I ever imagined and I find myself more frustrated and sad than I do excited. Its so hard to anticipate something so many times just to get no results. Eventually you quit anticipating.  I'm there.

But then we got a small ray of sunshine. God shined down on us and saw our hurting. He had mercy on us and folks...we GOT A COURT DATE! I always love to ask God's people to bathe something in prayers that is coming up. And I typically love to give everyone plenty of time to do so.  This time I have not (given time that is). Ive been so worried that something will happen as it usually does, and court will in fact not happen. I suppose that chance is still there, but I'm tired of living without faith that my God is big enough to take care of it. If something does happen we'll just know our time is coming soon.  Otherwise, START PRAYING!!  October 15, yes that's Tuesday...the day after tomorrow, is the big day. In fact court will happen sometime while we sleep Monday night due to the time difference.  We need prayer! We have paid E's ransom now we just need a judge to declare him set free!!!

If all goes well we travel 4-5 weeks after court, which puts us getting home just in time for Thanksgiving. Boy do we have a lot to be thankful for.

Oh, speaking of travel.  We have one other request. PRAY for travel too. I mean not only that travel gets here quickly and goes smoothly, but there have been some changes lately. There are some new requirements with TB skin testing that will require our stay in country to be extended to 10-11 days instead of 1 week. Now this isn't a huge difference, but what we thought was fully funded, well now it isn't.  Pray that the extra funds will be there for the length increase and medical exams that will have to take place that we hadn't planned for.

NOW that we have the big news out of the way, I'm finally prepared to update some pictures of E's room.  There are still some boxes sitting around so ignore those, but we are pretty proud of his big boy room and can't wait to see him in it!

 My favorite part of this picture is the shadow box hanging on the wall! It has Dustin's old jerseys and newspaper articles in it from baseball.  Don't mind the giant inflatable bear lol it was $1 and I couldn't pass it up!!  Of course we got a bean bag, even though it's covered with stuff right now, but he loves the one at his orphanage, so it was only fitting to get him one for here!

 Love that puzzle and everything it represents!!!
The book shelf is full of awesome stuff, but among my favorite is E's grandpas baseball glove and trophies.

Ok I have a slight obsession with shoes and I've passed that on to my sons very own collection.  I just can't pass those little things up!! He's got a great variety :)

Want to know what I'm most excited about? Well besides the obvious of passing court and bringing home home, I can't wait to share his beautiful face with the rest of the world once he is ours! Stay tuned hopefully they are coming soon!!

Start Praying!

It's hard not knowing

Let me say first that this adoption is by far one of the hardest things Dustin and I have had to do. The emotional highs and lows are hard to deal with. The waiting is killer...we had been warned but to experience it is completely different. We knew going in to this adoption we would have a basic timeline. So assuming we would follow this basic timeline, has helped us for the most part. Until there are really long gaps in between movement. Then it becomes the hardest. We are in one of those moments.

We haven't had movement since early August. The last thing that happened for us was a signature from the MOJ and our file got moved to court. Since then...NOTHING. We've checked for updates but it seems the judge who has our file is still on vacation. A month long vacation mind you, perhaps even longer than that. VESTA did let us know that she has hearings scheduled for next week and the first week in October, so we are asking everyone to band together and PRAY HARD that our case is heard within these next 2 weeks. What a huge step this will be. It will mean E is officially and legally our son. I mean to us this happened a long time ago, but now the Bulgarian Gov't will recognize it. It's just hard not knowing how close or far away we are from this point.

We will travel roughly 4 weeks after our court date to bring our son HOME...where he belongs!! It's becoming real folks!! Just a few months ago Dustin and I were estimating E would be home within 100 days, now it's less than 100 days until Christmas!! This means he's only 6-8 weeks from being home if our estimates are right. Oh how we pray they are right.

A dear family that we have become friends with traveled to meet their son last week, and just so happened they were at E's orphanage. They saw him!! What a blessing from God, it's been so hard to not have updates! They asked about him and the social worker said he asked about us every time she went in his room. Now lets get real, this is a little hard to believe since he has 0 words in his vocabulary, but it's nice to imagine that he remembers us and is waiting for our return. Soon little buddy, soon!!
Please lift him and our family up over the next few weeks and pray hard that we receive a court date soon! We have a hole in our hearts that needs to be filled and a large family waiting to meet our blessing!

Let's Get Caught Up!!

Our blog has been acting up a bit lately so I've been unable to update like I've wanted to.  First some exciting news in the Grant world!!

We have been so graciously chosen to receive 2 incredible grants. The first is a matching grant from Lifesong for Orphans who have partnered with Orphan Care Alliance, that we are so close to funding!!  It was a total of $2500 which they will match dollar for dollar.  We only need about 600 more to have that funded!  If you're interested in sending a check to Lifesong for Orphans, here's how you do it!

Send a check for the amount you wish to donate to:
 Lifesong for Orphans
PO Box 40/202 N. Ford St.
Gridley, IL 61744

Then put in the memo Section: Perkins Family #3574

It's as simple as that and it gets doubled to go toward our adoption!! We are so grateful to this ministry for choosing our family to receive such an incredible gift.

Then last month we were chosen to receive a generous Show Hope grant!  I love this program so much and they have truly played a hand in leading us to adoption.  They have helped to bring home so many beautiful children that have impacted our lives!  Now they are helping to bring home our son!  Just a few months ago we were celebrating the 10 year anniversay with Show Hope in TN and now we are joinging the Show Hope family!  So excited to be apart of this amazing group of families who are making an eternal difference!

Now on to some Adoption News! 

Good news first.  Around the first of July we were informed that our Article 5 had been issued and we had been submitted to the MOJ for a signature.  This is great news!  We are only a few steps from traveling now!  There is  a small group of other adoptive parents that are in the same stage as us that took their first trip shortly before we did. All of those families have now received a signature so we are not far behind. We hope to have a signature by the end of the month, which is quickly closing in. 

The bad news is that the most recent family to receive signature (who traveled 2 weeks before us)  have been told the courts are officially shut down for August and court will not happen until mid-late September.  That puts us even farther behind them.  So what we assumed would be a september/october travel is turning into a october/ early  november travel.  The up side to all of this (we always try to find one) is it gives us an opportunity to get fully funded, and prepared for our little guy to make his grand arrival!  The down side is we miss him soooo much and each day gets a little bit harder! 

We are only about $5,000 from being fully funded, including the remainder of the Lifesong matching grant ($3,800 if we get it funded)  We do have one more grant to be reviewed in early August and we ask that you all join us to pray that we are awarded a portion of the grant.  This grant has the potential to finish our funding!!

We have also FINALLY redecorated E's bedroom! I really need to get some pictures up! I just love it, it's tooo cute, or I guess a better term would be cool!!  There are lots of reminders on the wall of the people who have helped make this possible, and of course from his daddy's glory days of baseball, haha!

We've even got some of Diado's (grandpas) baseball stuff (gloves and trophys) from when he played in little league and highschool. I love having all of the history and stories in his room. I can't wait until he's old enough to understand it all!

There won't be much movement now through probably september, but hopefully I can update with news of another grant!

 We are going to take one last HOORAH before E gets here, and are taking off to the Virgin Islands for a few days in August.  We are taking my parents who have never left the southeastern US or who have never flown. This should make for an exciting trip!  I'm excited to see them so excited about traveling, since dustin and I both love it so much!  We have never been to the beach together since we met so this will be an exciting trip!  We figured we'd better get in before all of our vacations turn into Disney World!! (which by the way we are definitely looking forward to)!!

Until our next update.....

Update

This part of the process seems to have few and far between updates.  We do have an exciting one for today though.  The last day we were in Bulgaria, our US agency sent off our I800 application for us.  This is kinda the final piece of paperwork that we file with the US to apply for the ability to get citizenship for our little guy once we pass court.  Basically once this application is approved everything else happens in Bulgaria.  Well it had been a month and we hadn't heard anything so I broke down and called them just to check progress.  There is great news!!

Our I800 was approved last wednesday (no pinkslip by the way) and sent to Washington DC via 2 day air.  There it will be uploaded to a computer system where the US embassy in BG will access it (hopefully by tomorrow) and then issue an Article 5.  The Article 5 will then get translated and submitted to the Minister of Justice for a signature.  We are hoping to have our article 5 issued, translated, and submitted by the end of the month.  This could mean that we get a signature in July since things seem to hurry up around this time of year. However we are still thinking we won't get court until things start back up in September then hopefully travel back in October.  But for everything to be complete on our side is exciting. Now we truly have to sit back and wait, everything is out of our hands and our country for that matter!!

One step closer! And not many more steps keep us from bringing our son home!!