Gearing Up

Well the season is beginning...the season of craft shows, that is...last Friday evening some awesome friends came over and helped build my bow stockpile as I am planning for the many shows coming up. First, there is a HUGE consignment sale twice a year here called Little Treasures. This fall it lasts from Aug. 28- Sept. 8. They have accepted me as a vendor! I am planning to sell bows, flower clips, and cookbooks. I am super excited and hopeful that we will sell TONS! The only downfall is that the company keeps 30% of my profits :(

Then I just found out about a free craft show towards the end of September and I have 2 in October. Plus we have a few more events that I'm hoping to set up a booth at too. I'm really excited about these coming months and what it will mean for our adoption.

Where we are - we are finishing up the final documents we need to submit out dossier to our new agency. We still have to get them county and state certified and then we can mail the whole thing in along with LOTS of money. Then we could pretty much get a referral anytime!! Woohoo!! So we are filling out several grant applications and trying to sell the rest of our tshirts an anything else we possibly can to come up with our dossier fees.

How can you pray? Pray that all the money will come in in the Lord's perfect time and that we will trust Him in this. Pray for our future son/daughter that the Lord will already be working in his/her heart to become part of out family. Finally, an urgent prayer request for our dear friends. Their daughter is in the Congo waiting to come home and is hospitalized with chicken pox. Please pray for complete healing for her and that her passport will come in so they can bring her home. Also pray for their son that justice will be done for him. Thanks!!

Adopt Shop

I'm really excited to introduce an easy, quick way to purchase our fundraising items: The Adopt Shop!! It is similar to Etsy but they do not charge a fee and only adopting families can put items on this site. Here is our link: Koenig Family Adopt Shop Here you can find almost all of our fundraising items: cookbooks, tshirts, necklaces, flower clips, headbands, blankets, etc. I'm going to try to update this site weekly. We just opened our shop last night and already had one sale! I'm hoping that this will travel outside of our immediate circle of friends/family (who certainly can order here too) so if you wouldn't mind to share our link, that would be great! If you are local, you can send me an email at Kristen's Email and order that way so you won't be charged the minimal shipping fee that is included on this site. This is a great place to buy all your birthday, Christmas, baby shower, etc gifts! Just think, you can buy your gifts and help orphans come home all at one place! There are some other sellers on there too so be sure to check out their unique items as well. Oh, and I put a link to this site on the left side bar of my page so you can easily find it in the future. Thanks so much!!

Why do I ever doubt??

Why? Why do I ever doubt the goodness of God?? Why do I ever doubt how great His love is for His people and for the orphans? Why do I ever doubt that He will provide for our adoption??

So this week I've been especially discouraged about the funds needed for our adoption. I know, in my head, that the Lord loves us and desires to see orphans placed in Christian homes. And I know that He will provide every single penny we need to bring our child home. But sometimes I doubt. The amount of money needed at times seems insurmountable to me. The reality is that nothing, not even $32,000+ is impossible to God.

Twice now we have come to our prayer room on Sunday morning overwhelmed with discouragement over the money needed for our adoption. The first time was several months ago and the next day the Lord provided. Today we came and our brothers and sisters prayed for us to have peace about this and to trust completely in the Lord. You see, we are not in control of even one little bit of this adoption, but the Lord is.

Then, two extremely unexpected and unrelated things happened this afternoon. First some old friends, whom we haven't seen in 6 years came to buy some adoption shirts. Not only did they buy more than we thought they would, but they wrote a check to Lifesong for double the amount of the shirts simply because Lifesong would double their check. We were blown away by the kindness of this brother and sister!

Then, this evening, some very dear friends gave us a sweet, homemade card. Inside the card was a very generous check, also made out to Lifesong. We love this couple dearly and were brought to tears by the kindness of the Lord shown through them. Thank you to both of these families for helping us bring our child home.

Neither one of these families were in our prayer room today. However, God was. He heard our prayers and He answered them immediately and so much more abundantly than we thought He would. Because these two families were obedient to the Lord with their money, we are closer to bringing our child home and our Lifesong grant has been completely met and then some!! Praise the Lord and thank you for praying and serving us!!

Starting Over...Almost

Well, I'm really feeling like we are completely starting over in this process lately. And we really kinda are. We have a new agency, almost had to start over with fundraising, new grant applications, doctor appointments, background checks, an extremely different dossier (even though we'd already had one translated for our old agency) and so on...

I know that this was the right move, the ethical move, and, most importantly, the move that pleases God but it's hard not to get discouraged and bogged down by the feeling of "starting over." I remember how long we saved for the first set of dossier fees and how excited we were to finally be on the wait list and now we are saving again and praying we have enough money to submit a new dossier to a new agency in about 3 weeks after my doctor appointment.

I just want to see our child's face! No, that's not entirely true - I want to hold our child in my arms and never let them go! I want them to have the assurance of a mommy and daddy's love, plenty of food to eat, and the knowledge of our Savior who died for them.

I know many people have been in this process longer than we have but it's been 16 months and we are practically starting over. Although hopefully, with ALBB the process will truly be finished in the next 9 months. I'm just tired and ready to be done...I know it will be finished in the Lord's timing but I'm ready...

Yay!! Shirts are in!!

I'm so excited!! Our shirts came in today! I can't wait to pass them out!! If you didn't get a chance to order one yet, we ordered lots of extras so just let me know what size and color and we probably still have it.

In other news, since we switched agencies, we are working on a new dossier and this one is much more detailed than the first so it's taking a little longer than we hoped to get it completed. However, that gives us more time to save for our referral fee.

We are also busy applying for a few more grants. Oh, and about those 4 little girls I mentioned, I found out a family is praying about them so I'm hoping they will be led to adopt them!

Thanks for following!!

More Details

Okay, I thought I should give a few more details about what's going on with us. We have switched to a new agency and are very excited about this! We did much research this time around and are confident that we are now working with an ethical agency that truly cares for the children and families they are working with. With this switch, we unfortunately lost a lot of money but we are confident the Lord will provide every penny we need to bring our child home. He has provided already for us in several unexpected ways since making the switch. We also have several fundraising opportunities/events coming up in the next few months. One of those fundraisers is a t-shirt sale. I would upload a picture but am not sure how to do that with a phone. If you are interested in seeing/ordering our shirts you can email me at koenigkristen@yahoo.com and I will send you the picture :) The Lord has really blessed this fundraiser so far!! We recently found out about 4 sibling girls that our agency is trying tomato with a family. Please pray with us that they will be matched soon and not have to be split up. Thanks for all your prayers!!

It's Been A Long Time

Wow, it has been a really long time since I have updated our blog! We have been without a computer for a long time and so I have been unable to update this. However, we are still in the adoption process and actually have had some pretty big changes!! Recently it came to our attention that our agency was participating in some unethical practices. We desire an ethical, upright adoption that reflects Jesus at every step. Therefore, after seeking counsel from some elders at Our church as well as some families that have already adopted, we terminate our contract wih that agency and have switched to A Love Beyond Borders. We are very excited about this new agency! Abbey is up from a nap so I must go for now but I will update more soon! Thanks for your continued prayers!!