...and David Slew the Giant.....

We are Close...oh so Close!!!!  I can hardly catch my breath thinking how close we are to traveling to see our girlies! To holding them in our arms, to making them our daughters, aaahhhh!!!!!
Ok, now I'll pull myself together and continue.
I thought you might like to know just where the money goes, just exactly why we need all this cash. We are not "buying" a baby or two, we are adopting and adopting internationally is expensive. I've heard it put that the money is a ransom to bring our children out of a prison where death would be the only release. That may sound dramatic, but honestly it's not far from the truth.
If you have any questions please feel free to ask, we'll answer them as best we can.

$12,500 Facilitation Fee -
 This fee covers both girls and is paid to the team in country. They are called "hand holders" that is exactly what they are. They hold your hand and help you navigate the crazy world of adoption. To me it is a small price to pay to have experts there to help whenever you need them.

$2,500 Embassy Fees -
 This covers the all the necessary medical exams, passports and visas for both girls.

$5,000 Living Expenses -
 This is an estimate of our living expenses while in country. This will cover our apartment, our food and our transportation. We expect to be in country about 4-6 weeks.

$5,000 Flights -
We have an idea what flights will cost but until we actually buy the tickets, we can only go on an estimate. This is for ALL the flights, including getting the girls back home.

As you can see, that neatly adds up to $25,000! It may seem like a lot, but to two little girls, its a ransom of freedom! Freedom to grow and live, Freedom to be someone, to love and be loved Freedom to make their mark in this world, Freedom to not be a number, to not fade into to nothingness, Freedom from being hidden away, behind high walls, Freedom from being a sad statistic. These girls, and all orphans, deserve life! Wont you help give it to them, won't you pray for us as we travel, won't you be a part of our journey?

Thank you so much, we couldn't be stepping forth in faith like this if it weren't for your support, thank you for your prayers, we have broke down many mountains thus far, and know we will have victory!

(Hi Andrea;)

Weeks Not Months!!!!!

If this adoption was a pregnancy we would be at that part where all you do is wait!! We are in the single digit weeks before we travel. That time that seems to zip by with lightening fast speed and at the very same time c r a w l s by so slow and all you can think is how bad you want to hold your girls!
All our paperwork is on the other side of the ocean!! You've no idea the relief it was to know it was there and in the right hands! I cried, and then cried some more! I remembered back to April when I got the list of papers to be filled out. I was totally overwhelmed. But we did it, one page at a time, some pages took longer than others! But we got them all done, Praise the Lord! Now we are officially "Submitted" to our girls country. We wait now to be given an appointment to go and get our babies!
We are anticipating an 8-10 week wait, so we are about 1.5 weeks into that! YIPPEE! Oh, sorry, just excitement bubbling up a bit there.
We've decided to take the next 7 weeks or so and just relax and enjoy ourselves and take long aimless drives in the country and go for walks along the pond and..............not! We have kicked into overdrive here, organizing and purging and redoing rooms and walls and vehicles. We are nesting so to speak!
There is a lot to do before we leave. Dane and I will be gone for about 5 weeks. Dane may do some flying back and forth and Ileigh will join me at the end to help bring the girls home. We are re-making one of the boys rooms into a little girls room and moving everyone around! I am so excited to get the girls things put together and in their room! It will be a pink paradise!! Elsah is thrilled to be the resident big sister and is planning on telling bedtime stories and singing songs until everyone is asleep! We have organized the "family closet" and added the little girl clothes to it, now there is as much pink as there is blue in there!!!!  We will start the room re-do next week! I'll put up some before and after pics when it's all done! Just writing all this is making me happy, we really are that close! There was more than once I thought we might not make it this far, the light is at the end of the tunnel.
We have had some wonderfully generous contributions, and have raised over $14,000!!! Can you believe it? A big thank you for what you all have done, donating and praying, we have moved mountains already! We need just over $10,000 to complete our journey. We have tried our hand at auctions and give-aways but haven't had any success with those yet. We need to raise at least $1000 a week in order to to meet needs. Would you join us in prayer, we are asking the Lord to give us direction in our fundraising efforts. And if you have any ideas that we could use we would love to hear them! If you don't have any fundraising ideas, but do have some extra cash laying around getting dusty...;) http://reecesrainbow.org/55889/sponsoranderson
Thank you,
Misty

And then there was Two!

This post has been a long time in coming, to be honest I don't get a lot of time on our computer! Mostly, I handle things on my phone. But making a blog post with my teeny tiny phone keyboard is not fun so I have kept putting it off!
As you know, if you follow on facebook, we have added a second baby girl to our adoption. No, contrary to popular belief, we have not totally lost our minds;) We just feel very deeply that we should do ALL we can to help "the least of these". Dane and I feel very strongly that we are to be the hands and feet of Jesus while we are here on earth.  That means that while we can and do pray for orphans all over the world, for us, being Jesus meant DOING something about the problem, it meant becoming "father to the fatherless". The more we have learned of the conditions in the baby houses in Eastern Europe the more we knew we had to do even more.  Adding a another child to our adoption doesn't double the cost in fact it's just a few thousand more. For just a "drop in the bucket" we could redeem another life, we could ransom a daughter! We felt we couldn't say no.
"Jolie" as she is know, is just 6 months younger than "Morgan" and 6 months older than our Aliviah! So, yes, we will have 3 little girls under 3!!  It will be crazy, I know, but SO worth it! These girls would spend their lives lying in a crib, with no one to hold them, no one to sing to them, no toys, no love. In all honesty the things I have learned about these baby house make my stomach turn. They keep me up at night praying God would hold our girls in the hollow of His hand, and keep them from the neglect and pain that is their lives right now.  The baby rooms are often silent, the little ones have learned no one will answer their cry, so they stop crying, they don't babble and coo because no one talks to them or engages them in any activity. They are often only changed once a day, to conserve diapers and washing. They are fed a slurry of potatoes and water in a bottle twice a day. They are left to die, no one cares, no one had a heart for them they are not the center of anyones world. I don't know why God allows such things to happen to the most innocent, I just know that He showed us what we can do about it. And we can't ignore the call. So we jump in with both feet and right now, to be honest, we are swimming against the tide, it is hard work. I believe Satan does not want these little souls redeemed, he wants them to rot, you see the very act of adoption mirrors what Christ did for us, He redeemed us and brought us into the family of God. We did nothing to deserve this adoption, He did it freely and with the greatest of love. Satan wants us to fail, and he works so hard to that end. But we must work harder! We have the victory, we are more than conquerors! We will succeed!!
Please pray for us, that everything will fall into place and we can get our girls in Gods perfect time!
Thank you So much for your donations and for your prayers, both are needed to complete this work!