Our Reece's Rainbow donation fund...

It has been moving upwards lately!  Just wanted to let you all know that we've been noticing...and its been making our day!  Thank you so very much to those that have been going to our online donation fund with Reece's Rainbow and donating...every little bit helps.  We still don't have exact travel dates yet.  We wish we did, so we could at least go ahead and book our flights.  The flights are already expensive...I can't imagine how bad they'll be by the time we get the go ahead to book them. 

Please know how very much we've appreciated every single donation.  We pray as a family for all of our donors....thank you for being a part of Joseph's journey home!

We passed court!!

Our court hearing yesterday was successful!

The court has permitted our adoption!

We are now the proud parents of Joseph Stanislav Perry!

Thank you to everyone that prayed for a successful outcome.  

We are so blessed to have your support.

Please KEEP PRAYING.  We're being told that because of scheduling issues and the way our in-country agency does things, we won't be able to travel to pick up Joseph until the last week of June.  This is several weeks later than was originally told to us.  I know some people think a few more weeks in an orphange that he's spent his life in won't make that much difference...but after all that Dan and I have learned about orphans and what they struggle with emotionally, we just can't stand the idea of leaving him there any longer than is absolutely necessary.  And this wait just doesn't seem necessary.  

In our hearts, we've been his family for an entire year now.  And he's spent that last year growing up in an orphanage instead of here with us.  Please pray he can come home as soon as possible.  It's time we get down to the business of sharing with Joseph what love and family really looks like!  

He's waited long enough.

We've got court tomorrow...

Praying that all goes well with our court date in Joseph's country...

Would you say a prayer with us?
Our agency is also telling us that we'll have to travel several weeks later than we were hoping...the end of June instead of the beginning of June.  Please pray  that it might work out so that we can travel sooner rather than later...we don't want Joseph waiting any longer than he needs to!

We'll post as soon as we hear how court went.

You can listen to Summit 9 Live!

Summit 9 is going on right now!  For those that don't know what that is, the summit it is a huge conference held each year by the Christian Alliance for Orphans.  I had really hoped to go, but there were several reasons why it just didn't work out this year.

BUT...they are streaming some of the sessions for free online!  I've heard some amazing testimonies from adopted children now adults, talks by adoptive families and a talk by Karen Purvis (author of "The Connected Child") that was so good I just couldn't take notes fast enough!

If you are interested in adoption, if you're in the process of adoption or if you've already adopted and want to be plugged in with other like minded people but couldn't make the summit...listen live!

He'res the link...

 http://www.summit9.org/live/

I spent most of the day yesterday trying to get the kids to work independently on stuff so that I could listen in :)  Hopefully I'll get to listen some more today.

Buy a bracelet...support Haitian Families and bring Joseph home!

We are so close to getting our little boy home.  We're already looking into flights for our final trip and its going to be expensive.  More expensive than we were hoping.  Must be peak travel time for his country because the flights are even more expensive than they were at Christmas time.

Just in time for our final trip and all the costs that are associated with that trip....

We have a very meaningful fundraiser for all of you!  You don't have to live in our neck of the woods to participate in this one...I can mail your purchase right to your doorstep ;)

The Apparent Project

Look at these beautiful bracelets...

 Can you believe that these handmade beads come from recycled paper, magazines, cereal boxes etc.?

 Or that the Haitian artisans that make these bracelets do so because they are wanting to be able to feed their children and support their families? 

 These are just a few of the people in Haiti trying hard to support themselves and make a life for their children.

If you can't read what the above tag says...it talks about Vanessa, a mother of two boys.  She is unable to feed her children so one is with his grandparents and the other has had to be put up for adoption because he spent two months in the hospital for malnutrition.  She is a mother that just wants to be able to feed her children and can't.  These bracelets help bring an income to women like Vanessa and other men and women working to feed and support their families.   

Lorene not only takes care of her 4 children but also her sister's 3 children as well.  Her sister has died and she is trying to support not only herself but all 7 children.

A little bit from the Apparent Project:

The Apparent Project artisans' guild
addresses Haiti's orphan crisis at the root.

Our name reflects our passion: We want to see Haitian families stay together. Skill development and employment addresses the needs of families before they are at the point of desperation, driven to give their children to an orphanage because of exteme poverty. After all, the vast majority of Haiti's "orphans" have not been orphaned by parental deaths, earthquakes, hurricanes, or floods, but are children of living parents who gave them up simply because they knew that an orphange could feed their child. Lagging adoptions, overcrowding, and lack of accountability has made many orphanages less than adequate homes for children, who often develop severe emotional problems such as reactive attachment disorder. This is why we think of our artisans' guild as an "un-orphanage."

The apparent project is allowing families to keep their children out of orphanages by helping them to making a wage to provide for their family.  

This is the kind of product that you can feel proud to have purchased. 

 A portion of the sale of these bracelets goes to our fundraiser to bring Joseph home and the rest goes right back to the individual that made each bracelet.  You can KNOW that Vanessa or Lorene or Makenson benefited and made a wage for their work thanks to you! 


And we're able to raise more funds to bring Joseph home!
Please consider buying a bracelet.  
We will be selling them here on the blog for $14 each to be able to cover the packing and mailing.


Please email me or leave a comment here with your email and how many bracelets you would like and I will email you about an address to ship it to.  Or, if you live locally, just send me an email or leave a comment on this post and we can arrange to get a bracelet to you!

We have a court date!

May 13th!  May 13th!  May 13th!

We are just so excited to finally have a court date.  

And it's on Our Lady of Fatima's feast day, so I know Our Lord's Mother has got this covered for us ;)

Our agency notified us of the court date but warned us that the judge is requesting updated FBI clearances from us.  Our clearances are still good until November 2013 but for some reason he is still not happy so our agency and ourselves are scrambling to try to provide so kind of official document re-stating what we already have.  Just say a little prayer that we can get it all worked out before court so that it doesn't affect our court date.  We've been told this has happened before with this particular judge but our USCIS officer had never dealt with this before.

Looks like Dan will be in-country picking up our son no later than the second week of June!  Hopefully sooner....our agency says 4 weeks after court, but we're hoping to make it sooner if they'll let us ;)

       So incredibly thankful for this journey of adoption, for all those that have supported us through it, and for the amazing son that we will have at the end of all this!

Don't forget your pizza!

For all our local friends....

Don't forget to get out to Brixx Pizza today and have some dinner!

Brixx is donating $3 for every 10 inch and $1 for every kid's pizza purchased with our flyer.

Our flyer is attached to my last blog post....print it and come on out!

We'll have our adoption board there and someone will be there handing out flyers for yet another pizza day event coming up on May 4th! 

Thanks for all the support!

Pray. Support. Donate. Advocate For Orphans