We might be under contract??

Hi everyone! Thank you for your prayers. Today has been a TOUGH day. Our potential buyers have been totally balking and nit picking but earlier this evening, they've given their verbal "ok" to our counter offer. (That after what felt like 500 phone calls back and forth to nail this down.) We feel like we've given the house away but we're trusting that since God led us to do this IN this specific way, He's got a plan for us on the other side. The buyers supposed to be signing docs tonight so we'll hopefully have everything tied up tonight or tomorrow. Praise God as this all goes thru!

Please continue to pray for our health and especially pray for a miracle for us being able to find something in our new price range. Scary! But our God is a big God! We'll keep you all posted!

Keep on praying....

No real news yet, everyone, so please continue to pray that God's will be done in the possible sale of our house! The buyers are sleeping on our counter offer. They wanted to counter our counter but when our agent explained that we are at our absolute bottom, they decided to wait and make a decision sometime today. Their agent and ours both feel like they're getting a phenomenal deal (which they are) and both are encouraging them to take it. We're also praying for that but feeling peaceful that one way or another God will bring us a buyer. Thanks to our families and friends for their amazing prayers as we have felt so incredibly peaceful, despite the low offer, that we're on the right track and felt God's hand guiding us thru this process. Yea God!

Additionally, if you all can be praying for our health - we're all 3 fighting off colds 'cause we're all just run down from this. Please pray that we'll be able to stay healthy and that hopefully this stress will be over and we'll be off and hunting for a home for us soon! Stay tuned and hope you all are doing well!

We might have a buyer!!!

Hi everyone! So just a quickie update - we rec'd an offer on our house late last night!!! We're not quite celebrating yet as they came in way low and we've already slashed our price. We're in the process of countering that offer today and hopefully, if all continues to go well, we'll be under contract in the next day or so! The amazing thing in all of this is that we both feel at peace (exhausted but peaceful) despite the low offer. In the meantime, since we slashed our price, we've had a bunch of showings and previews so overall we've felt encouraged and more importantly...affirmed that we are on the path that God wants us to be on. We will definitely keep you all posted and appreciate your continued prayers over this process. If we do get under contract, we'll be quickly hopping into "house-hunting" mode and would appreciate your prayers for a miracle in finding a house that we can afford and that is newer and therefore less maintenance than our current house.

Thanks everyone and we'll talk to you soon!

Obedience = Sacrifice

Hi everyone! So we FINALLY feel like we got some insight into our "situation" with our house. That God...what a kidder. I was meeting a friend for tea and was doing my usual begging God for help & strength, begging Him to help us know if we're to continue selling our house and asking Him to make things crystal clear. In the process of pouring my heart out to God, I asked Him how much do we need to sacrifice in order to obey Him? All of the sudden I felt Him say "Miss California." I immediately thought "oh crap." Miss California, because of her unwillingness to compromise the truth, lost the Miss USA contest. As I was sharing this w/my friend later, she said to me, "Donna, maybe all of this has been about obedience and not just about selling the house." Interesting. I don't know why I haven't thought of this before! As I was sharing this with Jim, interestingly enough, he too was asking similar questions. He pointed out that Jesus had made the ultimate sacrifice, Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son, etc. Hello! How in the world did I get to the mindset that being obedient means only blessings and not sacrifice?!

So, after a lot of prayer and talking, Jim and I made the decision to way slash the price on our house. If getting our house sold and helps bring Jasmine home sooner, it's worth it. More importantly, if this helps us to grow in our obedience to God, then this will REALLY be worth it!

Please keep on praying for us because we're nowhere near the end of this particular faith journey and I have no doubt that there will be more ups and downs before we bring Jasmine home and begin THAT journey! We are both excited to feel like we're slowly figuring out what we're supposed to be learning in all of this and can't wait to see how God's going to work it all out!

Where Jesus is

Hi all! Ok, I'm hoping this link will come across on the blog but if not please copy and paste it into your browser! This is an entry today from Tom Davis' blog. Tom Davis is the President of Children's Hope Chest and is currently in Ethiopia looking for orphanages that need sponsoring. What an incredible ministry! When I read stories like the one below, I think to myself "how can I complain about our circumstances when I don't even remotely have to live like this precious girl has lived?"

http://tomdavis.typepad.com/tom_daviss_blog/2009/04/the-mighty-one-has-done-great-things-for-me.html

The other thing I think about is about the author Henry Blackaby and how he speaks about instead of asking God to bless what you're doing, go join something that God is doing. I follow Tom Davis' blog regularly and I soooooo see God at work in their ministry and in the lives of these precious orphans. What I want to know is how I can join God there and be a part of what He's doing? I don't have the answer yet but just had to share! Boy, the problems of our lives sure seem pretty minimal and petty compared to these precious kids, don't they?!

Nothing new...

Hi all. Not much news to report. We're still waiting to hear on our China adoption and don't know when we'll get the call. We have finished all of our training and last week, we sent off for Lily's passport just in case we decide to bring her with us. Now we just continue to wait!

Our contract w/our realtor expires in 9 days and we're trying to decide if we'll try and press through the summer or just quit. People have gone into this feeding frenzy and seem to want everything for nothing. We're just not willing to give our house away & we can't compete w/foreclosure prices so we're looking into other alternatives. Please pray for us as we try and make a wise decision. We're starting to conclude that if God wanted this to happened, He would have intervened and helped this house sell a while ago. We clearly felt led to do this so it's all very confusing. He's not bound by the economy or anything for that matter. All of this amounts to alot of confusion as to how to proceed and where to go from here. We greatly appreciate your prayers for us in this. This was to be our way of paying for our adoption expenses, along w/grants, and with both of these not working out so far, we're going to have to come up with some extremely creative fundraising ideas. If anyone out there has any great ideas or things that have worked for them, please let us know! We are open to just about anything! ;-)

Business-wise, we're still in the process of re-working our website and currently have most of our products listed on Amazon.com. Business has slowed down considerably, which is also probably due to the economy, so we're hoping that things will turn around soon. We're still committed to putting together a quality site where families can come and get information and explore if adoption is for them as well as offer resources for families in the process of adopting. We will let you know when we think we'll be back up and running!

Happy Easter!

Well, there's not much to report with our family but thought I'd give a brief update. I hope you all had a wonderful Easter! We had a busy weekend w/a couple of showings on Friday, an open house on Saturday and then Sunday I had to sing for our 3 services and then we hosted my family for Easter brunch. It was a tough weekend because of having to pack up Lily and the dogs and be gone so much. Physically, the 8 months of having our house on the market has taken it's toll on me and I've been experiencing frequent dizzy spells from all of the stress. This weekend was no exception as we really didn't have much time to rest. We're really not big into the "bunny" part of Easter but did do a little Easter egg hunt w/Lily and her cousin. I'll try and post some pics soon!

As to the real meaning of Easter, both Jim and I felt humbled that Jesus chose to die for us and so incredibly thankful for God's Grace. We certainly don't deserve it and yet He went through unimaginable torture and death on our behalf. Wow. It's hard to comprehend.

As far as baby Jasmine goes, there are no real updates to report. We recently had to update our homestudy and file to extend our I-171 form for US immigration. Our adoption agency, CCAI, recently sent out a newsletter with information on the "Waiting Child" program that we are in, and the average wait is 12 months. The Waiting Child program includes children with special needs, medical needs and/or older children. Apparently our login date (login date is when your dossier is officially logged into the China Center of Adoption Affairs or CCAA) is in the date range that our adoption agency is currently placing. What that means is that we could be getting our "match" with Jasmine anytime in the next couple of months. We are still desperately hoping and praying that our house will be sold before that happens so that we can get Lily settled and get unpacked before starting the crazy preparations for our China trip.

We still haven't decided whether or not to bring Lily to China with us, but we applied for her passport over the weekend just in case. We'll continue to pray and talk about it and make a final decision once we know when we're traveling. We'll keep you posted on what we decide.

That's the latest and greatest with us! We'll try and update you all soon.