Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year from our family to yours! We had a wonderful time hanging out with my family this year. Christmas Eve, we went to 1 of the earlier services at our church and then came home and had some family time reading the Christmas story and then opened gifts. Christmas Day, we opened our stockings and eventually headed to my sister's house for a beautiful Christmas dinner. The thankfulness that we have felt throughout these past weeks continued to touch us on Christmas Day. We feel so incredibly thankful for God sending His son for us so that we can have a relationship with Him! We feel so thankful for family and friends and really enjoyed spending time with my family as well as my brother, who was able to fly out. The day after Christmas, my family came over to my house and we feasted on homemade chili, cornbread, salsa dip & fruit....yummi! That night, my sister agreed to spend the night so we were able to spend some wonderful time together and then attend church together yesterday. What a wonderful time we all had!

Needless to say, this has been one of the best Christmases the Young family has ever experienced! As we've reflected back over the year, we've been blown away by God's incredible faithfulness to us and His amazing provision. While this has been an incredibly tough year, it has been one of the best because of all that God has done for us and how He's grown us. We are so humbled that the God of the universe loves us so much to be such a huge part of our lives! Yesterday at church, the Pastor asked us all to think about how God had intervened in our lives in 2009. We were so humbled and touched to think of time and time and time and TIME again, of God's intervention over this past year.

We continue to Praise God for all that He has done and for all of you! Since I last blogged, God brought in another $3100 for our adoption! We are estimating that we only need between $4000-$5000, depending on the travel costs, to finalize our adoption! Praise God for His provision and thank you, family, for your generous hearts! We still have 2 outstanding grants that may provide so please continue to pray for that final money to come in however God chooses. We should hear back from the US consulate this week about our appointment date and then be able to make our travel arrangements. Wow! Hard to believe that we're leaving in approximately 30 days!

Well, we'll continue to keep you posted and thanks again for all of your prayers and encouragement! We love you and we'll update again soon! :-)