God Answers Prayers!

God has been at work in this adoption! Of course He has, He brought us to this journey and is providing every step of the way. Glory to God! In our last update we said we needed about $5,000 to send our paperwork to China. As of today we still need about $2,400.

This past weekend our sweet friends hosted a Family Dance Fundraiser at our church. We want to give a HUGE Thank You to everyone who helped organize this event for us. Thank you Ryan, Emily, Kim, Brian, Karen, Maury, Brooke, Murray, April, Trey, Esther, Robert, Beth, David, Jenn, Mark, Becca, Aaron, Candace, Brian, Nora, Dave, Sarah, Rick, Angela, Randy, Karla, Jim. I tried to name everyone, but please forgive me if I forgot someone. These are the ones who were behind the scenes working on every detail to make this fundraiser such a success! 

Also a HUGE thank you to everyone who came out to the dance on Friday night. Y'all could have been anywhere, but you sacrificed your Friday night to come support our adoption. We are so thankful for everyone who came out to support us in this journey.

The money raised this weekend will help us to send our paperwork to be authenticated and ready for the next step which is sending it to CHINA! We're praying to have this done in a few weeks so that our paperwork doesn't start to expire and have more delays.

Family Dance Fundraiser

Sweet Friends at the Family Dance Fundraiser

I'll be at a friend's church this coming weekend March 4-5 for a Women's Weekend. They had asked if I wanted to sell some of my necklaces at the conference! What a blessing! Pray for all the ladies that will be attending the conference that they will feel God's presence. Also pray that we will SELL OUT of necklaces! ;) We are so close to being able to send our dossier to China! Pray we can be diligent in saving and raising funds to get this done quickly.

Again Thank You for ALL your support!

Compelled Designs Jewelry Fundraiser!

Update: January 19, 2016
ALL necklaces have been sold! Praise God for answering our prayers and providing for this adoption! Thank you all who purchased a necklace from us! I am planning to get another bundle so if you missed out on this round just wait I'll be getting more in soon!

As I had mentioned in my last post, I ordered a fundraising kit from Compelled Designs to raise funds to bring our little one HOME! We need about $5,000 to get our paperwork sent to China so that we can be matched with our sweet boy! I'm so excited about this opportunity. The necklaces are $24 a piece and I can ship them to you for an extra $1. Each piece has a Bible verse reference on the back, so if you are interested in knowing which verse corresponds with a specific piece, let me know! The best way to contact me would be email akrobinson06@gmail.com. In the subject line please put Compelled Designs Fundraiser just so I can keep track of everyone's order. Just include the number that you'd like and if I need to mail it to you please include your address. Just in time for Valentine's Day!! These are first come first serve, so don't wait!

#1 sold
#2 sold
#3 sold
#4 sold
#5 sold

#6 sold
#7 sold
#8 sold
#9 sold
#10 sold

#11 sold
#12 sold
#13 sold
#14 sold
#15 sold

#16 sold
#17 sold
#18 sold
#19 sold
#20 sold

1. Proverbs 3:5-6
2. Lam 3:22-23
3. Eph 3:20
4. Prov 3:5-6
5. Psalm 91:2
6. Matt 11:28
7. Jer 29:11
8. Prov 3:5-6
9. Phil 4:6-7
10. Rom 15:13
11. Eph 3:20
12. Ecc 3:11
13. Psalm 91:4
14. Prov 3:5-6
15. Rom 15:13
16. Eph 3:20
17. Psalm 139
18. Joshua 1:9
19. Jer 29:11
20. 1 Peter 5:7

I800-A Approved!!

So our last update we had an appointment to get our fingerprints done on December 28th. Everything went smoothly at the appointment, the employees there were VERY nice and professional. There was a pretty good line of people in front of us, but with only 2 people doing the fingerprinting they moved pretty quickly. We had prepared ourselves that there'd be a waiting period after they were done because of the New Year. But just ONE week after our fingerprinting was done we received our I800-A approval notice in the mail! The date of approval on the notice was actually December 28th...yes the same day we got our fingerprinting done. We were shocked to get this back so quickly! GO GOD!

Next I had my passport appointment on December 30th. Everything went smoothly there too and the guy who took my application said he had to tell me 6-8 weeks, but he figured I'd get it in less than 30 days and sometimes he's saw them come back in 2 weeks. Wow! Well I was one to get it back in just 2 weeks! So glad I didn't pay for the expedited service. ;)

We are so THANKFUL for everyone who supported us through our Christmas ornament fundraiser. We were blown away at how many we sold. We wanted to share with you all how well we did on this fundraiser to give God the glory for this awesome blessing! And maybe to help other adoptive families know which fundraisers worked for us. We brought in a total of $803 with a few donations made without them getting an ornament. We took home a net of $727 with all of the supplies taken out. We were hoping to sell at least 20 ornaments. We ended up selling 47...an odd number because we broke only 1 out of all of them! So thank you all again for buying an ornament and we hope that you put it on your tree each year and think of us and hopefully by next Christmas we'll have our little one home!

With that said I am working on another post about another fundraiser I found. Compelled Designs sells handmade pottery jewelry with a scripture reference on the back. Each one comes in a fabric drawstring bag that is hand sewn through a ministry in Kenya. I love that they are handmade pieces and that the fabric bag is supporting a ministry in Kenya. I will try to have the post up later today with pictures of the necklaces I have for sale!

Where Things Stand

First of all, thank you all SO much for supporting us in our ornament fundraiser! We are so blessed to have such awesome family and friends. Since our last update we FINALLY have a completed Home Study! We initiated the home study process in July and had a finalized copy in November. I know this is a long process, but I feel like ours was really slow. We had a lot of waiting time in between interviews and waiting on email replies. Though the process was long and tiresome it's all worth it. We have learned to be patient and wait. Praise God this huge part of the process is behind us.

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) received our application December 2nd and we received notification of this on December 7th. We received our fingerprint appointment date today, December 17. Our appointment is December 28th. The Department of Homeland Security will complete an additional background check after they take our fingerprints. Then we will await our immigration approval. We are trying to be patient and TRUST Him in the whole process. We have many, many more steps to go, but one-by-one, we are getting closer to meeting our new child. All in His timing, which is always BEST!

Below is a list of milestones we have met so far and more to come. I've also put this on the sidebar of our blog for you to check for updates on our progress. Thanks again for loving us and supporting us through our journey!

05/2015 - Made the decision to adopt
05/19/15- Submitted application to LL
07/2015 - Initiated Home Study with Catholic Charities
08/11/15- First Home Study Interview
09/30/15- Second Home Study Interview
10/14/15- Home Study Visit
11/2015 - Home Study Report Complete
12/01/15- Immigration Application sent
12/02/15- USCIS Received Application
12/07/15- USCIS Letter of Receipt
12/17/15 - Fingerprint appt received
12/28/15- Fingerprint appointment
              - Immigration Approval
              - Dossier Authentication
              - Dossier to China (DTC)
              - Log In Date (LID)
              - Out of Translation (OOT)
              - LOI Submitted
              - PreApproval for Child
              - Dossier Match Reviewed
              - Letter of Acceptance (LOA)
              - I-800 Approval
              - NVC GUZ # PDF
              - Article 5 Drop Off
              - Article 5 Pick Up
              - Travel Approval (TA)
              - Depart for China
              - Meet Child
              - Adoption Finalized
              - Consulate Appointment

Adoption Ornament Pre-order

Fundraising Poll

We are currently waiting for our home study to be completed so that we can send it on to the next person. I have been brainstorming and researching fundraisers that would work for us. We have come up with three different ideas....

I found these cool bracelets on one blog that I follow and really liked the business. It is MudLove and they have bracelets and some coffee mugs also. They sell these products and they give 20% to Water for Good which helps give someone in need clean water! These are just a few of the bracelets that they have to choose from.

Everyone loves T-shirts and I've seen many adoption shirts around. I do not have a design yet, but we are working on coming up with something that ANYONE would love to wear. I don't want something that says "Robinson Adoption" or I don't even know if I want a China specific shirt. Maybe something as simple as saying "Adopted" on the front...well because we are ALL adopted by God! This is just an example...this is not our design! But maybe something similar.

Lastly, I saw a post on Pinterest of an adoption Christmas Ornament! I haven't made one yet, but have the stuff to make one to see if I like it or not. I could not find an example for China, but here is one for Africa to show you the idea. Just something simple so that you can hang it on your tree and remember that YOU helped bring a child home to his/her FOREVER family!

*Please vote for your top choice. We may end up doing a couple of these, but just wanted to see what y'all were interested in before we go all in on one of them. :) Thank you for your support in our journey to adoption.*

Which product would you purchase for our fundraiser?

MudLove Bracelets

Christmas Ornament

Adoption T-shirt

Poll Maker

Home Study Visit

Almost 2 months have passed since my last post! Wow! We have been gathering paper work and had another interview in Nashville with our social worker. Everything has been going pretty smoothly. We had our home study visit on Wednesday the 14th. We had 2 weeks from our last interview to prepare for our home visit. Our social worker had told us not to worry about the home visit that it really wasn't as crazy as you'd think....but I was still nervous not knowing what she was gonna be looking for! Thankfully our house was already pretty child proof so we didn't have much to do in that area. I spent most of the day Tuesday cleaning and decluttering our house. We made sure all of our smoke alarms had batteries and were working. We worked on our special needs consideration list until about 1am on Wednesday. We wanted to have the list complete for her when she came, but we still have a few needs that we need to research and pray over. That list is so intimidating and hard to put a yes, no, or maybe on each need. So please pray with us about that list! We know God already has a sweet little one waiting for us, but we don't want this list to delay our process.

So Wednesday is here and we are going around the house making sure the house looks presentable and the kids are all dressed! I got up early and made pumpkin chocolate chip muffins so the house would smell like FALL....and for some breakfast for us and a treat to offer our social worker too! She gets to our house right on time. Our kids are wonderful and they actually talked to her when she was asking questions. Sierra even made a picture while she was here of "mama, daddy, and our little boy" in China. She said we were running to each other in the picture! Wow, what a sweet sister....and NO we did not pay her to do that! HAHA! Everything went great during the visit. She basically asked if we had any questions for her and we gave her some of the paper work we had been working on and then I showed her around our house. She then went through our 'next steps' with us and was on her way! She was at our house for maybe 30 minutes! I was relieved to have that part over with even though it really wasn't as bad as I had imagined it might be.

So our next steps are to get a couple more pieces of paper work in to our social worker and she will write up our home study report. Then she will send it to us and our placing agency for review. Then when it's finalized it will be sent in to Immigration! CRAZY!! And the waiting begins....While we wait we plan to start some fundraising. We are brainstorming some ideas and hopefully in the next few days I'll post some ideas and y'all can give us some feedback to help us in what direction to go with our fundraising.

We are so thankful to have such a wonderful group supporting us in our adoption journey!!