Our application has officially been approved by our agency and our Letter of Intent (our request to China to adopt Asher) and family info has been sent to China to be translated and then submitted!!  We are now in a new place of waiting....waiting to hear if China will give us the go ahead.  It feels so good to finally be moving forward.  To say that we are slightly anxious about receiving our pre-approval from China would be a HUGE understatement!  We know God has this and we are not worried, just really looking forward to getting it :) 

Our next steps will require raising money.  We now have 90 days (hopefully it won't take that long) to come up with $2500 for our first agency fee.  We also need to get started with our homestudy pretty much immediately after we get our pre-approval.  Our homestudy agency is Children's Bureau, Inc. out of Indianapolis.  Their fee is $1600, with $800 needed upfront and the remaining $800 to be paid before the paperwork is finalized and sent to our agency.  We have filled out an application with Sonscope to try to have our homestudy paid for, but there is no guarantee that it will be.  Right now we are looking into the different fundraisers that are available and the three that we really like are a puzzle fundraiser, a Thirty-One fundraiser, and a jewelry fundraiser through Compelled Designs.  The Thirty-One and Compelled Designs fundraisers are selling products, and then we get a portion of those sales toward our adoption.  The puzzle fundraiser is a little different.  We have a 336 piece puzzle made with a picture of the country of China, in the colors of the Chinese flag. You will be able to sponsor a piece for $25 and in turn, we will write your name on the back of a puzzle piece.  As the pieces get sponsored, we will assemble the puzzle.  Once the puzzle is complete, our fundraiser will have raised $8400.  This amount will pay for all the fees we need in the first half of our adoption process, including getting all of our paperwork complete and sent to China.  We will be putting the completed puzzle between two pieces of glass and framing it to hang on the wall of Asher's room so he can see some of the names of the amazing people who helped bring him home.  The last half of the adoption process is travel and incountry expenses.  We are hoping that those will be paid through the grant Asher already has on a wonderful site called Reece's Rainbow and through other grants we will be applying for.  I will be setting up a separate post for the puzzle fundraiser soon with all the details, so please check back and consider being a part of putting our puzzle together!  As always, your prayers are greatly appreciated!  Love you all!

~Carly