I am struggling today. It's been a rough couple days actually. Several great things have happened in the midst of it though. We have our homestudy under way. Our social worker will be making her first visit to our home on November 27th. We got news that Asher is back with his foster family after his cataract surgery and seems to be doing well. We got Asher's bed put together. I go into his room often and stare at his bed and think about what it will be like to tuck him in at night and watch him sleep peacefully. It's also hard to look at his bed because doubts still creep in. What if we will never get to tuck him in? What if I will never see his sweet face in person? What if he will never call me mommy? I am trying with all my heart to cast my cares on the Lord, but I find that I have to do it repeatedly and often.
We are still being blessed by a few generous donations and we will never be able to tell you all how thankful we are. I received another email from our agency today reminding me, as if I somehow forgot, that $2500 is now due and we can't move forward until it's paid. I don't know if I've explained in detail what this means. If we don't pay this first fee now, we don't get to move forward in putting our dossier together. The dossier is the stack of papers that need to be acquired, filled out, notarized/apostilled, and sent to China. China gives us a deadline of when those need to be submitted, which is 6 months after they have given pre-approval. Our pre-approval came on October 29th, so that puts us in April for having them returned. It usually takes roughly 4-5 months (if everything goes smoothly) to complete your dossier. What happens if we don't have our dossier to China in that time frame? Well, we are told that they might grant us one 90 day extension, but if we don't have our dossier submitted on time, China closes our file and we lose Asher. That's just it. We don't become his parents and he is again put back on the waiting list. We can't reapply to adopt him, it's over. It's hard for me to even type those words because I don't want to admit that it could happen, but it could. We could still lose our little boy.
I know God is in control and I still have faith that He will provide if this is His will, but I'm human and I'm scared. I want to bring my little boy home. Right now, after other fees have been paid, we have $400 to put toward the $2500. Every time I sell a crochet item, the money goes in the fund. Every time I babysit, the money goes in the fund. Any time we have extra, it goes in the fund. We aren't even buying our kids Christmas presents this year because we've talked to them and we've all decided that we already have more than we need and we need to be putting our money toward bringing Asher home. We are tapped out.
This leaves us at the mercy of those willing to help bring Asher home. We have a puzzle fundraiser where we are asking people to sponsor a piece for $25 by using the PayPal Donate button on this blog and it's ongoing. We have an Usborne Books fundraiser that is going on until November 30th: https://w3493.myubam.com/ . We have a 31 fundraiser going on until November 29th: https://www.mythirtyone.com/shop/eventhome.aspx?eventId=E3967700&from=MYEVENTS .
Would you consider helping us bring our son home? We would be forever grateful.
God bless,
Carly
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