FUNdraising

Our idea of fundraising was asking people to give us money and that felt so selfish to us.  We know that what we are doing is a great thing, but we also needed money and hated the thought of asking for it.  We put it off for a long time and just thought that we could just "do it on our own" or wait for the adoption credit from the government (HA!) which we don't know if it will still be available.  After talking with godly friends and our wonderful community group, we realized that God has placed a GREAT group of people in our lives that love us and wanted to get behind us to help us raise the money we need.  When we told them about our hesitation of asking people for money, they said, "We'll be doing the asking!".  Why yes, yes, they would and that brought rounds of laughter and a burden lifted from our shoulders.  Soooo.....

...we have decided to start doing some fundraising and God has already started blessing us before we've even begun! We received $500 one Sunday from someone anonymous and then we received $3,000 from a friend that is going to be used to match funds through our fundraising!  GOD IS SO AMAZING!!

Our first fundraiser is a Premier Jewelry Show.  My friend is a consultant for Premier and makes 50% from her shows and is graciously giving us 100% of those proceeds for our adoption fund.  It will be held on Tuesday, March 19 from 7-9 pm in her home.  We, of course, are hoping for a great turnout.  There's also a special deal going on until March 28 with Premier.  If you spend $75 then you will be able to choose any item in the catalog that is $50 or less and get it for $10!  Catalog sales also count in this deal!  I am excited to see what God is going to do with this fundraiser and at the same time help my friend with her new business.  Thankful for my mother-in-law Joy Kelley who will be showing the catalogs to her friends in Guam! We mailed it off today and can't wait to see how many sales we get from that! We have an event set up on FB here if you are interested. My friend came up with a pretty sensational tag line for this fundraiser, "BLing Calvin Home". Haha!

Our second and ongoing fundraiser: Baby Bottle Drive.  We are going to be purchasing baby bottles which we will give to friends and family and have them take them home to fill with change. They will then bring back the filled bottle and get another one to fill if they would like.  They are welcome to take home several if they so choose.  We will put a half sheet in each bottle telling a little bit about ourselves and our adoption story.  We've come up with a pretty catchy tag line (we think so anyway!) "Fill a Bottle, Change a Life".  I will post a more specific blog with details about this fundraiser in the near future.

The third fundraiser is a garage sale.  Bolivar, MO will be having their city-wide garage sale on Sat., April 27th.  We are asking people to donate their junk unwanted items for this garage sale.  We'd like bigger items like furniture and/or TV's since we can make more $$ with them.  But we will take all donations.  Whatever we don't sell at this one, Willard (where we live) has their city-wide garage sale in June.  We will again ask for more donations and use what we didn't sell in the last one for the Willard garage sale.

We have some more fundraising ideas, but so as not to overwhelm you or make this post longer that it needs to be, I will blog about them as we get them set and have more details.  We are excited about where God is leading with our fundraising and can't wait to see how much more he will be blessing us through this. If you have any ideas, feel free to post here or send me a message on FB.  Thank you for walking with us through this journey.

Avoidance

Sometimes it seems that avoidance is better than facing problems head on.  Not that blogging is a problem, but time just slipped away so fast it seemed that whenever I would think about blogging about our life or how we are doing in the adoption process, I would think, no one really pays attention anyway or I'm just going to give up on this blogging thing and not worry about it.  I know, it was the wrong way of thinking, but hey, you have to start somewhere.  So, I am starting again.  I am going to do my bestest (I  know it's not a word, but I  like the way it sounds when you say it :D) to blog on a regular basis...again.  So much time has passed and so many things have gone on since I last blogged, that I will not do a catch post right now.  I will do catch up blogs over the next few weeks.  For right now, this will have to do.  Thanks for reading! =D

Way too long!

Wow! It's been way too long since I last blogged...and this adoption process....!! :p  I think part of the reason is because I've been pretty discouraged about the whole process.  Waiting...waiting...paperwork...

paperwork...deadlines...deadlines... having to get our home study updated ($400 later).

I thought we had some paperwork (marriage and birth certificates) expiring this month, but in  emailing with our Family Coordinator, I am encouraged once again! She informed me that they are good for up to 5 years.  In the paperwork process, you have to have new marriage and birth certificates, not the ones you got from the hospital.  I thought they were expiring this month because they were going to be a year old.  We have a little more time to get our paperwork off and we are almost there!

We were told in the beginning of this process that it's easy to get caught up in the process and feel discouraged with it all.  It's easy to forget the end result...a child!!  Hopefully, we'll get our paperwork sent off in January or February.

In family life, we are all doing well. Charis was baptized and Caleb had the privilege of baptizing her, that was such a sweet moment.

Adoption Fund raising

Today, we have been working on adoption fund raising.  We've applied to different grant agencies.  We heard back from one agency called Lifesong.  If funds are available they give applicants interest free loans.  Funds were unavailable for us to receive a loan, but they are helping us out with fund raising.  We are in the process of applying for more grants, but all grants are not guaranteed. We have put together a letter (with the help of Lifesong) that we will be sending out through the mail for help with our adoption.  We have attached it here on our blog.

Lifesong reference letter

Our support letter

We have attached a PayPal link set up through Lifesong where funds can be given to help with our adoption fund raising.

All you have to do is click on the yellow donate button below.  Then when you get to the Lifesong site, scroll down and click again on the yellow donate button.  It will take you to the PayPal donation page.

Under 'purpose' you will enter 'preference Kelley, Caleb/#1384 adoption' and then enter the amount you wish to donate.



Please help us get the word out by posting this for us on your blog posts or Facebook accounts.  Just click on the link below to re post it.  Thank you for your help!

My birthday

I have the most wonderful husband and daughter in the world! This is the best birthday I've had in a long time.  I think the reason why it was so good was because I had no elevated expectations for the day.  I would love to sit here and describe my whole day, but I also want to add pictures.  I will describe my day in short sentences instead.

-Slept in.
-Ate breakfast @ Cracker Barrel with friends.
-Went to the pool w/same friends.
-Soaked up the sun and played Spades (Caleb and I won this game) at the pool.
-Went to my second 5K.
-Ran it in 42 minutes - took 2 minutes longer than the first one.
-Ran it @ 6pm - the weather was hot and humid - harder to run in hot and humid weather (my sister Jody      would have loved running in this type of weather - strange!  I love you, Jody!).  It probably didn't help by spending most of the time in the sun before running either!=
-Ate an ENTIRE funnel cake by MYSELF.  Yes, I did feel pretty sick afterward, but loved every minute of it!
-Went to our friends house (the ones we spent time with earlier) after the 5K.
-Walked into a small surprise party with cake and ice cream.
-Didn't eat cake and ice cream since I had just eaten an ENTIRE funnel cake by MYSELF.
-Will be able to eat the leftover cake on Father's Day.  Will be spending time with our friends again.
-Played Spades (our friends won this game) again.
-Got home around 11pm.
-Posting this @ 3:48AM.  Couldn't sleep.  Too much funnel cake...??

Two white boys having a 'serious' discussion

SO GLAD THE END IS NEAR!

Yes, she did eat this all by herself!

Yes, I cried.  It's what I do.

Didn't realize my shirt still had wet spots on it from pouring water on myself while running.  It was hot!

Couldn't enjoy the cake since I had just eaten a funnel cake.  I did enjoy watching everyone else enjoy the cake and ice cream.

Charis' salvation

Charis accepted Christ as her Saviour on Tuesday, May 4!  Caleb had the privilege to lead her to the Lord.  I am so thankful that God allowed him to do it.  We have been praying for her salvation and also praying that one of us would be able to do it.  I am so glad that Caleb was the one that had the opportunity.


Here is their conversation:

I started off our conversation with telling Charis about my day at the A29 conference.  I explained to her that I learned how to be a better daddy.  Then I went into detail about how I sinned against her by being too controlling.  I told her that God is sovereign and in control of everything including her.  So I don't have to be a controlling daddy.  I just needed to trust Jesus more.  She forgave me for sinning against her, and we cried a little.  Then I asked her if she was a sinner.  She said she was so then we talked more specifically about her sins.  Then we talked about how Jesus is her rescuer and died on the cross to forgive her from her sins.  I also told her that Jesus was a better daddy then me and anything that I do that looks like I'm a good daddy, its because its Jesus doing it through me.  And when I do something that is sin, like being controlling, that is really me.  She said that she wanted Jesus to forgive her from her sin and become a Jesus follower.  So we talked more about what it means to be a Jesus follower.  We talked about what it would look like for her at age 6 to be a fully devoted follower of Christ.  She was so excited and asked if she could be a Jesus follower.  So I explained that she would need to ask Jesus for forgiveness of her sin and accept his free gift.  Then Jesus could be her rescuer.  So she asked me if I could pray for her.  I told her that this was a prayer that she would have to do by herself.  So she prayed "Jesus please forgive me for my sin and rescue me, I want to be a Jesus follower.  Amen".  I have not experienced so much joy in my entire life!  We cried for a while together and talked about what it means to be a fully devoted follower of Christ.  We then went upstairs and told Tracy what had happened.  Then later we discussed what baptism and communion were and that she would be able to participate in them both.  She was very excited.  So all day she was so excited to tell her friends one by one that Jesus saved her!  



Besides the birth of Charis, that was probably the best day ever!  They were both pretty emotional when they came upstairs to tell me what had happened.  To see the joy and peace on her face was something that I will never forget.  I am so thankful that God gave Caleb the opportunity to lead her to Christ and for us to witness the transformation.



We were out driving around doing errands that same day and a song came on the radio that talked about being forgiven.  Charis said, 'That's what I am!'  I asked her what she was talking about to get a feel of if she knew what the song was talking about.  She said, 'I'm forgiven!'.


II Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come[!!].

$7,700

Upon submission of our dossier (the paperwork that will go to Ethiopia) we will have $7,700 in fees to pay.  All the fees are broken down into 5 different payments:

The 2nd program fee of $2000
Translation fee of $800
Post Placement Deposit of $1000
Courier fee of $800
First Half of the International Program Fee $3750

Chump change!  HA!

We are in the process of filling out two different grant applications.  Please pray that we will be able to receive some sort of grant money through these different organizations.