"Thank you Jesus for your bobo's"

We try every night before Gabe goes to bed to read a section out of his Jesus Storybook Bible and we pray and put him to bed. The other night he flipped through his Bible after we read a story. He happened to come to the picture of Jesus hanging on the cross. The first thing he said was where is the man's shirt? We explained that some men took his shirt in the best way we knew how! He then proceeded to ask about the marks on Jesus' body. His bobo's. Again we explained why Jesus had bobo's and that he did it for us. When it was time for him to pray it went like this: "Jesus, thank you Daddy, Mommy, "little brudder", "Arica" (Africa), thank you Jesus for bobo's". I looked at Ben and we both had tears in our eyes. It hit me; My sweet babies will both have to make a decision when they get older. They will either choose or reject Jesus as their Lord and Savior, and it is mine and Ben's job to teach them not by just words but by the way we live our lives in front of them. I also started thinking, if it wasn't for Jesus' "bobo's" we would have no hope, there would be no adoption. I realize that this adoption is nothing without God's adoption of us as His children. It is still amazing to me that God has called us to this and that without His power we CANNOT do anything. Through His Power we can get through every obstacle that this adoption will have, through His Power we can save and raise the funds for this adoption, through His Power we can fly to Ethiopia and meet our son and love him and bring him home to be a part of our family just like we brought Gabe home to be apart of our family on December 14, 2008. Through the Holy Spirit and God's power that he supplies we will be able to bring our baby home.
"... whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the STRENGTH WHICH GOD SUPPLIES; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen." 1 Peter 4:11

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The other day we sent in our signed agreements and $1,125 to America World! This means we have officially signed a contract saying that we understand everything that is about to happen in this adoption! As far as I'm concerned there is no turning back!!! That is scary and exciting! Most likely in a few days our family coordinator will call and introduce herself to us and explain the dossier process to us. The dossier is all the paperwork, medical papers, government fingerprinting, homestudy, etc. She will send us the packet and we will get started. Tomorrow I will contact Lifeline Adoption in Birmingham. They will be doing our homestudy. That is where a social worker will visit us and evaluate our home and family. This is a huge prayer request because this can be a little nerve wrecking and once our home study is complete we can start applying for grants and no interest loans. This week we also start our first training course on adoption. I am very excited about this!! Please be in prayer for us as we continue in this process.
* PRAYER PRAYER PRAYER. This is always the first and most important thing we need from everyone!
* our emotions as we know that this will be a frustrating process at times.
*The funds needed for the adoption. In the next few months we will have to pay for the homestudy, the USCIS (government fees), and when it is time to submit our dossier we will have to pay almost $8,000 at one time! As I have said before, we know God has called us to this and He will provide. Maybe He is calling you to care for the orphan by assisting us monetarily with our adoption? Pray for us as we save and fundraise.
*Our families and our church as we seek to make everyone aware of adoption and our role as Christians in taking care of the orphan.

I also wanted to remind you of our fundraisers going on. We will be continuing to sell T-shirts (picture, cost, and sizes to the right) until Monday, August 8. Two weeks from tomorrow. It is a very cool t-shirt that will bring up awareness of adoption!

We also have a link to our Just Love Coffee store. You can go online and order coffee or whatever you would like and part of the proceeds will go to our adoption and part will go to an orphanage in Ethiopia.
Please message me or Ben if you would like to order a tshirt or have questions about Just Love Coffee.

Pray for us also as we start planning a yard sale! (yikes!) If you would like to donate any items to sell at our yard sale please email me at toriram52@hotmail.com or message me on facebook.

Thanks for all your support! We love you all!

We are officially accepted into the Ethiopia Program!!!!!!

First of all I want to say that God is so good. I am learning every day through this process how unworthy I am. God doesn't need me to adopt this little boy but he is allowing me to be used for his glory. I am in awe of that fact.

I started my day cleaning my house (because my parents are coming this weekend!). I tried not thinking about Sara. Sara is the intake coordinator for AWAA. Sara is the wonderful person who tells you that you have been accepted! See, yesterday she emailed me back to tell me that she planned on giving all of our application info to her supervisor for final approval yesterday afternoon. So of course this morning I thought maybe she will call today. All day I checked my email. Nothing. As I was having my quiet time this afternoon I poured my heart out to God. I cried harder than I have in a long time. For my son who I don't know yet, for the unworthiness I felt, and to let him know how overwhelmed and scared I was! It was so liberating to know my God hears me and knows every thought before I even speak it! 

This afternoon right as Ben was walking through the door to get out of this stormy weather we are having, the phone rang. I didn't think much about it, but when I said hello a cheery voice came over the phone and I knew it was Sara! She asked me if it was a good time to talk and of course I said yes! She immediately said "Welcome to the Ethiopia program!" I couldn't contain myself and cried and told her how excited I was and all she could do was laugh and tell me how excited she was for us. It was wonderful to hear someone say ok now you can officially start the long process of paperwork that you know is going to eventually turn into waiting for a referral then waiting to go meet your child! Overwhelming, but wonderful! She talked to me a few minutes about the agreements we had to sign and the program fee we have to send in. Every time I talk to someone from AWAA I am reassurred of our decision of choosing them as our agency. They are awesome and know they will be so helpful through this process, not only with all the logistical stuff, but spiritually as well.

I hung up after talking with her and started looking at the email that she sent. I looked at all the money that would be due at the time of doing our dossier (all the paperwork and homestudy stuff!). I started fretting. You see Satan knows exactly where my weak spot is. Worrying. Today during my quiet time I begged God to help me trust him even when the amount of money seems so overwhelming and impossible to pay. I also prayed that I would be able to withstand the fiery arrows that I KNEW Satan would throw at me. Please pray for us through this!

So we are super excited that we are officially in this thing! This week we will be signing all the paperwork and sending in $1,125. That seems like a lot but when you look at the grand total ($30,000) it seems so small! Once they receive the paperwork we will wait a week and be assigned a family coordinator. She will email us the dossier packet. This is (from what I hear) one of the most difficult parts of the adoption. It is a ton of paperwork that we will have to make a million copies of plus a homestudy. This is where a social worker will come  into our home a few times and make sure we are good parents and that our home is ok to live in. It seems crazy because one would think that was obvious considering we have been pretty good parents (well, we think so!) for 2 1/2 years now! We covet your prayers through this trying process and also welcome any monetary assistance as well. As I have already mentioned this is a lot of money and know God will provide it. Maybe he will provide it through some of you (if he is calling you to do so.) I want to remind you of our two fundraisers going on.

Our T-shirt fundraiser is still going on! We are going to try to get a large order before we send it in so you still have time!!!! They are $25 and I have a picture to the right. You can facebook message me, or email me (toriram52@hotmail.com) to order one! You can use paypal to pay or mail us a check. Our address is to the right as well.

Our other fundraiser is the one I just blogged about the other day. Just Love Coffee. Our store website is to the right of our blog. Just go to the website and order! They have all sorts of coffee and other things that you can order. Check it out!!!!

As always we appreciate everyone's prayers and donations! You are truly appreciated.

"Praise be to God, who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me!" Psalm 66:20

Second Fundraiser! I hope everyone loves coffee!!

Yes, here I am again with another fundraiser! This is one that I think is really awesome because everybody loves coffee right? I heard about this fundraiser through a friend in NOLA who is in Ethiopia RIGHT NOW!!! getting her son. This fundraiser is called Just Love Coffee. It was created by a family who has adopted and wanted to help out other families who wanted to adopt by creating a way to raise money to pay for it. You can check out their website ( justlovecoffee.com) to read their story on how they got started. How this will basically work is we will have our own store on their website. Our website URL is justlovecoffee.com/theposeys. Once you go to this website you are free to order from it just like any other store online. Justlovecoffee will take care of all the ordering and shipping. Another cool thing I read about them is that the proceeds from buying coffee or whatever you order goes not only to our adoption but to an orphanage in Ethiopia! We will receive $5 per bag of coffee. It may not seem like much but it adds up!

I want to thank everyone from the bottom of our hearts for contributing to this adoption through your prayers and monetary gifts. We pray that God would truly bless you for helping to bring our son home. As I have said in a previous blog, we are all called to take care of the orphan. Whether that adopt, foster care, mission trip, or just give. We are ALL called. God didn't say if you are rich than go care for the orphan. He just told us to take the step of faith and adopt. I can truly say that we do not have the money to do this but God is giving us wisdom in how to save money, to find different grants to apply for, and he has given us wonderful friends, family, and brothers and sisters in Christ (some of who we have never met) to assist us in bringing our little boy home. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! I cannot say this enough. We love all of you and appreciate everything.

Almost accepted!!!!

Well as ya'll already know we sent in our application to America World last week. I have been in agony since then waiting to hear the words that we were accepted into the Ethiopian Adoption program! As I was at the beach this past week with my inlaws I patiently waited for something! Any news!!!! As I was sitting in the living room of the beach house we were staying at I heard Ben say we got an email from Sara from AWAA. My stomach immediately started doing flips!! I was so nervous and wondering why she didn't call and sent an email instead!  I looked at the email and immediately realized that this was not that magical moment of hearing we were in the program! (darn!) Sara had a couple of more questions for us and of course a couple of more forms to fill out! One of the forms is truly a blessing from the Lord. America World gives full time pastors a 25% discount off their program fees. I am MORE than willing to fill out that form! The other is a monthly expenses form to let them know where our money goes each month. At first I thought this seemed a little redundant considering we filled out that stuff on our application but as Ben reminded me they want to make sure that we are financially stable and to also prepare US for cutting back and really taking a step back to see where our money is going and to see how we save for this adoption. Another thing Sara told me (and something I knew already) was that the first phase of the adoption (program fees, homestudy, dossier) costs around $5,000. Please pray that we can pay that at the time that it is needed. I know that God will provide as he is providing already! There were a few other things she wanted to know and so I sent her an email back answering those questions. I sent this email on a Friday afternoon knowing I wouldn't get a reply back until Monday. I truly truly believe that this short time waiting is preparing me for the long wait that I know is coming. So all that to say I hope to hear that we are accepted very soon and then we can move on to all the paperwork!!!

We ask that you continue to pray for us and pray about how you could help support us during this process. ( Buy a cool shirt!!!!) We thank the Lord for everyone's prayers and encouragement thus far and to those of you who have sacrificed by giving towards our adoption through just giving and buying tshirts!
There are times during the day that I ache to see my other son and I dream about the day I can hold him and tell him that I am his Mama. Pray for me (and Ben) as we pray for our son who may or may not even be born yet or even if he is, pray for his safety, health, and pray that he is being cared for and loved as he waits for us to bring him home.
Please continue to pray for us as we raise the funds needed, our application to be accepted so we can start the paperwork and homestudy, wisdom for me and Ben (creating a budget that will allow us to set back the money we want to save each month for the adoption, and obtaining all the info for the dossier), sprititually (Satan must really really hate adoption!!!) He will stop at nothing to tear me and my family away from his will and plan. Just pray that our attitudes would be Christlike and that we would lean on him and serve him daily!!! I have been listening to a song lately about waiting. I am sure that some of you have heard it from the movie Fireproof, but it is truly what I am feeling right now.

We love all of you and know without a shadow of a doubt that God is moving through this process and thank you again for lifting our family up to him in your prayers. 2 Corinthians 5: 14-15