Family Members, Photo Shoots and a Fundraiser!

Hello friends!  It's been a few weeks since we've had the chance to update everyone so we wanted to share some news.  We've experienced lots of love and great news this month.

Our first big news is that our family has expanded!!  While it's not in the way that our blog is for, it's equally as exciting!  My brother got married the first of this month to Emily.  Our family got to spend three days in Rosemary Beach, Florida celebrating love and marriage.  We're so excited to know that our children will have such an amazing and godly woman as their aunt.  She's an answer to prayers, a wonderful enhancement to our family, a great friend and perfect for my brother.  We couldn't be more excited for them as they start their marriage.

This fall we were also blessed by a friend introducing us to Tiffany Palomba of Bella Vie Photography .  Tiffany goes to our church and is a member of the photography team.  Not only that but she's just a beautiful person inside and out!  She offered to do a mini photo shoot for us as a fundraiser.  She donated two shoots and the money that came in from them, she donated to our adoption fundraising.  She also surprised us and asked if she could do a shoot of just Brian and I.  It was such a treat!  We loved being able to capture our journey as we prepare to open our home for children.  The pictures turned out great, here are a few of our favorites!

 Lastly is our Christmas fundraiser, Our Love Tree!  We saw this idea from another family that adopted a few years ago.  They did an envelope fundraiser where they numbered the envelopes 1-200 and people would sponsor an envelope and donate the amount they wanted on the corresponding envelope.  Well, we decided to put a Christmas spin on this idea.  We created 200 handmade ornaments and numbered them 1-200.  People pick the number they want, donate that amount and then we send them their ornament.  Once that ornament is purchased, that number is no longer for sale.  If we are able to sell all 200 ornaments, we will raise over $21,000 which would be a tremendous blessing for our adoption expenses!

As of today, we've sold 40 ornaments!  We have a lot left, so if you are interested in supporting us, this is a great way to do that!  The numbers that have been purchased so far are:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 29, 30, 33, 34, 35, 50, 71, 75, 77, 82, 83, 90, 120, 150 and 199.

If you want to purchase an ornament, choose one of the numbers not listed above and send an email with your name, address, and ornament number to higdonadoption@gmail.com.  Once you've done that,  you can make your donation here.  We'll send your ornament out that week in time for you to have it for Christmas.

We've started our home study process and have all the money to cover all of the payments for that.  Once that is finished, we'll need $15,000 for our country fees so we are praying and believing that money will come in soon as well.

Thank you for supporting us through prayers, encouragement and finances.  We couldn't do all of this without the love and support of our family and friends!

Lastly, today is my birthday!  I know we aren't supposed to share birthday wishes, but I'm going to share my birthday prayer today.  I'm praying that next year for Christmas we will have a child (or two!) to fill a pair of these shoes.  It's an ambitious prayer, and we're trusting in God to fulfill it for us.  If you want to give a birthday present, purchasing an ornament would be a great one!

Love you all and Happy Thanksgiving!

Lauren

How big are your grapes?

I wanted to start off by giving you all an update on things. If you follow us on Facebook then you might already be aware of some stuff, but we have been so busy with all things adoption, plus a big family wedding, that it seems like we haven't posted a blog in forever. The biggest news is that we have officially been accepted into Bethany's Haiti program (woop woop!). It was a pretty incredible story as to how it all happened, but the condensed version is that we found out two days before the program was scheduled to close that Haiti had the exact age range (0-3yrs) and the average timeline (9-18 months) that we were looking for. We will have to share all the details later, but we got into the program and we were told by others that have gone through this process, that getting into a program in two days just doesn't happen.

Second big update is that our first official fundraiser was a major success. We had a big yard sale where friends and family donated things, and we were able to raise almost $1900 selling other peoples stuff. I really can't even type that out without shaking my head in disbelief. Our goal was $400-$500, but every other goal that we have set so far has been blown out of the water so why not that one too. All I can say is my God is so much bigger than I know, and He has this all worked out.

We had several big ticket items at our yard sale like bikes, furniture, and TVs, and we tried to make a point to let people know that our objective was to raise money for an adoption. Now I know that people who shop at yard sales are just out looking for really good deals, but I had to walk away a few times to calm down because these yardsalers were driving me up a freakin wall. These people would come up and offer $25 for 45" flat screen high definition TV, or if something was marked at fifty cents they would offer a quarter. Are you kidding me! The best was when I wouldn't sell a mountain bike to a lady for $30, so she sent her little girl over to give me the puppy dog eyes. Sorry lady, no dice. The bike she wanted is selling online right now for $275 and I was only asking $75 so I don't think I was being unrealistic. Besides I put a lot more value on all of this stuff because it was part of my ticket to bringing my child home. That bike, TV, or $.50 sweatshirt is going to help make me a daddy and you got the nerve to come and make an offer like that!? I just told you why we are here, we are adopting a child, and you are going to argue with me over a quarter. Sorry if I'm rambling, I can feel my blood pressure rising as I'm telling you this story, but that got me thinking about perspective. As I said, I saw all of that random stuff as part of my ticket to fatherhood, but my neighbors saw it all as random junk that I was just trying to get rid off. Same stuff, different perspectives.

Lauren and I really love our church, so this may be a little biased, but it seems like whenever God is trying to show us something, our Pastor has a sermon that is right on topic, and his sermon from a little over a week ago now was no exception. While I was spending all weekend thinking about perspective, Pastor Steven preached a sermon about perspective. So, i figured I would try to break it down and tell you what it meant to me and maybe it can help you too. You can watch the real deal here. I'm specifically referring to part 3, but the whole series is amazing, and you should check it out.


Did you watch part 3 "It's Already Written"? If not then please go back and watch it before reading any further.



Seriously, go watch it. It can change your life!


I had the opportunity to listen to our pastor preach this message a few times, and each time was a little different, but the part that stood out to me was when he said "We don't experience our reality, we experience our perspective of reality" I loved that. When I first heard that I think I did a backflip in my mind because it spoke to me right where I was at. I was dealing with the reality that this adoption is going to cost a lot of money that I don't have, but trying to look at it from the perspective that nothing is impossible with God. Now I'm not saying that we should live in this bubble of positive thinking and never face reality, but as Christians we can choose to stand on God's promises and believe that God will do what He said He will do. Ok so hopefully if you still haven't watched the sermon, that little nugget has peaked your interest. Watch it already!

Pastor Steven used the story of the twelve Israelite spies to illustrate his point about perspective. Moses was about to lead the Israelites into the promised land, and he decided to send twelve spies into the land to check it all out. So these twelve dudes go out into the promised land and spend forty days exploring. While they were exploring, they cut off a single cluster of grapes so large that it required two men to carry it. Try to imagine that, a single cluster so big that two men had to carry it. Moses wanted them to bring some grapes back to give the people a taste of what they were about to be given. So the spies come back with the ridiculously large grapes and tell Moses and the people of Israel how great the land is, but ten out of the twelve tell them that the people there are to powerful for them to overcome while the other two, Joshua and Caleb, are reminding them that God has already given them the land. Long story short, the people chose to believe the perspective of the ten over the perspective of the two, and because of their disbelief they ended up roaming the desert for forty years before they went into the promised land, and most if not all of the people who believed the negative report over the promises of God died before getting to the promised land. "We don't experience, we experience our perspective of reality."

I think that the grapes in this story represent proof of God's promises. It is essentially God saying "look, I told ya so!" As we have been stepping through this adoption process we have already had a lot of moments where we just had to stop and say "Ok, God. You got this, and we trust you." Those moments are our grapes, and they are some big ones. How big are your grapes? What has God been telling you to do, but you are looking at it from the wrong perspective? What has God shown you in an attempt to say "I got your back, just believe in Me and My promises." I'm not sure if any of this even makes sense to you, but I'm just trying to get you to look at things a little differently. There was an old song that we used to sing in church when I was a kid that went something like this "Whose report will you believe? I will believe the report of the Lord!" So I ask again, how big are your grapes and whose report are you believing?

Brian