An Unusual Friendship

Now that I am back from my mission trip to Denver, I am ready to hit the ground running on our adoption. Last week was an amazing time away and time to refresh. I gained a lot of perspective and stood amazed as God changed hearts. 
Our team got back Saturday night and by Monday I had several adoption things to accomplish. I had to get something notarized and then send our FINISHED HOMESTUDY to USCIS...after an hour of  trying to figure out how to properly mail it, it was finally on the way. This was an amazing step! What does this mean? Well right now we are waiting to be assigned a new fingerprint appointment. When we get that we will head to Fargo to get reprinted (3rd time during this process) after that we wait for approval. Then we send our "paper baby" (lots of very specifically filled out papers) to our little man's country and wait for submission and travel dates. Things are rolling and we are getting more and more excited! 

With all of that being said, we still have quite a bit of money to raise which brings me to my next story. (Money yuck! I know, please stay with me!) This is the story of an unusual friend. A few weeks ago, while writing a youth talk on forgiveness, I ran across the story of a man who in 2006 committed a tragic crime in an Amish school house in Pennsylvania. I will not go into more detail on the man but through my research I came across the story of his wife, Marie, whose story was one of forgiveness and redemption. I was in awe of her and as I sat and watched her video. (video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9ydPtBEWbI) I wanted to know more about this woman and where God had taken her life. So what did I do? Googled it of course! I found her blog (https://whisperandwonder.wordpress.com/), and as I was reading I was quickly amazed at one entry in particular, she was adopting! More than that, she was adopting a child with special needs, I couldn't believe what I was reading. Marie and I had similar hearts for orphans. I decided that I would try and reach out to Marie. You see, during this process I have tried to reach out to people who have similar hearts and see if they would help advocate with us. As I reached out and barely held my breath on getting a reply (I have reached out to many people). I sent my initial email around noon and by that evening I received a response. I read it over and over again not believing that she actually wanted to help us; that she was willing to listen to our story. She even had a fundraising idea!!

Marie Monville with Cindy Lambert has written a book:
"One Light Still Shines: My Life Beyond the Shadow of the Amish Schoolhouse Shooting"

Not only did she write the book, she sent Derek and I 25 signed copies to sell and put towards out adoption!!!! Can you believe it! Her generosity is overwhelming! She also did a phone interview with me and may be blogging out story soon. I cannot put into words how much it means to me to have her support and love us in this way! 

So here is how this will work, if you want a copy of her book (hardcover) please send $20 (local), $25 (if you need me to ship it to you) to our paypal macbenz630@gmail.com, once you have done this please email me the receipt and your address and I will either deliver it (meet you somewhere) or ship it to you. If we sell all the books we have the chance to make $500!! This would be incredible for us! 

Here is a description of the book:

“My story is not about my past, but about your future,” says Marie Roberts Monville.

In the startling tragedy of the Amish schoolhouse shooting at Nickel Mines, one story has never been told; Marie Roberts Monville, the wife of the man who created such horror, tells her story for the very first time. It is a story of sorrow and destruction, but also one of majestic deliverance, unending compassion, breathtaking forgiveness, and grace-filled redemption.

Within a solitary moment, Marie Monville realized that life, as she knew it, was over. What she never anticipated was a tangible encounter with God reaching into her circumstances, through them rewriting all she believed about herself, her faith, and the God she thought she knew.One Light Still Shines reveals three love stories: the innocent love of a devoted wife for a husband in pain, the incomprehensible love of God in the aftermath of massacre and destruction, and the redemptive love of Christ, waiting to unfold in the life of every person who reads this book.

Marie's journey since that darkest of days has been invaded with light which shines through these pages into the darkest questions we all face--questions about our past, our value, our identity, and own powerlessness in this fallen world. Come face to face with the Power behind every answer―a love that begs to be received.

I know this post has been rather long, but thank you for those who have stuck with me! I will probably write more posts as we get closer to traveling and meeting our son. I also have a very unique fundraiser up my sleeve after we give this one some time, so stayed tuned! Thanks for taking this journey with us! We appreciate everyone's support and kind words.

One BIG step closer and a few more mountains...

This is a long overdue post (SORRY)! I have debated many times what to write and I have even deleted a few saved drafts, the problem is I have so much to say and I want to say it well. I also want to share a clear picture of where we are so I am going to start with that. 

We have our Homestudy draft!!!!!! THIS IS HUGE! Now we have to edit it and send it back to be finalized. Once that is done we send it to USCIS for approval get finger printed one more time (sigh) AND wait for our approval. Once approved we send all of this to our little boy's country!!! This may seem like we aren't that close BUT WE ARE!! 

We recently added a thermometer to our blog to show everyone where we are financially and what we have paid/raised so far. I talked to some other adopting families and they said to be as transparent and detailed as possible so I am going to break down the cost and where we are. I know this may not interest some of you so hang with me, there is more to read at the bottom.

Cost Breakdown:

$15 Marriage certificates
$120 Passport (Kaylee)
$400 Homestudy Application Fee
$85 Homestudy Background Check
$125 Taylor Johnson Test
$500 Review Translation and Legalization Expenses
$50 Wire Fee
$400 Facilitation Services
$1800 Adoptive Family Assessment and Liaison Fee (1st half)
$85 Apostille CSP/POA
$1500 Adoptive Family Assessment (2nd half)
$890 i600a USCIS
$8500 Facilitation Fee
$350 Apostille Fee (Part of this has been paid)
$135 Adopted Child Medical
$325 Visa
$500 Passport for Child
$800 Travel to America (Child)
$2500 Plan Tickets adults
$500 In country travel Fees
$4200 In Country Living/other plane tickets

If you are still reading, thank you! I did that for two reasons: we want to be completely open with where the funds we are trying to raise are going AND I want people who may be interested in adopting to have an idea of what the money side looks like. When you see plane tickets and living expenses please understand this is not a vacation that we are asking for help with, this is a rescue mission. Yes, we will probably enjoy exploring the country and culture of our son, however our purpose and our heart is all about him and bringing him home. 

We have had a few successful fundraisers and we are so grateful to everyone who has helped us get this far. We have a few more things up our sleeves but will wait just a little while to launch those. For those of you who are curious Trivia Night raised....$842!!! We were thrilled! All glory to God! How incredibly he provides! It was such a fun night with some AMAZING people! I also had a stranger, who is now a friend, reach out to me and offer to fundraise for us until we leave. WOW! I was speechless! She runs gatheringfamily.org you should check it out! 

The other day I was feeling really discouraged as we were waiting for our homestudy draft and received another "you need to hurry" email (there is nothing that makes you feel more helpless, trust me). As I did math over and over again I was overwhelmed, BUT God is awesome and he shows up! He shows up in having me teach my youth group a lesson on trusting him, a lesson on staying out of the boat and a lesson on him working things out for our good. I just laugh as I study to teach things things and realize they are for me as much as anyone. He shows up in complete strangers committing to help us raise money and making new friends, he shows up ALL THE TIME! How dare I doubt ever, but I do, I am sad to say, I do. When that happens I take a deep breath and remind myself to stay out of the boat and to trust harder. Whatever you are going through I just want to encourage you to stay strong and to keep climbing out of the boat and trying again, he will always be there to reach out when we start to sink. He has our best interest in mind always even when we don't understand. 

Thank you for your support and encouragement as we are getting ever so close to meeting our little boy. Please pray that these mountains continue to move and that God continues to show us the way on this wild journey.

Oh and one more picture of our boy!