Submitted and Puzzle Fundraiser!

Today is a great day :) It is April 24, 2014 and our Dossier is officially SUBMITTED!!!! Thus begins the countdown to travel- we could be hearing when our travel dates will be in mere weeks! Eek! So much to do! I've already created the packing list of all packing lists so now it's time to get to it!

And we still have some fundraising to do haha. Whew! the next fundraiser we are rolling out is our Puzzle Fundraiser! We got this awesome puzzle for the boys (isn't it the coolest?):

It's a 1,000 peice puzzle and each peice can be sponsored for a $5 donation to our FSP through Reece's Rainbow! The link to our FSP is here: http://reecesrainbow.org/70400/sponsorfahringer and there is also a button on the right side of our blog that links to it. All donations are tax deductible! Once you make a donation, let me know (either a comment here on the blog or a message on our facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/#!/fahringerfamilyadoption) and I will write your name on the back of a puzzle peice for each donation! Once the puzzle is finished, we will frame it in a clear case so the boys can flip it over and see all the names of the people who helped us bring them home forever! It will be artwork for their room :) I will be posting updated pics of the puzzle as it gets filled in with more and more names so keep checking back here for updates!

Trust and perspective

While our "paper baby" is finished and waiting to be submitted to our boys' government, a whole new paper process has been taking up my spare time now- applying for adoption grants. The applications are miles long and involve interviews with our pastor who then has to fill out even more paperwork on our behalf. It's pretty daunting. Yet while I was looking up requirements on one of the grant sites the other day (The Orphan Foundation), I saw some statistics that helped me re-focus on why we are doing this. Yes the paperwork is hard. Yes the fundraising is even harder. But it is nothing compared to what our boys have been through already and what they would have gone through had God not opened our eyes to them in time.

There are 143,000,000 orphans in the world

There are an additional 20,000,000 “displaced children” in the world

The combined count of these categories makes the orphan population the 7th largest nation on the planet – slightly larger than the population of Russia



In Eastern Europe, less than 50% of the orphan population will live to see their 20th birthdays

In Eastern Europe, of the orphans that survive their 20th birthdays, 50% will end up in organized crime, drugs, or prostitution 

 



Since we committed to Sheppard in December, God has been teaching me something big. In the midst of the paper chasing. Getting bedrooms set up. Planning how to manage time off work. Fundraising. More Fundraising. In the midst of all this crazy. God is asking us to trust him, completely. He opened our eyes and broke our hearts for orphans in the first place. He loves Sheppard and Pierce more than we ever can and has sustained them all these years. He's got this. In light of this, suddenly the hard stuff of adoption- the tedious, never ending mess- seems so small. As Alden and I were worshipping with our church yesterday, celebrating Christ's ressurection and defeat of the enemy, it suddenly hit me just how patient God is with me. Every day when I worry about funds or travel, every day that I choose not to trust him, he loves me through it. He invites me again and again to trust him. And I realized just how blessed we are to even be on this journey. Here we are, out in these deep waters of a journey we never could have imagined for ourselves. What an undeserved blessing. What a God we serve.




matching grant recap

So, after our AG fundraiser we were offered a very generous $350 matching grant! To sweeten the pot, I threw out a little extra incentive- if we could meet the match in one week's time, I would chop off and donate all my hair! Well, our amazing supporters blew that fundraiser out of the water and we met our match and then some in mere days!!!!! So, here are the before and after pics for you!

 

 

Before...

 

 

 

and After!!!

 

THANK YOU to everyone who has donated to help us break our boys out of the orphanage forever! We are brainstorming a few more fundraisers since we still have quite a ways to go before we can finally shout that we are fully funded! We only have about a month left before traveling to our boys' country so we are scrambling to get these last few fundraisers together- stay tuned!

 

As for our "paper baby"- it is now in the boys' country being translated! Once it is ready it will be submitted ot the goverment and then will begin the hurry up and wait period for travel dates- usually dates are given a month or so after submittal! We can't believe how close we are to meeting our boys!!! I will be posting pics of their room once we get another bed set up- so much to do! :)



And the winner is...

Thank you so much to everyone who participated in our American Girl Doll Giveaway!

We are thrilled to announce that thanks to all our wonderful supporters, this giveaway brought in a total of $786 in donations!

We are completely blown away! Thank you so much to everyone who shared the giveaway on social media, gave generously, and prayed for this fundraiser to be a success! We could NOT have done this without each and every one of you!

And now the moment you have all been waiting for..............the winner is............

Sarah J.! Sarah will get to pick out the American Girl Doll of her choice. Congratulations!