We are deep in the middle of the adoption process. No longer at the beginning, yet it feels like we are a bit of a way off from the end! So far, most of our paperwork is in the final stage, which is at the Chinese consulate of whatever in which it originated, and we are waiting for those documents to be returned to us. We have completed our homestudy and are waiting for our social worker to send the final approved homestudy to us and our agency. I will say this: everyone told me that was the easiest part, and it truly wasn’t bad at all. Those of you who know us know that our house is far from perfect, and most of the time it can be quite a mess. In preparation for the home study, we cleaned out a whole lot of clutter from the inside of the house, and did a lot of the outside cleaning up and projects we had been wanting to finish. We had met with the social worker individually already, so when she came to our house, we had a joint interview (Todd and I), and then she met with each of the children individually. The day of the homestudy, I think our house was just about as clean and pleasant as it has been since we built the addition! I felt so good about everything. I had gone around and covered all the outlets, stored our knives up high, put all the medicines (prescription and OTC) in a lock box high in the pantry. The children were all super well-behaved, and they all expressed their excitement about the adoption. It went so well. I was so relieved to have that part behind us. It was a wonderful feeling when the social worker told us as she left that she thought our family was amazing, and she couldn’t wait to help us add to it!
For the last several weeks, we have continued to pray for wisdom regarding whether we should adopt a second child at the same time as Xiao. God led us to a 12-year-old girl, and we have been praying that God would speak clearly as He has through this whole process. The girl we have been praying about was brought to our attention by someone who has a connection with the foster family and orphanage where she lives and goes to school, so we didn’t find her on the waiting child list. They have been able to tell us a lot about her. She seems really sweet and seems like she would be a really good fit for us at the same time with Xiao. I felt pretty sure about it from the beginning, when we first learned about her. We wanted Todd to feel peace about it, so we continued to pray. This wasn’t something we wanted to rush into, and we certainly didn’t want to do it if only one of us felt called to do so while the other was not comfortable. After several weeks, much prayer and counsel, we have decided that we will be moving forward with the adoption of this little girl as well as Xiao. We are both at peace with the decision and are excited about moving forward. Yesterday, we sent in the paperwork for her, and we are waiting for all the funds to come in to get all of it sent to the Chinese government for preapproval. I will write more about her soon. We want to thank everyone who has been praying for this decision, and we now ask that you continue to pray for us as we all prepare our hearts and our home to welcome these two precious children. We know it is going to be very hard, so we covet your prayers and we will definitely take you up on your offers to help as we bring them home.
We are doing a few things to raise money, if anyone would like to support us. We are going to be holding a garage sale on December 12th. If anyone local has anything to donate to the garage sale, we would love to have things to sell, especially furniture and other larger items. If you have anything to give, please feel free to contact me and we can arrange to get it from you. Also, if anyone wants to help us prepare for the sale and on the day of the sale, let me know. We will be having the sale in Circle C off of Davis Rd. at the home of some dear friends.
We are also selling t-shirts! We will get about $10 for every shirt sold! The shirts are being sold through Bonfire Funds, and it is awesome because all we have to do is design the shirts and as long as we sell at least 11 shirts, they will go to print and ship directly to our supporters! We designed a shirt with no personal references on them so that they can be sold to more people, so if you know anyone who would like to support adoption, or even anyone who has adopted themselves, this shirt would be great for them! They say “Every Heart Deserves a Home” with a map of China and a heart inside China on the front. The back reads, “A Father of the fatherless…God makes a home for the lonely.” Isn’t that awesome?! You can go to this link to see the shirt and purchase. There are options in both short sleeve, women’s short sleeve, long sleeve, hoodies, and youth sizes! Spread the word! Share this link with everyone you know! We would love to sell lots of these shirts to help us get closer to our goal and bring our children home! It would also be great to get photos of everyone who buys the shirts to have for the kids to see someday that all of these people were thinking of them before they even came home. Go to this link to buy a shirt, and please feel free to share and spread the word!
https://www.bonfirefunds.com/erdner-family-adoption