It is hard to believe that is has been a year since we officially started the adoption process. We applied on March 23rd, the day Scott turned 25. It is possible that I had our application complete by January, even though I couldn't apply until March. I thought it was a good time to look back over the past year and commemorate all of God's faithfulness. There has been so many small things I don't know if I can list them all, but here are a few big ones.
1. Our goal for 2013 was to have our dossier finished. Then the government shut down and the FBI stopped processing fingerprints. We thought for sure this would keep us from meeting our goal, but we received FBI clearance in the middle of December, and finished getting everything certified by December 31st!
2. Finding Brielle. There are so many God moments in our choosing to adopt Brielle, but I will share one story. When we were first married with both liked the band Sky Sailing, and one of their songs was titled Brielle. We both decided we liked that name, and tucked away for potential children. In April we found a little girl on the waiting list names Juanita Gabrielle. We knew she had medical complications, so we wanted to consult a doctor. We took several months praying over the decision before applying to adopt her specifically. Her name just confirmed our decision because my great-grandmother's name was Juanita. Then one day Scott spoke up and asked if I remembered the name we liked Brielle. I remembered, but didn't recognize the connection. He said that Brielle is from the name Gabrielle. I knew then that this little girl was supposed to be my daughter.
3. Fundraising. We knew we would have to raise around $36,000, and our prayer when we first began was to finish debt free. After a few months of fundraising I didn't believe that would be possible, so we began looking at our options for adoption loans. I set the resources aside to look at later, but I am now happy to say we will not need those! As of yesterday we have completed our fundraising goal! That is a testimony to God's faithfulness because there is no way we did that on our own. Thank you to all of you who personally gave; you have played an important part of our story. We cannot wait to tell Brielle about all of you! We may still have some unseen medical costs, but our travel and agency fees are now fully funded!!!
Praise God for all that He has done in the past year! We cannot wait to see what the future holds, and hopefully we will be in Colombia this summer. Please keep praying that our paperwork will be processed quickly, so we can go get our daughter!
