One year ago...

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!

It's been awhile…but good things are happening!

So I haven't posted anything on here for a while, but it's not because nothing has been happening. After Christmas we began planning in earnest for our big February fundraiser. It is our final big fundraiser, so we wanted to do it right. God has really moved our hearts towards the cause of adoption, not just our adoption. We wanted to share our hearts and calling towards adoption as part of our fundraiser night. It look a lot of prep, possibly more than our wedding, but I had some awesome help. God came through in some big ways, especially that all of our food was donated! We had around 80 people attend the dinner, and our silent auction was also a great success! We did a style of auction called Pick-A-Prize, which is like and auction/raffle combined. If you would like more info let me know! Overall, we raised about 1/4 of our travel cost. That doesn't sound like a lot, but since our travel will cost around $10,000 it was an awesome start! Thank you so much to everyone who came out and supported us that night!

Our other great news is that we have received a matching grant from Lifesong for Orphans! Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta is providing the funds through Lifesong. We were awarded a $2500 grant, so if we get all of that matched we will get $5000. That puts us so much closer to be able to finish debt free. Our goal from the beginning was to do this adoption without taking out a loan, but I have doubted that along the way. It just goes to show that God is always bigger than our expectations! If you are interested in giving we will be putting up a Paypal link on the blog, and on our website Our Adoption Adventure.

Our paperwork should be finishing up translation in Colombia, and be passed along to be reviewed anytime now. Please pray that we will find favor with the officials, and the paperwork will be processed quickly. You can also continue to pray for the health and development of our little girl, Brielle! We officially announced her name at the fundraiser. We cannot post pictures until after her adoption is finalized though.

Thank you for all your support and prayers!

Timeline Update

We have officially reached the end of the paperwork since I mailed in our dossier yesterday! I thought that I should give an update on our timeline.

We are predicting that it should take about three months for our paperwork to go through translation and approval in Colombia, and then they will send us the official referral for our little girl. I can't wait for that day! Our specific prayer request here is that they will accept our dossier without the numerical scores for our MMPI2 test. (A psychological exam we had to complete). We have heard that they can misread your number, so we chose to leave ours out. However, they can send a request for them, which will delay the approval and why we need your prayers.

Then the agency said that it can take 5 months to get our visas and a court date in Colombia. I don't know if I can wait that long, so that is where we need your prayers again. Scott's work is flexible so we can be prepared to travel quickly. We want to get our girl home (mostly because we can't wait to have her here), but also to start therapy for some of her special needs. The longer she is in the orphanage the more she could be delayed. Let's pray that we will get a court date soon after our referral!

Finally, don't forget about our final fundraiser! A Valentine's Dinner...For the Love of a Girl. You can check out all of the details on our website www.ouradoptionadventure.org or on Facebook.

Your Prayers are Working!

We received two important documents in this mail this week! God is so good to get these in before the holidays! First we received Scott's employer reference with the apostille (government certification). We've heard that CA can be picky about apostilling documents, so we feel very fortunate that ours worked the first time. Also, I've mentioned many times that we've been waiting for FBI clearance. I've been trying not to get my hopes up about getting the clearances before Christmas. When the government shut down they stopped processing fingerprints, so we knew they would be backed up. Normally the clearances take 6-8 weeks, and we just received ours today (only about 7 weeks)! So now we send those off to Washington, D.C. to get them apostilled by the federal government. Your prayers have been surely helping us!

The final document that we need prayers for is our I-797. We got more fingerprints done with the USCIS, and that is the last step before getting the I-797 clearance. We are hoping to get the document by the beginning of January.

Please also pray for our girl during this Christmas season. We have no idea if they do any type of celebration at the orphanage (it is a Catholic orphanage). Our main prayer is that she would have a full belly and know that her mommy and daddy love her. I won't be able to send anything to her until she is officially referred to us by the Colombian government.

My last bit of news is to save the date for February 8th. We are going to have an awesome Valentines Dinner fundraiser at our church (Momentum Eagles Landing). We are hosting a pick-a-prize auction, and will have childcare as well. The proceeds from this fundraiser will go towards our cost of travel to Colombia. Hopefully this will be our last fundraiser before going to get our girl! Please plan on coming to support us!

Merry Christmas from the Hamilton!

Pictures & Fundraising

No forward progress to report in the paperwork department, but we are praying for FBI fingerprint clearance before December. We appreciate any prayers to speed that us!

Last Saturday we took pictures with our friend, Jordyn, who is an awesome photographer. She took some pictures for us to help us document this important part of our lives. Then she and Scott did portraits for several different families. She is especially awesome because she is donating half of the proceeds to the adoption! Here are some of our pictures:

Scott and I were looking through our funds after a convicting sermon on Sunday, and we just have to glorify God for all He has done in our adoption process. As of September 18th we had completely drained our funds that we had saved because we had to pay for our homestudy. Our next big payment will be when we submit our dossier, and we are praying that will be before the end of 2013. At times I felt like we would never be able to raise that money before Christmas, but God's timing is always right. We have currently raised all of the funds that we need for the dossier payment!!!! Next we will work on raising money for our attorney fees in Colombia, all our travel costs, and the cost of our post-adoption visits. I finally feel like our trip is in sight, still in the distance, but at least in sight. We cannot wait to meet our little girl! I can't wait to spend Christmas 2014 as a family of 3!

Making some progress!

Small steps...but any forward movement is encouraging! Yesterday we received Scott's employer reference in the mail, so now we can mail it back to CA to be apostilled. Then we also got our appointment from the USCIS to have our biometrics taken. This is the final step for USCIS clearance, which is one of the more lengthy steps. We are still waiting on fingerprint clearance from the FBI, so please pray that we will get that soon. After we get all of the clearances we can take all our paperwork to the state department in GA to have it apostilled, and then get it sent off for translation. We are praying to get that done before Christmas, but that deadline is quickly approaching.

Also, we have been doing well in our fundraisers. The tshirts have been ordered, so if you haven't paid we would appreciate a check anytime. You can message me on Facebook for our address. We should be able to get those distributed before Christmas (hopefully)! We have about $2000 left to raise before we can submit our dossier to Bethany, so we are also praying that we can get that raised so it doesn't hinder our progress. After that payment we will begin raising funds for travel, which we estimate to be around $10,000. We are planning a fundraiser for January, so I will post more info on that in the coming weeks.

We have been very blessed by personal donations thus far. We are hoping to get a matching grant, which people can donate to for our travel costs. We will post more info about donations after December 15th.

Thank you for your support and prayers!

Will the paperwork ever end?

We are in the midst of the "paperwork" stage of the dossier now! Plus we are applying for as many grants as possible, and it seems that each application requires the same questions with just enough variation that I have to rewrite them all! But we are excited to be making progress each day, and hope to get several grant applications mailed off today. We did our FBI fingerprints last week, and have our doctor's visits next week. Please keep praying that our clearances will go quickly, and smoothly.

Some exciting news is that our Bethany representative is visiting the orphanage where our little girl is today. We are going to get some updated pictures and videos, and we got the chance to send some questions for the representative to ask. I wanted to know what size she is wearing, so I can start looking at all those cute girl clothes! In case you are wondering we are not allowed to post any pictures of our little girl until she is legally adopted, which will happen in Colombia.

I mentioned on Facebook that our goal for selling shirts is 200, which will bring in over $1000 for the adoption. Please keep spreading the word!

Thanks for all your support and prayers!

Shop on Amazon and help us earn adoption money!!

We are doing a new fundraiser where we advertise products for Amazon. The more products we successfully adversities the more we make for promoting them. So use the links we provide to purchase items and you will be helping fund our adoption! If you have specific items you want to buy just email me, and I will put up a link. My email is allyson.hamilton88@gmail.com The item is the same price, we just get paid for the advertisement.

Right now Amazon has a promotion where we can earn $6 for anyone who tries out a free 30-day trial of Amazon Prime. If you have not used this feature yet it is awesome! Just use this link : Amazon Prime Trial. If you don't want to pay for the membership just cancel at the end of the month. Thanks for your support, and let us know any special requests!
You get:

• FREE Two-Day Shipping on millions of items
• No minimum order size
• Unlimited instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with Prime Instant Video
• A Kindle book to borrow for free each month from the Kindle Owners' Lending Library

The best news yet!

Well this past week has been a roller coaster in many ways. We traveled up to Virginia for me to take a Master's course at Liberty. We were able to see Scott's family, and stay with his brother and sister-in-law. We got to celebrate our niece's first birthday, and his grandma's 90th birthday. The course that I took was my first "live" counseling course. I had to be a counselor and client throughout the week, which was very emotionally draining. Wednesday and Thursday I was at the school for 13 hours total because we had to videotape counseling after class. I got home Thursday night only to find out that my hard drive was full, and none of the videos had recorded. We redid the the videos Friday, and I finally was done around 4:00pm. When I got home I got an email that said "Good news for the weekend!".

Our Colombian worker had been in Haiti all week, so I did not expect to hear from her. We were waiting to hear back from the orphanage about a letter of intent that we had submitted for a 2.5 year old girl. On Friday we found out we had been accepted!!! At this time we are not going to share lots of personal information about her because we are still working to get government clearance, etc. We are super excited though because we can really start making concrete plans. I can start on her nursery, and possibly sew her some clothes. All of the fun mommy stuff! :) We already have her first hair clip, made by my sweet friend Joy. Our timeline is not definite yet, but we hope to travel in 2014 to pick her up.

Other than our paperwork we still have a lot of fundraising to do, so we are still praying for the Lord's provision. We have been blessed by some donations in the past weeks, and picked up our sample shirts from Black Ink today. We will be taking orders this week, so I will put all the specifics about sizes and prices on the blog soon. We also hope to have our website up soon, and we will have online ordering available there.

Don't forget about our coffee fundraiser as well: Just Love Coffee

Thank you for all your support! Let's bring our little girl home!

Fundraising so far...

A big thank you to everyone who has already purchased coffee! They send us a check at the end of each month, so we already have our first check headed our way. 

Just click this link, Hamilton Coffee, and put in your order. They will make great Christmas gifts!

Also, coming soon we will have our adoption T-shirts for sale. They are going to be super comfy, soft shirts from Bella Canvas. Black Ink printing has been very generous, so we will make a good amount of proceeds from these shirts! Be looking on the blog and Facebook for more information about ordering in the next few weeks.

Chick Fil A calendars just came out, and we are going to be selling them! There are also great Christmas gifts. More details coming soon!

First Fundraising Venture

Well no time like now to start fundraising! Early on in our process I learned about this awesome coffee company called Just Love Coffee Roasters who support family adoptions. We have our own personal link that you can purchase coffee through, and some of the proceeds will go towards our adoption. Their coffee is fair trade, and you can read more about their mission on their website. If you love coffee then please consider purchasing through our link! If you don't drink coffee then any of their merchandise would make great Christmas gifts, and it's never too early to start Christmas shopping! 

Our personal link to purchase from is: https://justlovecoffee.com/about/beneficiary/hamiltonadoptionadventure/

Here is the amount that we receive from each purchase:
13oz. Coffees (non-small lot): $5
8oz. Coffee (non-small lot): $3.50
10-count Single-Serve Cups: $2.50
Tastes of Africa (4) 8oz. Sampler: $7
Tour of The World (4) 8oz. Sampler: $7
Coffee Cupper's (11) 8oz. Sampler: $19
Jamaica Blue Mountain (small lot): 4oz. ($3)  13oz. ($9)
Special Blend–I Love Mom: $5
Special Blend–Pinky Beans (Available in October only): $0
T-Shirts: $5
Sale T-Shirts: $3
Sale Hoodie: $4
Beanie: $3
Hat: $3
Stoneware Mug: $2
16oz. Steel Tumbler: $2
Aeropress: $5
Aeropress Microfilters: $.25
Coffee Scoop: $1
Chemex Brewer: $3
Chemex Filters: $0
LaMarzocco Espresso Machine: $0

Thank you in advance to everyone who makes a purchase! You are helping us bring home our Colombian child! 

Home Study Approval!!!

Hooray!! We found out today that our home study has been approved!!!! This is what we've been waiting for all summer, so we are super excited. Now we send it with out I800A form to the USCIS, and that begins our dossier process. I am just super excited that we can get moving again. But now we are also hitting the reality of fundraising. I am going to start looking at different options, but we have tentatively planned on selling tshirts, and coffee through companies that support individual adoptions. So be looking for more info on the blog in the following months...think Christmas gifts :). We also hope to get a matching grant, but all of this will take lots of applications. Time to get to work! I am going to try to put a graph on here to show how we're progressing, but I have to nail down some of our figures first. Thank you to everyone who has been praying for a speedy approval...it worked!

Ask, Seek, Knock

We are in a series at church called Jesus Said. It is a really great series that concentrates on the words of our Savior. This week our message was given by Brad Sinclair and he talked about the Ask, Seek, Knock passage. I have always thought this passage was pretty simple, but Brad really challenged my mind set. He said that we often ask of the Lord, then we sometimes seek Him, but do we really even knock. We need to be persistent in bringing our requests to the Lord; we need to knock on His door.

I ask many things for our adoption, and we often seek out the Lord's guidance. I am not sure if I have ever truly 'knocked' though. I think I'm a little scared to knock. I'm afraid I will be persistent with what I want, but it is not what the Lord wants. So I sit back and wait for a 'sign'. I do not actively knock on the door to see what the Lord has for me. I think it has something to do with a lack of faith. I'm afraid to ask for specifics, and then trust that the Lord will make it happen. I want to control the situation (how surprising to those who know me).

So I've been challenged to knock on the door of the Lord for what we want in our adoption. I'm telling to all of you, so I have someone to hold me to it.

1. Debt-free adoption. This is kinda a big deal because adoption costs more than both of our cars combined. We have been debt-free our whole marriage, and I believe, with the Lord's help, we can continue to be debt-free. It means we will have to trust on the Lord to provide, and apply for as many grants as we can get. I'm not very good at accepting help from other people, so this will truly stretch me.

2. Our specific child. I've been very nervous to put any type of limitation on the child that we want because I feel like we have the resources to meet needs of a variety of children. We are open to medical needs, siblings or a school age child (up to 6). From there I have a hard time narrowing down any specifics. I still struggle with saying we "can't/won't" take a certain disability, age, etc. I don't want to limit what the Lord can do through us. But I feel like we need to start making decisions about what we can truly handle. We need to start knocking on the door for the specific child. Please pray wisdom for us as we make these decisions because it is heart-breaking.

I know this isn't just my typical info post, but this is a little glimpse of what goes on in my head daily as we continue this journey. I have been so encouraged by everyone who says they read our blog. It is very humbling to know that so many people are praying on our behalf. Please feel free to comment on the blog, or the Facebook link. It is super encouraging, and I love answering any questions.

If you are at all interested in information about how to begin adoption please let me know. We feel very passionately that more people could adopt if they knew how to begin.

God Bless,
Allyson

Homestudy Update

It's been a while since our last update, but we have finished our home study! Our final visit with our social worker was last week, when she came out to our house. It will take her about a month to write our home study; it's super detailed. Then we will move onto our dossier. It is even more paperwork than the home study, and lots of government forms to fill out. We hope to get it finished within six months (it takes some people a year or more). Once our dossier is finished, translated into Spanish and approved by the Colombian government we will wait for a referral.

At this point we would not be referred to a child under the age of 6, due to some changes by the Colombian government. We are looking at children on the waiting list in hopes to speed up the process some. Most of these children are on the list because they have medical needs or are part of a sibling group. We are open to both possibilities; we are spending a lot of time in prayer over what needs we could meet for a child. You can be praying that the Lord gives us wisdom about how much we can do. Once our homestudy is written we will begin fundraising. We have been saving my salary all year to help cover the costs, but that will only be a portion. We are so appreciative to anyone who has already donated to us. We will probably make a tshirt, sell some fair-trade coffee, and apply for grants to help raise some more support. All the details will be put on this blog. Since I'm not working next year my job is going to be fundraising (as well as getting my Masters). If anyone has any ideas for fundraising please let us know!

Thank you again for all your support and prayers! Please feel free to comment if you have any questions about our journey.
~Allyson

We've applied!

We have taken our first official step, and completed our adoption contract. After lots of prayer we have decided to go with Bethany with their Colombia program. We have decided that we are open to adopting a child a bit older than preschool age, around early elementary age. There is also a possibility that we could adopt a child off the waiting list or a sibling group. We don't know where this journey will lead us, but we feel like this is the way that God is leading us. We are excited about pressing forward, and will be preparing for our home study in the next month. If anyone has any fundraising ideas for us please feel free to share! We have been saving my salary since the beginning of the year, so we have part of our funds raised, but we will start fundraising in earnest after our home study completed. Thanks for being part of our journey!