Lithuania is rockin'

We learned on Monday that the AS (Adoption Services) in Lithuania had sent our Bethany representative a letter last Friday stating that we have officially been matched with Paulius!!! It is a sigh of relief as we have been working for over a year with no guarantees... anyone up to this point could have received the referral for him. They also stated in the letter that they were in the process of compiling our referral documents. Our Lithuania rep also said that we have urgent status to have the referral translated and that we should have it in 2-4 weeks! Once we accept the referral, it will go back to Lithuania to be translated and on back to AS. We could know our travel dates as soon as October. I feel hopeful that we will have him home by Christmas! The only negative is that things are progressing so fast now that it doesn't give us much time to raise the money. Many grants require us to have a referral before we apply, and then takes weeks to process. I am concerned that we will not have the funds to travel before our travel dates, but I will keep trusting God. Another adopting mom posted that God funds what He favors and in the Bible, he promises, "I will not leave you as orphans", so I will keep believing in this and praying!

Today, our caseworker visited our home to update our home study. Once she has it typed up, it has to be approved at the local and national offices and then go on to USCIS for approval. It took about 9-10 weeks for the initial approval, but this update will hopefully go through much quicker. It can hold up our travel date if not done quickly.

We did complete the Show Hope grant application and received confirmation that it arrived. Our grant will be reviewed in late October and we will be notified of whether we receive anything by November 15th... about down to the wire! This is such a wonderful ministry and so many families receive some amount. We are also applying for a Brittney's Hope Seedling Grant for special needs adoptions. This grant will require us to raise 1/2 of the amount that they award in effort to pay-it-forward to another family adopting a child with special needs. This is an exciting opportunity!

Our next fundraiser will be in the form of a yard sale. Unfortunately, we are not allowed to do yard sales in our neighborhood unless it is part of the community yard sale. We participated in the spring sale and it was a flop because of the weather. Hopefully we will have good weather this time.

This adventure has gone from a snail's pace to now moving so fast that we can't keep up, but soon we will have our son home. As big of a headache that this has been at times, I know that these have been trials to better prepare us for a future with our new son!