Sunday, May 13, 2012

Mother's Day....

Greetings all,

        This is Mat, Necia's husband.  I have taken over her blog for Mother's Day to share my appreciation for her.  I have never met anyone with a heart like hers.  She loves with all of her heart, and would do absolutely anything for those she cares about, without any thought to the personal sacrifice required. Necia would go to war for anyone she loves.  She has such an amazing heart for the 'little guy.'  This is one of the reasons she so loves orphans.  I am so grateful and inspired daily by her selfless love.

      Necia is both a dedicated mother and wife.  She works tirelessly at the things that so often go unnoticed.  I often forget to tell her how much it means to me that she takes care of all of the little things that go along with everyday life.  She does this while still making time to read to the kids, fix boo boos, and get all of those snuggles.  It amazes me.

     More important than any of that, I thank the Lord that he gave me a wonderful woman of God for a wife.  Her love for the Lord is incredible.  Her dedication to God inspires me to be a better man and to seek Him more.  She is an amazing prayer warrior.  I leave the house daily knowing that she is praying for all aspects of my day.  She is the perfect partner in raising the kids in the ways of the Lord, and is very much a Biblical wife.  I thank her and I thank God for providing me with such a wonderful partner to go through life with.

Necia, I love you .
          Mat


P.S. - Don't kill me for posting this.

We survived!!

We all managed to survive the garage sale fundraiser we had last weekend.  We were so blessed in many ways.  We really felt GOD working in all aspects of the event.  We are so grateful to all of our friends and family...and a few strangers who donated items to sale.  As you can see below, there was no shortage of generosity.


There was also no shortage of help.  We had friends and family volunteer to come out and spend part of their weekend helping.  We all know how valuable and precious that time can be.  We started the sale at 6:30 in the morning on Friday, and we had customers for the next 12 hours without a single break in business. Saturday was not quite as busy, but it was still great.  We were exhausted, but it was also a ton of fun.  We were able to raise over $2,100 dollars for Isaac.

One of the highlights of the weekend was how involved Andrew and Olivia wanted to be.  They really wanted to help bring Isaac home.  What better than a nice old fashioned lemonade stand?


Now one thing is for sure.  We have some natural born sales professionals.  It doesn't hurt that they are so cute, or that they had a shamelessly sweet sign. This was the one time that I didn't mind them not taking no for an answer. There were several conversations that went something like this:

    Lemonade! Fifty cents! You want some lemonade?
                   
                No thanks. Not right now.
   
    Lemonade!  Its for my bubba. Just fifty cents.

               Not right now. Thank you.

     Lemonade! [takes Isaac's picture to customer] his name is Isaac.  We want him to come home.
            
               Ok. I would love some lemonade.
  
    Ok. but you have to pay for it ok?

It really wasn't fair, and some may say that we took advantage of their cuteness to manipulate people into helping. Guilty as charged.  If it gets Isaac home sooner, I don't feel bad about it at all.  Especially, when I see how bad they want him here.  Olivia went into her room and took all of the dollar bills out of her money jar, about 6 months worth of savings and told us she wanted it to go to Isaac.  Could not have been more proud of her.  All together they turned $5 worth of lemonade into over $60 dollars.

We still have miles to go before we can bring him home, but we have seen GOD provide so much for us in this process that we have no doubt that HE will provide the means.  We look forward to seeing how HE does it!


Praying For All Things,

Mat and Necia

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Chip In

Two posts in one day.  This one is a little harder to write.  We've decided to add a chip in link to the blog.  We set our goal to be $8,665.  That is half of the country fee.  Our goal is just less than 1/4 of our total adoption cost.  We ask that you prayerfully consider donating.  Please pray that God will continue to provide financially for our adoption.

Photobucket

All Things Isaac

I realized that I haven't "officially" announced that Isaac is ours on the blog.  We got the call February 2nd while setting up for our first garage sale.  Since then we've gone into bring Isaac home mode.  We had a fantastic garage sale that weekend that brought in $2,300 in sales and donations.  WOW!!  Praise the Lord!!

We had our homestudy visit last Thursday and I feel so silly for worrying about it like I did.  It couldn't have gone any better.  We should be homestudy approved next month!

I'm finding it hard to balance my emotions between wanting time to hurry up so that it's time to go get our boy and wanting it to slow down so I can savor every moment with Andrew and Olivia. 

We knew in our hearts that Isaac wouldn't come home this year, but I guess we were hoping that maybe just maybe he'd be home by his 2nd birthday.  Outside of a miracle (and I do believe in miracles) he won't be home this year.  So until I see him in person I will hang on to what I do have.


                                                This is the first picture we saw of him.

                                    This is the most current picture we have.  He's 15 months.


Photobucket