bodner003

"And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus." (Phil.4:19) When we started this journey back in March, one of the obstacles in moving ahead was finances. We are, by no means, struggling to provide for our family but certainly didn't have an extra $32,000 laying around. That chunk of change seemed like good reason to keep pushing the idea of adopting out of my head. But God convicted us on a deeper level. Not only had he softened our hearts for his ministry of adoption but he vividly confirmed that he would provide in all things, even the finances needed to fund this adoption. We seriously had no idea how we were going to pay for it. My pride stood in the way of wanting to fundraise. The only other way was to deplete our savings and borrow the rest. Although debt is very unbiblical and not something we want to touch, I was able to rationalize the idea. The debt was for good reason, right? God ...

Merry Christmas, baby girl. Wish you were home. We love you... http://youtu.be/dy8RW6aHXWQ

We have 2 tickets for the December 29th, Saints vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers game, in the Superdome. It's funny how we acquired these. These tickets were donated for the silent auction portion of our  Orphan Awareness and Adoption Fundraiser . A lovely family purchased the tickets and then donated them back to us! Very tempting, as Seamus would love to bring Brady to his first Saints game. However, we've decided to raffle them off to help with our adoption expenses. We're almost fully funded, y'all! Both Saints tickets are Terrace Level, Section 638, Row 17, Seats 1 and 2. We will begin selling the raffle tickets now and will draw the winning ticket at 7:00pm on Friday, Dec. 20th. We are selling the raffle tickets for $5 each or 5 chances for $20. The winner of our drawing wins both tickets, face valued at $164 (really worth more since our Saints are rocking it this season). If you would like to purcha...

Prepared for a bunch of random thoughts and news? Good, because that's pretty much how my brain is working lately. Random and scattered. We are currently on day 25 of our LOA wait. I'll briefly recap what this means. 25 days ago we received a PA (pre-approval) from China to adopt Emily. We are now waiting for our LOA (letter of approval) which makes the adoption very official. The LOA wait typically takes anywhere from 2-6 months. We did receive some fabulous news on Wednesday that our dossier (our 1 million page packet telling them who we are) is OOT (out of translation). This is really good news because it's the step within the LOA wait that takes the longest. Once your dossier is OOT, you can expect LOA in about another month. Let me reiterate what I've said in the past... the Lomans will be doing a spastic happy dance when LOA arrives. I'll brief you on future steps as we get there. For now, please pray that our LOA comes quickly. If it does, it's possible w...