Today is May 15th, 2009. Rica & I feel so blessed! Here is an update:
ADOPTING FAITH BENEFIT EVENT:
1 - Our May 8th Adoption benefit was Amazing! Our family felt so loved and encouraged! There were nearly 200 adults in attendance with another 43 children in childcare! Dianne Porter and her incredible team outdid themselves with all the set up, food, silent auction and many other efforts. Joey Prather did a great job as emcee, Mitch blessed us by singing "When love takes you in" , and the Albertoni's shared their China adoption story of Annie - very moving. We cannot express all the gratitude we have for the many people who gave of their time, effort and resources to make that night an incredible evening. And for those following our journey... the answer that many of you have been waiting for... to date we have been blessed by $10,400.00 in donations and gifts!!!! Most of it came from the benefit event. We now have what we need to pay for all of the stateside expenses in preparation for our dossier! We praise God for His faithfulness and for moving in the hearts of so many of you to get invovled. Thank you!
1 - Our May 8th Adoption benefit was Amazing! Our family felt so loved and encouraged! There were nearly 200 adults in attendance with another 43 children in childcare! Dianne Porter and her incredible team outdid themselves with all the set up, food, silent auction and many other efforts. Joey Prather did a great job as emcee, Mitch blessed us by singing "When love takes you in" , and the Albertoni's shared their China adoption story of Annie - very moving. We cannot express all the gratitude we have for the many people who gave of their time, effort and resources to make that night an incredible evening. And for those following our journey... the answer that many of you have been waiting for... to date we have been blessed by $10,400.00 in donations and gifts!!!! Most of it came from the benefit event. We now have what we need to pay for all of the stateside expenses in preparation for our dossier! We praise God for His faithfulness and for moving in the hearts of so many of you to get invovled. Thank you!
PROGRESS REPORT:
- We also finished our 8 hour online Hague course and did our fingerprinting yesterday (FBI, DOJ & Child abuse checks.. we were waiting for the latex glove to follow...)
- We will finish reading two adoption books this week
- We're waiting for our social worker to schedule & complete our home study.
- We need to go through the immigration paperwork and process.
- We're waiting for the green light on putting together the dossier that we send to China (followed by much waiting..)
* special prayer request: we have hit a snag in our paperwork. We have discovered that Rica and I do not have any legal paperwork on file showing a change from our birth names (Chipponeri & Covey) to our family names (Allen & Hoffmann). It is uncertain at this point how much of a snag this could be... it could be a significant setback, or just another piece of paper to fill out and fee to pay. Please pray that we are able to resolve this simply and quickly so we can move through the immigration process smoothly.
Again, thanks for joining us on this journey to adopt Faith!
Love,
The Allen family
