Well...here we are...October the 1st. I have missed checking in with you during the day this month but it has been a good break. Got a minute? I'd love to share a few things with you. This will be long, but I love you...please hang with me. <3
We took September off from actively fundraising and selling anything for our adoption. I feel like it gave me focus and helped me regroup. I really thought about things we might offer you, that you would be interested in and that would also help us get John Preston home.
In the next few days, I will share about several fundraisers that will run concurrently.
First, we are hosting a Diffuser Necklace Fundraiser. This is right up the alley of all my oily friends. You drop your essential oils on the pendant, place around your neck and your oils go with you. I have been wearing Lavender around my next for the past two weeks. If you know me, you know what it is for but I don't think the FDA will let me tell you. ;-) I encourage you to get one of these not only for yourself but for your kids. What an easy way to help them! My oily business friends, these would be a great gift for friends you have enrolled. I know I have TONS of friends that use essential oils. This would be such a huge tangible way you could help us AND help your family. We have a REALLY ambitious goal for this fundraiser and we need your help!
Here are all the details:
Next we will be putting together another soap order. I can not tell you how much I love these soaps. And everyone that buys them from us loves them too. We are constantly being asked when we are placing another order. We need to get them ordered soon so they will arrive and have time to be cut and dried to use as Christmas gifts. Please consider helping us with this fundraiser when it is shared in the next few days. All soaps will be pre-payment orders and we'd love for you to help us when the time comes by getting the word out. I expect to have all the details ready sometime tomorrow.
We will also be hosting an iPad Mini Giveaway. You'll have the chance to donate $10 per chance. You can purchase as many chances as you'd like! This would a great Christmas gift or even a treat for yourself if you win! I'll be sharing details about it probably on Monday.
We have also been blessed with a matching grant. We are not allowed to give towards this grant...our friends and family make donations and then the organization matches them for up to $2000. So that would mean $4000 total to help bring John Preston home if we reach our goal. More details coming soon about this. If you want more information, please let me know.
Tax deductible donations can also be made anytime to help bring John Preston home in his Reece's Rainbow account at http://reecesrainbow.org/88597/sponsorparris-2
We have about $2100 left to be finished paying our agency fees and then we can begin to focus on travel expenses of about $13,000. I am praying that these fundraisers above help us knock out the agency bill in the next two weeks. Ambitious? Yes. But I serve a big God. We started this adoption process with nothing and God has met our needs right on time. Have we struggled? Yes. But who doesn't? Bryan reminds me of this constantly when my faith waivers. When I look at the numbers on paper and begin to wonder if God will make it happen in my time. Oh, how I want it to be in my timing. But God's timing is perfect. He is right on time. Pray for me specifically to stay strong, work hard and continue to have faith that God is going to meet us right where we need Him.
Can I tell you that the thought of traveling most likely towards the beginning of December has me wanting to jump up and down. We are not financially ready to go yet but my heart is. Our boy has waited over EIGHT years for a family to love him. EIGHT YEARS. If you have children, can you imagine missing that much time with them...missing all the milestones, not celebrating birthdays and holidays? We have a lot of time to make up for. We have a lot of love to give. John Preston is loved and wanted. He has a family waiting for him. Our family. He has siblings that are waiting on pins and needles to get him home. We have friends and family and a whole community of people who can not wait to love on him.
I know we are all stretched thin. Everytime we turn around money is needed for something..to pay a bill...a kid's sport equipment...school supplies. It never ends. I know. We are there too. Sometimes I wish a money tree would pop up in our backyard and I could play catch up on everything at once. But instead we do what we can each payday, much like you, I'm sure.
We do not take for granted even ONE dollar you have used to help us bring our son home. Not one dollar. We are so thankful. We could never really communicate to you how much it means when you purchase something we are selling to fundraise...or the times you have just made straight out donations...you just stopped and wrote a check to help us bring our son home. I know you could have spent your money on other things. I know you didn't have to help us. I know you helped because you love us and you love John Preston.
We need you. We need you to come alongside us. We knew in the beginning we could not do this alone. We need you to hold us up on days when it feels like it is harder than we can handle. We need you to hold us up when we are wondering where the next fee will come from. There are so many of you that have told us you are praying. That is exactly what we need. You standing in the gap for us.
We need our community...we need our church family...we need our ballet friends..our soccer friends...we need strangers. Anyone that agrees with what Scripture tells us in James 1:27 "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows their distress..."
Will you commit to pray with us?
Pray for John Preston's safety and health. Pray that his needs are met. Pray that he feels loved by his foster family and pray that his heart softens to begin to love us as much as we already love him.
Pray for the hearts of our children at home. Pray that God will protect their hearts form what potentially could be a very hard transition. MinLan came home as basically a baby. John Preston is going to bound in the door as an eight year old. Very different circumstances. Pray that our children already home, will know that family is forever...even in the hard days...pray that they will know that we love them, even when their new brother is likely to be taking a lot of our attention and time.
Pray for Bryan and I. That we will be strong...that we will work hard...that we, with God alone, can move these mountains to get our son home. Pray that our relationship stays strong and that we work together as one in the final two months especially.
Friends the time is here. I can see the finish line. And let me tell you...it is beautiful. I see that ribbon stretched across the horizon and I am sprinting. Running as hard as I can to our boy. Pray we don't stumble right before the end. Pray we stand tall and burst through that ribbon in victory with only the Lord receiving the glory. It is He and HE alone that has brought us here. No one else. He has been faithful.
Love,
Jenifer
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