Blissful Waiting

I wish that I could post some fabulous new event that is moving us closer to Baby Parker, but we are waiting. We are waiting not only for our home study to be started/completed but we are waiting for God's perfect timing when we will meet our little one. 

Is the waiting frustrating?

You better believe it! But I continuously hear God reaffirming that His timing and plan is more perfect than I can imagine. 

All of our paperwork is in and we are just waiting on a social worker. So until we move forward, we are blissfully waiting for the time when God expands our family with sweet Baby Parker! 

Love y'all!

Karilyn

Blessed Our Hearts & Hopefully Soon - Our Arms!

At our meeting in Columbia two weeks ago, Derek and I were asked to start completing lots of tasks. One task was completing our physicals so we can begin our home study. I am happy to say that we have completed these and we are waiting on the adoption agency to get the paperwork. Hopefully, we will know soon when the home study and interviews will start! After the interviews and home study, we will be on the waiting list!

I am always truly amazed at how God is just opening doors and blessing us through this entire journey! I am so humbled by your prayers, sweet notes and help with fundraising. 

A sweet group of friends blessed our hearts this Christmas by being very sneaky and changing a $20 gift exchange into one of the sweetest ways to help our adoption. I was seriously in shock and I'm not sure that I said, "THANK YOU!" enough times. I sat there like I was in a dream and played it over and over again in my head to process the love and friendship that was in that room! Thank you to my sweet "Girls of 29369"! Y'all have blessed our hearts and hopefully soon - our arms with a sweet baby! XOXO

Also, my sweet faculty at school did a charity donation during our Christmas party and our adoption was put in the basket as a charity and was drawn! We are continually blessed and just beyond grateful for your love! 

To say the least, our Christmas has been blessed beyond measure and we know that we don't what the future holds for us but we do know who holds our future! 

Love y'all!

Karilyn

Thankful for Wonderful Family & Friends!

Things have been really busy with adoption progress and fundraisers! This blog post is LONG overdue!

First, I have to give a HUGE SHOUT-OUT to everyone who helped us at Pizza Inn on November 21st! That was no easy task and our family and friends just jumped in and helped us tremendously!!! THANK YOU so much for giving your time to come and take orders and serve drinks at Pizza Inn! I don't think that I will ever be able to repay each of you for what you did to help us that night! Derek and I just keep saying that we can't believe how many people showed up to help us! We are so grateful for everything that you did to help us reach our dream of becoming parents. Y'all made the night run so smoothly and you have blessed Derek and I beyond comprehension!!!!

To everyone who came & feasted on pizza and generously tipped the ever so lovely wait staff, THANK YOU! It was so wonderful to see each of you and be able to talk & fellowship with each of you! We are so thankful for your friendship and love!

Without both of those groups of people, our Pizza Inn fundraiser would not have been so successful! That night we raised over $2000 for our adoption! WOW!!! This is beyond what we expected to raise that night! The Pizza Inn staff couldn't believe what we made that night either. They were already begging us to come back and do another fundraiser for our adoption! It is amazing the way that God is just pouring His love on us during this whole process! We just know that the child that God has for us is out there and we are looking forward to meeting him or her!


Update on the Adoption Process...
We have turned in our paperwork to start our home study with our agency. Unfortunately, this agency does not accept our previous home study, which is a bummer because we loved the lady that we did our first home study with last year. We are waiting to hear if we made the training session in Columbia next Friday! I will update the blog when we find out!

Please keep praying for this whole process, but more importantly please pray for the woman who will be allowing us to parent her baby! She is making a huge sacrifice for us. She is a woman that I will always cherish, because she is the woman that will make me a mom! What a hard decision to make!

We have been told numerous times that adoptions can happen just from word of mouth. If you know someone who is considering adoption, please share with them our adoption book. It is just a little inside look into our lives!

Click here to see our adoption book!


Love y'all!
Karilyn

Heart of a Sweet Student

Today started off like any Monday morning. I was moving quickly around my classroom making sure that everything was perfect and ready to start the day with my 20 sweethearts! Little did I know but my heart was about to be blessed in a tremendous way!

A precious mom and her youngest daughter walked into my classroom! This isn't unusual because I taught her two older children, so of course they will periodically stop in to say hey. Today wasn't just to say hey and to give a hug. In fact, the older two siblings weren't with them and the youngest isn't even in fifth grade. The daughter began to say that she had something for me, so I opened this note from her:

GET YOUR TISSUES READY!!!!

Yes, I know! It is the sweetest thing ever! My prayer is that Derek and I can raise our child/ children to show this much compassion at such a young age! 

I absolutely love her words of "I hope this helps you raise the child that God has chosen for you!" This is by far one of the sweetest gifts that I have ever received! 

Thank you to everyone who has supported us through this journey! I was just thinking today that my tears over the past few years have been centered around disappointment, but over the past few weeks my tears have been flowing due to joy!

Love y'all!

Karilyn

Pouring Out His Blessings On Us!

Derek and I have been so blessed to have so many people helping us the past few weeks! I can't thank each of you enough for ALL that you have done for us! You're making our dreams come true a little faster than we ever imagined! Each of you have made God's love so tangible for us and it has truly been a blessing to see Him use each of you in our lives!

I'm astonished at how quickly the first shipment of bracelets have sold and I just found out that a second shipment will be arriving in two weeks! Thank you for not only supporting us but the Haitians! 

We now have shirts available for purchase!!! Thank you to Angela Lancaster for using her incredible skills of design and Sheryl Elliott for using her fabulous organizational skills to get this project going! 

Here are the shirts:

You can email elliott236@att.net if you would like to order one!

The scripture on the back of the tee shirt is Hebrews 6:19 - "We have this HOPE as an anchor for the soul firm and secure." 

Our hope is found in God and we are looking forward to what lies ahead for us! The journey to being parents hasn't been easy. Although, I'm so glad to know where my hope is found! 

Love y'all!

Karilyn

The Bracelets Have Arrived!!!!

The bracelets have arrived and we are beyond excited!!! Let me know if you would like 1,2 or 100! :) 

The money from these bracelets will help our fund our adoption and a sweet Haitian who is trying to make money to help support their family with food and housing! I'm in love with this fundraiser already!!!

The ornaments will be arriving mid-October!

Here are a few examples for your viewing pleasure...

Love y'all!

Karilyn

For Karilyn...

“For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.” Habakkuk 2:3

On this journey we have begun, I wanted you to know that I love you and can’t wait to see what the Lord has in store for you and I. The other night you spoke about how blessed we have been. What I was wrong in doing is leaving out how blessed I am to have you.

This morning while going to work, the Lord spoke to me and I felt such a peace about the direction of our new journey. So many times we have both tried to make things work, but after our meeting with the lawyer we both made a  decision to wait upon the Lord's guidance and direction. In my opinion, that was the best decision we’ve made. 

I appreciate everything you are doing and continue to do for our soon to be family. I love you!

Derek