really?

Moving right along in more ways than one.

I know the Chip-In says there have been no contributors to this point, but that isn't true! A check was waiting in our mailbox today from a dear friend for $500. Yes, you read that right. There are two zeros after that five. Humbled and grateful don't seem sufficient. God is moving in this. I just feel it. He moves His people to respond to the needs of the fatherless. How else in the world would their needs be met? They do not have a family. We are their only hope. We, God's people, are James' only hope.

If you want an incredible example of God's people responding in a mighty way to the plight of fatherless orphans, read this. Brace yourself, though. The photos are hard to look at.

Stories like this are why I even felt like it could be remotely possible to raise $10,000. $10,000. That's a lot of money. Well not for an army. We've seen it over and over again. And, folks, it's humbling. In fact, it puts me in my place sometimes. Those defeated moments when I wonder in my smallest of places, 'God, can you really do this?' Oh my. Can He ever.

Update: we sent off the copies of our dossier documents to Wide Horizons for the China dossier specialist to review. She'll confirm that everything looks right, they're all signed, notarized, stamped, etc. Once she gives us the all-clear, which could be as early as Monday, then we head to the Secretary of State to have the documents certified. The SOS basically just certifies that all the notarizations are legal and legit. Probably checking to be sure the notary's commission isn't expired, etc. That supposedly only takes a trip downtown and it's done in a matter of minutes. Once the documents are certified, they will be hand-delivered by courier to the Chinese Consulate in DC. That will just take a couple of days to perform. The Chinese Consulate will then send the completed dossier to Wide Horizons and they will send it off to China. This is what we need prayer about: China requests that dossiers are only sent in batches once every six weeks. They want agencies to compile a batch of dossiers and send them all off to China together versus sending them individually as they come in. Our prayer request is that our dossier will arrive on week 5, day 4. We want our dossier to sit for only a matter of days before being sent to China. If you're a praying person, will you pray that the timing of all this will fall just perfectly, so our dossier can get to China as soon as possible? Once the dossier gets to China, it could be months before we hear anything. Ahhh.

And the final thing to note is that JD and I got our fingerprinting appointment with USCIS (in Norfolk). They schedule you a time and date and you better be there even if the creek rises! Our biometrics (fingerprinting) appointment is on Tuesday, June 22nd. JD has a one-day business trip to New York the day before, so pray that he'll return without issue on the 21st so we can head to Norfolk on the 22nd. Our appointment's at 10 AM.

Thank you so very much for your prayers! They're priceless.