AMAZON is supporting our adoption with your purchases!

Amazon has this great affiliate program where we can make money for our adoption off of others purchases! It is so simple. Every purchase is confidential so go ahead, use the link on the right and buy your things. Bookmark our page so that each time you want to go to Amazon it will link to our affiliate page. Share this with your friends and family. The money will go straight towards our adoption costs and every penny counts! Thank you for your prayers and support, we truly appreciate it.

The link will stay on the right side of the page so check back if you loose it! This works for Amazon Prime, Business and every other Amazon account!

Coffee Break?

Hello friends and family!

Anyone who knows us knows we love coffee! Iris & Jeremiah both learned very early that when ordering coffee Mommy says, "with cream" and Daddy says, "cream and sugar, please". Well, we've combined our love for coffee with a great way to support our adoption!

We've partnered with the folks over at Just Love Coffee in Murfreesboro to bring you your favorite morning brew. With every bag you purchase, Just Love Coffee will donate a portion, (we feel like it's a generous portion!), to our adoption. So, if you like quality coffee and you'd buy it anyway, why not buy from them? In turn you'll be donating to us! This is a really neat company that supports fair-trade farmers all over the world, they help bring clean water to these villages and provide jobs for families who might otherwise be without. To order anytime, just use our link. You don't have to be local to order, this is a great mail order company. Thank you for supporting us. Every dollar counts and right now we are counting every dollar!

God Bless,
Martha

Merry Christmas and a Joyous New Year!

Our holidays looked a little differently than in years past. We didn't travel to Oklahoma, or see our family as usual. It was hard, it was different, but it wasn't miserable. Christmas Eve we went to our Christmas Eve service then had dinner with the Roe's and several other families. We celebrated Christmas morning at home with just the four of us. Jeremiah expected to find snow on the ground, after his initial disappointment he was still excited that it was finally Christmas! Our dear friends, the Print's came over for breakfast and to play with all the new toys. After nap we headed over to the Liss' to celebrate Christmas dinner with the Oliver's, Lestarjett's and so many more. While we missed our family and there were some tears from me, we really did have a great Christmas. Here are a few highlights from our day.

Christmas morning excitement! 

Taking the babies with us to Christmas dinner

Iris and Lisa having some Play-doh fun! 

We are moving right along in the adoption process! We have begun our home study and the paper chase continues with applications, documents, more documents and notaries. God has been so faithful to provide through so many ways! Many of you have given us gifts, we've sold necklaces (a great success, so we'll be doing that again soon!), and we've had extra monies come in and go straight to the adoption accounts. The costs are great, but God is a great provider! Always feel free to email us any questions you have, we would love to answer your questions! We look forward to the Christmases when we have our whole family together!

Thanksgiving Update!

I just realized I didn't update about the Turkey Trot! Our Thanksgiving weekend was such a fun one, but by the time it was over we had a lot of catching up to do. It was filled with friends and lots of fun. We got up early for the race, to say Jeremiah was excited would be an understatement. After the 5k, (I ran & they cheered me across the finish line), Jeremiah and his best buddy, Blake (14) got set to run the race. When they said, "go" he ran his little heart out, but soon became distracted with buildings, police cars, even a leaf or two. I thought surely something was wrong when they were so far behind so I ran to meet them, but Blake explained that J was taking it all in. His post-race comments included, "Where were the cheerleaders" and "I thought it was a little too long". Here are a few shots from the day. Thank you to all who supported us by cheering us on, by sponsoring us and by encouraging our little guy. 

Give1Save1-Africa: New Family - The Greenfields

This site has become one of our favorite Monday rituals in the last few weeks! Each Monday a family is featured and a short story about their adoption is presented. We love to see how God is blessing us with extra in our personal finances so we can bless others even while we are saving and paying for our own adoption! Check out this sweet family and consider giving, even a dollar & social network share will spread the word and increase their account!

Give1Save1-Africa: New Family - The Greenfields: Good morning everyone! I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving. And now all the Christmas fun can start! This weeks' family is a little...

Thanksgiving Reflections

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I'm having a hard time putting my thoughts to paper so forgive me if this is a bit jumbled, but I do want to share. I am running a Thanksgiving Day 5k tomorrow morning and immediately afterwards Jeremiah is running his first Kids Fun Run 1k. He is adorably excited about it and cannot wait for people to cheer for him.

All day today I have been emotional thinking about him running this race. It was 4 years ago that the Lord first called me to begin running and I ran this same race on Thanksgiving day, 2008. See, we had been trying to conceive a baby for several years and we had lost 2 babies to miscarriage. Al & I both felt like this run was unto Jeremiah. I didn't really know what that meant, just that we were committed to do anything the Lord called us to, not to waste any days just waiting. Each time we trained we prayed for the baby boy God had promised, but also asked what else He might have for us in our season of preparation. When I ran that race I was carrying a teeny tiny little guy that only God knew existed. I found out the Saturday after Thanksgiving that I was pregnant. Now that tiny little miracle is a walking, talking, running little boy!

He doesn't know what this race means for me, but I do. The bigger picture for us this year is that Jeremiah and I  are racing to raise support to bring the next member of this family home through adoption. I look forward to a night like this in the future when I can sit down and blog after the kids are in bed and remember the race Jeremiah ran for his brother Luke, still unknown to us in Ethiopia. I know that Thanksgiving I'll be a mess watching my boys run side by side, a couple of promises fulfilled. Don't worry, Iris will be right there with them! I'm confident she won't let them do much without her.

Thank you to everyone who has prayed for us, encouraged us and sowed into this adoption financially! We are so thankful for each of you! We are very close to having another payment to send in and then we'll be starting our home study! Exciting days ahead!

If you see me tomorrow at the race, don't be surprised if you see a few tears of joy. God is so good and I am ever thankful for his faithfulness. He who promised, truly is faithful.

Martha

Sponsor Jeremiah is his first 1K! Click the link to the right or contact me for a mailing address...

Remember if you'd like to run, walk or skip in the Turkey Trot 5K, you can join our team and get your own sponsors! Email me for more details, marthaandal@gmail.com. We love you and appreciate ALL the prayers and support!