Our first item of praise is that Hallie is doing great! She had surgery just over two weeks ago to repair her broken finger, and she is in a bright pink cast up over her elbow. Leading up to her surgery, I was actually sick to my stomach because I was so worried about her. I wished so much that I could take the pain for her! For about 48 hours after surgery, she was clearly in pain. She never cried, but she couldn’t get comfortable and was very clingy with me. I hate the fact that she can’t express the things she is feeling! It makes me feel so helpless as a parent. Since getting through those first few days, she has been fine. She loves to have people sign her cast, and she is eager to show it off. We put a “cast” on her Baby Cinderella, and then she insisted that her Care Bear needed one too. For a non-verbal child, she can be pretty bossy. 🙂 She will go back to the doctor in two weeks to have the cast removed and the pins pulled out of her finger. We would appreciate prayers for that, because I think she is going to be terrified of the cast saw. I plan to watch some YouTube videos of cast removals before she goes, and we will probably practice taking Baby Cinderella’s cast off, but I still think it will be hard for her.

Second item of praise is that we have all the money we need for our matching grant. Yay!! We don’t know who the donors are, but we know that we have met our total. To anyone who gave toward that, thank you, thank you, thank you!!

And now for the prayer requests. We are just over a month away from travel, and we are still about $19,000 short of the total amount we need. That is terrifying!! Whenever we look at that total, Greg and I can both feel our hearts begin to panic. It truly seems impossible to raise that amount of money in one month. But we are both thankful that we serve a God who can do “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine”! We know that He has called us to this work, and He will provide everything we need to accomplish it. Please pray that our hearts and minds will stay fixed on Him. We are waiting to hear back about two grant applications, and we are nearly ready to submit another. Please pray that God will grant us favor with these organizations. And please pray that He will move the hearts of people to help us in this work. Again, we want to say thank you to all of you who have already given to help us with this. We have raised more than half the money we need for this adoption, and many of you have helped us get to that point. Please just don’t stop praying for us now! We are both striving to thank and praise Him for His provision, even though we can’t see it yet. Also, please pray for our new son. In just over a month, he will lose everything in the world that is familiar to him, and he will have to start over with a new family, new country, new language, new culture, etc. We know that this will be a huge blessing to him, but I feel pretty certain that it won’t feel like a blessing at first. Pray that God will prepare his heart and help him through that difficult transition.