Butterfly Kisses

Thanks to April and Carmen at Butterfly Kisses we will be displaying our products in their store. It is so nice of them to let us use their space to raise money for our adoption...we appreciate them so much! We should have the items in there by the end of this week so please stop by and take a look.

**Also, thanks to Karen Townsend for coming up with a great design for our sign and info cards-if you ever need any type of invitation, announcement, holiday cards, etc...she does a wonderful job and is very talented!

Thanks to everyone!!!

Happy Day....Sad Day!

Today was a happy day and a sad day! The sad part was that Miss Tracey from our church is leaving for Africa tomorrow....everyone is going to miss her dearly...but we know that she is doing what God has called her to do and that is a WONDERFUL thing! We will be praying for you Miss Tracey and please keep us all posted!!

The happier part of today was that we had a baby shower for Tyson and Renee...they are adopting a little girl from China..Sarah Ren! They will have her home with them soon and we are so excited for their family! We can't wait to meet the child that God has chosen for them! What a blessing!!!

Another very happy thing that's going on at our church is that some of our friends are in the process of adopting two boys that are in foster care. I have just been so blessed by watching the whole process...they are doing something that will change those boys lives forever...not only are they giving them a Forever Family with them but they are also giving them the chance to know God and that is so AWESOME! What they are doing has just touched me so much!

Kelly and I are so blessed to be part of such a special and loving church family...we thank God each day that he led us to Tunnel Hill First Baptist!

FINALLY....Kelly and I went today to be fingerprinted for our FBI clearance. This is one of the first steps in the adoption process! It was kind of a strange experience....while we were being fingerprinted there was an inmate in a holding cell right next to where we were standing...he was looking out through a tiny hole and tried to talk to us...it was very sad. I don't know what he did to be there and I didn't want to know but it made me think of how we are all sinners, but people who don't accept Jesus Christ are just like those inmates sitting in a dark cell...they have no future. There are people that have everything: money, nice cars, big houses, anything you could possible want, but if they don't have Jesus in their life they are hopeless. Some of us who struggle each day to make it but have Jesus are so blessed. Some days I forget that ...I get down because of the financial struggles Kelly and I are facing right now...but then I remember that I know Jesus and there is nothing more in this world that I could ever need or want!

I just want to pray for those men and women who are sitting in the jails that have done horrible things to be there and they have no hope...they still deserve the chance to know God...no matter what we think about them they are still God's children and as long as they are alive they still have a chance at knowing God and having a future with Him!

My son Asa went with us today and it was hard explaining to him why people have to go to jail...kind of like explaining why people have to go to hell...those are very touchy subjects...but we will definitely be adding the inmates to our prayer list each night and I hope it will teach Asa that EVERYONE deserves God's forgiveness!

God bless!!

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of Gods grace....Ephesians 1:7

Check these out..Kelly is building these to sell to raise money for our adoption...you can go to our website at http://www.amieandkelly.webs.com/ to purchase. We will also be placing these in stores around Dalton...I will post which stores as soon as we find out. We will be adding other items soon! Pass the info on to anyone who you think might be interested. Email me if you have any questions!

Thanks!

PROJECT 400-Goal was to have 400 attend our worship service...we had over 500!

I am so proud of the youth at our church (Tunnel Hill First Baptist)...today they were in charge of the worship service and it was so AWESOME! Watching so many youth get baptized and giving their testimonies just gives you hope that there is a chance for our world...with kids like that in it. Our youth minister Tyson has done such a great job...you can just see how much he loves those kids!

We can get so comfortable in our lives and forget what our real purpose in life is...to glorify God! I just wish that I could have been part of something so great when I was a teenager...it would have saved me from so many mistakes and heartache. I hope and pray that I can teach my children what I have learned from the mistakes I made!

We live in such a corrupt world...I can't imagine how hard it is to be a teenager today...they need all of our prayers and support!

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6

My first entry!

Well here I am creating a blog...I know that some of you are probably in shock right now...believe me so am I! The reason I haven't before now is mainly because I don't know that much about computers and also because being a mom of two I really don't have the time. I'm very old fashioned so there is a part of me that wishes computers and internet didn't exist. But the fact is, it is here to stay! There is so much bad on the internet but I've also learned that there is some good. Sometimes it is the only way to reach out to others and that can be a very good thing! Two of my favorite sites are http://www.joniandfriends.org/ and http://www.tangle.com/. I receive emails from these sites daily and they have really changed my daily walk with the Lord. I try to share the really good devotionals and videos with my friends! So if you go to those sites and sign up you can get some great encouragement each day!


I will try not to bore you too much with my life but here is a little bit of our story and how we chose to adopt from Ethiopia. Maybe in the future I will tell my personal testimony...but that will take some time to sit down and type...there's so much to tell!



**Some couples know from day 1 that they want to adopt, but for us it wasn't that way at all.
When Kelly and I got married I thought life was PERFECT and then we had our wonderful children and it was even more PERFECT...what more could a person want. We could have sat back and just enjoyed life from there on out and never needed anything more. But as a Christian I just knew there was more that I needed to be doing for God. I had always heard that God gives you "spiritual gifts", but I never felt like I was included in this. I never felt like I had anything to offer someone else or had any special talent. I was just happy being a good wife and mother! I was comfortable in my life and had no reason to change anything.

About 3 years ago I really started feeling God telling me that he needed me to be doing more...but for me, hearing God is one of the most difficult things to do. I have to have something thrown right in my face for me to know it's Him talking to me. So I began praying really hard that He would show me what I could do for Him and what my purpose in life was. One day it just hit me, "Adoption!" I had never thought about adopting and Kelly and I had never even discussed it. For a while "adoption" kept coming up everywhere I turned. I would even try to push it aside but God kept putting it right in front of me. I had asked God to show me and it was evident that was what he wanted our family to do.

I talked to Kelly about it and he would agree that adoption is a great thing, but wasn't that for "other" people. We thought it was for couples that couldn't have children or for "super special" people who you see adopting kid after kid after kid and their just one big happy family. Also, we thought people who adopted had extra money just lying around and they could afford to adopt.

Well little did we know...most people who adopt do it because they "want" to not because they "need" to, and as far as being "super special"...well Kelly and I are far from that but we do have a love for the Lord that gives us the strength to do anything! And the money part, most everyone we have talked to or read about don't have the money to adopt...they raise it...because they know how important it is and they will do anything to live out God's plan.

After talking off and on about it for about a year and a half...we just really didn't know if it was something we would actually end up doing...it seemed so out of reach. But last November during National Adoption Month we had a couple speak at our church about their adoption journey. We didn't even know they were speaking that day. During the service I had to fight back the tears...there was no denying what God was calling us to do. I didn't know what was going through Kelly's mind but as soon as we left church the first thing he said was "How can we not adopt...this is what God wants...we have love to give a child and that's what we are going to do!" I was so overjoyed...my prayers had been answered. I didn't want to ever talk Kelly into adopting or just get him to go along with it...I wanted him to want it as much as I did and feel it in his heart...and now he did!

Deciding to adopt was the easy part...we had so much more to face from there on out! At first we decided we would adopt a little girl from China...but as we soon found out that's not what God had planned for us. We were just comfortable with the idea of adopting from China...most of the children we knew that had been adopted were from there and it just seemed like the right thing to do . We contacted the adoption agency we wanted to use and filled out our preliminary application. After a few days we got the call and they told us that we wouldn't be able to adopt from China. I was heartbroken! Kelly and I began to question if God really wanted us to adopt..we were very frustrated and discouraged. It's funny how we ask God to show us His plan for us but then we want to handle all of the little details ourselves. We began to pray about it more and ask God to show us where we needed to adopt from, if that was even what He wanted us to do.

Kelly and I just felt God telling us to not give up and to not take "No" for an answer...we needed to prove to God that we were in this for the long haul...so two days before Christmas I emailed another adoption agency that a friend had told me about. I told her our whole story and just laid it all out for her and just waited to get an answer. On Christmas Eve I received an email that said "I can help you...you can adopt internationally"! We were so excited...it made our Christmas even more special!

So on that Monday I called the lady who had emailed me and we discussed things and she said she would look at which countries we could possibly adopt from. Her answer was "Ethiopia." We had never even considered it but somehow as soon as she said it it just felt "right". Talk about doing something outside of your comfort zone. To show you how silly we can be, our main concern was "how will we fix their hair"...Kelly said, "we will definitely have some bad hair days around here"...but I checked online and there is actually a website for adoptive parents to learn how to fix African hair! Funny!

So far the adoption process has had so many ups and downs but we just know how wonderful it will be in the long run. There are days when we get discouraged and think that adopting this one child isn't really going to change the world, but then we think about how God adopts us into His family and doesn't give up on us even though we are just one lost soul...how could we say no. We don't deserve what God gives us...but these orphans deserve a chance to have a future. I look at how happy my children are each day...all their needs are met...they wake up with smiles and go to bed with smiles. They are shown love each and every day. Then I think about all of the orphans in the world who don't have even their basic needs met let alone love from a family. Doesn't every child deserve that!
We don't realize it yet but that child will change our lives so much that we can't even imagine. Iris and Asa will be so blessed by this and all of our family and friends will get to experience this with us...it will not only change that child's life but all of the lives around them.

One more thing we face is people asking "why don't you adopt in the united states,

well there are almost 200 million orphans in the world and God needs people to adopt from all places and he calls us all to adopt from different places. Each family has to do what is best for them. I think it is a wonderful thing to adopt domestically or adopt from any country..but God has placed Ethiopia in our hearts and we know that is where our child is.

Our journey has just begun but with the prayers and support of others we will get through this...after all God is in control and he does finish what he starts!

being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:6

This blog is mainly so we can journal our adoption process and to also help support others who are going through the same journey!

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Galatians 6:9