Preparing for Praise in the Park

We are looking forward to Praise in the Park, in Blaine's hometown of Lucedale, Mississippi, this weekend where we'll be sharing our adoption story with fellow believers. Praise in the Park is a Christian festival that is hosted every fall in Lucedale's city park. We will be among approximately 40 vendors and 12,000 people who are gathering together to enjoy a day of food, fun, and Christian fellowship. Jeremy Camp, Building 429, Leeland, and Royal Tailor will be performing this year.

I spent the day getting ready for PITP. Here are a few photos of my preparations! :)

 Instead of a coke sign, I used an old piece of wood to create the sign for our booth.

 First, I used a dry brush technique to give the board a white wash.

Then, I added a few other colors, sanded it, and wiped on a light stain.

The finished product!

 These 2 pieces will be used as our "billboards" to advertise our wristbands and t-shirt give away.

 I gave them the same treatment as the "Adopt Colombia" sign. I didn't have time to paint the ads on them, that will be tomorrow's work! 

We will be giving away glow-in-the-dark wristbands as a "Thank You" for donations we receive.

We hope to meet a lot of people and raise awareness of the orphan crisis around the world. We are excited to see what God is going to do this weekend!!!

Finances

We wanted to give you a quick update on where we stand financially.

Through the generous gifts of friends, the profit we made from the Loblolly Festival, our savings, and a personal loan we are up to $10,601! We are a quarter of the way there. :) We appreciate your prayers concerning our fundraising efforts. We will be at Praise in the Park in Lucedale, MS on October 22. This is where about 12,000 people gather each year for a day of worship in Lucedale's city park. Pray that God will multiply our efforts to spread our story and that He would do a mighty work to help us reach our goal.

For a more detailed description and checklist of our expenses, visit our support blog! Financial Outline for the Colombia Program

PAPERWORK

I'm beginning to realize how hard it's going to be to keep the blog updated now that the PAPERWORK has started!  We started working on what Gladney calls "Group 1" of the documents to be submitted as part of our formal application.   This includes a description of each of us, our marital history, members of our household, our education, religion, criminal records, our finances, our home, employment history, mental and physical health, and five references.  A "child preference profile" was also a part of the "Group 1" documents.  This is where we were able to give a detailed description of the children we would like to adopt such as, their ages, gender, and overall health.  We agreed to accept a sibling group of up to 3 children, of either gender, 8 years old and under.  We also stated that we would be willing to discuss accepting a referral of a child with correctable medical issues.  We were encouraged to consider doing so because, what is often considered correctable medical issues are things like developmental delays and the results of malnutrition.  

Next on the agenda is completing the "Group 2" documents.  This will include employment verification, a physician's report on the both of us, verification of health insurance, and a few other miscellaneous documents, most of which have to be notarized.  We anticipate that it will take a few weeks to have everything completed.  Although this paperwork is anything but exciting, we know that with each document completed, we are one step closer to our little ones. :)