The Day After

As Christmas time has come and gone in the since of a day, but we need to celebrate Jesus Christ everyday!  Anyways, it was such a joyous time celebrating with our family and watching all the cousins having fun and playing together.  There is something so great about hearing the kids running and playing throughout  the house.  I just pray that next year our new little one will be laughing and running and playing with them.
 Laying in bed this morning snuggled with my family I was thanking God for the true blessing of our family and anticipating/dreaming of our other child snuggling there with us by this time next year (oh how I pray that will be so)!  Our family is just not complete without them and God is so good to have put that desire in our heart and to keep nuturing that desire for our child who is far away.  We continue to pray daily for them and their protection and can not wait to pick them up and hold and squeeze and kiss their beautiful face.  I am so thankful to God for helping me/us through this time of year knowing that they are far away from us and not knowing their situation is hard, but God has challenged us and brought us closer to Him through this time of growing and leaning on Him to take care of them and us.  This time of waiting is hard (and we have only been in this stage for 3 months) but we are going to take this time to let God work on us and what He needs to teach us and if we allow Him to  grow us through this time the lessons we gain are far more worthy than the hardship of the "waiting"!  Everything comes in HIS timing!  Merry Christmas to everyone and I pray we all learn and grow in Him this upcoming year!!!

Prayer Needed!

As I mentioned in my last post that even though this is a wonderful time of year it is also very hard at times when you are in the "waiting stage" of adoption and we have only been here almost 3 months there are many others that have been in the "waiting stage" for 16 months and are struggling not having their babies home with them.  So, I am asking for any of you that read this to please keep them and all those in the adoption process in your prayers.  Most of we all know that God has called us on this journey and there are times that we just need to be lifted up by others to help carry us a little when we can't stand on our own.  Through this journey God is pruning and teaching us in many ways, but at times it gets hard and I can only imagine the struggle that those feel that have been waiting for a year, 14 , 16 months must be feeling.  I asking that you not only pray for them, but to pray for referrals to come.  There are many children and sometimes the paperwork just isn't getting done in a timely manner or they don't have all the clearance levels in place and so the children who are paper ready are just left waiting in the orphanges.  (this is in the southern region of Ethiopia-please pray for this area).  God is so in control of every step and as much as you know that at times you just need a little hope.  Please pray for all of these families who have been waiting so long to bring their children home and pray for the children and their hearts to be prepared for their forever family.  May God truly bless you during this time of celebration of the greatest gift that could ever be given to each and everyone of us and that is the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!  If you don't know how ask Him into your heart and learn about the most perfect gift that has ever been given to you and I!  Merry Christmas!

Christmas Time!!!

As we are getting ready for this time of year and enjoying our time together as a family we can't help but know that our other child is not yet here with us and we pray they are with us next year, actually I am assuming they will be!!!  As we decorate, buy gifts and prepare you still feel like you are missing someone and that is a bit hard!  So, we pray a lot for them and where they could be right now and their situation.  I pray so often for God's arms to be wrapped around them carrying them and protecting them and whispering to them that everything will be ok.  I pray for their birth family and the situation they are in and the decisions they will be making or already have made and how hard it must be for them to make that decision to give up their child for another to raise...  It is a little overwhelming everything that can and does surround the adoption process.  Things you don't think about when your pregnant with a baby in your tummy.  But, knowing that God is preparing their family for the decision they will make and preparing our hearts and our child's heart for each other is an utterly amazing and overwhelming sense of peacefulness.  This time of year and everyday for that matter is about God and for God and through this journey of ours to get our other child we will praise God and give Him all the glory, because HE IS GOOD!!!

Thanksgiving!!!

What a wonderful time of year to celebrate with your family and friends and to think about what God is doing and has done for you and your family.  We are just so blessed to be His children and to be going through this life with Him.  He is so amazing to show each of us His love through this life and we are forever grateful and thankful.  With each day that goes by we long for our child that is in Ethiopia and even though we don't physically know them we feel them and pray for them each and every day.  It is hard to explain for others to understand.  I guess I can compare it to being pregnant and longing to see your babies face and hold them because you can feel them inside of you, but with adoption you don't have their presence in your body, but God is so gracious to give you that feeling in your heart and it is amazing that He can create that sense of feeling inside you without a physical baby being there.  I am so thankful to God for this journey to adopt another child of His as we are all adopted into His family through knowing Christ!!!!  I pray you know the living God and if you don't please ask! 

Current Fundraising Efforts

Well I will be going to another craft show this weekend with my sister and I will be selling those cute hats with bling on them, you know everyone needs one or two :)!!!  They sold great at the last craft show I did a couple of weeks ago which we also sold some beef jerky which went pretty well and we still have a little bit left so if you would like any-just let us know and Isabella had her cocoa stand which did awesome!!!  She is so funny and quite the little salesperson.  She would call to people when they would walk by saying "Cocoa here-it will make you warm inside".  She is so beautiful to help raise money to bring her brother or sister home and she can't wait!  She had a lemonade stand in the summer and we are thankful to all who came out to support her efforts!  I love how she comes up with the ideas to raise money and it is so precious that God gave her a heart of compassion!  We appreciate all of your support and we greatly appreciate your prayers-we could not do this without them!!!   Also we just started our T-Shirt shoppe through Adoption Bug and there are some great designs on there, so please take a look and pass along the info to you family and friends and Christmas is right around the corner!!!  wink, wink  :)

More of the Story

So, we sent our application in and started our process of going through the paperwork and scheduling our home study.  I was so nervous about the home study, but it was great!!!  Our social worker was just wonderful and made us/me feel so at ease through the process.  We meet with her on three different occasions and received our completed home study the end of June.  During our waiting time we continued to complete our physicals, background checks, financial info etc.  We also had to have letters of reference and we are so thankful for those who did that for us and our family!!!  After we received our finalized home study we were able to apply for our I-600 (immigration background clearance)  we had to be fingerprinted (which I thought was very interesting, Matt not so much since he has had to do it several times with being in the Army).  This is probably the most important piece of paperwork, this piece of paperwork will tell us if we are approved to adopt from Ethiopia and they approved us.  We received our clearance pretty quickly.  So, after that last piece of paperwork came in we got everything notarized and took the items to be State Certified and then made three copies of all the paperwork and mailed it off to AWAA with lots of prayers and we became DTE (Dossier (all our paperwork) to Ethiopia) on 9/30/11.  So now we are in the waiting phase of our adoption and this can take between 10-16 months for us to receive a referral.  During this time we are going to be fundraising like crazy and trusting in God for His perfect timing for Him to bring us our child!!  Please be in prayer for us as we continue our journey to meet our beloved child of His!!!

Our Decision to Adopt

We knew we always wanted to have more children and the old natural way (meds and IUI treatments) didn't work the second time and we did not want to go any further with infertility treatments and we were not disappointed (this time around, but years prior it was very hard) because we knew there was another way to grow our family and that was through adoption.  My husband and I had the apps and looked at different agencies through the years and this last time back in Feb 2011 we had started it again.  This time we or I was more serious about finding the right agency and we kept going back to the one we had first looked at several years earlier and that is America World Adoption Association.  We finally decided on them mainly because they are a Christian based company, great customer service and then the reviews were fantastic and we felt it was the right fit for us.  The only thing was the money-where were we ever going to come up with $30-$35,000.  It is the main reason we had never moved forward before and it was stopping me because of the anxiety that I felt even just talking about i was very overwhelming.  So, one day my husband told me send in the application and there was me, but what about the $$$ where is that going to come from and then he said it- You are not having faith in God to provide if this is what He wants for us He will provide and show us the way.  Talk about a gut check and actually more of a heart/faith check, he was right.  My lack of faith in God (really Cindy, doubting God) has held us back from growing our family for way too long and I am forever thankful for my hubby calling me out on it and who better to hold a mirror in front of you besides the person God has put by your side and the one to lead our family.  So, that night we filled out the application online and sent the application fee and so our journey began....

A little about us

We are the Montoya Family and Matt and I have been married for 14 years and we are the proud parents to Isabella.  We have always desired to have a family and after 8 1/2 years of trying we became pregnant with our daughter and we have been so blessed by her in our lives.  We are continually grateful for this precious gift from God.  Although we are extremely happy with our family we have always wanted to have more children and we didn't care whether or not they are biological or born to us through adoption.  So, after a few years of trying and looking at adoption agencies we took a leap of faith and applied to our adoption agency and we were accepted to begin the process of adoption.  We were excited, but overwhelmed (especially me) with the financial aspect of the adoption.  But through taking the step of faith and trusting in God to provide we have been walking through this process.  Though there are times when we get weary He is always there to pick us up to guide and direct us on the path we need to go.  We have been so blessed thus far and can not wait to see how He continues to nourish and grow us deeper in our faith with Him through this season in our life!