Fun Shaped Pasta is Back!

We have several fundraising opportunities right now. Here's a recap before sharing the latest:

1. Photos by Pamela Ferguson for a $50 donation for outdoor pics and you will be given the CD to print as many pics as you would like. email me if you are interested godforgives@bellsouth.net

2. Want to get healthy and help an orphan? check out www.findtheburn.com. When you order items on this website excluding the heart monitors, and apparel, we will receive 25% of your order. When you place an order please email me your confirmation so that I can forward it to Christina for us to receive the donation. godforgives@bellsouth.net

3. Fill a baby bottle with your spare change and give it to us to cash in! We are randomly passing these out so let us know if you want one or use your own if you have one already! We also would appreciate any donations of bottles that you may have left over that we can use to put labels on and pass out.

4. Note Cards - more to come on this later.

5. Attend our yard sale on May 8th. More details to come.

6. Our latest fundraiser that is more time driven is Fun Shaped Pasta - see below for details. Spread the word.

Right now Lily’s Prayer is fundraising with a great company called “Fun Pasta Fundraising”! We are working hard to raise money to bring home our child from Ethiopia as quickly as possible and we would appreciate your support. Here’s how you can help.

They offer a wide variety of fun and delicious pasta products…Here are just a few of the pastas offered: Cat lovers, Dog lovers, Girlfriend Pasta, Tailgate and Celebrate pasta, Slapshot Hockey Pasta, Soccer, cheerleading, basketball, baseball, Gobble it Up Thanksgiving pasta, Halloween Pasta, Christmas Tree pasta, Cheesy Farm animal pasta, Chili kits, Chicken Noodle pasta(noodles are shaped like chickens) and for Football season there are 27 different College Logo Pastas (Big Orange UT Pasta)!

Check it out – there’s something for everyone! There are meal gift bags available and each pasta comes with its own seasoning and three recipes. And the prices are affordable – you can support our adoption with prices ranging from $6.50 to $11.00.

If you are a local family or friend you may email your order to us at godforgives@bellsouth.net. Be sure to include which items you want, and your quantity. We will then send you a confirmation of your order, your total due and where you can send your check. If you are not local or it would be easier for you to have it shipped directly to your home, you have an opportunity to place an online internet order with Fun Pasta Fundraising. Each order placed sends 40% of your order total directly to our adoption account (excluding the shipping cost for online orders and taxes for TN residents). 40%!!!

So, please go to the link below and have some fun shopping. Make sure if you are ordering online that you don’t forget to enter our account # at checkout so we get the proper credit.

We are taking orders for the next 4 weeks so send this on to all of your family and friends and help us bring home our child! Just think every time you cook a delicious bag of fun shaped pasta you’ll be reminded that you helped with bringing an orphan home to their Forever Family!

First click on the following link to check out the fun pasta for sale

http://www.funpastafundraising.com/images/stories/brochure.pdf

After you have made your selection(s) either email your order to us or

GO TO: www.funpastafundraising.com

Click on the link “CYBER SALES-Support Your Group”

At CHECKOUT, please input our ACCOUNT # LP10

Thanks so much for your continued support!

Haircut and Style Winner is....

Thanks to all who donated for our recent raffle for the $45 gift certificate to Miracles and Thank you Brittany for donating the certificate! The winner is Gretchen Mason! Can't wait to see your new haircut and style!

Thank you to all who donated items to our most recent yard sale and to those who shoppped at our yard sale. God has blessed us beyond belief and to HIM we give all the glory. The yard sale was a huge success. We are now gearing up for our next one on May 8th. We are hoping to blow it out! We are doing a baked goods sale, hopefully face painting and maybe a few other special surprises. We sold out of most everything that was packed in our two car garage so its time to fill it back up. Let us know if you have any items you would like to donate to us and we will arrange to pick them up. We especially want any Kids backyard toys if your children have out grown them. You can email us at godforgives@bellsouth.net. Also if email us if you would like to donate baked goodies for the sale.

Keep praying for us. We are getting closer to being on the waiting list which means we are getting closer to bringing our child home!

What's up with the Scott Family

We are so sorry we have not updated the blog in a while. It's been crazy busy the last couple of weeks. So in a nutshell I will try to summarize what's going on with the Scotts:

We received our Approved Home Study in the mail on 4-2-10. Praise Jesus! We can begin moving forward.

On 4-3-10 we mailed our I-600A to the United States Citizenship Immigration Services in Memphis along with our $830. We now have to be approved by their office to officially adopt internationally. This process can take anywhere from 4-8 weeks. We are praying for 4 rather than 8 obviously!

We are about 75% done with our Dossier paperwork. We hope to have it all completed in the next few weeks so that we are prepared when our I-171H Form arrives. This is the form that has to come from USCIS.

Current Fundraisers!

We are having our first yard sale of 2010 to help raise money for the adoption this Saturday, April 10th 7:30 - 2pm in the Glen Oaks Subdivision follow the signs. We have a ton of new items. Thanks to all who have donated! If you are thinking "Oh man, I forgot to call the scotts about my stuff I have I wanted to donate!". It's okay. We will have another yard sale May 8th when our subdivision does the big one. We have a ton of kids toys. We are running a special on clothing... Fill a Kroger Paper Bag with as much clothing as you can for $5. We have a ton of miscellaneous items, table set, bedding set, Home Interior pictures of Exotic animals (very nice stuff), and lots more.

Pamela Furgeson is currently offering a photo shoot for $50 min. donations or whatever amount above that God may set on your heart to donate for outdoor pictures of your kids, pets, family photos etc. She is currently raising money for her mission trip to Haiti this summer and has offered to donate a portion of the proceeds to our adoption fund as well as another family adopting! How cool to help out three really good causes and have great photos of your family. She will give you the CD to make as many prints as you would like. If you are interested either email Pamela at mommyandmeembroidery@yahoo.com or myself at godforgives@bellsouth.net.

I have a gift certificate for a cut and style valued at $45 donated by Brittany at Miracles in Hendersonville. I have been going to Brittany for several years and she is very good! We are taking $5 donations for entries to win this gift certificate. Just like our last raffle an entry will be made for each $5 donation. So if you donate $10 that will give you two entries and so forth.

Things to pray for: Our child waiting, the funds to be in place each step of the way, Dossier preparation to go smoothly and for us to be on the waiting list by the end of May.

Congratulations to the Kingsbury's on getting their call this week that they officially have a little boy and little girl sibling group waiting to be brought home to their forever family!


God is good ALL the time! ALL the time God is good!

The Winners are.......

Thank you so much to all who donated to our raffle! We are forever grateful and humbled by everyone's generosity. Please excuse our very unprofessional video below announcing the winners. Lily has provided a little comedy and our dog, Abbey, decided she wanted to put in her two cents as well! A huge THANK YOU to Erica Mierop of Signature Finishes and Allen and Vickie Beckner of Jump On It Inflatables! Congratulations to the winners. I will email the winners with the contact info to redeem their prizes. A little tip...you will need to scroll down to the bottom of the blog to pause the music before clicking play on the video.

Ethiopia now a 2 trip Travel Adoption

Wow! If adoption wasn't already expensive enough! Today news broke that Ethiopia will now require adopting parents to travel twice before the adoption is completed. The first travel we will meet our child and attend the court hearing. This was not required before today. We will have to leave our child behind and wait for our Visa appointment with the Embassy to return to bring our child home. This has a lot cons but has pros as well. We will get to meet our child a little sooner and we will not be required to re-adopt our child once bringing them home to the united states. This is the same process that Haiti required so we are familiar with this process but Ethiopia is much more expensive to travel to being that it is so far away compared to Haiti. This now adds about $6000 to our total of $19,000 we still need to raise. The first trip we will both be required to travel but most likely the second trip only one spouse will be required so worst case scenario David will travel alone to bring our child home. Yes I said David because most of you know me well enough to know God is stretching me to make the first trip! (ha!ha!) Basically, we are not worried about it at this time. We know that God is totally in control and he is in the details. We'll just have to be patient and continue moving forward to let God continue writing HIS story through our adoption journey!

Please be in prayer for our home study to be wrapped up and approved in the next couple of weeks. We are right there at the end of it trying to cross every T and dot every I. We have a deadline for a grant we are applying for that is due April 15 and we can't apply again until October 15 if we miss it. We have to have the approved home study in order to apply.

Only six days including today remaining for our current Donation Raffle. If you've been meaning to donate for an entry please do so soon before time runs out! We are at 53 entries! God is so amazing! We give him all the glory for how far we have come on this journey! Please spread the word and help us reach 100 entries by Monday March 15th.

In HIS Grip!

Two weeks left!

There are only two weeks remaining for our donation raffle. We are still praying for a total of 100 entries by March 15th. We currently have a total of 33 entries. As for the 40 entries we were praying for by the end of the week, God continues blessing us and we are only 13 entries away from meeting that first goal. We are praying for 13 more donation entries by Wednesday.

We've noticed we have many readers from all over the United States and wanted to give a big THANK YOU to you all for following our journey! We've had one reader as far as Australia - totally cool!

Enter to win a Bathroom or Children's Room painted by Erica of Signature Finishes, Valued at $500 or for a chance to win a free day's rental from Jump On It Inflatable For every $20 donation made to our adoption fund Starting February 15th thru March 15th you will be entered in the drawing for a chance to win. $20 =1 entry, $40 = 2 Entries,$100 =5 Entries, etc. You get the idea! Services must be redeemed in the Middle TN area and are not redeemable for cash. See our post titled "Enter to Win" to see pics of Erica's work and our post "Donation Raffle Update" for details on the rental. You can make your donation through the donation button here on our website or mail us a check made payable to Cindy Scott at 1015 West Kirkland Ave, Suite 202, Nashville,TN 37216. We will post a short video of Lily pulling out the winning name for each prize on our blog no later than March 20th. So brown brag your lunch for a week or skip Starbucks a few times and donate to have a chance to win! How cool to make a $20 donation to help an orphan come home to their forever family and have a chance to win an awesome painted room worth $500 or have the coolest yard toy in the neighborhood for a day!



Blessings,
Cindy

Lily is Twelve today!

I can not believe that my baby girl is twelve years old today! God has truly blessed us with an amazing young lady. We are so proud of her accomplishments and are so honored that God chose us to be her mom and dad. She is so full of life, dreams and has such a huge heart for God. I wished that at her age I would have been half as wise. As I've mentioned in our very first post about our journey leading to Lily's prayer, she has been a prayer warrior since the age of two. It has officially been a little over ten years now that she has been praying to be a big sister. She has not once let go of that dream. She has always shown great faith in believing that one day God will answer her prayer. She too is growing so much on this journey along with her mom and dad. She is learning that God does answer prayers but its in HIS timing and sometimes HIS answers are packaged different than our answers. My prayer for her going into this next year is that she will have her little brother or sister by her next birthday! We know our God is BIG and HE can and HE will move mountains to bring our child home soon in HIS perfect timing.

Please pray about helping us answer Lily's prayer by making a donation even if it's five dollars because as I say all the time....Little is much when God is in it! We are still praying for 100 entries by the 15th of March for our raffle. We are currently 69 entries away from that goal. God has been so good through the generosity of many people already this week. We only need 15 more donations to reach our goal of 40 by the end of this week.

Thank you all so much for taking a moment to read and keep up with our journey!

If you can, please take a moment to post a Happy Birthday wish to Lily! She would love that!

Blessings,
Cindy