While We're Waiting....

Since I am obviously horrible at blogging.......this post will just be an update from my heart on where we are in our adoption process.
Last October we were able to do a "Both Hands" project through Lifesong.  Through many generous prayers, work, and donations we were able to send our dossier (paperwork) over to Ethiopia (DTE is what it will be referred to).  We were so appreciative for all that everyone did to help in the journey to our little guy.  Since being DTE on November 4, 2011, we we given a $4,000 grant from Show Hope!  This was amazing and very encouraging!  This grant will help in accepting the referral for our little guy when the time comes.  We have been DTE for 5 months....which basically means we are just waiting for a referral.  We have not seen a picture nor do we know a name, but we pray for him daily.  We pray that God will open doors and trust in His timing.  All in all, I think we've been fairly patient....including our girls.....but it can be hard at times.  We have seen God bring home some children from the Congo that we have been praying for....SO EXCITED and love these little ones and their families!  It has been neat to see their journey along the way. 
I would have to say that, in the last 4 months, God has truly been working in our lives.  There is so much that I don't even have the time to share....but daily walking in the Spirit has been a challenge that we are praying for strength to do, faithfully, each day.  God is faithful.  God has been faithful.  God is GOOD!  We trust Him.  We trust His timing.  We trust His plans and purposes....even when we do not understand. 

Would you continue to pray for us?  Pray for our family.  We want to be in God's light.  We want to share God's light.  Pray, also, as we continue raising the funds for travel expenses.  We still have several cookbooks, we sell coffee, and we're working on our next big event!  Details to come.....

Cookbooks $10 (add $2 if shipped)
Coffee  www.justlovecoffee.com/thekrausfamily

Thanks to all for your continued prayer and support!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKkHi5lJ4yc

Over the Summer

So....I'm really not good about keeping a blog updated! So much has been happening since my last post. The girls have all started school....Courtney in 8th grade, Caity in 5th grade, and Chloe goes to Preschool 2 days a week. I started teaching music classes to the 1st-5th grades at Gray Road Christian School last week and add the PreK and K5 this week. All piano lessons have started back up again too. This should be a busy week! I'm very thankful for the "job" that God has allowed me to have so that my girls can attend the great schools that they are at. (Plug for Gray Road Christian and Greenwood Christian Academy!!!)

Adoption News: The summer was spent getting our dossier (huge amounts of paperwork) ready to send to Ethiopia. We are waiting on our final document (I-171H)!!!!!!! Once we have that document I will make a ton of copies of everything and then, in God's time, send it off! I say "in God's time" because we are waiting to see Him provide!!!! God continues to send in financial support from friends. It's so amazing to see Him work! It's also very humbling!

We have just been approved to begin our next big project....BOTH HANDS! If you've never heard of this...YOU NEED TO! It's something very exciting that God has placed in our laps. We're in the process of getting a team gathered to support us and doing the project mid-October. Time is important because we need to avoid the holidays and we don't want to wait until the beginning of next year. We've also filled out a few grants that we will not hear about for several months....but the hard/busy part is done.

If you're asking, "What can I do?"....here are some specific things we need:

1. PRAYER! Prayer for us to be patient as we wait on God and His timing in bringing a little boy to our family.

2. SUPPORT! Consider joining our Both Hands team! Every donation we receive through this is tax-deductible and 100% of the donation goes towards our adoption.

3. BUY or SELL! We still have about 70 cookbooks left....that would bring in $700!!! That would great help in having the funds available to send our Dossier to Ethiopia.

Thanks for your love and support! "Taste and see that the Lord is good"!!!!

On our way!!!

I can't believe it's been so long since I've updated our blog. I guess with Facebook it seems like everyone gets the scoop anyway! :-) So.....some of this will be old news to many of you, but we are praising God for every step of the way!

We were officially accepted to the Ethiopia program through America World Adoption Agency. We've sent in our first payment, been assigned our Family Coordinator, applied to The Miriam Project for our home study, and started the "paper chase" process. This last week has been a busy one! We have a few appointments this week and hope to hear when our first home study visit will be. It seems like there is so much to do and we're gradually wrapping our brains around what should happen and when. The entire process can be so confusing at times, but I'm thankful for great friends and a great agency that will help us and answer many questions.

Our cookbook sale, Taste and See, has gone great! We've sold over 250 cookbooks. At this point, we have about 100 cookbooks left for sale. Our total profit for the cookbook fundraiser, when they are all sold should be $2,700!!!!!!! We are so pleased!

This morning we, along with our friends' Andrew and Rachel Hancock, hosted a "Walk for Adoption" for our family and friends. We met at Independence Park at 9:30 and most everyone walked around the track once....some did many laps! (overachievers!!!!! haha!) We had many family and friends donate snacks and drinks to hand out. We also had many help in various ways....making signs, keeping track of the donation boxes, and helping with the snacks. God has blessed us with such a great team! I am so thankful for the body of Christ!!!!! I don't have the total donated for this event yet, but we are once again amazed at God's provision!

So, we continue the paper chase and wait for God's direction at every point. We know God is bigger than anything we face through this process! We trust in Him!

Taste and See COOKBOOK!

We have collected many recipes from family and friends and are ready to launch our cookbook fundraiser! The cookbook is being submitted this week and should take about a month and a half in production. They will be here in time for Mother's Day gifts.....so plan ahead! :-)

The cookbook will be a soft-cover, spiral bound, 250 recipe cookbook. The cost is $10 per book. We are taking pre-orders so that we have a general idea of how many to order. If you are interested, please email me at christy.kraus@gmail.com. If you are out of state there may be a small shipping fee....I will get that info. for you.

Please feel free to share this post or our blog/story with your family and friends! We are excited to see what God has in store for us. Lord willing, we will be "moving along" with the next phase soon!!!

Looking forward to seeing God's plan for us unfold!
Christy

Waiting...

Well, it's been a few months since we've posted. We've been faithfully working on our debt and longing for the moment when we would be able to say we've been accepted and are waiting to hear back from the agency. Waiting. It's a funny word. It shows just how patient you are, and how wrong your previous opinion on your own level of patience actually is. Waiting. It's what we've been doing - not for the day to come, but just for the day to even begin. Waiting. That can be a rather depressing word, and yet God's word is full of admonitions for us to do just that - wait:

"Trust in the LORD, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in Him, and He will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday. Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him;"

I made Psalm 37:4 my life verse a long time ago. "Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart." I've tried, and failed often to make Him my pleasure. I've seen times when He has been just that, and my desires are for nothing more than Him, and I've seen Him work desires in me that I have never had before. This adoption is one of those desires. And yet I failed to take the passage as a whole!

He starts by commanding us to trust Him. Does this desire not require trust? He tells us to live and to be faithful. Does this desire not require faithful living? He tells us to commit our way to Him, to trust in Him and know He will act. Should we expect anything less if we truly are following His leading and faithfully living in that light? And He tells us He will use this in our lives to mold us and make us new. We, just have to wait.

"Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness." God put us in this very time period that our faith might be tested, and in so testing might give us the patience we need to wait. When we look at all that God has done in this process so far, and see all that He has provided, how can we see this as anything but a wonderful thing?

Yes. We wait. Yes. We have a strong desire. But as has been my prayer since the beginning and will continue to be my prayer, I ask that God works in us to make us ready for our little guy. Looks like He's been answering my prayer.

His,

Kevin

A Thankful Heart

My heart is full. I have so much to be thankful for! It's the day after Thanksgiving and we spent a wonderful day with my parents on Thanksgiving Day. I felt very blessed to have my grandparents there too! Please continue to pray for my Grandma's health and for strength for my Grandpa as he cares for her.

Today, as a family, we picked out our Christmas tree. It's fun to make these memories with the girls. Right now we're enjoying some Christmas movies together and just enjoying family time. Yes, God is good and there is so much to be thankful for. I'm thankful for my family, my church home, and the girls' school families (Gray Rd. and Greenwood Christian). I'm thankful for wonderful friends who encourage us in the Lord. I'm thankful for a warm home and all our needs provided. Most of all, I'm thankful for my Savior. Of course, adoption is on our hearts constantly but I am still amazed and thankful that I was adopted into the best family there ever will be.....God's family!

I want to share an email that my sister sent out to her friends. Please pray that God will use this to help us on our adoption journey. I am thankful for how she has allowed God to use her to be such a blessing in this way!

From Jen........

In an effort to help my sister and brother-in-law with some funds for their upcoming adoption, I have decided to put together a cookbook fundraiser for them! God laid this on my heart as a way to be a blessing to this family that I love so much. So I am asking for help from those of you whom I know love them too and want this process to move along as quickly as possible. In the very near future, I will be sending information on how you can order this very special cookbook! But for now, what I need are your favorite recipes...and your prayers! Please pray that this fundraiser will happen smoothly and that it will be successful and that God will use it to make this adoption process happen in HIS timing and in HIS way!

Here is how you can share YOUR special recipes...

1.) Go to http://www.typensave.com/.

2.) Click on the "login" button.

3.) Beside "Contributor Name", enter your name as you would like it to appear in the cookbook.

4.) Group Login: Africa

5.) Password: Krausfamily

6.) Read the Welcome Page, then click on "Add Recipe".

7.) A new window will pop up that will give you instructions and allow you to easily submit a recipe.

For now, I have set the max number of recipes for the book at 300 and the max number submitted by any one person at 7. I can change that later if need be.

I am grateful in advance for those of you who will be able to submit recipes and to later purchase a cookbook! I can't wait to see the finished product!

If you have any questions, you can either send me a message on Facebook or email me at singnjen92@yahoo.com.

Thank you,

Jenny Johnson

Psalm 34:8 ~ "O taste and see that the Lord is good."

I do hope many of you will pray for us! Please feel free to post recipes! And when the time comes, order your cookbooks! :-)

Love to all!!!!!

Christy

Please join us in prayer!

http://www.orphansunday.org/