The Reese Family Adventures

July 17, 2019

Hello friends! I am sorry I’ve been a little MIA on the blog during the past few weeks. We have been very busy trying to finish up our adoption study paperwork and as of about 5pm Monday, we have finished!! Praise the Lord! We are so excited to have this step completed! Here is a little recap of what has happened over the last month and a half:

June was filled with yard sale preparation, the actual sale, lots of paperwork, Vacation Bible School and many reminders of God’s grace and faithfulness through it all. During the weeks leading up to the yard sale, our house had steadily been taken over by all the wonderful items you all had donated. We are overwhelmed how many of you took the time to look through your houses and generously donate so many wonderful things to our sale, precious friends who showed up at our house just asking what we need and offering to help, friends who gave us tents and tables to use for the sale, friends who worked on Friday gathering, organizing, and pricing items and friends who worked all day on Saturday, from early in the morning to late in the afternoon, lifting heavy boxes and furniture and helping yard sale customers with joy and kindness, thank you is not enough! We really could not have done this sale without your vital help. We love you all!

Praise the Lord, we only saw a few sprinkles throughout the day. My mom said that she was looking at the radar and it seemed as though there were rain showers all around us, but we never had more than 10-15 minutes of drizzle. We know that was the Lord. We had a great turn out and were able to raise about $1,500 to contribute to our adoption fund!! Thank you so much for those who prayed for the sale and continue to pray for us through this process. I will list some specific requests at the end, but I cannot tell you how much it means when someone tells us that they have been praying daily for us!

The Rooted Designs shop is still going strong, thanks to your support! When I first had the idea to make jewelry to raise money for the adoption, I thought that it would be so amazing if Rooted Designs could go beyond just helping to raise funds for our adoption. I’m praying that after our adoption is complete, Rooted Designs will continue to grow and that funds from there will be able and help support other families who are adopting or serving the Lord in some way. I have loved designing and making this jewelry and I would love to use it to share the love of Jesus with others.

There are new items being added almost daily to the shop, so be on a lookout and continue to share with your friends near and far! It is so fun to see you post pictures on Facebook and Instagram or see you in person wearing your jewelry from Rooted Designs! It’s just another way we feel your support! Rooted Designs is now on Instagram @rooteddesignsshop! In the coming days, I’ll be doing some behind the scenes videos and some fun updates on things coming soon to the shop, so be sure to follow over there as well as our Facebook page.

Will you pray with us?

1. Continue to pray that each step in the adoption process will continue to move forward smoothly.
2. Now that we have finished our home study paperwork,  we will have a home study visit by our social worker. This is a very exciting step in the process because we are one step closer to becoming a “waiting family”.  With the acceptance of our home study, we will need to make a $7,000 payment. Currently, we are about $2,000 short of this in our fund. Will you pray that we can make this payment? Our prayer from the beginning is that we would never have to pause the process due to lack of funds, so please pray that with us.
3. After our home study visit is completed, we can begin applying for grants. Please pray that we will be able to receive many grants to help offset the remaining total cost of the adoption, which after we make the $7,000 payment will be about $28,000. We are excited to see how God will continue to provide.
4. In October, we will be attending a training that is required for all adoptive parents in our agency. Pray that this time will be an encouraging and informative step in our adoption journey.

We have had some trouble with our fundraising site, but we have now got it up and running! Our new site address is http://www.purecharity.com/reesefamilyadoption.

Thank you all for praying and sharing!!

June 1, 2019

First of all, I just wanted to say thank you to all of you for your encouraging words and prayers for us as we begin this journey. We are so blessed by your support and those of you who have agreed to pray with us throughout this process. At the end of this blog, I’ll share a few specific requests as we head into the next few weeks. We cannot wait to see all that the Lord will do in this specific adoption and how He will use it for His glory. 

In the coming weeks, we have some big things happening. First of all, we have our yard sale coming up on June 8th. We have already begun gathering things to sell, in fact, our dining room has turned into “yard sale central”. Thank you everyone who has donated and volunteered to help on the day of the sale. Please continue to share with your friends and bring us anything you are wanting to get rid of! 

Second, a sweet friend of ours, Bailey Powers, is hosting an online Thirty-One party to help fundraise for our adoption. She is a great Thirty-One consultant and has very generously offered to give us any commission she would make off of the online party! The link to shop the online party is: https://www.mythirtyone.com/us/en/1999332?pd=11286335&fbclid=IwAR1EfsVPBYQnK2_3jNu6avfP7Mz-EIcvW8sqlT2VnjoEY55EzhI8h1c7_i

More information about the Thirty-One party can be found on my personal Facebook page (Carolyn Reese), on our family Facebook page, The Reese Family Adventures, or on our Instagram @thereesefamilyadventures. Please feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested! 

Thirdly, thank you so much for sharing and supporting Rooted Designs! I am excited to say I can now offer shipping for out of town customers! My sweet mother-in-law bought me some cute envelopes to package all your goodies in, so they will even look pretty getting to you! Please keep sharing with your friends and keep me busy making jewelry! 

We have just recently launched our fundraiser page for our adoption! The site is www.purecharity.com/jordanandcarolynreesefamilyadoption. There, people can read a little bit about our heart for adoption and give a tax-deductible donation that goes directly to our “account” at our adoption agency. We would so appreciate if  you would consider sharing our story with your friends and family and prayerfully consider giving. We knew going into this, that even with the money we save, we wouldn’t be able to do this on our own, but at the same time, we know this is what God has called us to do, so we are stepping out and trusting that we will have everything we need to follow Him in obedience to this calling. We have already seen Him provide in so many ways along this journey already which has been such a blessing and encouragement to us.

Prayer Requests:

1) Yard Sale, June 8th- Pray for great weather, a great turn out, and opportunities to share about why we are choosing to adopt and the hope we have in Jesus. 

2) Home Study- In the next month, we will be completing all our paperwork, classes, and trainings needed before our home study visit. Please pray for us as we complete all these things. 

3) Financial Needs- Upon completion of this paper work we will need to make a pretty large payment toward our total goal of $35,000. Please pray with us that our fundraisers and donations will cover this cost. We are praying that we will never have to be in a situation where we will have to pause the adoption process because of finances. 

Lastly, I just wanted to say again how thankful we are for each word of encouragement and support, each prayer lifted on our behalf, each piece of jewelry purchased, each thing donated to our yard sale, each “share” on social media. I don’t know whether you all know this, but whenever you help or give, even if you think it’s in a little way, it’s a big deal to us, and we are all so blessed by the love and excitement you have shared with us. 

May 16, 2019

Thank you so much for joining together with us as our family follows where the Lord is leading and begins the process of adoption. We hope that as we share this journey with you, it encourage you to consider where you and your family fit in when it comes to caring for the unborn (and birth families), for orphans, and for foster children. We know that not every family is called to adopt, or to foster children, but we do think that we, as believers, must consider our part in caring for vulnerable children. 

For Jordan and I, adoption has always been something we have thought about, but we never had peace about moving forward with the process until March of this year. Both Jordan and I, during our individual times with the Lord felt Him calling us to move forward and begin the official process of adoption. For me, I got to the point where I felt the Lord so clearly calling us to adoption that I knew that if we did not move forward and obey this calling, that we would be directly disobeying the Lord. It is so amazing to look back and see how God spoke to Jordan and I both individually and as a couple, giving us peace and excitement. Our children are also so excited. In fact, they all pray each night that God would give us a baby through adoption. It has been so fun to see how even at their young ages, God has placed an excitement, love, and care for adoption in their hearts. 

After attending an information meeting, we submitted our preliminary application and just received word today that we are officially accepted! The timing of our acceptance is just another testimony of the Lord’s kindness and love. Maybe I will share more about that later, but already throughout this process, we have seen, more times than we can count, the Lord at work in the little details, encouraging us as we go along. I think of the Israelites when they were wandering in the desert for forty years. God didn’t leave them to wander alone, in silence. “The Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to lead them on their way during the day and in a pillar of fire to give them light at night, so that they could travel day or night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night never left its place in front of the people” (Exodus 13:21-22). God didn’t have to care for the Israelites like this, but He did out of His magnificent grace. We are so thankful for the way we have seen God lead, guide, and work in our adoption journey so far. 

The thing we know will carry us through this often unpredictable journey of adoption is prayer. We would love it if you will lift our family up in prayer throughout this whole process. I will be posting prayer requests as we go along and we would be honored if you would support us in that way. If you would commit to praying for our family, would you mind sending me a Facebook or Instagram message, or just leave a comment below this post? I would love to compile a list of names of all the people that were praying during this time to give to our future son/daughter. I think it will be such a blessing and encouragement to see how loved they were by so many people even before they were born.

What follows next will be for us to gather all the paperwork and documents needed for our home study. During this time, we are going to begin fundraising. We knew going into this, that if this was the Lord’s will for us, that He would provide everything we needed. Domestic adoption right now costs approximately $35,000. Looking at that number, it is easy for us to feel discouraged, knowing that we do not have that kind of money laying around, but because we are so sure that the Lord is calling us to adoption, we are confident that He will provide what is needed to welcome a new baby into our home through adoption. We know that He wouldn’t call without providing what we need to follow in obedience, so we are stepping out in confidence knowing this. 

The first way we plan on raising adoption funds is by hosting a Yard Sale for Adoption on Saturday, June 8th from 6am-12pm at our house. This is where we would love your help! First, if you have any yard sale items you would like to donate to the yard sale, we would love for you to bring them to our house anytime on Friday, June 7th. We will have your items for sale at the yard sale and anything that doesn’t sell, we will donate to Injoy Ministries. We would also love to have help the day of the yard sale.  Following the sale, we will have a hotdog lunch as a way for us to thank you all! We hope that it will be a fun day and a great way to kick off our adoption fundraising. 

Another way we will be fundraising is through “Rooted Designs”. I have been hard at work creating hand-made bracelets and earrings that I will have for sale. Be sure to check out and “like” my Rooted Designs Facebook page and share with your friends! There, I will post the things I have available to purchase. The name “Rooted Designs” is taken from Ephesians 3:14-22, which are some verses I have been praying over this adoption journey so far. It says, “For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with the power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith-that you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him Who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the powered at work within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever, Amen.”

We will also be accepting tax-deductible donations through the website: www.purecharity.com/jordanandcarolynreesefamilyadoption. The money raised here will go directly to our agency to fund the expenses of our adoption process.

If you have made it this far, thank you so much for listening to a little bit of our heart for adoption and how we plan to move forward in our journey. I hope to keep this blog up to date as much as possible, so that you can journey along with us. We also have a family Instagram page that we will keep updated (@thereesefamilyadventures) as well as our family Facebook page: The Reese Family Adventures. Thank you so much, for your prayers and support friends! We are excited to see all that the Lord is going to do in and through this adoption journey!