UPDATE: 11/19/15

Our family is so blessed to be bringing home another precious girl from China. We arrived home in mid-June 2015 with Lila but we knew even before we left that we would be returning soon to China. Why? Why would we decide to return so quickly for another girl? The answer is GOD. We have been broken as we have seen the thousands of children that wait worldwide for a family. God commands us throughout the Bible to care for widows and orphans, to love our "neighbors" and share His love with the world. We are stepping out in faith and are hoping you will join us!

We know that not everyone can adopt but we can all support it in one or another. This isn't about us, it's about a sweet child in China who is waiting for a family of her own to love and belong to!

A fellow adoptive mom, Jenny Garity recently shared this post, it pretty well sums up our reasons for taking on a second adoption at this time.

"When you see my fundraising posts you might be asking yourself: Why in the world would someone who just completed an adoption and used all of their financial resources go running back to China for another child? Why wouldn't they wait until they've had time to save money again? I know you might ask yourself these questions because I would have been wondering the same thing just a few short years ago. So why?

• Because once you've been down the adoption road, you can't stop thinking about all of the children that have been left behind. 

• Because children don't belong in orphanages and you have a great sense of urgency to see these children in families, where they belong. 

• Because you can't un-see what you've seen on this journey, whether it's the inside of an orphanage or the faces of waiting children looking back at you, page after page on your computer screen. 

• Because you see with your own eyes the impact, both physically and emotionally, that the love of a family has on your child.

• Because we were not put on this earth to love and serve ourselves. We are here to love and serve God and others...to put the needs of others before our own. 

• Because God commands us in His word to defend orphans and to satisfy the needs of the oppressed. 

• Because you realize that the things money can buy are nothing compared to the redemption of a child's life.

• Because you have faith that if God has called you to this, He will provide. 

• Because it doesn't matter how hard this journey is, what matters is that children need families. 

• Because you've had a fire lit in your heart, a burning passion to see the orphan crisis come to an end.

The 153 million orphans worldwide are not someone else's problem, they are OUR responsibility. We ALL have a role to play in caring for these children. We can adopt, foster, pray, provide support financially and in lots of other ways.
It takes a VILLAGE to adopt a child. Thank you for being our village!"

That pretty much sums up our hearts. We are so excited to see what God has in store for us and our new family member!  

Monday, Monday! 4/13/15 Update

It's Monday!  Monday's are happy days in our China adoption circles as they are typically "family" days - the days when families are united with their children in China!! Every Monday morning I eagerly look forward to seeing the pictures of families meeting their beautiful sons and daughters who, praise God, are orphans no longer!! What a blessing and an encouragement to watch these stories, share these journeys and then to finally see that first family photo!  We gaze longingly, knowing that someday it will be us holding Lila and shedding tears of joy to have her finally with us.

Latest pic from her BFF's
birthday party

It's hard to believe, but that day for us could be in just 8 or 9 Mondays!  Over a year of planning, working, fundraising, waiting (and waiting and waiting) will all be over soon and we can begin the work of bonding and attaching that is all a part of this adoption marathon. Please pray with us for Lila's heart!  We have read books, attending trainings and generally "know" what things we can expect, but really we have no idea. Each child is unique, with their own temperament, emotions, experiences, memories, fears, etc. We must learn how to love Lila in ways that she specifically needs.  We will learn what scares her, what soothes her, what makes her happy, what foods she doesn't like, what things she likes to play with, how she sleeps, how to make her laugh, and so much more!  We look forward to these lessons but also know that it will be hard work, there will be tears, frustrations, possible even temper tantrums (after all she is our daughter and 2!).  Please pray specifically we will have wisdom and patience as we love her and woo her heart.

As I mentioned we are in the final stages now with travel coming soon.  We are currently waiting for our I800 (permission from US Immigration to bring Lila home) approval.  Once we have that there are just 2-3 additional short steps until we will be waiting for travel approval (TA) from China. When that arrives we  will mostly travel within 1-2 weeks - fast!!! Please pray all these steps go smoothly.   It's a very exciting time!

The last piece is finances.  We have come such a long way and are so thankful for each and every source of funding - grants, personal donations, sales of bracelets, hats, tshirts, and baked goods.
In order for us to travel though we need to raise the last $6000. Its a lot yes, but not compared to how far we've come!!  I posted on our fb page today if just 100 people donated $60 each we'd be there - fully funded!!!  It sounds so doable to me and in fact, we already have our first $60!!!! Yea!  God has been so good to us, proving everything we have needed along the way and we are trusting that He knows exactly where this final amount will come from.  Would you please pray that God will bring in this last $6000. Please pray and consider helping us - any amount is greatly appreciated!!

Update . . . and a name!

Time for a little update as we patiently (or some days, not-so-patiently) wait for our LOA (letter of approval) from the Chinese government to proceed with our adoption.  We really are in the final stages people!! Once LOA arrives the average time to travel is 8-10 weeks!!! SQUEEEEEEEE!!  If you've followed our FB posts, that is the reason you've seen a lot of packing posts.  I'm eagerly trying to get easy stuff out of the way - buying supplies, washing/ironing/packing clothes for Lila, getting our luggage situation squared away (what we are taking for checked bags, carry-ons, etc.), making copies of documents, making appointments with the travel clinic for vaccines and prescriptions.  All these things keep me busy and really to help to pass the time!  Next week you'll probably see a flurry of . . ."we cleaned this room today" as the Spring cleaning fever and nesting are definitely making their way to the surface!!

As for funding, it may seem like I say this a lot, but we are so thankful and grateful for all the support and donations we have received.  We currently have a little under $10,000 left to raise!!  We have 5 more grant applications out and are praying for some favorable responses to help make up the difference!  God is so faithful and has provided for every amount we have needed each step along the way and we are confident He will provide this last "little" bit! (ok, in no one's mind is $10,000 a little bit, but considering the amount raised so far . . . . ).   If you would like to help - every single donation is so appreciated!! - please visit our You Caring page.  Thank you!!

How about some fun news?  It looks like we may have settled on a middle name for our sweet girl.  We (ok mostly I) have struggled with this decision! Should we include part of her Chinese name? Should we wait and see what the nannies call her?  I think this is a very personal decision for international adoptive families - and the thing is, no one is right!  You just have to do what is right for your family!  I know people talk about "taking away the only things they have", etc., but in the end we decided that the name given to her by the government (or orphanage) really wasn't an emotional thing.  For the most part, the children are given a surname that corresponds to the city where they are located - all of the children at our daughter's orphanage have the same last name.  Of her other two names, one is most likely a name given to every child born that particular year, or found the year she was or something like that.  So you can see, no one lovingly cared for her and spent time with before deciding on what name would fit her personality, or "go with" her, or be best suited for her.  It was not emotional.  Names are important in any culture! We all have names we like and names that just make us cringe (I'll refrain from sharing mine since I don't want to offend anyone, but it's no secret that I like plain, old-fashioned, uncomplicated names.  You may not, and that's ok for you and your children!!).

That being said, we have decided to give her the name Lila Mei-Lin.  Throughout this process we have always liked the name Mei since the meanings include, beautiful, pretty and younger sister.  Lin has various meanings including beautiful jade (disclaimer: this is all what we have found online, we have not consultant anyone about specific Chinese characters, etc.).  We like the way it flows together!  Am I going to be sorry about the hyphenation someday? Perhaps, I don't like to complicate things but we just like the way it looks better than un-hypenated.

Please continue to pray with us that we will receive approvals and visas and all the things necessary in a timely manner! We're praying for early June travel, but realize all things are in God's hands not ours.

UPDATE: BIG News!!

Goodness, I've been really bad at updating!  There is so much to tell you that has happened since January 1st!

As I mentioned in a previous update, we mailed all of our dossier documents to our agency on December 15th.  They in turn prepared the documents and sent everything out to be authenticated on December 23rd - right before the holidays!  I'm convinced God was using this to once again teach me patience (really wish I could just learn that lesson already)!  Over the next 4 weeks we waited for word that our dossier had returned to our agency and sent to China (this is known as DTC - Dossier to China).  On January 23, 2015 we got the great news that we were DTC!! What a great feeling!! An even greater feeling was to come just 1 short week later when we learned on January 30, 2015 that we were LID (that stands for Logged In Date)!!  Amazing!! We were now in for one of the hardest waits of this process - waiting for approval from China followed by Travel Approval (TA).

Only one thing stood in our way - we were not yet matched with our sweet daughter!  This has been by far one of the hardest "waits" of this whole process!! If you remember we started this crazy journey of adoption last March.  Our homestudy seemed to take forever (we all know I'm being a bit dramatic here!).  Since last March we have hoped and prayed for our daughter, we have watched our agency's list of waiting children and prayed over several of these precious ones.  We thought we were close on several occasions only to receive a firm "no" from God.  Heartbreak is something we understand and have learned to thank God for.  Through these difficult times He was teaching us to trust Him more, to love Him more, to seek His will for our lives (not what we tell God we'd like His will to be - HUGE!) and to wait patiently (there's that word again!).  It has definitely not been easy! But God is so gracious, He has blessed us with His Word and in it we have found comfort, hope, rebuke, and confidence that He was indeed working out His plan for our family!

We had heard from several people to be ready! Once we were LID it was entirely possible that "the" perfect file would come to us soon!  So we waited with thankful hearts knowing we could trust God to reveal our daughter!!

Thursday, February 5th we received a call from our case worker.  She had a file that they had just received that might be a great fit for our family and she wondered if we'd be interesting in reviewing it?  Ummmm, YES!  I waited in front of my computer until the file arrived.  It wasn't a huge file, just a few short pages, but as I read it I felt a sense of knowing - maybe it was just hoping - but I definitely had a feeling like this could be "her"!  I immediately forwarded it to my husband at work.  As we talked about it we both felt that this was very promising so I rushed off to have our doctor review the file.  I was also able to forward her file to a sweet angel of a lady in the adoption community who offered to have the file reviewed by a pediatric specialist!

Our pediatrician called me within an hour - yea!  It was pretty much a green light from her but we decided to wait for the specialists review.  Time to insert that word - patience - again!  It wasn't that long in the grand scheme of things but we waited until Sunday night to get the review from the specialist.  The wait was so worth it as it was favorable, pretty much what we had hoped for and didn't contain anything that we were not prepared for!  

That night - Sunday night, I sent an email off to our caseworker accepting the file and asking for her to submit a Letter of Intent for us on her behalf.  We got a call Monday (1/9/15) morning that our LOI had been submitted and we now waited for PA (pre-approval).  A fast turnaround was something I dared to hope and pray for but I kept reminding myself that it would most likely be at least a week before we received word.

It is with tremendously grateful hearts and praise to God that we can announce that we received our PA today - 2/10/15!! Our precious girl has found her home and we are in love!  May I introduce to you the newest Masse - Lila!

Isn't she the sweetest?  I am so overwhelmed with love for her, it's indescribable really!  We will have more information coming but please pray for us as we now wait for our LOA!! If our timeline continues on schedule we are looking to possibly travel in late May or early June!! I am SO READY!!  Thank you all for your prayers and support for us during this last year - stick with us a bit longer - this is the FUN part!!!

Julie

P.S.  We are still in the process of raising the funds needed to complete our adoption.  If you'd like to help with that please go to our YouCaring site.  THANK YOU so much!!

2015$ is ALMOST HERE!

Merry Christmas 2014 from the Masse Family (awaiting 1 more)!

The big day has come and gone but we trust that the truth and joy of Christmas will remain with us forever!  This Advent season our family used a new book from Sovereign Grace Ministries called Prepare Him Room.  It was an excellent guide as we set out to focus on the gift of God's Son.  What I didn't know when I ordered it was that the short story included for reading was set in an orphanage!  I've wondered if we are more sensitive to things pertaining to orphans and adoption or has God been placing orphans before us more than ever in preparation for our family's addition? I'm not sure really, but what a joy to see how He continues to prepare our hearts and give us more and greater love for these precious children!

We are just 1 week away from launching 2015$ - Two Thousand Fifteens - our upcoming fundraiser!  Since my last update, our agency received our dossier and sent it off for the authentication process! Due to the holidays it will probably take a bit of extra time for this step, however we can expect to be DTC (dossier to China) in 2-3 weeks!! WOOOOOHOOO!  What a huge step this is! All of our documents have been gathered and once they arrive in China we will be in the waiting phase - waiting for our referral (our match with our daughter), waiting for our letter approval (known as LOA in the adoption world) and then waiting for TA (travel approval).

If you remember from my last post our 2015$ - Two Thousand Fifteens fundraiser will begin on January 1, 2015.  We are praying and asking God to put it on the hearts of 2000 people to donate just $15 to our YouCaring adoption fund! That's HUGE I know, but God is so much bigger than that and we are trusting in His provision!

There's one final aspect of this fundraiser to share - and hopefully this will be fun for lots of YOU!  As a small way of thanking people for donating during this fundraiser we have prizes to give away.   For every 50 donations made we will draw a name from all the donors and that lucky winner will receive an EXCLUSIVE, made-only-for-this-fundraiser, handmade (by me) leather and bead wrap bracelet, aka a Bracelet For One.  I'm apologize there isn't a picture yet, (I'm waiting on the supplies to arrive,) but it's been designed and will be very special and gorgeous!  Think of it, if we receive 2000 donations you would have 40 chances to WIN! :)

Here's a summary:

• Would you be willing to donate $15 toward our adoption on January 1st?  
• Would you be willing to SHARE this event with your friends and acquaintances? Maybe your FB friends, maybe send emails?  If everyone we knew shared it with their circle of friends that would be huge!!
• For every 50 donations made, we will award an exclusive Bracelet For One to a randomly drawn winner!  

Here's a badge you can grab to make sharing easy (simply right click and save the image)!  The more people that know, the better!! Thank you so much for your help - see you next week!

Update for December 17, 2014

Time for another update!  We've gathered all our dossier documents and I was ready to send them off to our agency on Saturday but I ended up waiting . . . no real reason, I just figured we were still waiting on immigration and I hadn't gotten the checks from the bank yet.  Plus we had a crazy weekend!

Fast forward to Monday and when I made my weekly call to USCIS to see if our file had been assigned an officer I was told we had been assigned and  . . . APPROVED!!!  Hooray!! What great news!! It was 36 days from receipt to approval - God is good!!  So that meant we should get the hard copy any day and I better mail those dossier docs to the agency!!  I waited until I had to go to work hoping the mail would come and would include the approval.  No mail by the time I left so I went to the PO and mailed our docs Priority mail (shoot! I should have overnighted them!).  When I got home from work we had gotten the approval in the mail - another praise (but again, why hadn't I overnighted them)!  I emailed that right to our agency, but now they wait for the rest of the documents to arrive.  Once the agency gets our documents they will prepare them and send them off to be authenticated in the state of Alabama, then on to the Houston Consulate and then off to China!  This all should day 2-3 weeks.  Unfortunately it won't make it before the China shutdown from Dec. 28 - January 4, but God has a purpose in all things!

A little update on our upcoming fundraiser - 2015$.  With our dossier finally on the move we are in need of funds to pay the agency fees.  If you look on the our YouCaring website you will see that to date we have raised roughly $8,400 which is amazing!!!  I've made over 150 bracelets, Emma has been making hats, and flowers and owls, etc., we have been given gifts and so much support and we have used some of own funds to get to that amount.  We praise God for all the support we have received and the funds He has provided so far!! In order to submit our dossier (and all the supporting fees) we need about $1800.  We also need to make agency payments totaling around $5000.

I've said this several times, but I think the statistic is something like 90% of people who consider/think about adoption decide not to move forward because of the cost!! I totally get that!! $30,000+ is a huge amount of money!! But from the beginning we have felt that God has called us to adopt a little girl from China and that He would ultimately provide all that was needed!!  It's such a small amount to our great God, really!  So . . .

Please mark your calendars for January 1, 2015 and join us for 2015$ - Two Thousand Fifteens!! We will asking 2000 people to donate $15 on that day.  WOW!! Is that a lot - sure is!! I don't have access to 2000 people all at once! But with YOUR help we definitely do!!

• Would you be willing to donate $15 toward our adoption on January 1st?  
• Maybe for the next 3 weeks you could not get a fancy coffee or a hamburger - put the money in a jar instead and save it for January 1st??   
• Would you be willing to SHARE this event with your friends and acquaintances? Maybe your FB friends, maybe send emails?  If everyone we knew shared it with their circle of friends that would be huge!!

Next week I'll share another aspect of this fundraiser - the FUN part!!! We want to add some fun and give back a bit too as a thank you for your support!

10/24/14 Update

Well folks I'm so happy to report that we have a "signed, sealed and delivered" Home Study in hand!!!  I can't tell you how excited we are to have this piece behind us!  God has been so good in granting patience through the whole thing and we know that He has a purpose for it!

What next?  Immigration approval, dossier document preparation and (hopefully) matching!  This is going to be so fun!  We have submitted our immigration documents and they should be received soon, in the meantime we work on more document gathering and authentication.  The goal is to have our dossier to China (DTC) in a couple of months!!  Whooooooosh!!

As for the matching, we are so excited about the possibility of finally "seeing" who our daughter is!  Our agency is working with us and we are just waiting for God's timing in all things!  Please pray that we will have wisdom and patience (there's that word again!) in all matters.

Now that our homestudy is done we also have several big payments due!  Thankfully, we can now start applying for adoption grants so please pray with us that we will receive a good chunk of what is needed!! In the meantime, please continue to order Bracelets for One (or see the tab above), share it with those you know and be watching for a brand new fundraiser soon!  :)  We have lots of new colors and designs!!

This is our October bracelet - natural agate stones.  It's been very popular and is a great choice for people who like earthy, natural colors!

and of course since we are adopting from China, one of my favorites is the Jade bracelet!

Thank you everyone for your prayers and support!!

8-9-14 Update

Well it's been a long time since I typed an update hasn't it?  Basically because there was little to report.  We've been working away on our homestudy and had hoped to finish it up this week.  Delays, forgotten clearances and just life makes everything move slower than we'd like it too.  However, through it all I am reminded that God has a plan and a purpose for all things.  Whatever that is (and we may never know) we have to simply trust that it is for our good.  Sounds easy?? NO!  I am not a patient person by nature so this has not been easy!  I was so hoping that this was the week!  Please pray for us - pray that we can get the tasks done quickly that are needed to complete the HS and pray for patience and peace.

We have begun the matching process which has been exciting!  Please pray also for guidance as we carefully consider each precious possibility!  Each and every child needs a home and a family to love them - it's almost overwhelming!

Thank you for your continued support and prayer, we are pressing on! :)

P.S.  If you haven't already please check out our FB page for Bracelets for One - we have almost reached the half way point in our goal to sell 200 bracelets!  Please keep them in mind for the upcoming holidays - every order makes a difference!  Thank you!

7-11-14 Update

We're making progress!! We received a draft of our homestudy this week and are now in the process of reviewing it with our homestudy agency and LifeLine.  It seems to surreal to think we're almost done with this phase, it's been a long 3.5 months but how exciting to move forward!  We now will begin working on our dossier and are able to be matched now (the most exciting part!).

Bracelets for One has been busy, busy, busy!! Through all of our wonderful friends and family, Facebook and word of mouth we are almost half way to our goal of selling 200 bracelets (and I'm all for upping that goal!!) with 76 sold!!  How amazing!  It's been incredible to see the response and to think how each bracelets brings us a little closer to being able to bring home our little girl!

I failed to post the July Bracelet of the Month here on the blog, so here it is - RED!   This is the perfect summer bracelet - red, clear and silver beads are used on white pearlized leather.  This bracelet will be available until the end of July, so get your orders in before it's too late! (email me at jjmasse[at]sacoriver[dot]net).

July Bracelet of the Month

I have one other new bracelet to show you. I was asked to make a bracelet for a man a few weeks ago - how awesome that he wanted to show his support for our adoption and help us out!!  I made this bracelet for him, but in a two wrap style which looked better on a man.  I love the result so much I decided to add it to the "line" and the really great thing is that it works for a man or woman!  I love it!!

Hematite

Thanks for checking in with us and thank you for your prayers and support!

6-9-14 Update

Well the update this week is that our home study is almost done! I say "almost" with some hesitancy as I've learned this process does like to move slowly.  However, the social worker has most of the report done and we're hoping to have it to review soon!  I never really believed it would take this long (the eternal optimist!) but it's been a good lesson in patience.  God's timing is not ours!

For the past 2 weekends we had a yard sale down at my parent's house near the beach (better traffic flow then where we live).  It was a ton of work to get ready for and I have to say that my girls did A LOT of the work!  But we were able to make over $300 to put in our adoption fund!  Yea!

Bracelets for One continues to grow and flourish - thank you so much to all who have ordered and shared our links!  So far we have made and sold 36 bracelets!  That's 18% of our goal of 200!  How cool!  Please continue to share - we now have a Facebook page just for Bracelets for One.  It gets updated when I add a new bracelet or have something special to share.

I've started a "Bracelet of the Month" as a way to add different colors and designs into the mix.  Orders will be accepted until June 15 and all orders will be sent out thereafter. This month's bracelet is a beautiful "ombre" style bracelet with beads ranging from an opal/clear bead to aqua beads bracelet.  It is made with natural leather. I have pictured it as a 5 wrap bracelet which is be available for $37.99, but it's also beautiful in the original 3 wrap style ($25.99 plus shipping).  If you'd like to order, please send me an email (jjmasse [at] sacoriver [dot] net or leave a comment.

One more new item - I just got in a supply of dark brown leather which is now available for any bracelet!  I think the brown would look amazing with turquoise beads!  I also had some light topaz beads which were just waiting for the brown leather - check it out!  This bracelet is so pretty!!

Thanks for checking in with us!  Keep those orders coming - every bracelets gets us closer to our goal!