May 4th

Today is the day one year ago that we were officially matched in the system with our little sweet P.

We knew the moment we saw her face on a Friday morning, that she was ours. Despite the unknowns, (and there were A LOT) we made the decision to email our family coordinator Saturday night and request to be matched with her. By 6am Monday, May 4th, 2015 my phone was ringing. Our family coordinator was calling to let us know that we were officially matched with P.

What a year it's been. I feel like we're on this crazy rollercoaster and we have NO idea when the ride will end. But it's also an amazing rollercoaster, and I feel blessed to be on this ride called adoption. The highs and lows have taught me so much about Jesus. His longsuffering patience. His unwavering love. His pure goodness.

We stepped out in blind faith this day one year ago. We felt a peace that only God could bring to our hearts in this situation. A peace that allowed us to move forward without any real information other than 4 pictures.

Today, one year after our match, we are waiting for a court date to attend. This is where a judge in Ind*a will legally make her what we've known her to be for a year now. Our precious, chosen, daughter. A Salonga.


Here is how you can be praying for us:

• We ask that you pray for our attorney. We won't share her name with you, but God knows who she is. Please pray that she will receive our affidavit and register our case in court so we can have a date set. 

• Please be in prayer for our court date. We are boldly praying for a June date. 

• Pray that our judge would be for adoption and would grant us verbal and written orders in record time. 

• Pray for our last moments of a family of four. That all of our hearts would be prepared for this new transition to a daughter and a little sister. 

• Please continue to pray for P. Pray for her little heart. What she has known for 3.5 years is about the come to an end. The loss and pain that she will experience is so huge. Pray that we would be able to be a source of comfort for her and we could help her to handle her grief. 

I'll leave you all with this picture of her. I could stare that those adorable little feet and that cute denim skirt all day! 

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Hebrews 11:1

T-shirt fundraiser

I haven't posted an adoption update in a while because, well, there's not much to report! But, if I did post an update it would go a little something like this:

Every night I lay in bed thinking about paperwork. Correction. Pretty much every waking moment somewhere in the back of my mind you can bet I'm thinking about paperwork. Paperwork to gather, paperwork to get notarized, documents to create, what items can I check off the seemingly never-ending list that compiles our homestudy and dossier. Apparently, I'm slightly overwhelmed by paperwork. The pimples that are showing up on my face serve as proof to this. Yet, at the same time, I'm thankful for this paperwork. I'm thankful that each document gathered, each form notarized, each item checked off the list is one step closer to our little girl!

With that being said, we're meeting with our social worker for the first time on Saturday, our homestudy is coming up, and we're hoping to be able to submit our dossier by the end of the year at the latest.

Mark and I are so excited to officially announce our first fundraiser! Our hope and prayer is to raise enough funds to help offset some of our upcoming adoption expenses by selling some awesome t-shirts!We've been working with a great company called Fund the Nations who has helped us to create the most perfect t-shirts.

By purchasing a shirt (or two!) you're helping us get one step closer to our sweet girl, AND you're getting an awesome t-shirt that will promote adoption awareness and can serve as a reminder to pray for our family whenever you wear it! I'd say it's a win-win situation.

So here they are, the shirt designs! We will be taking pre-orders from August 20-September 5.

All pre-orders must be submitted to us and paid for by Friday, September 5, 2014. Once all pre-orders are received, we will be placing the order and the shirts will be shipped to us. If you are local (Glendale and surrounding Phoenix area) we will arrange delivery or pick-up. Otherwise, shipping will be a flat $4 fee per order. You can expect to have your shirts by mid-late September.

How to order:

1. Choose your t-shirt design (1 or 2), style (scoop neck or v-neck), and size.
2. Place your order one of many ways:
1. Send an email to megansalonga {at} gmail {dot} com with your order information.
2. Send either Mark or myself a message on Facebook
3. Comment on our t-shirt pictures on either Facebook or Instagram
4. Leave a comment on this blog post
3. We will send you an email confirming your order.

Pricing/Style/Sizing:

• Adult T-shirts will be $20 (plus $4 for shipping if you are not local to the Glendale/Phoenix area) for sizes XS-XXXL. Both designs 1 and 2 can be ordered as a traditional scoop neck (as shown in image) or v-neck for no additional cost. Please specify the type of neck line you would like. Otherwise, we will assume you are ordering scoop neck.
• The t-shirt itself is very soft, so it is a little thinner than your normal t-shirt, and a bit more fitted (some people say they run small, but it is just a more fitting shirt). Please keep this is mind when ordering, as some may want to order a size up. 
• Children's sizes (2T-youth sizes) will be available for $15

**UPDATE - A few people have shown some interest in getting one of the designs as a racerback style of shirt. If you are interested in this, please contact me ASAP and let me know which design preference you have so I can put you on a waiting list. We need to reach at least 13 shirts to place an order. Once I have 13 people on the list, I will look and see which design is the majority, as we can only do one of the designs. I will then contact everyone on the waiting list to finalize your order. **

Payment:

• Cash in person
• PayPal - You do not need a PayPal account in order to pay. Once you tell me your order, I will send you an invoice via email and from there, you can pay with a credit card.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions at all!

Remember to keep our family in your prayers. Thanks so much for your support and love! 

Let the paper chase begin!

Time for an adoption update!

After we got the call about being accepted into the Ind*a program, we were emailed a bunch of documents and agreements to read, sign, and send back to our agency along with our first big program fee. 

Here are the big brothers getting ready to take everything into the post office! P.S. I'm so excited that they are getting to share in this journey with us! So much fun...and quite the learning experience (no blog title pun intended!)

Yesterday, I got a call from our family coordinator who we will be working with up until we travel to Ind*a. Mark and I are so excited to be officially beginning the infamous "paper chase" phase of our adoption process. I know that at times, all the paperwork will be overwhelming and stressful, but at the same time, I know that each day, each document checked off the list, is one step closer to our sweet girl.

We dream about the day when we get a referral and finally get to see her picture, we imagine traveling to India hold her in our arms. We talk about bringing her home to her forever family with her two big brothers who are already praying for her daily. Mark and I are just amazed at how much we already love this little girl that we don't even know yet! While it's fun to dream, I also realize that we've got a long road of waiting ahead that's going to require an enormous amount of patience that only our God can provide.

And with that, I'm brought back to reality with words that are going to become a frequent part of my vocabulary. Words such as dossier, home study, Apostille (no, I don't mean Apostle), Hauge Convention, and oh so much more.

So, here we go! It's time to start collecting documents for our dossier!

What's a dossier, you ask? Well, basically it's a compilation of paperwork that will be sent to the C*RA and the local adoption authorities in Ind*a to prove that we are in fact, awesome parents that are fit to raise a little girl! It will include our home study, copies of birth certificates, marriage certificate, passports, tax information, financial information, physical exams and lab work, criminal background (of lack thereof), reference letters, and I'm sure there's more but you get the idea...and now you understand why they call it the paper chase! Our goal is to get this completed as quickly as possible and hopefully before Christmas! Once our dossier is complete and we are approved with C*RA, we will be able to receive a referral. There is no way of knowing how long we'll wait for a referral, but we're leaving it in God's hands. We are confident that he's called us to Ind*a to bring home our daughter, so we'll do our best to trust in him and his timing...he hasn't failed us yet! ;) 

Please continue to keep our family in your prayers. Specifically, please pray :

• That we can navigate through this dossier building process quickly and efficiently...and that we won't mess up any paperwork! 
• That our upcoming fundraisers would be successful. I'll be starting to work on the t-shirt fundraiser soon, and our big garage sale will be in the beginning of October. More details soon...
• For our little girl. That she is safe, protected, and loved on until we can provide all those things for her. 

On life, homeschooling, and wait...WHAT?!?

Yes, my friends, you've read that right...

Ind*an adoption. As in, we're adopting from Ind*a!!

Before Mark and I got married, we dreamed about our family. How many kids would we have, what their little personalities be like, would they look like their Filipino daddy, or would they take after their half Ecuadorian, half white girl mama? But, we've always had it in our hearts to adopt. For us, adoption has never been an "if", but rather, a matter of "when".

As some of you may know, the past year has been one of the most trying years that we've endured since being married (I'll save that for a whole separate post), but it's also been one of the most faith growing years of my life. I've always had a strong faith in Christ, but I thank God for this past year (as crazy as that may sound) because its gotten me to this place of completely trusting in God's plan for my life, even if it involves loss, sickness, struggle, and pain. I can look back and see His hand print in every single moment of it. His timing is perfect!

Lately, we have really felt a calling that our "when" is now! We've spent the last month in serious prayer, sought Biblical council, prayed some more, talked to other adoptive families, prayed about it, researched agencies and countries, prayed a little lot more...well, you get the idea.We really wanted to make sure that calling we were feeling to act now was not out of our own desires (although we really do want this to happen), but that we were in line with God's will for our life.

So, we're excited to announce that we're officially in the adoption process!! It's going to be a long journey, but we can't wait for the day we get to bring our little girl home to her forever family!

As you may or may not know, adoption is super expensive. Like $25-30,000 expensive. But we know that since God has called us to this, that he will provide the funds to bring home our daughter. To help with some of the costs, we will be announcing a t-shirt fundraiser in the next couple of weeks (because who doesn't love an awesome t-shirt), and we're going to be having a huge garage sale in October and would be more than happy to accept donations of your "stuff" to sell!

Please be praying for our family as we go through this long process...it's going to take a village.