Amazing Blessings

There is so much to share regarding the blessings God has bestowed upon us in the past days!

If you read our last post you know that we received our I600A approval, which is a huge step in the paperwork process of adopting our daughter!

Thursday a friend and I went for lunch at a little Korean diner, Tinytown Carryout. It was such a delightful surprise. The menus were in Korean & English. I ordered Bulgolgi, which was wonderful. They also served the food in the traditional Korean style with the eight dishes of kimchi. I tried seven of the dishes with two being my favorites.

However, the highlight of the lunch is when a soldier and his party sat at the table next to us to dine. He told his friends that he was adopted from Korea when he was eight years old and his parents let him choose his name. He chose to keep his Korean name, however, he retained very little of his native language. He loved growing up in Middle Tennessee and his adoptive family. I hung on his every word, while still not trying to appear as eavesdropping!

I told the waitress that I would be visiting Korea that we were adopting a daughter. As we went to leave, she met me at the register and said, "Next time you bring her, you show me your girl." She continued to ask me to bring my daughter and show her as she walked with me to the door with her hand on my arm. It was so nice, even my friend commented on how nice to see her so interested in our sweet Korean daughter!

Friday brought another pleasant surprise, less than a month after applying for our passports that came in the mail! Now we are ready to go to Korea to bring our girl home!

Saturday was the culmination of many weeks of blessings as our families and friends donated items for our yard sale, prayed for us, lent us tables & clothes racks, and helped us along the way! As one friend was dropping off items they jokingly told me if they didn't know we were having a yard sale, then they would nominate us for the show about hording stuff!

Here are some pictures of the house and stuff we collected for the sale:

We started our day bright and early at about 4:30 am and finally had everything out of the house in the driveway and yard by 8:30-9am. We are so thankful my parents came to help...I don't think we could have done it without them! The crowd was steady and we sold, sold, sold!

At the end of the sale, we raised $735 and we donated two truckloads of items to the members of the Jamaica mission team at our church, gifted several boxes of clothes to friends & family members, donated three boxes of items to a group that reads to those in need at the Salvation Army and plays with the kids. We also saved back some of the nice household items for families that lost all they had in the recent flooding.

We were so thrilled to raise so much toward our adoption, but were equally glad that the donations and items we cleaned out of our house can continue to bless others. It is amazing to see God work and multiply the generosity of the many people that blessed us!

At the end of the day we were al exhausted, sore, and decided to find a spot to just lounge for a while! Needless to say we all slept very well Saturday evening!

Have a very blessed week and remember to be a blessing to someone this week!