Harder Family

Harder Family

Thursday, October 6, 2016

God's Goodness

Philippians 4:19 "And my God will supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus."

Matthew 6:31-32 "Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all."

Stepping out in faith can be intimidating and scary, but obedience is a beautiful thing. As we prayerfully considered adding to our family through adoption, it was one of those moments. We were at the ledge of the cliff and we had a choice: we could obey God and take that leap of faith, or we could worry about the deep chasm beneath us and be fearful. We decided that life is too short to not live courageously. If God was calling us to adopt, then we would obey. We know that He is sovereign, so if it wasn't His will, He would close the doors. Over the last few months, we have seen God do some pretty amazing things in the adoption process. When one of our payments was due to our agency (due to adding an additional child), we received a financial gift from someone. We had paid some of our fees with our credit card and Wayne wasn't sure how we were going to pay it off. The next day, his adoption credit from work hit our bank account. Two weeks ago we held a rummage sale with another adopting family at church. God provided in a huge way then as well...just in time for our next payment to our agency. These are just some examples of how God has moved some gigantic financial mountains...I mean, who has approximately $60,000 laying around to adopt two kids?

God has been working in other ways as well. We can look back and see how God opened doors throughout this process and made ways where there didn't seem to be a way. With that in mind, even though I would love to still travel in December, that won't happen apart from a miraculous working of God (which I know is possible). But I have learned on this journey to trust God's timing. Maybe my "ideal" time to travel isn't what is best for the boys or our children. Faith, trust, and obedience are difficult things to do, but they are so worth it. Our dossier (a fancy term for tons of paperwork that took months to accumulate) is sitting at our adoption agency waiting to be sent to China tomorrow!! From this point, it is anyone's guess how long it will take. The general timeline is 4-6 months. Thankfully we are so busy with school that it has distracted me. Again, I'm just trusting God's timing. The girls can't wait for us to bring their brothers home. They daily pray for them and it is so sweet to see their excited faces.

Please pray with us for SC & DJ. Please also pray for the paperwork and the government agencies that we have to wait on during the next few weeks. Once we receive our letter of acceptance (LOA), we can officially announce our intentions to the boys and write them!! Thank you to everyone who has been praying for us during this process. 

If anyone is interested, Great Wall China Adoption is still looking for host families for the winter session (mid December to mid January). Here is a great video on the amazing kids waiting to be hosted by a family.


Below are some "catch up" pictures from what we've been up to. 


Pictures from the rummage sale at our church. Thank you to everyone who donated items and showed up to shop.






Nature walk at the Little Red Schoolhouse. We had to identify trees and study leaves and their bark. We also fit some PE in as we walked around the nature preserve!



















This year we are part of a local co-op. The girls have really enjoyed going each week, especially Joella who is part of a preschool class.




Abigail, Grace, and Naomi joined the local homeschool cross country team. We made a couple of them join, which has resulted in tears at times. Thankfully, they told me the other day, after successfully running a 5k - see pictures further down, that cross country has been good for them. I'm just excited that they are starting to run so I have people to run with in the future...although once Abigail gets up her distance, she is going to kick my butt in time (her pace is about 8:15)










We made two trips downtown last week to get the last of our paperwork done. Monday the four youngest went with me to drop off our I797 (approval of our adoption from the US government) at the Chinese consulate. We paid to expedite it and we were able to pick it up the next day!! After we picked up our paperwork, I found out that our dossier would sit at our agency for a week due to a huge Chinese holiday that shuts down the government in China.


Tuesday we picked up the paperwork after co-op and then had to drive to Indiana for a cross country meet.


We attended a symphony performance at Wheaton College. You can't beat a free concert!




We attended a cooking class at the library.






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