"May the Lord God Reward You Fully For What You Have Done!" Ruth 2:12

On this last day of this wonderful year of 2013, we would like to say..."Thank You!"...from the bottom of our hearts!!

It has been an amazing year of our Lord's wonderful provision!

 Thank you all for helping us to love orphans! Thank you for joining us on this journey!

The t-shirts are here! It's time for the kids to come home! Right??

By the way....it's not too late to make a donation to help us rescue our children!! Would you like to join us on this journey on this final day of 2013?? 

You can visit our family support page right here:  Reece's Rainbow Winslow Page

We are soooooo close to our goal!!!

Thank you again! We sure do love you! Please feel free to share this with anyone you would like!

Praising the Lord--OUR GREAT PROVIDER!!!

And so yesterday....we posted about our need. We asked you all to storm the gates and pray...thank you from the bottom of our hearts! This has been amazing! Today our Reece's Rainbow Account See It Here! went up by $1,940.00!!!  Also..at church today...we were showered with gifts that totaled an amazing amount of $1,302.25!! Thank you all soooooo much!

And so take a peek at our thermometer over to the side of our blog! Yesterday morning we needed $13,500.00 to be fully funded. Now, just a tad over 24 hours later....(a bit more than one day!!!) we only need $7,135.00!!! Thank you God's faithful people from the bottoms of our hearts! You are helping us to rescue precious Zoey and Jerry!!!

Know what we were thinkin??

Okay..so in this day so far, we have already received $3,073.00 toward our goal....and all that is remaining now is about $10,400.00. We just got a donation of 100.00...so we were thinking...what if 104 people gave 100.00?? Wow...we'd meet our goal!!! Isn't that awesome?? 

Anyway...we were just praising God and thinking at the same time! Cool, huh??

The Reality of It Has Set In....And So the numbers had to be recrunched!!...

Psalm 50:10 says: 
"For all the animals of the forest are mine, and I own the cattle on a thousand hills."

Now that we have taken our first trip, gotten an idea of expenses related to travel, and particularly Zoey's medical needs and the need to bring an extra person along with us to help with the her and Jerry....and factoring in the amount we owe to our agency as a final payment right NOW...and after much prayer and petitioning to the Lord..knowing that HE knows ALL of the details....and trusting Him for them....

... in the last few days...we've done the math, as we are praying for a medical expedite and need to have the money available to us as soon as possible... we have  crunched and re-crunched the numbers and subtracted out the amount that is available in our Reece's Rainbow account toward our adoption... and have come up with a total that we now need to be FULLY funded.

And that total is:  $13,500.00!!!  There...we said it...we put it out there...that is our total....the amount due in order to fully rescue our precious kiddos....(phew..we feel better having said that!)

Will you join us in praying and storming the gates??  It's the perfect time to make a tax deductible donation and have it be included in your 2013 taxes!!! :) :)  What better way to use that year end money that needs a place to go????

Click on this link Reece's Rainbow/Winslow Adoption and it will bring you right to our Reece's Rainbow page, and all you have to do is click on the donate button! It's that easy!!! 

Would you all please be willing to share this post with everyone and anyone that you can think of! That would be awesome!

"We truly thank our God upon EVERY remembrance of you!!!" Phil 1:3.

We sure do love you all!

Trusting God and thanking Him in advance!! 

Keep checking the thermometer to the right of the blog for updates as the money continues to be provided by the Lord! 

Encouragement for This Day!

During family Bible time this very morning, God encouraged me greatly with these verses as though He had written them just for our Zoey! I'm going to put her name in them to personalize them just for her:

Psalm 71 verse 6:  "You, God,  have been with Zoey,  from her birth! From Zoey's mother's womb, you, God,  have cared for her. It's no wonder that Zoey is always praising you with her smiles and abundant joy!"

verse 7:  "Zoey's very life is an example to many, because YOU GOD have been her strength and her protection!"

Thank you soooo much Lord for this encouragement today. I truly needed it as we wait for you to bring her home to us! Thank you Lord for Zoey's example. Although she has NO reason for joy and smiles, she is FULL of joy! There truly is NO explanation for this other than you, God! Thank you!

Today is Zoey's 7th Birthday!!!!!

Happy 7th Birthday Dear Sweet Zoey Girl! We LOVE you!! Hang on! We'll be there soon! We pray without ceasing for you our precious daughter!

Fret NOT!! We are home!!! Please keep praying!

Thank you for your prayers! We arrived home late Wednesday night! We had to layover in Chicago on Tuesday night due to mechanical problems with the plane!

We are soooo glad to be home and loving on our kiddos! They did sooooo well in our absence! Thank you Lord! 

Now onto the final paperwork stage! Our 1-800 is ready to be shipped priority mail tomorrow! It's just waiting for a letter from a pediatrician in country who will testify to the need to expedite our file for Zoey's sake! This letter will accompany our I-800 in our country and also accompany the paperwork in our children's country! We are praying for things to be quick! We are also almost done with our 2nd stage dossier documents! Fingerprint update! Done and sent! Power of attorney forms signed and notarized awaiting apostilling on Monday! Other documents all signed and ready! Just waiting for our medical update (our 3rd one in just over one year! Sighhhhh) This will be done next Friday!

Not bad for just coming home from our trip on Wednesday night..and today is only Friday??? Right??? Yup!

 This is my office! In the midst of everyone! Wonderful and NEVER lonely, but often a bit hard to concentrate if you KWIM!!!???

Truly a Miracle from the Lord!

This is truly the Lord. When we went to Jerry's orphanage on Friday morning last week for our first visit with him, we were introduced to him and he came and gave us big hugs and said..."Mama--Patkey(Papa!). The staff had done a wonderful job preparing him for our arrival! These 2 photos were taken shorty after we met him!

So as we sat in this really hot and stuffy room playing with him, with about 5 staff members of the orphanage all staring at us, our translator Yavor came into the room and said..."They've asked me if you would like to take Jerry with you?"..."Take him where?" we asked..."Back to the hotel with you!"...said Yavor..."They said you could bring him with you, and keep him with you until Monday!"...."WOW!"....you see, we were scheduled for the usual, 2 hour visit in the morning and 2 hour visit in the afternoon for Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and a morning visit only for Monday. Instead, God allowed us the blessing of having this special guy with us the entire time! It was amazing! Then, on our facebook group Shelley told me this about Jerry's orphanage:


"Yes, this is the orphanage that has been open for 90 years and has NEVER had an adoption. Your precious boy will be the first!!! As a side note, the reason we ended up with his file to begin with is because one of the ladies at the MOJ (Minister of Justice) just loved him...his photo and his description. She asked Toni to please advocate for him."

Isn't this amazing? Isn't this incredible?? From across the world, our God who sets the lonely in families, who commands us to care for the orphans and the widows...chose us...The Glenn Winslow Family...and our joyous little guy Jerry...to break open the doors of this orphanage that had been closed to adoption for 90 years!

Just had to share that awesome miracle with you! I'm typing this blog post as we await the boarding of our plane from Frankfurt to Chicago!

We are super excited to love on our kiddos waiting at home for us!

 

Please pray for this little guy today and in the coming months until our return!

Would you please pray for Jerry this day. As we are packing up our bags to check out of the hotel and bring him back to the orphanage this morning, please pray that Yavor, our interpreter would be able to communicate to him that we are coming back. We told him that when we come back and bring him to America that this small carry on that you see in the photo below would be his. So this morning, he's got his 2 bags to take, and this carry on and he keeps pointing to it and saying..."Jerry's! Jerry's!"...we think he thinks that he's coming with us today!

We ask you to pray...for peace and comfort for him and us! This is going to be rip your heart out hard when we have to walk out of those doors without him!

We've left him with a photo album that Yavor translated for us, and he's met all of the kids at home on face time! Thank you technology! So....now we can just pray once we get back in that car and head to Sofia! Thank you all for praying!

 He had ice cream at supper last night for dessert and he LOVED it!

 So he found Glenn's new Chippewa boots and he just HAD to try them on after his bath!

 Glenn spent some quality time with Jerry last night teaching him the fine art of dipping cookies in milk! Yeah!

 Here is our bud this morning, with "his" suitcase!

Thank you for your prayers! We love you all !

4 Hours this afternoon in the hotel room before supper....and well..we had to get a bit creative!

So Jerry has really bonded with Glenn these last 3 days which has been awesome! ...take a peek:

"Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy." Psalm 47:1

We've learned a great lesson from our Bulgarian children. This is the lesson of great joy, and having it amidst great loss, or sorrow, or want. Truly, truly...they have displayed to us that:
"Godliness with contentment is GREAT gain!"....1 Timothy 6:6. They have joy in the midst of nothing. They are so excited and joyful to be held, to be smiled at, to go outside the walls of their orphanages, to have a papa and a mama to call their own! This has been humbling and amazing!

So here is some really cool conversations from today:

Jerry to his new friend Bobby who he met at the mall:

"Come, come, come, and meet my Papa and my Mama, come Bobby, come!"

Oh friends, I cried with tears of joy when Jerry was so excited to introduce us to a his new friend at the mall, and to show Bobby that he really had parents, just like him. Bobby's parents were sitting off to the other side of the cafe. 

Jerry has had many firsts in these last three days, and one of the greatest truly was being able to say to his friend..."here are my mama and papa!".....Wow!!!

Bobby:  "Let's go play now!"
Jerry:  "okay!"

Then at lunch time, we were all sitting around the table and before we were ready to eat, we all held hands as usual and Glenn said a prayer. Even Yavor is holding hands with us and will tell Jerry to say amen. Today:

Jerry:  "Why are we saying these prayers, anyway?"

Yavor:  "Because your Daddy and Mommy are talking to God."

Jerry:  "Who is this God...I do not know him, I don't think."

Yavor:  "Oh Jerry, I'm sure very soon you will know him well!"


And they will know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes they'll know we are Christians by our love!

And that my friends is truly what it is ALL about! Thank you Lord! Today was a good day, a VERY good day!

 So...Jerry's favorite cartoon character is Mickey Mouse, and we found some Mickey Mouse cartoons on You Tube in Bulgarian! How cool is that!

 So in the men's room at the mall, this boy on the right comes up to Jerry and starts poking him and teasing him and Glenn is wondering..."is this the Bulgarian culture to do this with strangers?"...and then when they came out, we asked through Yavor who this was, and it turns out it was a 14 year old boy named Marshall who attends school with Jerry...so then Jerry got to introduce him to his Dad and Mom! Very cool!

 Glenn and Jerry had fun on the motorcycle video game!

 Jerry's funnest, though, was sitting side by side with Glenn at the car video games and just pretending to drive, making driving sound effects and pretending to crash! It was so cool!

 Then we went to the grocery store, and bought some cookies and some milk. Glenn is going to teach Jerry the fine art of dipping cookies in milk before bed! Wow!  So Jerry was so excited, and demanded to carry all of our purchases to the check out and then to carry the bag to the car!

 

It's soon dinner time and we will have our last dinner and then breakfast tomorrow with Jerry. We will check out of our hotel, and head to his orphanage and drop him off. This is going to be very, very hard on everyone! We covet your prayers!