What an amazing difference a year makes! Take a peek!

I thought you might like to take a walk down memory lane with me and my family. One year ago we brought home our two precious Bulgarian children. To God be the glory! GREAT things he hath done!  Here are side by sides every month over the last year. The photos on the left are on August 6th, 2014 when we landed in Manchester, NH. The photos on the right are each month on the 6th. It's incredible! It's a miracle! Praising God!!! These pictures are TRULY worth more than 1,000 words! 

Just HAD to put these photos of JoyAnna, too! Truly, she has had a most amazing transformation!! Don't you think?? From a scared little girl to a beautiful young lady! The Lord has truly replaced what the locusts had eaten in this little gal!! :)

This is the day....That The Lord hath made...Let us rejoice...and Beglad in it!!

Today (Tuesday) is a free day for us while we wait. It's been wonderful so far. We slept in and had a late breakfast. We LOVE the breakfast buffet at the Budapest hotel!!

Glenn and Jerry are doing laundry this morning to hang up to dry. We have been gone for one week, and so it's time to do some laundry! And so..equipped with a plunger, the bathtub and some laundry soap, they go to work! 

Grace and I are studying her lines for the play auditions which are the day after we return from this trip!! 

JoyAnna a.k.a. "Vicki" is hanging out on the bed enjoying some time with me and Grace! She's is doing soooooo well! What a blessing!

Our dear, dear friend Sylvia is going to watch JoyAnna and Jerry this afternoon (yes, she's storing up her treasures in heaven!!) while Glenn and Grace and I go exploring for a bit! Then  tonight...we will eat at a traditional Bulgarian restaurant down the road!!

It's a good day....a very good day! And we rejoice and are sooooo very glad in it!!

Pssssst.....Did you know?? WE PASSED COURT!!!! Can I hear an AMEN???

Just a quick note for all of you who don't have Facebook! On Monday, June 23rd, our adoption became official in Bulgaria!!! Praise God!!!

Official already in our hearts....it became legally official!

Jeremiah Albert Erol Winslow

and 

JoyAnna Yanka Deneva Winslow

Zoey is smiling in heaven!!

Rejoice with us!!!

Let the Count Down Begin!! 10.....9.....8....7....6....... "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." John 14:18

Praising the Lord this day...we are just 10 people away from our goal! That's right...10 people to give $100.00 and we will be FULLY funded to rescue our children! Thank you Lord! Thank you Jesus!  We are sooooo close. We covet your prayers and encouragement! Thank you and HUGE hugs to ALL of you who have stepped out and come along side of us!



So...a few announcements!! It's NOT too late to join in the Give A Way!! Please visit that link:  Wrapping It Up Give A Way

We also have a sweet gal that has stepped forward to help us reach our goal in another way. Check it out here!  Paracord Products for Orphans

Here is the blurb she wrote about us:  

Do you LOVE the Winslow Gang like I do? Did you love and pray for sweet Zoey before she went to her new home in Heaven? Were you, like me, touched by the Winslows' dedication to bring home a second child after suffering such a painful loss? I don't know if they have a Family Warrior or not, but since they are my 'family of the month', I'm planning to shout about them regularly until they are fully funded! If you would like to help this amazing family bring home TWO sweet children, would you consider dropping a little $$ in their FSP, or saying a prayer? From now until April 30 you can also order a custom, handcrafted paracord bracelet for you, your kids, or someone else you love, from me via this page (https://www.facebook.com/paracordfororphans) and all proceeds will go to the Winslows! So far I've got a little over $40 with their name on it... can we get to $50 by the end of this week? That's only two more bracelets! AND you'll be blessing me by giving me something to do! Please message me (either personally or via the page) for details on ordering your personalized bracelet!

And so...would you please consider joining with us and partnering with us so that we can reach our goal as soon as possible?? Thank you in advance! We promise to keep you posted!

We have our Article 5 next Tuesday the 22nd. Here is what that is:

Article 5 explained:
 
The Bulgarian agency representative attends the visa interview at the US
Embassy. At this meeting, the US Embassy representative will review your
home study, dossier and the child’s information and will approve the
adoption to continue. If they have any questions about items in the home
study or with discrepancies between the I-800a approval and the child’s
referral, they may ask for additional information. If they approve everything
as is, they will issue the Article 5 letter the following day. You will be
notified via email when this happens.
Once the Article 5 letter is received, it is translated & authenticated. This
process takes a little over a week to complete. Once that is complete, it is
submitted to the MOJ, along with all the second stage dossier documents
that you completed.
Your dossier file is now officially complete.

Then from Article 5 this is what happens:
Preparing the dossier for court
Once your dossier is resubmitted to the MOJ (Ministry of Justice) , it goes through a series of
steps that take about a month to complete. It is first given to the attorney,
who reviews the file and prepares the official consent for adoption by the
sending country under Hague. It is then given to the Minister for her
signature. After the Minister signs the dossier, it goes back to the attorney,
where the court petition is prepared. The dossier then goes back to the
Minister for a 2nd signature. After the Minister signs off on the dossier this
time, the dossier is taken to the courts by someone from the MOJ.
Then it's time for: Court
Once your dossier is sent to court, it is assigned to a judge. The official time
line for this a judge to be assigned is 14 days. Once it is assigned to a judge,
the judge has 7 days to assign the court date. How far out court is depends
on the judge.
Some judges will ask for additional information from the adopting family
before court and others will not. You will be notified of your court date and
any additional documents required via email from your case manager.
An attorney from the Bulgarian agency represents you the day of court. You
will be notified via email the day of court about the outcome of the
proceeding. The adoption will be granted unless the judge or prosecutor asks
for additional information, in which case, court will be postponed and a
future court date given.
Once the adoption is granted in court, there is a 7 day wait period before the
adoption is finalized. After the 7 days, it takes 3-5 days to obtain the signed
court decree from the judge.
Once the court decree is obtained, the new birth certificate is applied for.
This takes up to 5 business days. At the same time, the court decree is being
translated.
You will receive a travel date for trip 2 after the birth certificate is
obtained. You will be notified of travel dates via email.

And so...there you have it! Please pray for a speedy process from this point on!! We sure do thank you and covet your prayers!

Love:

The Winslow Fam

Our Wrapping It Up Just Got Better!

We are VERY excited about our Wrapping It Up Give-A-Way!! Please continue to check it out! We've been able to add our Project Hopeful Support page as an option, and also, this morning, my dear friend Ashley Plourd added a $25.00 gift certificate to her awesome website:  The Salve Garden. Check it out! She makes awesome Salves and healing balms! We use many of them every day here!!! We thank you all so much for your generous donations to our give-a-way! It's been such a blessing! Now we are only $1,900.00 away from being FULLY Funded!! Amazing! In just 13 days, $6,600.00 has come in! Wow! We stand amazed!!! Thank you so much! That's $500.00 per day approx.! Wow!!!  So please keep checking out the Give-A-Way. Take a moment to check out the wonderful items!  We love you!

Wrapping It Up Continues...

Posted on my facebook page:

Be sure to check out our Wrapping It Up Give away page!! New items were just added including this awesome drawing by our friend Daniel!! Isn't it great???? Also season 3 of Duck Dynasty, and an awesome Bulgaria plate, too! Please share this link with anyone you can! We are getting MUCH closer to our goal!!! Thank you soooo much! Just a small donation will enter you to win! You can also enter to win by just sharing about it on your facebook page, or your blog and letting Frankie Miller, know about it! Thanks again!!

See the whole give a way right here:  
Wrapping It Up

We Give Thanks for You This Day....Philipians 1:3

We stand amazed that in just 7 days, over $1,500.00 has come in toward funding this final leg of our adoption! Thank you ALL soooo much! Just today, 2 checks came in the mail. One for 200.00 and one for 100.00. 2 days ago a check came in the mail for 125.00 from a fellow adoption family that is bringing their new daughter home very soon! Thank you all for your great encouragement to us. Thank you for helping us to rescue our two precious children VERY soon!

Coming VERY soon will be a wonderful give away to help with our adoption that is going to be headed up by my dear, dear friend Frankie Miller! Promise to keep you ALL posted!
xoxoxoxo

 

Would You Be One of the 85 Needed to be a Blessing and completely fund our adoption?

“Once our eyes are opened we cannot pretend we do no know what to do. God, who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls, knows we know and holds us responsible to act.” Proverbs 24:12

Our pick up trip of our 2 blessings, Jeremiah and JoyAnna is quickly approaching. 

We are on a fast track, and will soon be contacted to go and get them. God has provided ALL that we need for every expense and adoption cost so far and that has been a HUGE blessing.  Since we were required to take another trip to meet JoyAnna, our expenses needed have gone up. We have calculated now that we will need about $8,500.00 to pay for the pick up trip. This includes airfare, hotel and meals, and medical and other expenses in country.

We'd like to know if you'd be willing to partner with us in this way, and if there would be 85 of you who would be willing to give $100.00 toward bringing home our blessings from the Lord??  Would you prayerfully consider being part of our 100 club? What a joy it would be to us! In the past almost 18 months we have been on this journey, we ourselves have given many gifts of $100.00 or more to other adoptions. This has been an amazing encouragement to us. This is because as the scriptures say, "our eyes are opened and we CANNOT pretend we do not know what to do!
It would be a blessing to us if you all would consider donating $100.00  to our Reece's Rainbow page which can be found:HERE. This means that our Reece's Rainbow page needs to show a total of $25,522.00 Rejoice with us as we watch God provide and the number go up! Stand Amazed with us, too!

*If you so desire to do the work of more than one person, well, we pray that God will bless you greatly! We'd like to thank you in advance for your love, your prayers, and your generous support! Please, please, feel free to share this with ALL of your friends and family! To GOD be the GLORY, for GREAT things HE hath done! May the Lord bless you for what you have done this day! We sure do love you bunches!

Happy 10th Birthday to our Jeremiah! This will be your LAST birthday as an orphan!

We love you so much little Jerry, and we can't wait until you are here in our family, right now you are filling our hearts with love! Have a happy birthday our sweet, high energy, loud, and very cuddly little guy! We love you! BIG hugs!

Your family!!
 

Awesome Adoption Video!!

" Pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord. Lift your hands toward Him for the life of your young children!" Lamentations 2:19

Please take a few minutes and watch this awesome video on adoption of special needs children and what God has to say about it! It's awesome!!!


Project Hopeful: Adoption is Redemption from Lantern Vision on Vimeo.



Happy New Year! And thank you for all of your love and support! We love you!

PS...only $4,629.00 needed to reach our goal and be fully funded!! Hooray! Thank you God!!!

"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! 

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!