TEAM UP

LATEST NEWS

For anyone just joining us, we have been on an adoption journey for almost 5 years.  We have now been matched with a beautiful brother and sister in Bulgaria.  These children deserve a chance to have a loving home where they can grow up feeling safe, secure, and wanted.  We want to provide them with that kind of home.  Our boys Colton and Eli are already very excited about their new brother and sister.

If you are familiar with international adoption, you know how expensive it can be.  While some of the fees have already been paid, we still have many more to go, not to mention the cost of traveling there twice.

COUNTING THE COST

We have worked through many, many fundraisers so far including 28 yard sales.  We’ve made things to sell and worked odd jobs.  While we don’t mind the work, we are now pressed for time.  We need roughly $13,500 before we can begin making travel arrangements for our first trip.  Most grants that I can apply for, now that we have a referral, would take 1-3 months to respond.   I’ll still be applying to them because we will have another $13,500 due by fall.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

What we are doing is asking our friends and family to TEAM UP with each other to help us make this goal.   We are asking you to be a Team Leader and share our story with at least 9 other people who might like to be a part of helping us bring our kids home.  Ask those 9 people to join you and your team in donating $10 each (more or less won’t be refused).  If you could do that, your team would have generated $100!  If we can find 135 people to be Team Leaders (and everyone participates), we will reach our $13,500 goal with ease.  As much as I hope everyone can help, I know some people truly can’t.  So if you happen to be someone who can do more than $10, that would be awesome!  Ask your team members to try to let us know in their transaction that they are donating through your team (write it on the check, comment in PayPal, comment on my blog, email me, etc.)

HOW TO BUILD A TEAM

Here are a few ideas of how to build your team…

1. You can print copies of this post (or your letter or email if you got those from us) to give to your friends, coworkers, neighbors, Sunday school class…whomever.  You might want to edit out the "How to Build a Team" section -- too much information.
2. You can make a request on Facebook for people to join your team.  For example…
• Some friends of mine are adopting 2 kids and need to raise a lot of money fast.  If you could donate just $10 to their cause you can go to the link below.  I’m looking for at least 9 people who will join my team in supporting them.  Let me know if you are interested.  If you do donate, please let them know you are supporting through my team.
3. You can send out an email using something like this…
• Some friends of mine from church (work, etc) are adopting two kids from Bulgaria.  You can read more about their story here (thedemossfamily.blogspot.com).  They’ve asked me to team up with a few friends to help them raise money.  I need to put together a team worth at least $100.  Could you put in $10?  You can donate by PayPal on their blog or mail it to the address shown there.  Just look for the blog entry titled TEAM UP.  You can also read more about this fundraiser there.  Just let me know if you can’t so I can look for another person.   If you do donate, please let them know that you are supporting through my team.

If you get more than 9 people responding on Facebook OR  if you can think of more than 9 people to send an email to OR if anyone wants to donate more than the requested $10, all the better!!  Anything above our first goal will go toward the final goal.

DONATIONS

Your donation can be made in one of three ways:

1. If you have the opportunity, give it to us personally.
2. Send a check to us at 3438 Leslie Ln., Murfreesboro, TN 37128.
3. Use the “Donate” button on the right to pay with PayPal.

Please help bring these beautiful children home.  Share our story and make donations as soon as possible.  We are setting April 15, 2012, as our goal for raising these funds.  Again, as soon as we have the funds, we can arrange our trip.  Any funds that may come in later can still be used for the final fees and 2^nd trip, but remember we MUST have $13,500 before the 1^st trip can be scheduled.  Hopefully we can raise the entire $27,000 and make this our last fundraiser!  Feel free to share our story with more than 9 people or share through email or Facebook.  You might even make sure you have your team built and then post it on Facebook for anyone else who might be interested.  If one of your team members wants to start a new team, that will work too!  Any way you can reach people to join our cause would be greatly appreciated.

With all our thanks,

The DeMoss Family (Tim, Libby, Colton, Eli, M & V)

My Plan or God's Plan

For those of you who have recently joined our story (and don't read a person's blog entirely from the beginning to "catch up" like I do), let me give you an update on where our journey has brought us so far and our most recent twist.

May 2007 - We attended our first informational meeting about adoption.

Aug/Sept 2007 - We committed to adoption.  We began fundraising first rather than applying.  The plan was to adopt 2 girls preferably sisters.

April 2008 - I started this blog.  By that time, we had decided on names for our girls:  Keely Page and Maggie Elizabeth.  We wanted them to be between the ages of 1 and 5.  We were still researching countries and agencies.

May 2008 - Bulgaria was chosen.

August 2008 - Agencies were unofficially chosen.  Miriam's Promise would be the homestudy and post-placement agency.  All God's Children International would be the placing agency.  We began paperwork for home study.

November 2008 - Changed agency choices.  We now planned to use Heaven Sent Children for the home study and post-placement study.  We also planned to use Christian World Adoption as the placing agency.

May 2009 - Changed one of the names from Maggie to Mattie.

November 2009 - We made our final change of agency choice (actually applying this time).  Our official placing agency would be Tree of Life.  Application submitted with Heaven Sent to officially begin our home study.  We requested 2 girls between the ages of 2 and 7.

June 2010 - Submitted our dossier.

Dec 6 2010 - We were officially registered in Bulgaria.

August 2011 - Updated home study and USCIS.  Changed the ages from 2-7 to read a birthday after "such and such".  This would make the oldest possible age at most 6 months younger than Colton.  It would also allow the maximum age to rise as Colton gets older.  After much hesitation, we also indicated we would be open to considering boys...but we continued to refer to our future kids as "the girls" anyway.

December 2011 - Finally finished renewing our USCIS approval.

February 2012 - MOJ asked our agency if we would be interested in a sibling group of 3.  We were interested but felt it might be more than we could take on.

So that brings us to March 2012.  Last Thursday, I emailed our social worker to ask her a question about a couple of kids she had sent out an email about.  Not really expressing interest, just curious.  She answered my question but told me I couldn't ask for them because we had a referral coming.  WHAT?  At this point she only knew that we had been matched but knew absolutely no details.  Friday, we got the details.  It shook me a little because it wasn't our plan.  It wasn't the little picture I had created in my head of our lives.  I had pictured 2 cute little girls:  one younger than Eli...maybe both.  Not the case.  Are you ready for this?  We were matched with a brother and sister.  Did you catch that?  WE HAVE A REFERRAL!!!!!  The boy (M) is 9, and his sister (V) is 7.  In fact, she turned 7 just four days before Eli did.  We had always joked that one might be close to Eli's age and we'd call them twins.  So now we have twins (four days apart) -- Eli with his red hair and V with her long beautiful black hair.  I can't wait to start braiding!

Now, I posted all of the history up above to show you something.  We have had our plan for quite a while.  This brother/sister duo is not what I had planned.  They are not what I had pictured.  In my head all my thoughts centered around 2 little girls.  I had their room planned somewhat.  Their ages varied from one day to the next, but that was the most significant detail that was unknown.  When I received the pictures of M and V, my first that was "What?  A boy?"  Would you believe I've actually had that reaction before?  When we were planning a family, we casually talked about future kids' names.  The first one we picked was a girl's name.  When we found out we were finally expecting, we came up with a boy's name but mostly focused our talk on the girl we felt sure we would have.  When the ultrasound showed (very clearly) that we were going to have a boy, we were stunned.  "What?  A boy?"  It took us a good half hour or so to wrap our brains around the idea and decide life would be alright with a boy.  Next Colton comes along, and we fell head over heels for him.  God knew best.  He had a plan better than ours.  Fast forward to our referral.  It felt the same way.  Knowing how everything worked out so well last time, we knew we needed to seriously consider embracing this change.  When I told Colton that we had received a referral, I told him that this wasn't exactly what we had planned, but that I didn't want to get so focused on my plan that I missed out on something God had planned ('cause I know He is a much better planner than I ever thought about being).

We did take a couple of days to think about it, talk about it, pray about it, and talk to a few other folks about it.  I even spent some time staring at the boys' room trying to figure out how to put 3 boys in there.  Long story short, we decided that these indeed were our children.  We are so excited!  Colton and Eli are so excited.  They keep looking at the pictures over and over.  They tell everyone.  They keep asking why we can't leave now and bring them home.  For those of you new to adoption, I can't post their pictures or names or detailed information about them here.  Friends, I also can't email anything to you.  But if I happen to see you in person, please ask to see my pictures (like I won't offer)!  I have 77 of them on my phone!

The next step?  Major fundraising fast.  Big payments are due before we travel, and we have some expensive travelling to do.  We are tentatively planning to travel in early May.  It would have been sooner, but Tim needed to stay at school through the kids' state testing week.  Then we come back and apply for as many grants as possible, do some more fundraising, get the house ready and travel again.  The second trip may be some time in September or October.  Then the new roller coaster ride begins.....

Did I mention they are beautiful????