Timeline!

Someone gave us a great suggestion of laying out as simple as possible to everyone our adoption time line and when money is due that way people can know how much we need and by when so they can be praying and helping if they feel led to! I agreed that this was a great idea so I will try my best to do this for you below!

~We have already paid $650 for half of our home study fee.

~Our next stage or set of things we need to get done as soon as possible is to finish the home study ($500 left to pay), submit our i-600a form to USCIS ($670), get our FBI fingerprints done ($160), medical visits($60), yellow fever shots($240) and marriage/birth certificates notarized($30) and apply for passports ($110). We need to get these done before we go on to get our referral of our baby girl!

~Our goal is to get these things done by the end of February! We will need approximately $1,900-$2,000 to be able to get these things done.

~The next big step after that is getting our referral of our baby girl! In order to receive our referral we have to give $1,000 to our lawyer. We are hoping to receive a referral and be ready for it by the end of March.

~Once we have our referral it will take a few months for us and our lawyer to get all our notarized documents, forms and all the necessary steps in order for our lawyer to schedule a court date for us. During this time and before we leave we will need to raise up another approximately $12,000-$13,000 before we can leave for Uganda to go get her!

~The last $2,500 approximately that we will need is after we come home with her. That will be to cover the cost of post-placement visits and u.s. adoption finalization!

SUMMARIZATION: We need to raise up $3,000, Lord willing by the end of March to be able to get our referral of our baby girl! After that we will need to raise up $12-$13,000 in order to leave and go get her and bring her home! After we return home with her, we will need to raise the remaining $2,500.

Our goal and hope is to raise these up and get everything done in enough time to go and get her before the courts close for a month. I am not for sure but I believe they close from the middle of July to the middle of August. Of course, we realize this may not be what happens and we may have to wait longer. However, this is something we are shooting for so we can bring our little girl home sooner rather than later!

If any of you have frequent flier miles you would like to donate, that would also help so much! Our plane tickets will cost us around $3-$6,000 for both of us to travel there and back and if we could get enough flier miles donated that could take $3-$6,000 out of our adoption funds that we need to raise!

It's kind of weird and humbling to have to share these details with you all and ask for your help but we simply know we cannot do it on our own and so we are trusting God knowing that He has called us to this and will not leave us! Thank you for your support and even more for your prayers! We love you all!

We are personally doing as much as we can by saving, using our tax refund and doing fundraisers to help bring our baby girl home! We already have our first fundraiser going on which is the candle fundraiser. Look out for our next fundraiser within the next month or so! The next fundraiser will be selling adoption T-shirts that have a great message and spread awareness of Africa and orphans just by wearing the shirt but also with each purchase of a shirt, you help us be one step closer to bringing Isabella home! Another thing we are going to do is have a HUGE yard/garage sale in the spring and we are going to ask all our friends and family who may have things they don't need anymore and would like to contribute to the yard sale and hold a big weekend long sale and hopefully raise up lots that way! We have heard of other adoption couples doing this and raising hundreds and some thousands by all the donations of items they received! I am also starting to do cakes again however I am only doing orders for 50 servings or more right now except for family because I really don't make much money with cakes under 50 servings!  The big cakes are what give me the most profit!  So if your in need or know of someone in need of a wedding, birthday, special occasion or holiday cake for 50 or more people please let me know!  All the money for my cakes will go towards our adoption!

Love to all,