UPDATE!!!

Hey guys! Ok!! A lot has happened this week for sure!! So here goes!!! On Sunday night we drove to Memphis so we would be there when the courthouses opened at 8am. We got there at 8 am, got what we needed and head to Pulaski TN at 810 am, we arrived there around 1230 and got what we needed, grabbed a bite to eat and drove to Nashville TN by 230!! Our Psyciatrist in in Pulaski TN. He works in Memphis at a hospital several days a week so he had stuff notarized in both Memphis and Pulaski. The state of Tennessee requires you to go to get a certified letter stating that the notary is true and valid and the signature is real. On Tuesday we took all of our documents to Birmingham. We found out that Ben's medicals didn't have a copy of his chest x-ray and the kids medicals needed to be rewrote with the kids full names, and Anna and Nate's birth certificate was more than a year old. On Wednesday, I went to pick up a copy of Ben's chest xray results, got Anna and Noah new birth certificates at the health dept. and picked up the kids medicals. Tonight, we will drive to Montgomery to spend the night so we will be in Montgomery when they open. We will be at the Secretary of State office to have Anna and Noah's birth certificates apostilled and then we will take everything to Birmingham to give to our agency. Our agency has received our FBI clearances back from the Secretary of State. At that point, God's will, everything should be ready to be mailed to Peru!! WHEW!! I need a nap!!:) When our dossier arrives in Peru, which should be on Monday, our lawyer there and some other folks will start pushing our dossier to be translated! My medicals expire on April 10th! If they expire before then, they will have to repeated which will mean at least two more weeks and more money. We are praying that it will be translated and turned in to the director by then!!:) God Bless, Brandi

Update

Adoption update: Well.. It has been a while since I updated last. I Am so bad at this! I have added our adoption timeline to the right side of the page. If you look at back post, we were first hoping to travel in Feb or March, then April. Obviously that is not going to happen since our dossier will not be to Peru until March. So it is looking like mid to late summer. At least we hope and pray that is the case. I have to say that adoption is the craziest, scariest, hardest, most amazing thing ever!! BRANDI

Adoption Update!

We have completed our homestudy with our social worker. Laura is wonderful!! She is so nice to work with! She has turned it over to Villa Hope now. We are waiting on them to approve it, which should be any day. We have been working on our I800a forms to send off when our homestudy is done. You have to send a copy of the homestudy with the I800a forms. When our homestudy is complete, we can also start working on our dossier. We already have much of the information needed for the dossier as well. So that is it.. nothing major. We are just waiting! I will admit- I do not do well with waiting! I am learning though! I find myself thinking about "her" all through the day, wondering what she is doing! A few days lately I have been down in the dumps thinking, how in the world are we going to come up with that much money is so little time!! We know that God lead us to her so he will provide. In his time, of course!! Galatians 6:9 9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. We have many fundraisers going on! 1. We are doing mini sessions with Mary.

2. We have Aggie's Arts for sale!

3. We have Compelled Designs for sale!

4.We are going to start doing a fundraiser with Amy in November selling Thirty-one! https://www.facebook.com/groups/213620522061331/?ref=br_tf 5.We are doing a book fundraiser! The lady who is doing our fundraiser I have never met! She has offered to give us 100% of what she makes!!:) https://w3657.myubam.com/ 6.We are doing a Origami Owl Fundraiser too. A lady contacted us wanting to help us out!!:) https://www.facebook.com/lindseyboyerorigamiowl 7.If you just feel lead to make a donation, you can do so on paypal. Just go to https://www.paypal.com/. My email is frogger200017@gmail.com So there we go! I think that is it! We have lots of fundraisers going on! Christmas is coming up. Please consider buying from us for your gifts!!:) Thank you all so much for praying with us and following our journey!!:) I can not wait to hold that precious girl and for her to meet all of you, after all, you guys are helping get her here!!:) Brandi

Update

We had our yardsale on Saturday. We made $825.95 to go towards getting our sweet baby! Emma and her friend Kara Beth and Kara Beth's little sister did an awesome job with the lemonade and treat stand! They made at least $60 by themselves. The McClures let us use their yard since the Hamtpon Cove community sale was that day. They helped us set up and tear down. The Bongs came to help us with the yardsale too. Angela was a big help with Nate. My Mom kept Anna and Noah which was a big help too! We had our homecheck on Sunday afternoon. Since we have had a homestudy for fostercare adoption, she expects this homestudy to be done in three weeks or less. After our homestudy is approved we file our I800a. The I800a is what allows us to bring a child from another country into the U.S. This process can take a while. We also will start working on our dossier when the homestudy is approved. We already have most of what we need for that. We are still selling Aggie's Art and Compelled Designs. I have marked down the prices some on those too! Please continue to pray for us! Please also pray for the health of "Little One"! God Bless, Brandi Cantrell

Just wanted to do a quick update: 
We are in the process of doing our international homestudy. That should be done in just a few weeks. When that is done, we have to file our USCIS forms, when our homestudy is complete we start working on our dossier. When we get approval from the U.S. saying we can bring a child from Peru here, we can mail our dossier to Peru. It has to be translated. Once Peru receives our dossier, they put her officially on hold for us. They only place children in Peru, once a month so we will have to wait on that as well. We orginally had planned to travel around Feb or March, we had to wait on some stuff to be done so now it is looking like April. Emma's birthday is in April so we are planning to celebrate her birthday in March. 

In April when we go, it will be Fall time there. They are on the same time as we are as well. That is be really nice. I was nervous about the kids adjusting but they are on the same time as us. We have been looking at apartments to stay at. We plan to get a two or three bedroom so we have bedrooms, more than one bathroom, a kitchen and washer and dryer. 


We have a lot of fundraisers going on. Right now we are selling Compelled Jewerly and Aggie's Art jewerly. Both are very beautiful and make great gifts!! 
Oct 12 we are having a yardsale. We have had lots of donations. We are overwhelmed by the love that has been shown to us!!! . Our sweet friends are letting us use their yard in Hampton Cove. The day of the 12th, Hampton Cove is having their community yardsale day.
October 17th at 6 pm at Southside Baptist we are having a painting party fundraiser. 
November 16 from 9-3 we are doing a photography fundraiser at Chase Railroad Museum. 

So this is just a little of what is going on! The biggest way that you can help is joining us in prayer!! 

We are so excited for this journey and can hardly wait to bring our little girl home. I can not wait to meet her and for her to meet all of you!!:)


Brandi

Hey guys! I am horrible at updating. So sorry! I will try to do better. 

Here goes!!:)


Ok so we have pretty much finished up with our foster care stuff. We are still planning to do foster care adoption at some point but right now God is leading us on a totally different path. We were not expecting this at all. We had said at some point decided we would do international adoption but we had planned to do that several years from now. 
I got an email from an adoption agency that I  had never heard of. In the email it asked me to join their private Facebook face that they post pictures of kids on the waiting children's list. I requested to join the page. Their are only 40 something people on the page. That same day I joined they posted a picture of a little girl from Peru that I totally fell in love with. I can't explain what happened but I felt this overwhelming feeling in my heart that I needed to inquire about her. I wish I could share her name and her medical condition but for now I can't. She will be 3 in November. I can say this, the sooner she gets to the U.S for medical care the better.

So here we are.. we are trying to raise enough money to go to Peru to get her in Febuary. We need to be there 3-5 weeks. Yes, we are crazy! I do know that if God leads you to it, he will bring you to it though. 

We just finished up with a tshirt sell and raised almost $400 in a week. I am about to start selling beads for Visiting Orphans. They are beautiful.  In October we are planning to do a yard sale. If anyone has anything they would like to donate, please let me know. Then in November I am planning to do an Aggie's Art fundraiser. They have some amazing jewerly and would be great Christmas gifts. So those are our plans. Obviously the biggest help right now for us is prayer. Lots of prayer. Would you please join us in prayer as we pray our little girl home!!:)


God Bless,

Brandi

Adoption Update!

Hello everyone,

I am so bad at updating but some of you have asked so here it is!:)

 

We had our physicals yesterday. We go back on Friday for tb skin test results and blood work. 

 

We went car shopping yesterday as well. We are now in the "big van" club!! We were very tight on space in my car and grocery shopping trips were a disaster and we know we are adding kid or kids to our family so we needed something bigger. We have been looking for about six months but have never done anything with it. 

 

We have our next meeting and home check on August 13th. We should have the results of all of our test and everything by then. After that meeting we should be homestudy ready by September 1. I am so excited! I know God already has the child or children already picked out for us. I have to remember to be patient. I have a hard time with that. I am getting better and better though.

Emma and Noah are very excited to welcome more kids into our home. Of course Emma wants it to be a girl and Noah wants it to be a boy. Who knows. Maybe it will be both!!;) We will have to wait and see what God has planned for us. 

Thank you so much for everyone who has been praying for us and asking for updates. 

 

God Bless,

Brandi