Helping Those Left Behind

One of the hardest things about being in Asen's orphanage was seeing all of the other precious children and knowing that they would still be waiting for their forever families. We have been thinking about ways that we could help these 75 children who continue to wait. We contacted the orphanage director and she told us that their greatest needs were for "basic necessities" such as diapers, food and clothing; as well as an industrial dryer. Right now the orphanage is hanging all of the laundry outside to dry! Can you imaging doing laundry for 75 children from newborn to 4 years old without a dryer?!? I can't even imagine doing laundry for my family of 7 without a dryer!

We would love to be able to bless the children left behind with some of these necessities. Our main goal is to be able to fund the dryer (about $700) and then provide as many necessities as we can. Because the cost of things like diapers is so much lower there, the best way to do this is to take cash with us and then purchase the items in country to take to the orphanage. The donations will stretch much further this way. The funds for the dryer will be given directly to the orphanage director.

If you have been looking for a way to directly impact the lives of orphans this is your chance! We will be collecting money to take with us when we travel at the end of March. The first $700 will be used to purchase an industrial dryer for the orphanage and we will use any extra funds to purchase diapers, food, and clothing for them while we are there. We will post pictures so y'all can see exactly what we were able to purchase to benefit these beautiful children. If you would like your contribution to be tax deductible you can send a check to Hays Hills Baptist Church and put "Love the Least Ministry - Orphanage Donation" in the memo. Otherwise, you can send your donation to us via mail or PayPal and let us know what it is for.

If you have a connection and are able to obtain items such as toothbrushes, small toys, etc. at a low cost we would be glad to take these along with us as well! As soon as we know which airlines we will be flying I plan to contact them to see if we can get the baggage fees waived so that we can take some donations with us.

The poverty was obvious to me when I travelled to A.J.'s country over the summer, but I was shocked to learn that the average monthly income there is only about $500. As the poorest country in the EU they have really struggled with their economy over the past 10 years. These children really do need us!

Introducing...

Asen James Jakubauskas!!

Our court date was today and our adoption has been granted! So what comes next? We wait some more. :-) The adoption decree will be signed by the judge in seven days (February 29). Then our facilitator will pick up the decree and take it to get the new birth certificate issued. That will take a week as well (March 1). At that point Elena will take both documents to be translated and make arrangements for our pick up trip. We should be able to travel to pick him up sometime after March 15, providing that there are no more delays. But honestly, after all of the delays we have experienced another delay at this stage would not surprise me at all. But just knowing he will be home before his 5th birthday is so exciting!

Curious about his name? We chose to keep his Bulgarian given name (Asen) to give him a connection to his birth country and his life before he became a part of our family. The staff at the orphanage is very fond of our little guy and they call him Sennie (Take the "A" off of Asen and add a long "e") and also Asencho (Asen plus "cho" like the beginning of "chosen"). Asencho is a diminutive form of his given name, sort of like when we call our Eve "Evie". Our family usually calls him Sennie when we talk about him, but we also call him Asen and A.J. His middle name is from James 1:27 - "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

Join us in praising God for this blessing!

We also ask that you join us in praying that we will have no more delays and Asen will be home as soon as possible.

If you are able, you can still donate toward our travel expenses and enter to win some amazing prizes at Forty to Forever.



To Scream or Not to Scream, That is the Question

Last week we got the wonderful news that our court date had been scheduled for February 8th. Obviously, we were very excited and started looking ahead to see when we would most likely travel and making plans for our kiddos who would be staying behind.

At about 3:30 am today I was suddenly wide awake and had an unshakable feeling that something was not right. With all of the delays and problems we have already had in this adoption process I was fearful that something had not gone well with our court hearing. About an hour ago I got confirmation of that. The judge that was assigned our case requested some additional documentation from our agency. Usually the judges will accept a scanned copy of the apostilled documents as long as the original is provided to the court before the adoption decree is picked up. Our judge refused to accept anything other than the original and will not hear our case until February 22nd.

Our wonderful stateside facilitator said  "Your family has had every delay imaginable and then some." and that just sums it up perfectly. If there is an issue or problem that has ever been seen in an adoption process we have seen it. And we have seen a few that have never been seen before.

Please keep praying for our family and for A.J.