Very Exciting Things are Happening!!!

So recently we have been awarded two separate matching grants.  What is a matching grant you ask?

     Matching Grants are a quick way to double your donations.  For every dollar raised up to a certain      amount, the grant agency will match the money.  $1=$2, $100=$200, etc. You get the idea.

Now onto the exciting news.  We have been approved for a total of $6,500.
The grant agency Hand in Hand has approved us for a grant of $2,500!  The second agency is Lifesong for Orphans in partnership with Chosen and Dearly Loved, which has approved us for a grant of $4,000!  Now comes the part you have been waiting for.  We are not allowed to donate to ourselves.  So we are at the mercy of gracious givers.  This is a great opportunity to raise $13,000.  We are desperately hoping you can be a part of this donation.  Any amount you give up to the total grant amount will be doubled.

In order to be approved for the grants a lot of time has gone into even more paperwork on top of the already large stack of paperwork for the adoption itself.  Once you apply to the various agency (and we have hit several of them) you are then reviewed by a board, committee, or just a kind hearted person who is giving away money to what they feel is a good cause.  The dollar amounts vary from agency to agency.  $500-$15,000.  And believe me any amount is golden in our eyes.  So now that great amounts of time, both ours and the agency folks, has been invested into these applications it would be a shame to waste them.  So I am asking that you prayerfully consider giving to our matching grants.

If you look to the right you will see a donation button for Lifesong which will lead you to PayPal.  Again any amount will be wonderful.  The Lifesong grant has a due date of October 28th.  After that date the money will only be a donation to our adoption and will not be matched by Lifesong. So it is important to not let this opportunity pass.  Lifesong donations are tax deductible as a 501(c)3 organization.


The Hand in Hand donations have to be postmarked by September 10th.

Please send all donations made payable to “Hand in Hand Christian Adoption postmarked by September 10, 2015 to: (for tax purposes please include our name on the outside of the envelope only…do not put our name on the check itself) Below is how the envelope should read.

Hand in Hand Christian Adoption, Inc.

Aaron and Karen Pirkle

18318 Mimosa Court

Gardner, KS 66030

I know this is confusing, it was confusing for me to make this post.  If you have any questions please call or email or just grab one of us in passing.  Again THANK YOU! And please continue to keep our growing family in your prayers.  This is an unbelievable stressful journey made easier by your concern and prayer.  Thanks for every thing. 

Aaron Pirkle

Ready for Authentication

My mom, the boys, and I have driven all over Alabama this week.  Sunday, the boys and I drove the girls to camp Maywood.
Monday, Mom, the boys and I drove to the Morgan County Courthouse to have all of our Morgan county paperwork county certified.  Then off to Athens b/c I had one paper that was signed by a notary from Limestone Co.
Tuesday we drove up to Madison Co. courthouse because one of our notaries had signed the paper in Morgan Co. but had their notary in Madison Co.   If I had known that, I would have gone to Madison on Monday also.
On the way home, we stopped by a used homeschool curriculum store in Madison and got the Seth's curriculum for the year.
I finally had all of our Alabama paperwork county certified except for our home study, whose notary happens to be in Shelby Co.  Rather than drag this out 2 weeks with mailing here and there, I decided to bite the bullet and just go do it in person.
So, Wednesday, Mom, the boys and I drove to Shelby Co. to have our homestudy notary county certified, then off to Montgomery to have all of our Alabama documents State Certified. That whole ordeal Wednesday took about 7.5 hrs.  It  has been a long 4 days of driving all over.
I also mailed off our TN and IN papers to get state certified and have those back already.  All of our dossier papers are now ready to be sent to various Chinese consulate offices to be authenticated.  Which means, our 10 pages from Alabama will be going to Houston, my Birth Certificate from Indiana will have to go to Chicago, and Aaron's birth certificate and our marriage license from TN will go to DC.  Crazy.
I was excited to send them off, then found out the Houston courier I was going to use is taking a vacation next week, so they won't be taking papers to the consulate until 8/12. Oh well, I am glad to have those papers finished with county and state certifications.  Now I just to have make copies of everything, fill out some papers pay some money, of course, and send them off.
We haven't gotten any money yet from grants.  So far, all we have heard is that they have received all of our paperwork.  I have applied to 8 different grant agencies. I plan to apply for more, but getting our dossier paperwork done was more important.
Our travel date to China should be sometime between November and February.  I am so ready to go!

Applying for Grants

So far I have filled out tons of paperwork for 8 grants.  There are still a few more that I am working on. It will probably still be about a month at least before we hear from any of them. Most have a 6-12 week decision period, I know one I applied for won't even make a decision until the middle of November.
The last few weeks have been a whirlwind. Back on Father's Day, Aaron got the opportunity to go to a wildfire in Florida. So we raced home and got him packed real quick. Unfortunately, for the time period he was to be gone (16 days) I had already signed up to work 5 days, both weekends that he would be gone.  The first weekend, my two oldest were going on a retreat and wouldn't be there to help my mom.   So, I arranged with Aaron's parents for them to keep the 3 youngest that first weekend. So I drove all the kids 2.5 hrs away up to TN, dropped the 3 youngest off, then drove the older 2 to their retreat which was kind of on the way home, then drove me and mom back home. I worked the next 2 days, had Sunday off, worked Monday, then I drove back up to TN on Tuesday and met Aaron's parents halfway to pick up the kids. I was supposed to work Sunday, not Monday, so I had arranged for one of the youth interns to pick up mom and the older two for church Sunday driving them everywhere they needed to go. Thankfully, someone at worked switched a day with me.

 The next Friday, again, I met Aaron's parents halfway and dropped off the 4 youngest kids.  Madelyn came home with me because she was leaving for a mission trip to Houston the next day.
I was supposed to work the Saturday she was leaving, so I had arranged for me to drop her off at 5:30 am at someone's house and they would take her to the church at 7:30pm to leave that night. I ended up getting cancelled that day. I did work last Sunday.  Went Monday all the way again to TN to pick up the the boys and left 2 kids there.  They were brought home Thursday.

It was an extremely stressful and busy time.Very hard trying to juggle everyone and get everyone to the correct place when I am the only one here and the only one driving.
Thankfully Aaron got home safely!

Another perfect timing...I had applied for USCIS before Aaron went out of town. Well, USCIS sends you a letter and tells you what time to come for your fingerprints.  They had scheduled us for the morning after Aaron returned from Florida. So we did get our USCIS fingerprints taken again.  I believe this is the 4 time since 2007 we have had to go do that there. I don't know why we have to repeat them every time, but we do. And when you are adopting and dealing with governments, you don't question why, you just do it.

We also have almost all of our dossier compiled. Everything that needs to be notarized is done.
The next step is to send my Indiana Birth certificate up to the IN Sec. of State to be State certified. I need to get Aaron's TN birth cert. and our marriage license certified in TN.  Then all of our documents from Alabama that have a notary on them, I have to take to the courthouse in Decatur, have them county certified, which means that they attach a letter saying that the notary is indeed a notary, then I have to mail all of this to Montgomery to have the county certification state certified, where they attach a letter saying that the county certification is real.

When our USCIS comes back, we will attach it with all of our other documents and send it to the Chinese consulate in Houston where they will authenticate the documents.   You cannot send paperwork directly to the consulate, it has to be delivered by a courier.  So, that means we get to pay a courier a lot of money, I will guess it will probably cost $300-$400 to have all of our paperwork authenticated including the courier fees and consulate fees.

We are getting excited though.  The closer we get, the more real it gets.  I am still hoping to have her home by February.  We'll see!

Home Study in Our Hands!!!!

FINALLY!!!!!!
We have our home study.  I am so happy.  Our social worker had sent us some papers to sign, an addendum, to our home study, that is what delayed it a few weeks.  She sent them a week and a half ago Thur.  Which is 11 days ago.  We were supposed to sign them and then mail them back to her, then she was going to get the home study notarized and then mail it to us.
Well, the Monday after she sent them, we still did not have them and she only sent them from Birmingham.  So, long story short, I realized that waiting for papers, mailing papers and her waiting for them, then waiting for her to notarized, then waiting for the home study to actually get to me might take another few weeks.  So, I bit the bullet and drove the hour to Birmingham 6 days ago, last Tuesday and met her in a parking lot, where I got the 4 copies of our home study.
I mailed our paperwork to USCIS last Wednesday morning!
USCIS normally takes 6-10 weeks for approval. So my goal is to have all of our dossier paperwork gathered and ready for when the USCSI is approved.
We applied for 2 adoption grants and an adoption loan last week.  Now that we have the home study in hand, we can do that.  Unfortunately, it takes about 4-10 weeks for these grant/loan agencies to let you know if you are getting a grant or loan.  So, I am praying that  by the time our USCIS is back and we owe another $10,000+ we will have more money.
So far for our adoption we have paid:
$1506 to Agape for the Home Study
$97 Home Study Fingerprints
$890 USCIS
$179 for mandatory education
$164 for birth/marriage certificates, criminal background checks
Totalling:  $2836

From our donations and fundraisers, we have around $1900 left.
Unfortunately, we owe our agency $3750, so I had to go get a line of credit from our bank.  It was really, really depressing, since we have spent the last 2 years paying off $39,000.

I guess I am disappointed.  I was hoping to do this adoption debt free. Perhaps we will get more donations and enough grants by the end to pay off any loans we might have to get.

Hard to put how I feel into words.

This child is worth all of this. Every bit of money we spend to help her get home.  I am not saying this to remind myself, because I know her worth. I am saying this to remind any one reading this that wonders why we would embark on this journey.

Still Waiting for Home Study & Fundraising numbers update

This is taking forever, I mistakenly thought that we would have our home study back at the beginning of May, or at least by the 2nd week, so we could go ahead and apply for grants and loans if we have to.  Finally heard from our agency Tuesday and there was a little bit of the home study that needed tweaking in order to comply with China. So after speaking with our adoption agency and our home study agency, I am hopeful that we will get a copy in our hands next week.
Also, our home study didn't cost as much as I expected, so I adjusted our fundraising thermometers and I was able to add another $200 that was given to us at church the day after our pancake breakfast, from people who were unable to attend the breakfast.  We are thankful!
Our van is leaking transmission fluid.  Ugh, need to get that fixed asap also. Work camp next week, which means 3 - 4 trips to Decatur every day.

Pancake Breakfast $697 raised

Aaron and I want to thank everyone who helped us bright and early this morning with the pancake breakfast and everyone who came to eat and support us.  It was a great success!  We are closer to our goal of $3750 for our 1st agency fee due now.
Still waiting for the home study in the mail so we can start applying for grants and probably some no interest loans.

Still waiting for home study

Hopefully next week, we will have our home study in our hands. We have made some progress in that the final letter of recommendation is on it's way and the social worker has sent a copy to our adoption agency for review before they sign and notarize it.  So it should be soon!
We have major bills coming up..
Our $3750 agency fee is due now and as soon as we get the home study in our hands we will need to apply for USCIS which is around $1000.  So we have almost $5000 due now.  In 6-10 weeks when our USCIS comes back, we will our our agency over $6000.
Soooo, we really could use some support.  Speaking of that, we will be having a pancake breakfast this coming Saturday May 16th from 7-10am. Tickets are $6 each, so come out and support us!  Thanks!