Thursday, June 27, 2013

The one with the Announcement

Hi friends and family!

If you've been a follower of this blog for a while, it is no surprise to you that the past two years have been heartbreaking for us, as we’ve tried to expand our family. If you're a new reader, you can read our story by clicking the link above. Through it all, the Lord has shown His love and faithfulness with the help of your kind words, actions and prayers. We know that our story is not over and He is taking care of our babies until we are able to meet them one day. We are confident that He has big plans for our family and are more hopeful than ever that our family will continue to grow.

It is with excitement that we want to share with you the news that we are adopting!

We began working with an adoption consultant in Atlanta back in April and are pursuing domestic newborn adoption. Because she works with agencies across the country, we hope to welcome our baby to our family by Christmas! We want to share this wonderful news with all of you, because we are asking you to link arms and support us through this process.

1. We are asking for your prayers. Pray that the process would continue to go smoothly. Pray that we would have discernment when reading through cases that we receive through email. Lastly, pray for our birth mother that we have yet to meet that could very well be carrying our baby right now.

2. We are asking for financial support. As domestic newborn adoption expenses can cost upwards of $40,000 depending on the state and agency, we have a goal to raise $25,000. If you would like to help us achieve our goal, there are several ways you can give. We can guarantee that 100% of the funds we raise will go towards bringing our baby home.

- We have set up an online giving link on this blog through PayPal that can be found on the right sidebar.

- If you are local, you can donate any gently used items to our yard sale (and shop our yard sale!) that we are going to have the weekend of August 3rd. Email me at Stephanie.oprea@gmail.com if you are interested in donating items and I will send out separate updates about how to help with this.

The past two months have been a blessing as we’ve learned the many different parallels of this adoption process to our spiritual adoption by our Heavenly Father though Jesus. We are so excited about bringing a baby home and are confident that the Lord already knows the baby that is meant to join our family. We know that He is calling us to this and He will see us through it. Thank you for celebrating what God is doing in our family. We look forward to updating you with happy news along the way.


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Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Trinidad Video

During our week in Trinidad, I was our resident photographer and shot some video as well. The one and only Addie Jones (K-Life Women's Staff) put together this fabulous video that really gives a good look into what our trip looked like. Enjoy!

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Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Trinidad

We are home and it feels oh so good to be back in the USA! For those that don't know, the husband and I got home around 1:30 AM from taking a group of 8 high school students down to Trinidad with Atlanta K-Life. We joined K-Life chapters from Kansas City and Waco, TX to bring our group total to close to 50 people! We linked arms with TTUM (Trinidad and Tobago Urban Ministries) and served in several villages around Trinidad by visiting primary (elementary) schools, doing some construction, visiting an orphanage, visiting a boys' prison and hosting a Vacation Bible Club each afternoon. We still managed to have some free time where we shopped around Port-of-Spain and spent a day on the beautiful beach of Maracas Bay. We have had an incredible trip and it is so refreshing to see how God is moving around the world. I could type for a week and still not express how much we were able to see and experience during our seven days on this tropical island off the coast of Venezuela. I think the pictures will provide the best description...

Waiting for the crew at the airport at 4:30 in the AM

The whole group on our cultural tour visiting a Hindu temple. Trinidad is predominantly Hindu due to the large Indian population.
Atlanta crew
You have to remove your shoes to go inside the temple.
This is actually one of their gods that they worship outside one of the temples.
Vacation Bible Club in an area known as Jacob Hill.
 










We visited three different schools during the week where we did some skits, sang some songs, shared a short message and broke the kids into smaller groups to talk to them about Jesus.
"Liming" is Trinidadian slang for hanging out




Construction around the TTUM campus
Party time after nightly devos.
On our way to Maracas Bay


This guy came up and played his guitar for the group for some money. It was totally worth it.

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