This Thanksgiving 2014

Thanksgiving has always been one of our favorite holidays. The air is getting crisp throughout the country everywhere but Florida… and it’s always great to see family. This year we made a trip to South Carolina to spend some time with my family and play some golf. Wow, we are definitely not ready to face the cold!

If you’ve been following our blog for a while, you know we have many things this year to be thankful for. So many people have supported us through our adoption, we have been relatively healthy, and God has blessed us with a renewed faith in his provisions for us. It is hard some days to remember that the very same God who spins the universe into order knows each of us by name, and loves us deeply.

A few weeks ago, we had an amazing turnout for our yard sale fundraiser, which you can read more about and see some photos on our previous posts. What we didn’t reveal at that time was some very exciting news. The Thursday before our yard sale… we were matched.

Our referral came in the form of an email and a phone call from our adoption agency. I was in the car on my way to a dinner in Orlando, and Laura was out and about with the kids. Laura answered the call and a voice on the other line said “Laura… we have some news for your family. He’s a little boy and he’s 8 months old.” She nearly dropped the phone from the wave of emotions that came over her. We imagined several scenarios where we would get the news if I was out of town on business, or if Laura was in North Carolina, but we didn’t figure we would both be away from the house. “He is one of the youngest we have seen come through the system, but I have to tell you that his condition is a little outside your openness range. We almost passed you with him, but something told us we should let you see his file.” “Ok” Laura said, “ok”.

Our Referral Pics

For the next several hours, we both frantically tried to open files on our phones and read more about him, and his heart condition. When I got back from Orlando, Laura and I looked through the photos and prayed for wisdom in making this decision. We had already lined up a doctor from the University of Washington, who specializes in adoptions from China, to review our referral file.

Laura and I had been preparing ourselves to be matched with a child with some sort of orthopedic special need, so receiving a little boy with a congenial heart defect (CHD) was a bit surprising. His condition is called teratology of fallot. You can find out more about this condition here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetralogy_of_Fallot. It basically means that his heart has a hole in it and pushes un-oxygenated blood back through his body causing blue spells. He will eventually need open heart surgery to repair the hole and open the main pulmonary artery traveling to his lungs. It is heartbreaking imagining his mother/father giving this little boy up knowing that they could not provide him the care he needs. Without abandoning him, he would have no chance at survival. In God’s perfect timing, someone brought him to an orphanage partnered with our agency, and ultimately into a match with us. How could we say “No”?

 

Look at that smile!

Again God’s timing is so purposeful.  The next Friday after the call we received another call informing us that he was in the hospital having heart surgery (in China).  As you can imagine Laura was hysterical and we wanted to be by his side.  The orphanage was unable to give us any more information and we will not hear any status update until after he has been brought back to the orphanage. We believe God brought us this little boy for many reasons and we believe His timing was specifically so we could lift him up in prayer during his major surgery.  We don’t expect to hear anything for a while.  Please pray with us.  Pray that the open heart surgery would fully repair his heart defect, pray that baby boy would not be alone but would feel God’s hand holding his during recovery, pray for the continued legal paperwork to bring baby boy home, pray for the hands that care for him as they would love him as their own.  And please pray for us and that we would continue to follow God’s will.   

We are thankful for you!  Thankful that you continue to pray for us and continue to follow our story.  We hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

John and the Baumeister Gang!

A Hoarders paradise and one VERY grateful family

It came and it went, and what a weekend it was! Thank you to everyone who played a part in helping us pull together our adoption yard sale fundraiser last week. We cannot tell you how much it means to us to know we have friends and family who are willing to drop everything for a weekend to help bring baby China home.

Let’s start with the donors… your generosity and kindness for donating enough items to fill our garage and entire house was shocking. Our greatest fear was that we wouldn’t have enough items to sell to make an impact, but all of you exceeded our expectations. Super hero capes, hair bows, hand-made backpacks were among some of the local crafts available during the sale. Our local Chick-fil-A was kind enough to support us with coffee and even Krispy Kreme sent over some donuts. All volunteers were also blessed with a pizza lunch from one of John’s co-workers.

Next the volunteers… the 5:30am set-up crew worked magic. It felt like we were never going to empty the house completely. John’s parents were in town and helped set-up and organize, and our neighbors helped out wherever they could.  Everett’s preschool teacher Ms. Cindy and her husband helped out for both days and several of John’s co-workers and their wives spent all day Saturday with us restocking items, organizing and providing much needed support. It’s amazing how God provides when you least expect it.

The weather… Saturday was beautiful. We had over 200 customers and sold over half our items. However, later Saturday evening it started raining… Sunday was a different story with rain all day. Our volunteers pushed through though. We even updated our signs to read “Still open in the rain” to try and attract more customers. And they kept coming. Our biggest fear was not knowing what to do with all the extra stuff. The slightly “damp” items we had left.

We learned a lot through the process about each other and about our community. A small blog posting does not do anyone justice who helped out, but know that you were a gift from God that weekend. Lending us tables and tents, helping set-up, running the checkout counter, overseeing the craft table, “moving the merchandise”, delivering the larger items, restocking tables, organizing the clothing, watching our children for the day, dropping off items at Goodwill, etc. All would have been lost without you.

The weekend was a true display of God’s grace for us and we need to remember to give God the glory for all of our sales… all $6,500 of it. His Grace truly is Amazing.

Please continue to pray for Baby China!

John