The joys of adoption

Many responses come from telling people you are adopting and in the adoption process I have felt many feelings but for the most part the feelings have been of joy.

Joy in the fact that we will be welcoming a child into our lives that is already loved by so many, joy for the fact that so many are praying for our child, and joy in the fundraising process.

Yes fundraising is exhausting (at 7 pm at the Peters' household tonight it feels like 10 pm to us all!), fundraising is a process but it is a joy. A joy to share with friends, family, and strangers about the calling on our lives to love another; to do what God has called us all to do in loving one another!

Today was no different! We had a fundraiser, a yard sale, and we prepared by collecting donations, hanging posters, talking about it all week on facebook and the day finally arrives and we are set up and for the first hour we were having a great showing. People were coming, we were selling items, we were telling them about our yard sale and giving out fliers about our tee shirts and then nothing.

THE ROAD WAS BLOCKED for a road race!! Ahhh the first reaction was oh well we can't control this just like I can't control when we will receive a child and then I went inside and emptied the dishwasher and prayed that when the road opened that God would bring people here that needed to hear about our adoption or who would be willing to buy stuff. The blocked road also gave us a chance for some great laughs and checking out the merchandise, the joy in the journey. Well as soon as the race was open our road was full of cars ready to shop til they found just the right thing.

We were blessed all day! We saw people stop bargaining when they heard it was for an adoption, we received many donations on top of the items price marked and we saw that people in our community, life, and perfect strangers are generous and caring! It was a joy to fundraise today and share about our love for our future child.

My mom was here all day and she worked so hard and always a great greeter, Todd was in charge of the money and Patty (one of my teenagers) was our entertainment and our endless helper. They were all awesome and the day was a success because they were there but also because people donated so much stuff and come and shopped but at the end of the day it was a fundaiser and people always want to know how much you made... so how much did we make.

Well last night mom was like "I think $200 would be great." I agreed because we didn't have anything for sale for more than $15 and we knew the road race would stop some of the traffic but we serve a God bigger than road races or ticket prices and we were able to raise $417.13

Can you believe it?? Nothing short of a miracle so THANK YOU! Thank you! Thank you! But mostly thank you to God for providing for us in another way that we didn't think was possible! Thank you!! As always at the end of the night it is a JOY TO SERVE GOD and serve Him with so many wonderful families and friends and community members!

Here are some pictures from the day! Enjoy!

Friends from church were some of our early shoppers :) 

 Mom with the necklace pile! 

 Susan and Mike Smith shopping the books

 Donna Griswold chatting with other shoppers

 Patty dressed mom as advertisement for the Yard Sale! 

 Do you see the JOY??

 The joy of trying out some of the yard sale findings. 

 Patty's turn! :) The slippers with pink socks and a pink lamp. High Fashion. 

 Todd's family shopping the yard sale. Always a joy to have family around. 

 Todd's mom (soon to be grandmother) shopping. 

 The family- our greatest supporters!!!!!
My mom (Anita), Todd's Cousin (Erik), Todd, Todd's dad (Scott), Todd's mom (Joanne), Todd's Uncle (Mike), Me, Todd's Aunt (Karen)

Yard Sale for our adoption!

We are having a Yard Sale as a fundraiser for our adoption! 

We are collecting items that we can sell (no couches or electronics please) and we are looking for people who would like to help with set up, selling, and clean up! 

Here are the details of our upcoming YARD SALE! We are having a multi-family yard sale to raise money for our adoption! All proceeds will help with the adoption cost for our baby!

Come shop and get some awesome items and know that you are supporting our future family! :)

We will have items for sale for children, teenagers, college students, adults, EVERYONE! Come on by and SHOP!

Hope to see you Saturday, July 28 from 8 am to 2 pm at 7 Poplar Lane South Dennis, MA 02660. 

Waiting for the little things

Adoption is a lot of waiting as you can tell by now but we are not just waiting for the big events of receiving a phone call, making a relationship with a birth mother, having our child born, bringing them home and then finalizing our adoption.

As we continue to wait for the moment that we hold our child in our arms, we continue to trust God's timing. 

We are waiting for the little things like every expecting parents. Todd and I had the joy of going to the beach with our friends this week and when we got home we both were like "we can't wait to bring our child to the beach with friends and family!"

Todd and I are celebrating our 6th wedding anniversary this weekend so we went to celebrate by seeing Brave, the Pixar movie, and in there was a ton of kids and families. We so enjoyed all the little kids laughing and talking about what they were experiencing. We can not wait to take our child to the movies, to have them enjoy the simple things of life and to have the joys of being a child with loving parents.

We continue to work on paying off our adoption loan through dedication, amazing gifts from people, and selling our tee shirts and coffee! If you are wanting to buy a shirt, today is a great day for that and we so appreciate all who have bought shirts and supported us in our adoption.

Todd and I have been going through our house in preparation for our next fundraiser... A YARD SALE! We are going to be having a yard sale at our house on Saturday, July 28 from 8 am to 2 pm. We will be selling all kinds of stuff and some of our friends are donating items too. So stop by, get some great deals and support our adoption! Hope to see you at our Yard Sale on July 28!

The title of all post should be... THANK YOU!

Thank you to everyone who has in the past and who is currently donating to our adoption (by mailing checks, buying tee shirts, coming to a fundraiser)! We want to make sure that you all know that your donations mean the world to us. We had to take out a loan from the bank to get on the list for our adoption and the interest rate was high but manageable and we feel so blessed when we pay ahead and get that loan smaller and smaller! The day we pay off that loan will be such a blessing!

We want to make sure that everyone who donates knows that we are using every penny that you donate towards our adoption! Not a single penny that you donate goes to anything but our adoption loan and you can be sure that every time we get a check we make a donation towards that loan or directly to our adoption depending on the timing of what is due when. We have kept a list of every gift ever donated towards our adoption and we often look at it and give thanks to God for all of you.

Todd and I are still in the waiting process, man this seems like a long wait but we know it will be worth it in the long run! We long to share with our child about all the wonderful people through amazing donations made them a part of our family and through their care for us blessed us with the gift of a child.

We ask that you continue to pray for us as we continue to wait and trust God's timing. We look forward to the day that we post that we got a call, or our child is born, or that we are bringing home our baby, or that our adoption home visits are over and we are done with paper work and our adoption is finalized but one step at a time so we live in the moment of waiting. Of holding close to God's faithful love for us and holding close to our friends and our wonderful families who are more support than we could ever express! THANK YOU!

Thank you for your support, prayers, donations, love, and thank you for being you; for caring for us and for being empathetic and excited about our adoption too! You are all amazing!

Thank you and God Bless!
Love,
Meredith and Todd Peters

Still waiting

Some people have been commenting on how we have not blogged in a while about our adoption and it is not because we have not been thinking about our adoption, or because we have raised all the money we hoped, or because we have stopped giving thanks for all your support. Just the blogging had a pause.

I told Todd that we needed to blogging and he said what can we say but THANK YOU and please keep praying as we keep waiting. The waiting is not so bad but the not knowing is hard. The not knowing when the phone will ring and they will tell us we have been matched. The not knowing what year our child will be born, the not knowing is tough.

I am learning to live with the waiting. During the time of waiting we get to pray and talk to so many people about adoption. We get to share our passion about starting a family through adoption and what a great opportunity someone will have to share love by giving their baby up for adoption. We have a huge respect for our future birth parent in the decision they are making, to make the decision to give their baby up for adoption can not be easy but what a true act of unselfish love!

Todd and I ask that you please keep praying that we would be picked at the proper time by the right birth mother and that we would not only be patience with waiting but that we would be at peace during this time full of the unknown.

Thank you for all your love and support! It is amazing to see how much love is out there in this world and in our community of friends and family. We are blessed and we won't want to go through this journey of adoption without each of you!

Do you drink coffee or know someone who does?

Do you enjoy a good cup of coffee in the morning?

 I think there are many people out there that do and if everyone we know that drinks coffee ordered a bag of coffee from https://justlovecoffee.com/about/beneficiary/hopefaithjoyfamily/ it would be a huge blessing. A portion of all coffee ordered will go to our adoption cost. We are getting closer to being done with our bank loan (almost half way done paying that back) and that is a huge blessing! 

We continue to wait in God's timing and grace to be pick as adoptive parents and while we wait, we continue to strive to pay off our loan. We thank all of you who have donated, bought a shirt, and prayed for us! You have no idea how much it means to us to have you praying for us and donating towards our adoption. 

We continue to trust God and let Him have complete control over our adoption. 

Please pass the link on to your friends and family to buy coffee, mugs, and other cool items and support our adoption! Happy Coffee Drinking to you! :) 

Will you join us in the 7 o'clock hour?

Waiting is a process in and of itself. It is an art and it is something that Todd and are are truly trying to embrace. There is nothing more we can do, no more papers to fill out, no way for us to talk to a birth mother and tell her how excited we are to be parents and how much we already love our little child to be, there is nothing more to do but PRAY!
 
We pray, I think that we pray day and night for our future birth mother, we pray that our profile goes out to many birth mothers this month, we pray that a birth mother would pick us, we pray that our baby would be protected, we pray for our relationship with our birth mother, we pray for peace during this process, we pray that we continue to trust God's timing, and we pray for our fundraising (side note our shirts are still up for sale and would be a great gift for mother's day so please go order your shirts today at http://www.adoptionbug.com/petershopefaithjoyfamily/)

We also give thanks! We give thanks for everyone who is praying for us, we thank God for all who have so kindly made donations or bought a tee shirt to support our adoption. We thank God for our time waiting and we are thankful for God's continuous love and guidance.

People keep asking how is it going and it is the same answer it is a waiting game but every time I get asked that question I pray for the day that we no longer are waiting but are rejoicing with everyone about the child that God has placed in our lives.

So we are asking you to join us in prayer. We are asking that during one of the 7 o'clock hours, either in the morning or evening that you say an extra prayer for us and our adoption. We know there is great power in prayer and we know so many of you are praying for this adoption already and what a powerful thing if everyone who we know prays during the 7 o'clock hours. God hears our prayers and knows our desires and it is an honor to present this request to our loving heavenly Father together!!

We thank you for all your prayers, love, support and donations! We are blessed!