5 million.... a really big number for a really BIG God!

5 million seems like a lot, a really big number, a number I wouldn't want to count to.  A number I can't imagine, I've never seen 5 million dollars, what does 5 million grains of sand look like or 5 million leaves blowing in the wind?  or 5 million children, 5 million orphans in one country, 5 million orphans in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, many of them victims of a 10 year long civil war. To put that in perspective, we live in a state (Wyoming) with a population of about a half a million.  The Denver metro area has a population of about 3 million.  Miami has a population of 5.6 million.  In the United States there are over 400,000 kids in the foster system.  If I think about these stats for too long, I can become depressed and overwhelmed and then I'm reminded that there is a father to the fatherless that already knows all of this.

Father to the fatherless, defender of the widows- this is God, whose dwelling is holy.  God places the lonely in families; he sets the prisoners free and gives them joy 

(Ps 68:5-6, NLT)

He knows the magnitude of the crisis.  He loves these precious little ones, not only does He know ALL 5 million orphans in the Congo but He knows the number of hairs on each of their little heads.  That is a special kind of knowing.

And the very hairs on your head are all numbered.  So don't be afraid; 

you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows 

(Matthew 10:31, NLT)

He longs to see them loved and ultimately to know him.  

For The Lord your God is the God of gods and The Lord of lords.  

He is the great God, the mighty and awesome God, 

who shows no partiality and cannot be bribed.  

He ensures that orphans and widows receive justice.  

He shows love to the foreigners living among you and gives them food and clothing 

(Deuteronomy 10:18-19, NLT)

He knows that my heart is heavy with a longing for these little ones to experience a family.  

If you claim to be religious but don't control your tongues, you are fooling yourself, 

and your religion is worthless.  

Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means 

caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.  

(James 1:26-27, NLT)

He knows that my house will not hold 5 million children, but it can hold 2.  Our focus can not be on the 5 million, it must be on the 2, the 2 that we are bringing home.  The 2 little boy faces with sad eyes and sweet smiles, the 2 little boys who don't know their daddy and whose mommy has left this earth.  Those are the 2 we are focused on.  These 2 will one day call us daddy and mommy.  They will rely on us to feed them and nurture them and to walk through their grief with them.

We still need your help.  In the next few weeks, we will be needing to make a payment of $13,100.  We need about $10,000 of that still.  You can help by being one of the 60 to give $500.  You can do this by donating through PayPal, Continuous Worship or by personal check.  You can also use the amazon link to make purchases on Amazon.  We get about 4-5% of what you purchase.  It doesn't seem like a lot but it adds up.

You can also purchase coffee and apparel   through Just Love Coffee our storefront url is  https://justlovecoffee.com/Braddy.  Using this link you will end up in the Braddy Adoption storefront and a portion of your purchase will be donated towards our adoption.  I can't tell you how much we appreciate your contributions towards this adoption.  Just last week we were mailing in some paperwork and faced with the enormity of this task.  But it was this same day that God laid it on the hearts of so many of you to donate $500 or more.

Drum Roll Please!!!!

We are super duper exited to share with you our amazing news.... Mika is soon to be the only daughter in our home and the older sister of four brothers.  We have received a referral for 2 boys from the Congo.  They are 5 and 2 and super cute!   Please start praying for these wonderful boys.  My prayer has been that they would experience the spirit of God, that they would be safe,and that I would remember that God knew them before I knew of them.

This doesn't change our timeline, we are still waiting on the government.  But it does change the timeline of our payments and we will need to be making some pretty hefty payments in the next few weeks and months.  The nitty-gritty is that we will need $19,000 in the next few months.  We will be sharing more details on where all that money goes, but I really wanted to share with you tonight our JOY!!!! Donations can be given to us by check or through those two links on the margin.  We will also be launching some fundraising events this summer.  Stay tuned!!!

What does it mean to be an orphan?

There has been so much joy in my heart thinking about bringing children into our home.  This joy has overflowed and given birth to a passion, a passion for families, churches and communities to care for orphans.  But what does it mean to be an orphan.  When I started really pondering what it means to be an orphan my heart broke with grief. To become an orphan, there must be a wound... I know this is obvious, but sometimes I forget this.  These children are orphans because an unfathomable hurt occurred in their lives.  

This is the definition of orphan given by the USCIS website

The Immigration and Nationality Act provides a definition of an orphan for the purposes of immigration to the United States. A child may be considered an orphan because of the death or disappearance of, abandonment or desertion by, or separation or loss from, both parents. The child of an unwed mother or surviving parent may be considered an orphan if that parent is unable to care for the child properly and has, in writing, irrevocably released the child for emigration and adoption. The child of an unwed mother may be considered an orphan, as long as the mother does not marry (which would result in the child’s having a stepfather) and as long as the child’s biological father has not legitimated the child. If the father legitimates the child or the mother marries, the mother is no longer considered a sole parent. The child of a surviving parent may also be an orphan if the surviving parent has not married since the death of the other parent (which would result in the child’s having a stepfather or stepmother).

Just this week we learned the story of two boys, two boys who are orphans, two boys whose father is unknown, whose mother is deceased and whose grandmother is a widow and can no longer care for their needs.  They are orphans, they need a home, and they need the care of parents.  But what hit home for me is that in the midst of my joy, there is sadness and grief and the carrying of burdens of children that were born into tough places.  It is this strange mixture of emotions that is fueling my energies as we continue to work through the process.  Most importantly, this is what keeps me on my knees, begging the God of the universe to care for these children, to enlarge my heart, to allow me to do my part in caring for the many orphans that walk this planet.

... the Lord upholds his hand

Its time for an update, but I think you might be bored to hear of all the paperwork we have done and continue to do.  The exciting part of this journey is what is coming.  There will be children who need forever families and they will be matched with us and they will come live in our home and call us mom and dad and we will call them son or daughter. This is the moment we live for, the reason we do this.  Along the way we also have exciting moments, we have benchmarks in our mind that are moments for celebration.  One of those happened last night, it was a simple phone call, but it was a phone call that said it was time to move to the next step.... more paperwork and.... we can also now get a referral for children.  We had said we would take a sibling group and it is looking more and more likely that we will receive one. When I asked Paul what we should share with you, he said, what we've done so far.  Its super exciting, watch out.... 2 applications, 4 sets of fingerprints for Paul, 6 for Cristine (I have funky prints, I was told that, again, today), awkward doctors appointments, more forms than I ever could have imagined, passport for Cristine, ordered certified birth certificates, marriage certificates, many forms notarized, lots of time on the phone, multiple emails, hopes up, hopes down, questioning (what are we thinking) and clinging to God and reminding each other of this....

The Lord directs the steps of the godly, 

He delights in every detail of their lives. 

Though they stumble, 

they will never fall,

for the Lord holds them by the hand.

Psalm 37:23-24

Paul also wanted me to tell you what are next steps are (check out the top right of the freezer door)

Okay so you have to enlarge it to actually know what it says, but it all boils down to more paperwork and planning a fundraiser.  If you are going to enlarge that you should check out the quote and the proverb... good stuff :)

Here is the updated financial graphic.  Notice a few more filled in (each section representing $500) and the dots represent the pledges we've received.  Also, you can now give online through PayPal (which does charge a fee) or tax exempt through Maranatha Ministries using the big purple DONATE link in the margin.  

Thank you so much for your interest in our journey.  It is a joy to share it with you!!!!

All Things Are Possible

We want to keep you up to date on our financial raising journey.  To do that we will be filling in this graphic of Africa.  Each section is equal to $500.  What you are seeing is the money that has come in this week, 5 sections = $2500.  Yay!  In the coming week we are hoping to have an easy way for you to give online towards the adoption.

Our goal for the next couple of weeks is to raise $12,000.  This is what is needed to complete our dossier and get it sent in.  It is also the amount of money needed to receive a referral.  The referral is the moment we are longing for, this is when we will first find out who these precious children are.  It takes about 1-4 months to receive a referral after we have completed our dossier.  If you have not had experience in adoption, this probably sounds something like a foreign language.  The first time we sat in the conference room at Wyoming Children's Society, I became completely overwhelmed by the process and all of these words that were new to my vocabulary.  I want you to understand the process we are in, so as I learn more, I will share more. 

Thank you for joining us on this journey.  We have been humbled by the prayer and support that you have blessed us with.  As we continue to meet our financial goal we will continue to share an updated graphic.

You don't want to miss this!

Where we are at, you don't want to miss this!!!!

We are so excited to share with you our lastest movement in this adoption journey.  We have chosen the Congo as the country we will be adopting from and will continue to work with Wyoming Children's Society. This choice increases our financial need a bit but we believe that God has laid this path before us and we are taking it by faith.

What we need:

We want to share with you our needs and some of the ways that we believe God wants to meet those needs.  This adoption will cost approximately $30,000.   Initially, we will need to pay approximately $11,500.

I don't know what you think when you hear $30,000?  But I heard, that's a lot of money.  My husband heard, that's 60 people called to give $500.  Suddenly, that feels a lot more doable.  In the last two days we have already had some couples meet that need.  Maybe you are one of those couples that feels called to $500.  Maybe you aren't called to care for one of these precious children in your homes, but maybe you are called to help us carry this burden and thus care for one of these precious children. 

The Braddy Plan!

I thought you might also like to know what the Braddy's are doing in their own home with their own finances to save money for this endeavor.  The first thing we are doing is praying.  We know that we serve a God who promises to meet our needs and we serve a God that loves orphans and cares for them.  We are also putting all of our honorariums from leading worship for camps and retreats, speaking gigs, weddings and funerals towards the adoption.  We've also done silly things... I no longer use the dryer, we hang out all of our clothes (did you know second to the fridge, which we are still using, :) the dryer uses the most electricity in your home).  No more lattes at coffee shops, just coffee (except for the free drinks we earn at Starbucks and the library).  The coffee and the hanging out of clothes is small, it adds up over time, but its still small.  The real benefit might actually be the discipline of being thoughtful and present with my money.  It reminds me that these resources are not mine but God's, and I'm reminded that I must seek God, even about the small things.  It is this discipline that leads me to pray for the children that will come into my home.

You can also give by clicking on the Amazon link, a portion of your purchase will go to the adoption.  This is another small thing, but it adds up.  It is because of these small things that we have been able to pay for our home study, getting our house up to code and the other miscellaneous stuff that comes with this journey.

What Can You Do:

• Pray ~ 
• Provision... God 2 provide$
• Preparation... 4 our hearts & the children's hearts
• Pace...God's timing

• Give ~
• be one of the 60
• Use the Amazon link (in the margin to the right)

• Follow our story ~
• watch for more information (possibly more details for you accountant types)
• Learn more about the Congo
• and of course we will continue to share the journey of our hearts with you.

What's Goin' On

What's goin' on?

That's a good question.  When we started this journey, we were sure we knew what we were doing, where God wanted us to adopt from and how he was going to get us there.  But the reality was... we had absolutely no clue as to what we were doing (thank you to those of you who have let me ask a zillion questions) and then it occurred to us that God might want to get us there using a very different route from the one we planned.

Here's what we do know... we are called to adopt.  we have completed a home study.  we are open to whatever door God opens.  God is continually changing us through the process.  When our kids were born, I think I got a glimpse of unconditional love.  Yesterday, I got a very small glimpse of redemption, what it might mean to redeem someone and change their name and their life and give them a new name and a new life.  For more on that journey check out this post.

Our longing and our heart has been for Uganda, but yesterday God also revealed the need right here. That doesn't mean that we have made any changes, but it does mean that we are more open to God changing direction on us and in the process changing us.

So... all I can say is.... stayed tune, God's not done with us yet!