Part 2 - Both Hands Project Day Recap!

First and foremost, a huge THANK YOU goes to all of our family and friends who supported us on this very special day.  To everyone from those who were on our team who received sponsors for the day, those who worked beside us because they have a love for serving others, and to those of you reading this who have sponsored this event.  Both our family and Ms. Brenda have been doubly blessed by this day!

To start the day, we were  I was extremely nervous about the chance of rain.  They were only saying that it was about 30-40%, but here in good ol' Ohio this week, it has been very warm and humid, which typically leads to pop up afternoon showers.  Pop up showers + newly stained fence and shutters = bad news!!  Thankfully, the Lord blessed us with a beautiful day!  The day actually got nicer as it went on!  By the time we left for the day, there was nothing but sunny skies!  We descended upon Ms. Brenda's house around 9:00 in the morning and gathered everyone around Ms. Brenda for a time of prayer for the day.  We then got our job assignments from the Mister, sent Ms. Brenda on her way for a day at the spa, and were down to work!  We had a wonderful group of volunteers who gave up all or part of their day to come and help us serve Ms. Brenda.  It was absolutely awesome to see!  We all kept saying how much we felt like we were on a mini version of Extreme Home Makeover!

The fence turned out wonderful, the garage was cleaned and organized, (however not without at least 20-30 people stopping to ask if we were having a garage sale!)  The garage ceiling was scraped and repainted, wallpaper was stripped and the hallway was repainted, shutters were repainted, the main living space was deep cleaned, items were prepared and priced for a garage sale, and lots and lots of bush trimming and mulching happened!  We also managed to get half way through the process of removing wallpaper and painting the downstairs bathroom, however, the aquarium wallpaper proved to be a little more of a challenge for us than expected.  Nemo wasn't going down without a fight, people!  Michael and I promised to go and finish the job within the next few weeks.

My nemesis...the fish wallpaper

All in all, it was an AWESOME day!  We were so beyond blessed to have had the opportunity to serve Ms. Brenda for the day.  Again, thank you to everyone who was involved in the day and for all of your prayers surrounding the day!  

Several individuals have already mentioned to us that they had forgotten to send in their sponsorship amounts prior to the project, and were wondering if they could still do so.  The answer is definitely YES!  Our account on the Both Hands website stays open until we are fully supported.  When that day comes, believe me, you will ALL know about it!  

If you are interested in a tax deductible donation, please either go to www.bothhandsfoundation.org/schaadt to donate electronically, or send in your donation amounts to the address below.  Thanks again!

Lifesong for Orphans

PO Box 40

Gridley, IL 61744

Write in the memo line: Preference Schaadt #4556

So without further adieu, why don't you just take a peek and see what we were up to yesterday??

Part 1 - Weeks Leading up to Both Hands

Wow!  SO much has happened since our last post that I suppose we should update everyone, not only on how awesome our Both Hands project was, but on all of the amazing adoption process updates as well!  

First and foremost, I had mentioned in our last post that our Dossier was sent to China.  It was officially logged in to the system on June 11th.  This date is referred to as your LID, (Log in Date,) in the adoption world.  We are hoping to get our Letter of Acceptance, (LOA,) for our little man by the first part of August. Anything after that would be amazing, and anything after that I would prefer not to discuss at this time ;)

This past month with the project, I, (Erin,) have been running around like a crazy woman trying to coordinate everything for our big day.  This included getting all of the sponsorship letters out to not only the members of our core team who live out of town so they could send them out to their sponsors, but also to all of the individuals that we were mailing letters to.  Once the letters were gone, I then moved on to finding sponsors within the community to help pay for our work supplies, lunch, etc.  It was amazing to see how God worked through this portion of our project.  A sweet new friend from the local adoption community donated our breakfast, and lunch was donated to us by both Bada Bing Pizza and Papa Johns, which was awesome!  Wooster Brush, in Wooster, Ohio donated our painting supplies, and Home Depot donated ALL of our other supplies!  This included stain, paint, mulch, etc.  It.was.amazing!  When the assistant manager told me the news, I wanted to cry, laugh, hug him all at the same time. Don't worry, I refrained!   When I saw our quote with all of our supplies totaled up to an amount that would've been a lot for us to have to pay, with the word PAID on it, it instantly made me think of the cross.  We all had a list of sins too long for any of us to cover ourselves, and Jesus stamped out PAID with His blood on our lists.  Amazing!  So thankful that God is continually receiving all of the glory throughout this process!  We had to pick up a few extra items during the day, but God also provided as several workers chipped in to cover the majority of those costs as well!  

Oh, and on the glorious day this past week when Home Depot so graciously decided to pay our bill, we also received an email that informed us that we received a grant for our adoption from an organization called the JSC Foundation!  Knock my little socks off!  We only applied for this one grant since we have focused almost all of our time on our Both Hands project, so we were thinking we wouldn't have much of a shot.  Of course God had different plans, and gave us the one-two punch with both the Home Depot donation and this email in one day!  So completely amazing!  

Part 2 - Both Hands Project Day Recap is on the way!

Both Hands!!

The Mister and I are over the moon beyond excited to announce that we have been approved for a Both Hands project!  Since a lot almost all of you have never heard of Both Hands, or a project with them, let me take a minute to break it down for you!

Both Hands is an organization that was created to help adoptive families serve others while in the process of their adoption as a means of helping to bring home their little one.  The foundation of the project centers around James 1:27, which tells us to look after widows and orphans.  What this means is that we create a group of family and friends to be on our team, and this group gets "sponsored," from their family and friends to help us work at a local widow's home for the day.  Our team members get sponsored for the day like someone would get sponsors for a walk-a-thon or something similar.  The most AWESOME part about this project though, is that we get to spend a day with those we love, loving on a sweet widow in the community who needs our help, all while raising funds to help us bring home our little man!  100% of all proceeds raised will go towards bringing our son home to us from China!  Wow, I just don't think it could get any better! A wonderful friend of ours introduced us to the Both Hands project last spring, and we fell in love with the idea.  This fall, we actually were able to help support another friend's project, and that completely sealed the deal!  We wanted in too!  

The widow we have selected lives in our community and attends our church.  She has no local family, and her house is in need of many repairs.  She is also getting ready to downsize, so we want to help her get ready for the sale of her home as well!  She is a wonderful woman, and we are so excited to get to bless her for a day!  

Do you want in too?  If you have gotten fired up like I am about this awesome opportunity, there are definitely ways that you can help!  

Pray.  Pray for things like extra helping hands on the work day, materials and supplies to be provided, and of course for no rain!  Also, please pray that God blesses this project in the way that He sees fit.  

Volunteer. If you want to get more involved, please feel free to consider volunteering to work the day of the project, which is going to be June 28th.  Both Hands has created a Facebook page for our event, which you can go to at https://www.facebook.com/events/296604640520636/.  At this page, you can sign up to attend the project and get down and dirty with us!

Donate.  Please consider sponsoring us on our work day.  We have already given and/or raised about $12,000 towards our adoption, however, we are still about $20,000 away from what we will need in order to bring our little man home.  Any amount given brings us one step closer to having our little man in our arms!  Some of you reading this will be receiving a letter in the mail either from our family, or from one of our team members.  There will be instructions on how to either mail in a donation, or donate online at http://www.bothhandsfoundation.org/schaadt.  If you are that excited and just cannot wait for your letter to arrive in the mail, or will just forget if you don't take action now, please by all means feel free to go to our Both Hands link!  Both the online donate button is ready for use, and the Both Hands mailing address is on that site as well.  All donations are tax deductible as well...bonus!  Also, if you have any extra work supplies laying around that you have no use for, I will be soon posting a list of items needed for the project date on our project website noted above.

We are so so so excited for this project, and know that it will be a day full of memories, not only for our team, but also for our widow as well!  In other news, our dossier did officially make it to China on Monday of this weekl!  YAY!  We are waiting to hear when we are logged into the computer system, which begins our loooong wait.  

More updates to come soon!!!