Give, Go, Tell: See Our Shirt In Africa!

Since the Lord established our family, He has led us to amazing churches.  The church we have attended for over eight years now is no exception and truly a blessing to us.  We have found wonderful friends there, we are involved in ministry there, our kids love it, and the Lord has blanketed the hearts of the leaders and congregation with a holy desire to see the nations turn to Him.

One central way our church obeys Christ's Great Commission that we should go and make disciples of all nations is by planting churches, 1000 in 40 years, all over the world.  How blessed we are to see the gospel at work in the lives of so many of our friends who have been part of this going and telling the Good News, many times in the farthest, darkest, least loved corners of the earth.

As I may have mentioned before, as Believers, we are adopted by God, grafted into His family permanently.  We hope that our decision to adopt our baby girl form Africa and our love for our daughter would be a demonstration of the love shown to us.  We decided to adopt not only because of our desire to grow our family and to raise godly children, but in response to the immeasurable love poured out on us in our own adoptions.

And as part of our adoption, we are selling some pretty amazing T-shirts with the story of our own adoption amidst words describing our heart for adopting our own child.  Get a closer look at the shirts here, right on the shirt designer's very own website.  You, too, can own one of these, by the way.  We still have lots of Large and XL crew shirts left, and we'd love for you to partner with us in sharing the gospel in this way, as well as advocating for orphans while looking pretty cool, if we do say so ourselves.  100% of the proceeds from our T-shirt sales go toward our adoption fees and expenses.  I have many favorite parts of the shirts, but one of my very favorites is the part that says, "GIVE GO TELL."

This brings me full circle to the fact that our shirt has made it to AFRICA!  One of our very own church family has been serving in South Africa, and her mother took her one of our shirts on a recent visit.  Look HERE to see the shirt and what sweet Amber has to say about it.  What a thrill that she has shared the very first picture of our shirt being worn by a missionary in Africa (notice the wildlife in the background!).  Pretty good stuff.

Thanks for coming back, y'all!
~Katie

The Starting Blocks, and 7335 miles to go...

I've composed this first post in my head too many times to count, so I hope for your patience with my posts as I try to explain something bigger than we can wrap our minds around.  The purpose of this blog is for Curt and me to share the hope that we have within us and bring glory to our Father and Creator, who adopted us and gave us an inheritance beyond compare.  We want to share about our family's heart for adoption, why we chose to adopt, and how you can be a part of it.  If you are also adopting, we want to encourage you.  If you think we're crazy, we want to tell you why.  And if you want to join us in caring for orphans, we want to tell you how.

We are so grateful for the encouragement and prayers we have received so far.  We are in the very early stages of our adoption and are excited to share the ups and downs and God's certain faithfulness throughout.

Adoption can be expensive.  In this marathon, we have to raise funds.  We are starting out by selling the T-shirts in the sidebar.  Since we anticipate an international adoption from Africa, we designed this shirt with that in mind.  We want to be a picture of the gospel in this process, and the shirt is a part of that.  Please let me know if you have questions about ordering or anything else here.  And if you're local and can pay me directly, I'd be happy to deliver your shirt with a smile!  :)  The shirts are $20 each (feel free to give more!) with 100% of the proceeds going directly to our adoption fees and expenses (we've already seen the generosity of the body of Christ at work in amazing ways)!

To our friends we didn't get to tell personally, I apologize.  This ball rolled faster than I thought it would, and here we are.  One final note of gratitude to Stacey Simeone for her selfless work on our T-shirt and this blog.  Without her, we would not be at this point.  I'm truly grateful for her loving my family and that she is my sister in Christ.

Edited to add this pic of our shirt: