Waiting is tough...

Hi all! It's been a while since I've updated on things, so thought I better! It's been almost 2 monthes since we accepted our precious little Seong Chan Cho's referral. I never imagined waiting would be this hard! I feel like he's ours and should be with us already!! I understand waiting is part of the adoption process, and I know he's in good hands...just wish they were mine. We got an updated today on our little guy. Korea is very good at communicating with adoptive families and do monthly check-up's on the babies. We learned today that Seong is a whopping 20 pounds, eating solids, crawling, plays peek-a-boo, pulls himself up to furniture, and is imitating speech sounds! As a mom, each of these little milestones brings me such joy and I can't wait to celebrate the MANY milestones ahead with Seong.

We've had lots of questions about his name. We are still working on his "American" name, so we're referring to him by his Korean first name, Seong. I'm thinking it's going to be hard to change it, since he's "Seong" to us already. We're praying for the Lord to give us direction regarding this decision. We definitely will keep part of his Korean name, just haven't figured it all out. So, for now the extended family is referring to him as "Baby McIntosh"!

We have had a great response on our Dinner & a Movie card fundraiser! Thanks so much to all of you who've participated! If all the cards sell, we'll have raised $700 towards adoption costs!

We also received an answer to prayer, in the form of an adoption grant. As many of you know, we've applied for a number of adoption grants. Many of you have written letters of reference, or agreed to be listed as references - and a huge thank you goes to those who've helped with these!! We received a $2,500 matching adoption grant from God's Grace Adoption Ministry. They have agreed to match our fundraising efforts, up to $2,500 - dollar for dollar!

Lastly, we're coming to the close of our commuting to/from Sioux Falls, SD. We've been back and forth since June, and we've been homeschooling the kids during the process. I'm excited that they'll be back in school in two weeks! They both can't wait to be around their friends and back in a classroom! Homeschooling has been a wonderful experience, and an answer to prayer during the last few months. I have an entirely new admiration for families that home school!!

That's all for now! We're looking forward to giving lots of new updates about our little guy and thank you all so much for being so supportive to our family!!!

Dinner & a Movie Card Adoption Fundraiser

Are you interested in supporting adoption and get great discounts at the same time?

Our family is selling Dinner & a Movie fundraising cards to help raise funds towards our adoption costs and help to bring home our little baby boy from Korea. The Dinner & a Movie card cost $10 but quickly pay for itself in the form of savings to you! And, for each card purchased, $7 goes directly towards adoption costs!

Here's how it works: the fundraising card purchase allows you access to a savings website, with a unique login code provided on the back of each card. After logging in, you search for deals based on your zip code. Click on the offers and print your coupons! (To give you an idea, we can access 204 offers using our Champlin zip code!) The offers can vary, some can be printed multiple times, others are allowed to be printed once per month, some are for online sites. The cards are valid for one year. If you'd like to preview the offers in your area, log on to www.enjoyaccess.com using the guest login code: 550-guest

To name just a few, here are a few of the discounts available with the card:

• Target.com 10% off all online purchases
• Buca Di Beppo $10 off $20 purchase
• AMC $6.50 tickets
• Gap 20% off entire purchase (this offer valid until 10/31)
• Buffalo Wild Wings 5 wings free with purchase
• Aunt Annie’s BOGO
• Ann Taylor Loft 20% off entire purchase
• Office Max $15 off $50 purchase
• Michaels 15% off entire purchase
• Dominos BOGO
• Sears.com $35 off $300 purchase
• 15% off Lillian Vernon online purchases
• 15% off orders over $100 on Kohls.com

Additional discounts at Papa Murpheys, Quiznos, Culvers, Dairy Queen, McDonalds, and many more!

If you are interested in purchasing a card, please message me! Payment can be made thru Paypal, or a check can be sent to us, and your Dinner & a Movie card will be mailed and I will email your your login info as well.

Thanks for taking the time to read this! Please feel NO obligation to purchase a card, just putting it out there for those who may be interested! Feel free to share this with anyone who may be interested!

God Bless!

Jerra & Steve McIntosh

Our Baby Boy!

Today is a really exciting day for our family!! We have accepted a referral of a beautiful, precious baby boy from Korea!! Words can not even describe how wonderful it was for us to receive the call from our social worker, with the news about this amazing blessing. After much prayer, we both knew that this was our child. Of course, we wanted to shout it from the rooftops, but rather we've been very busy the last couple weeks working on acceptance paperwork, having medical reviews, compiling lots of needed documents, and much more. Now, that the paperwork is done, we've been given the go-ahead to share the news, along with pictures of our little blessing!! Baby McIntosh is almost 7 monthes old. He was born Feb 25. His Korean name is Seong. We'll working on his new name, and will be using part of his Korean name as well. He is currently living in a foster home, which is the picture of him with his foster mama. We pray daily for Mrs. Gong and her family, who are caring for our little guy. We anticipate approximately 7-11 months still before we can travel to bring him home.

Our kids are so incredible excited about their new baby brother! They picked out a new blanket for the little guy, and we're working on other fun things we'll that get to send in a care package soon. Is it too soon to get him in a Vikings jersey??! (J/K!)

We would ask for continued prayer support, for the remainder of our journey until this little sweetheart is home with us. I'm already growing inpatient, but I know and trust that God's timing is always perfect. I believe that God is filling in the gaps, providing everything this little one needs. We're so honored that God has entrusted us to be mom and dad to this precious little one.

We're also believing for a huge miracle financially, so if anyone has any good fundraising ideas, feel free to let me know! God has led us to adopt, directed the timing, the child, and is also providing the funds needed to make this dream a reality. He is faithful!

We'll keep you posted as we receive more information about our little guy!

Thanks for all your support!

Season of Change

Well, it's been FAR too long since I've last updated our blog. We've had a busy few weeks, and I've let this get farther and farther down my to-do list. Where to start?

Our adoption is still moving ahead steadily. We're 3 monthes into our wait for a referral,

so we anticipate another 3-4 monthes before we get that exciting phone call. With some of the changes being made in Korea, we will then have to wait up to a year before we can bring our little guy home. We're trusting God that it will be HIS perfect timing. We had a few bumps in the road the last 2 monthes with paperwork and immigration, but God has smoothed out each and every one as they've come up. Steve and I went to a CIS (Customs Immigration Services) appointment last week to have our set of federal fingerprints taken. While I was sitting there waiting, I was reminded of how fortunate we are, and all that we often take for granted as citizens of this free country. I sat surrounded by people who were nervously waiting while CIS officials were updating visa's, green cards, and prepping immigrants for their citizens tests. I leaned over to Steve and we talked about how thankful we need to be for the rights we have. Our right to adopt, being one of them. We're continuing to complete grant applications, some of our paperwork delays caused us to have to wait on many of the applications. So, I'm back at it. Not my favorite thing to do, but nonetheless, it's important and I'll continue to plug away.

On another note, we've also had an work opportunity come up for Steve in recent weeks. He was contacted by a company that he worked for years ago, and asked to be part of a restoration project on a cathedral in Sioux Falls, SD. I must say, we were pretty surprised that he was being scouted from another company, especially knowing that several of their employees were currently laid off. After much prayer, we decided that he would do the Sioux Falls project,but since the job will last the next 6-7 monthes, we would stick together as a family and do this together. I can't say this was a very easy decision, but the Lord reminded me how important it is for our family to stay together. We just call our home a "mobile home", since WE make the home, not the dwelling we live in. So,

we got a little apartment in Sioux Falls, and we commute here Sun-Thurs, and we come back to the cities on the weekends. We're into our 3rd week now, and I am amazed at how easy it's gone. (I know that it's the grace of God!) The kids and I are really enjoying our days together, since this is the first summer in 6 years I haven't done daycare. It's a summer of parks, picnics, pools, museums, and we're having a blast! And, the kids LOVE seeing their Dad each night, rather than him living 4 hours away from us.

Bruk has headed to Washington DC for the summer, and he's hoping to visit his family in Ethiopia for a few weeks as well. We miss having him around! He's staying in the family though, and when school starts, he'll be staying with Steve's parents. Rhett especially misses his "big brother, Bruk"!

Well, that's a very nutshell-version of the latest happenings with our family. We're excited for what God has in store!!

While I'm Waiting Song

While I'm Waiting

Yesterday, when I was driving, I was listening to the song, "While I'm Waiting" by John Waller. I've always thought of marriage when I've heard this song, but yesterday the Lord opened my ears to hear myself speaking the words regarding our adoption.

"I'm waiting, I'm waiting on you Lord, and I am hopeful. I'm waiting on you Lord, though it is painful. But patiently, I will wait."

I think the Lord was preparing me for the email I received later that evening. The Korea program we're in is now anticipating almost a full year wait to travel to pick up your child, after you receive the referral. The idea of having a child's picture, a name, a face, a real child waiting for you, and then have to wait 12 monthes to be able to hold him, just doesn't seem right. The Korean government has established a quota of a certain number of children they allow out of the country each year for adoption. Once the quota is filled, all other children must wait until the following calendar year. There are several officials lobbying to try to eliminate the quota and get the children into their forever homes and not tie up the children in foster care due to a legality. However, until that is resolved, we wait. See, God was patiently reminding me that I am not in control and I have to trust him.

Interestingly, I heard the song again this morning. I was reminded of the importance of obedience and not getting ahead of God. Which I needed, because today I learned our final homestudy is now on hold, as the "format" is being changed with immigration. Our social worker can't send us our completed copy, until she gets instruction from the Dept. of Homeland Security. So, we wait. The grant applications I've been tirelessly completing, can't get sent in without a copy of the homestudy. So, they wait. The invoice for our agency fees..waits.

I'm learning every day the importance of trusting God and not trying to solve things on my own. So, while we wait for these issues to resolve, I'll continue to be faithful to trust God, pray for our son, his birthmom, and the process of getting him home with us.

Psalms 27:14 "Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord."

A week later..

Well, it's been a week since I started this blog. I honestly think we've had so many things happening that I could probably write something each day...but don't worry, I won't.

Since our homestudy completion last Wednesday, we have had so much awesome encouragement and support from our friends and family...thank you all! My favorite was getting an adorable little stuffed puppy from his Auntie Melissa, which I can hardly wait to send to him when we get to finally get to the point of sending a care package.

One thing that stood out to me, was Friday we took Bruk in to the Anoka jail to get his fingerprints for the adoption paperwork (For those of you may not know, we have a foreign exchange student living with us, Bruk, who's from Ethiopia). The sheriff who took Bruk's fingerprints was big, grumpy and certainly had better things to do than our fingerprinting request. However, when he came back out from behind the big steel door with Bruk, he looked at me and said, "no charge. I'm an adoption supporter" and a smile appeared under his big, thick mustache. With that, my eyes welled up with tears, I thanked him and walked out. Now, it wasn't the expense of the fingerprints that we saved that moved me, it was the reminder that God is taking care of this process. We may not know WHO, HOW or WHEN he may choose to help us with this process, but He will, if we continue to trust. And we do.

Our Journey Has Begun

It's official - our family of 4 is growing to a family of 5 very soon!

As most of our friends and family know, we have been in the adoption process for several monthes. Adoption has been something that Steve and I had on our hearts before we had any children, and knew that someday we would be adopting a child. As the years have gone on, and God has blessed us with two amazing children, we have slowly but surely felt the tug on our hearts for adoption getting stronger and stronger. We knew last summer was God's timing for us to submit our application and take our huge leap of faith into this wild journey.

Last June, we were overwhelmed with the huge support from our family and friends helping us with a fundraising garage sale! We took our Pre-adoption classes in August, and planned on continuing on full-steam ahead with the process. However, God slowed us down a little, which allowed us some time to research, and process the huge journey ahead of us. We began our homestudy in Feburary, and became approved as of today! Now, the wait begins! We anticipate about 6 monthes before we will be offered a "referral", which in adoption lingo, is a baby. After we accept the referral, it will be about another 6-7 monthes before we can travel to Korea to bring our son home. Adoption is not a predictable process, nor is anything guaranteed. It's a huge step of faith, and we're trusting God to lead us each step. We are so thankful for your interest in our journey! We look forward to sending continued updates on the process!!