Taco Dinner Fundraiser

We had our incredible Taco Dinner Fundraiser this past weekend and y'all...we are overwhelmed with how amazing it was.  There really aren't words to describe it, so I'll leave it to the pictures.

Love, love, love this family...the Singletary's...who planned and prepared this incredible day.

Only 1 Coleman kiddo missing...

Our friends even cleaned up our kitchen

In the middle of packing her family to move 2 states away in a few days, it was super special to have her stand next to me during this event.  She's been a major rock and source of sunshine in my life.

Photo credits to this gem!! Loved her last minute idea of taking pictures for us - too perfect!! 

Mr. Tim - the Taco Shell Master.  He was a "tiny" bit excited to use his new toy.

Mrs. Kelly, the Taco Whisperer - loved cooking and prepping with her...and appreciated her attempt at teaching me how to properly dice tomatoes (and the gentle way she suggested I bag them instead!)

Prep work started a few days earlier - so blessed to have friends give up their days off!

Especially loved spending "real life" time with this girl!!! 

In summary, this was the Church in action y'all.  All day long.  It was amazing and incredible and we loved every minute of it.  To see so many friends and church family giving so much time to planning and prepping, baking desserts, working that day by setting up, serving, watching kids, taking pictures (photo bombing pictures for a good laugh later on), ordering meals, donating, tearing down, and cleaning up...it just does this family's heart a whole lot of good.  Someday our little man is gonna begin to process the first chapters of his life and while he's doing that, we'll be able to show him how, at the same time that he was alone and without family....we were all here...loving, waiting, and working for him.  I wish I could list every single person by name, but I'm far to afraid I would leave someone off.

And I'm sure you're curious as to how much we raised...well, again...mind blown. Overwhelmed.

I told God selling 200 dinner boxes was gonna be a long shot.  I'm sure He laughed out loud knowing we would sell between 325 - 350.

I thought it would be incredible if we made it anywhere near $2000.

And all the while, He was planning to provide $3,671.

All through our sweet friends and church family.

All for our little boy.

If you want to see all of the pictures from that day, click HERE

Adoption Happenings in 2015

I think I said it in my last post...I've really stunk at updating you guys the past several months.  There just hasn't been a lot happening, so it feels kinda dumb to post an update.  Make sense? Some days it does to me, some days it doesn't. Either way - here we are now, nearing the last week of March 2015.

If you had asked me in January 2013 (when we started the process) where we'd be in March 2015, I would've confidently told you that we would've been home with our son for several months.  But God had other plans that apparently include us waiting for much longer than anticipated.

But our wait is nothing compared to the wait on the other end of adoption.  The wait where it's babies, toddler, children, pre-teens, and teenagers...waiting for someone to come for them.  We wait with friends and family holding us up on our weakest and hardest days.  But them? Many times there's no one.  No one holding, encouraging, telling them to "Just hold on...God's got a family for you." No one.

So we wait...longer than expected...but we still wait with hope and encouragement and assurance that there is a sweet and precious little boy in Colombia who needs us to be his family.  It's not an honor that we take lightly - being allowed to parent a precious child like this.

The extra wait is sad, but there's also some fun and exciting happenings, as well.

Our agency, Lifeline Children's Services, recently hired a new representative on the ground in Colombia.  We have heard incredible things about Soraya and we're so excited to be working with her now, as well! She has a lot of connections with private orphanages (or casas) and now our agency is able to work not only through ICBF for connecting families and children, but also through several private casas, as well.  This is huge, y'all,  Huge!! Our social worker recently visited Colombia and returned with a LOT of files of precious kiddos waiting to be advocated for and adopted. Please keep this transition to our new rep and all of these new partnerships in your prayers and praise God with us for making these things happen!!

Our sweet friends, Tim and Kelly Singletary, make these world-famous (well, at least Slidell famous) tacos.  Y'all...you can eat these things 3 days later and it's still the best taco you've ever allowed your mouth to withhold!! Well, they came to us about a week ago and said they wanted to do a Taco Dinner fundraiser for us. Um...perfection!!! Yummy tacos and just being loved in this way...y'all, it's way too incredible.  And it's even better - our Sunday School class is partnering with them and providing the desserts for the dinner boxes! But that's not all, oh no, that is not all (Cat in the Hat, anyone?)...Tim and Kelly's care group have joined in and said "We'll cover the cost of the food!" So that means that ever single dollar of every single dinner box sold goes straight into our adoption account.  How great is our God?!?!

So here's the deal, Slidellians.  I've created an event on Facebook....Coleman Family Taco Dinner Adoption Fundraiser and tried to scroll through my friend list and invite every Slidell resident...if I missed your name I am so sorry, but you most definitely invited so head on over and let us know how many dinner boxes you want! Here's the details, thanks to my incredibly talented graphic designer sister, Maley, at Made by Maley (hop over, check her out, like her page)

Also, it'd be so awesome if any of you Slidellians could share the event on your Facebook page, as well and invite your friends.

Or gather your friends together for a dinner party, birthday party, "I Miss Football Season" party...whatever...and grab some tacos to go with your fun evening!

All that remains of our fees are our traveling expenses...airline tickets and hotel/food/translation accommodations while we are in Colombia. We know that this fundraiser will knock off some of that $8k...but what we really want - is for the people who are doing this for our little family by cooking, helping out, baking, and attending to know just how much we love you.  I have no idea, honestly, how we're ever going to fully convey to our little guy the amount of love that so many people put forth to bring him home!!

So make your Saturday night, April 11 plans with us and help us bring One More Home!!

Waiting Out the Wait List at #....

Lately I've had several people ask me for an adoption update and I've been surprised that they somehow missed my last "update" I gave in September.  And then I realized, I never gave an update in September.  I asked my Facebook friends to pray for us as we were about to have a phone conference with our Social Worker, Beth, and our in-country representative, Raul.  I had full intentions of writing and sharing an update and then....life, I guess.

You can ask a couple of my friends who I "attempted" to talk to after our phone conference and they'll be quick to tell you that I wasn't really making complete sentences.  Those types of meetings are mentally and emotionally draining to me.  Whether it's a just a tidbit of information or an entire seminar's worth - it takes me a little bit to process everything.

It's also gotten pretty hard for me to update this past year.  When I sit down to write, I want to share all that is on my heart.  I want you to try to be able to feel a little bit of what we're feeling on the inside while we're navigating this process.  In order to do that, I have to have the time to unpack all the emotional junk, sort out what to share and what to keep tucked in my heart, write it out (preferably in coherent sentences) and then pack it back up again...all during nap time.  So, it's a little bit harder now.

Now, for the update.  Our meeting in September went really well.  For months we've been trying to determine if the children available for international adoption, in our age range, had more severe medical/special needs or if they had mild/moderate/correctable special needs.  We know our limits as a family on the types of needs that we can choose to efficiently parent and if the children in our age range were on the more severe end - we knew it was time to research other countries or adoption options.

We finally got our answer...Raul told us that there were children available for international adoption who were on the mild/moderate end of the special needs spectrum.  This was good news for us (side note: it feels really weird saying, that's "good news" because, in reality, it's not.  It sucks.  There's a need for adoption.  There's kiddos who are sick and the very reason they can't stay with their forever family could be because they lack the finances and resources to properly care for their sweet kiddos.)

The second bit of "good news" we got was a bit of a surprise.  We've understood all along, as did our social worker, that Colombia didn't have a waiting list for families like many other countries.  However, in this meeting we were informed otherwise and Raul said he would work in the next several days to determine each families position on the list or their "number."

Here's where I want to give a quick stat we learned that day: Colombia is only processing 1/3 of the number of adoptions this year as opposed to 3 years ago.  Changes have occurred and things have slowed down substantially.

Our best guess at our number (based on some of the numbers that were thrown out in the conference call) was somewhere around #400.  I pictured one of my daughters being walked down the aisle in her wedding dress while I held my newly adopted toddler son in my lap on the front row.  But we were way off!!  I mean, big time, big time way off.  Who wants a math pop quiz?

400 - 386 = 14

We're #14!!!!!!!!!!

That means that there are 13 families waiting for an ICBF referral in front of us.  Only 13 - not 386!

We're still trying to determine exactly how this list will work...are there 13 approved families in front of us or 13 approved families for boys, 0-3, mild/moderate special needs.  This number doesn't tell us how much longer we have to wait, but it is SO MUCH BETTER than #400.

We've also been told that Colombia is still working diligently at updating all of the kiddos files for accuracy and "plan" to release them in the next month and start making referrals at the first of the year.  We're throwing in a couple of "grace" months and not really expecting anything to happen until February or March.  It's just good to know these kiddos are being advocated for and their files are being worked on so they can be presented with the most updated information.

December 9 will mark 1 year of "waiting".  Sometimes patiently and others times....not so much.  I just want my kiddo home.  I want to rock him to sleep, I want to play cars and trucks and build blocks with him, I want to read him a bedtime story and run into his room when he wakes up from a bad dream.  I want to doctor his cuts and bruises with magical kisses that only mommies have.  I want these things so badly - but not just for me...to fill this longing and emptiness in my arms.  I want it more for him...because a family is the least of what he deserves.

We're ready to give him all of us, every single day for the rest of his sweet life.  We are, oh so ready...

Hermanos de la Iglesia Colombia (Brothers in the Colombia Church)

A couple of weeks ago, I had the long awaited and prayed for opportunity to go to Colombia on a mission trip.  Our church has had a partnership with some missionaries there for several years and now, one of my most favorite families lives and serves there full time. So, it was a triple good-thing....a) serving the Lord in this way, b) being in my son's birth country while I desperately wait for him, and c) being with the Sumralls.

I have lots to say about that trip: my emotions and feelings when the plane landed - putting me on the same ground as my kiddo, the beauty of the Colombian people we were with, how my only hope was a 10 year old little girl when we hopped in the car with a ridiculous cabbie, and my short stint in a local Colombian hospital.  The LORD used all of these things for His good, His glory - and I can't wait to tell you about each of them.

I remember in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina (no, I haven't switched gears - hang with me, please).  I honestly didn't know what was going on - all I knew was that my husband was supposed to travel from Tennessee to NOLA on a Sunday for a Monday morning job interview, in anticipation of moving to NOLA a few months earlier than we had planned.  We were informed that there wouldn't be an interview that day because Katrina demanded a city-wide evacuation.

We waited in anticipation and fear and worry for the next several days/weeks...pulling up any and every bit of information from the internet of what was going on in the place we wanted to soon call home.  I remember working with some evacuees who were brought by Greyhound bus to the next country over from mine and feeling the emotional shock as one after one, broken people stepped off of a bus having lost everything - some having lost everyone in their family.  I clung to my computer and television in those days craving any bit of information.  I already had a love for the city I knew little about.

And now I find myself there, again.  I spent the weekend worshiping, teaching, serving, loving, and being loved by these people...

And I wait anxiously as I hear about waist-high flooding, 25,000+ people in this town and church being displaced - having lost everything.  As the rains keep pouring down in the mountains, causing the river to rise continuously.  

I remember after Katrina, that all I wanted to do was get to NOLA, help some how, do something...and now all I want to do is get on the first plane back to Colombia and go serve my friends, my brothers and sisters in Christ.  I want to hold them, love them, and cry with them.

I pray for the church and Pastor Manuel who have opened the doors as a shelter.  I pray for at least one family...a mom, her son, and grandchildren who lost everything.  I pray for a new Christian - "J" - who was to be baptized this weekend. at the church....and has now lost everything in the waist high water in his neighborhood.

I remember what it looked like when my husband and I came to Slidell on a rebuilding mission trip a few months following Katrina...and I have those same pictures in my mind of that same type of devastation and loss and heartbreak now for this beautiful town.

"Brothers of the Louisiana Church."

That picture was on the prayer wall of the church.  

And now, we pray for "Hermanos de la Iglesia Colombia."

Please join us in that prayer.

Colombia - Bound

No, I'm not Colombia-Bound for our son.  I wish.  Oh, how I wish that were the case.

But this is the next best thing.

For months I've prayed for an opportunity to go on an international mission trip.  I went to Rio de Janeiro once, about 8 years ago.  And it changed me.  Big time.  There's just something about being so far out of your comfort zone....new sights, people, completely different culture, words you can't understand and total dependence on a translator, eating food you've never eaten before...it just did really good things for my heart.

And I've wanted to go back.  Not necessarily to Rio, but somewhere - overseas, way far out of my comfort zone.  I want to get my hands dirty in working for Jesus so that my heart can get cleaned up a bit.

Our church has an amazing partnership with some missionaries in Colombia - 2 (or 5) of which are super close to my heart.  And about a month or so ago, God answered my prayers.

I am Colombia-bound for a short, 4 day (plus 2 travel days) mission trip.  I cannot board the plane fast enough.  But it's still 2 weeks away.

Many people have asked me if I really thought this was a good idea.  My heart is hurting and longing for our son so badly and there's nothing I can do to speed things up.  (Which reminds me - I owe you guys a big update...it's a good one - no kiddo - but good news.)

Yes, I am going to be in the same country, on the same soil, looking at the moon from the same general area as a sweet little boy who God is preparing for me to be his mommy.  And it's gonna shred my heart.  It's more out of my comfort zone than I had originally wanted.

But here's how I'm looking at it: from my home, I can hit my knees in prayer every single day for my son.  Prayer is a super huge and big thing.  It is so powerful and I am so thankful that I can go to my Heavenly Father through prayer.

And now's He's given me the opportunity to go and get as close to my son as I possibly could.  We will be training new Christians in discipleship and how to reach local unbelievers.  For all I know, the very people that we talk to and train to share Jesus...could leave the building we teach them in and walk straight into the home where my son is.

What more could I possibly do right now, than equip people who could take Jesus inside the walls that my son calls home.

Sound far fetched? I don't think so.  My God is pretty amazing.

So to help fund this trip, I'm bringing back the Apparent Project Bracelets.

If you don't remember the story behind them, you can check it out in this blog post.

It's not too early to start thinking about teacher gifts, stocking stuffers, gifts for friends, or to treat yourself to a sweet bracelet, made by sweet Haitian families.  Half of the money goes back to the family and half of the money helps fund my mission trip.

If you'd like a bracelet, they are $8 each and you can pay by cash, check, PayPal (click on the PayPal button on the right OR my PayPal address is jmalcoleman (at) gmail (dot) com. Please include $2 for shipping (any number of bracelets).

My goal is $500 and anything over that will go to the adoption fund.

The biggest thing you could do - is pray. Cover this trip in prayer...the church and people we will teach, the missionaries who serve there, the unbelievers who will hear the gospel, and our team members.

I leave in 14 days and 21 hours from the time of this post...but who's counting?

Engineers & Borders

"When the train you are on goes into a tunnel and it gets dark, you don't throw your ticket away and jump off the train. You trust the engineer." Corrie Ten Boone

I have to be honest...I'd never heard the above quote until Monday morning.  I stumbled upon it as I scrolled through my news feed on "the Facebook".  There's some stuff you can scroll quickly past with just a glance. But there's some people that when you see their name - you know 9 times out of 10 they've got something good to say and it will do you well to read it and take notes.

So that's what happened.  One of those people shared this quote in his status.  Boom. Perfect.  I loved it.

It's so simple - you'd be an idiot to jump off of a moving train in a dark tunnel...why not keep with the one you trusted to get you there in the first place?

And so it is with Jesus.  I hoped on the Jesus train many years ago.  I've been through dark tunnels.  Others have been through darker ones.  I've been stuck in those tunnels for what - at the time - seemed like forever.  I've also flown right through them as if the lights only flickered, quickly catapulted back into bright sunlight.

It also connects with a favorite song of mine -  Oceans by Hillsong United.  Hands down, here is the best line of that song...

"Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders..."

Trust that isn't held captive.  Trust that holds strong in a dark tunnel.

I saw my friends post this morning sometime between my first and second cup of coffee - which I drank as I waited to call the doctor for my little man.  Jacob and I had spent the middle hours of the night in the ER with him after he vomited up something I thought was a lot of blood. Praise Him that it wasn't blood, but something was up with my child and we needed to follow up with our pediatrician.

I went over everything with her...any and all symptoms he'd had in the past several days.  Extreme thirst during the day and throughout the night, loss of appetite, and - after seeing his weight on the her scale - a weight loss of almost two pounds.  That's when she asked me if the ER staff had ordered a blood sugar lab.  I told her no and the words she said next were:

"Those are symptoms of juvenile diabetes."

It took my breath away.  My grip around his little waist tightened in an attempt to protect him from a possible life-changing diagnosis.  My eyes stung with tears and I tried with everything in me to stay calm so Creek wouldn't be upset, too.

We went to the bathroom to try to catch a urine sample - which was great fun with a potty-training 2 year old.

My mind was flooded with fear and anxiety.  This would change a lot of things for our family.  I feared for how this could limit my son in the years to come.  How was I ever going to get a handle on all of the information I needed to know in order to keep my son alive and healthy?

And just as quickly as my mind was consumed with these thoughts...I was then flooded with peace.

Trust the Engineer.

Don't jump off the train.

Trust without borders.

And that was it.  If he had diabetes, he was still "fearfully and wonderfully made" by the Father of Creation.  God still "knew his every need".  He would let me "cast all of my fears on Him".  He still had a "plan with a future and a hope" for my son.  He gave me a "peace that surpassed all understanding."

And so the dark tunnel was short-lived...like flickering lights.

Ten minutes, one urine sample, and one finger prick later and our doctor smiled and said he was fine in regards to diabetes.

My heart was, too. My heart was fuller, stronger - my trust sturdier.

I had stayed on board with my Engineer.  He gave me His peace.  Because that's what He does.  That's what only He can do...give all of us the peace that we desire in the darkest of tunnels.

.
* I'm happy to update that my son is very constipated - and a little impacted....this caused the vomiting (ew gross!), the fever, the extreme thirst, the loss of appetite, and weight loss.  Thankful for something we can easily treat. Thanks for the prayers!

Where We Are Now...

So this is the follow up to my last post. Sorry it took a few weeks to get it out here.  Life gets crazy when school let's out, you know?

So after we contacted our social worker and told her we could not move forward with the sweet boy we loved so much, we were confused.  We started asking ourselves if Colombia was still the best country for us to adopt through.  What were our other options within our adoption agency? They work in a total of 14 (I think) other countries, as well as a private, domestic program.  If we were to ever make a change into where we adopt from, we will not lose any money we have already invested by staying with Lifeline.  It would just be a matter of updating some paperwork and transferring some information over (I make it sound easy, it's probably not).

So we began our "country" research over from square one - looking at each program and crossing them off of our list one by one.  This research had two purposes: one was to (hopefully) assure us that Colombia is where we needed to say and the other purpose was to create a "backup plan" of sorts if we ever do have to leave the Colombia program.

We were actually able to mark all but 2 programs off of the list of countries Lifeline works with: one international country and their domestic program.  At one point over the last 2 months, we have seriously considered both. But we really don't feel led, at this point, to change countries.  We were told, however, by our in-country representative that we needed to be prepared for a 1 to 2 year wait before receiving a referral.  Okay - we can do that....maybe not with great enthusiasm, but we can do it.  He also told us we should be seeing some major improvements and upswing in referrals over the next few months, so we are praying HARD that these things will happen.

So we are back to waiting and praying.  This week, we are praying specifically that we would receive a grant from the JSC Foundation.  They are a wonderful ministry that awards generous grants to adoptive families.  Would you please, please, PLEASE join us in prayer that we would be a recipient of one of their grants? It would be a huge help.

We've recently decided to travel to Colombia as a family (can't remember if I told you that).  This is adding about $7,000 to our travel costs because of plane tickets for each kiddo, extra food, and having to rent an apartment while we are there instead of staying in a hotel.  This wasn't an easy decision, but having our family split for 6 - 8 weeks on two separate continents really didn't seem like a fun thing to do.  Our original plan had been for Jacob and I both to travel for the first 2 weeks, then I would return home and Jacob would stay in Colombia with our new son.  But I know my kids and I know how much they would miss their daddy....and I don't know how I could leave the son I'd been longing for and praying hard for after just a few days.

I'm planning on doing a post soon about the many grants that are available to adoptive families.  There are so many ministries out there who want to partner with these families - in the same way that so many of you have partnered with us through our fundraisers and donations.  It truly is incredible to see so many people come together for one family, one child.  Whenever this adoption journey gets to heavy for me to bear, I remember that we are not doing this alone.  I look back at my list of people who have offered us encouragement and prayer, donations, participated in fundraisers....and i think, "Wow...they are with us."  It is an incredible encouragement.

It makes that possible 2 year wait a little easier knowing that each of you are waiting with us.

So,, immediate prayer needs:
1) That we would see the improvements and upswing in referrals from Colombia soon
2) That we would receive this much-needed grant
3) That God would continue to direct our path on this treacherous journey

Thank you, friends, for hanging in there with us...