Fan Sheng Hu!!!!

Back in August our agency matched us with a precious 20 month old little boy.  We sent in our formal request to China to adopt this paticular child, and after much waiting, yesterday morning we recieved our "Letter of Acceptance" from China!!!  This is China's official referral of this child to us!!!  We are now beginning our paperwork for visas, immigration, etc.  Lord willing, we should be traveling around the third week of January to bring our little boy home!

His Chinese name is Fan Sheng Hu.  Sheng Hu means "prosperous tiger."  In our family, he is affecionately referred to as "Little Tiger."  He was found abandoned on December 28, 2010 at a hospital.  He was 4 pounds 6 ounces.  He has lived his life to date at Children's Welfare Institute of Xiangyang City.  Other than his premature birth, he appears to be healthy and growing well.  We are sooo excited that we will soon have our little boy home!!

May Adoption Update

We have had an exciting two months on the adoption front.

Back in April we successfully completed our Both Hands project for Mary Alice! You can watch a video of the project at our Both Hands page -> www.bothhandsfoundation.org/brent-and-andrea-roberts.aspx. Our Both Hands fundraiser has been an enormous success, raising over $10,000 for our adoption!!!

Thanks also to ShowHOPE for a $4,000 grant!!!

Some other great news is that we have completed all of the paperwork for our adoption dossier!!! There are about two hundred pages of our homework being reviewed by the Chinese govenment right now.

Here we are "in labor" with River

How Both Hands Works

The Both Hands concept is unique, and yet very simple.  An adopting family (in this case, us) is paired with a local widow in need of home repairs.  The adopting family recruits a group of friends, called “the team.”  The team will spend a day with the adopting family serving the local widow by doing the home repairs that she is in need of.  The team will also send out sponsorship letters asking their friends, family, and neighbors to sponsor them for the day as they work on the widow’s home.  It is a similar concept to sending out letters asking someone to sponsor you as you run a marathon to raise money for leukemia.  Only, in this case the team will be serving a widow and all of the funds received from the fundraising letters go directly toward covering the cost of the family’s adoption.  The adopting family also sends out letters to all of their family, neighbors, and friends asking for sponsors.  This is an amazingly ingenious concept in which the Christian community is able to serve both the widow and the orphan simultaneously.  We are so blessed to be working with this wonderful organization!

March Adoption Update

We currently have twelve of our eighteen documents certified by the Chinese Embassy and ready for the dossier.  (The dossier is the collection of documents needed by the Chinese government in order to adopt).  The final six documents are currently in Washington D.C. receiving the certification from the Secretary of State.  And then they go to the Chinese Embassy.  After they receive their certification there, we will be able to send our completed dossier to China.  When this happens we will be able to be matched with a child!  Please pray for us as we finish up the document gathering and certifying portion of the process. 

Both Hands Fundraiser

Meet Ms. Mary Alice.

Mary Alice is a local widow whom we will be serving with a group of friends on Saturday April 14.  We will be doing a lot of scraping, painting, wood replacing, electric work, general property clean up, and more.  We are looking forward to getting to know Mary Alice better and serving her in this very practical and hands on way.  Thanks to all of you who are supporting and sponsoring us in this project. 

To sponsor us, please follow the directions at our Both Hands project website: www.bothhandsfoundation.org/brent-and-andrea-roberts.aspx.

We're Adopting!!!

We have been considering adoption as a means of growing our family for some time now. Last Spring is when we decided that that time indeed was now. For those who do not already know, we will be adopting a special needs boy from China. We have applied, trained, been though the home-study process, and amassed a considerable amount of paper that will soon be referred to as our 'dossier.' We are on the cusp of completing the dossier, which will speed up the adoption process considerably. We have started this blog as a place to keep friends and family updated on where we are in the adoption process.

This blog will also be home-base for spreading the word on our adoption fund-raising efforts.

Here is the family as of Summer 2011: