God is always right on time........

Since my post a couple of days ago when I said we signed the acceptance form, but were still a bit short from the full amount we had to send out, things have changed :) We now have enough to send the checks out on Monday!! This is amazing! We were actually short a little over $1000. God has once again proved He is faithful and we should never doubt that if it's His plan He will make it happen! I have said this over and over, but I can't say it enough. We are so thankful for the generosity that people have shown to help us bring Joy home! Thank You!!

Giving God All the Glory....Official Acceptance/Fundraiser

As I mentioned in my previous post we were blessed to have a fundraiser Monday through Wednesday of this week. This very sweet lady named Sarah who has a shop on Etsy did the fundraiser for us. I have never met Sarah and actually had never even talked to her when I asked her about the fundraiser. I just happened to come across her site through another family's fundraiser. Sarah had posted on her site that she would do fundraisers for families who were adopting. I thought this was very nice of her. Before the fundraiser started, I didn't know what to expect. I thought that we would be doing good if sold 10 pendants. I don't know why, but I just thought it was going to be hard to get the word out. I hadn't officially posted anything about the adoption on facebook yet and I thought many people were going to be surprised. Also....I'm not a very good sales lady. I usually end up talking the person out of buying whatever it is I'm trying to sell...lol!!! Anyway, I must say, this was definitely another one of those times when I saw God completely working things out! It was amazing. We not only sold 10 pendants, but we sold 94 total!!! I was jumping for JOY ;) ;) This was such a blessing because we signed our official acceptance form to adopt Joy on Tuesday! We are so happy and so relieved, but along with the excitement and happiness there is also a BIG bunch of money to be sent out. This fundraiser couldn't have happened at a better time. We are still a little bit short of sending out the entire amount. It turned out to be a little more than we expected because I didn't realize we had to pay for Joy's visa and medical stuff at the time of the match. I was just focused on the big amount, which we have been so blessed to receive from friends and family. It has been truly amazing to see God work this out. I know I've said that before, but it truly has. I just want to shout it out and tell everyone what He has done to bring Joy home with us!

Oh......I guess I should get to the part about Joy....I think maybe everyone who follows my blog already knows, her name is Joy :) She is 12 years old. We got a new picture of Joy, although I'm not allowed to share it yet. She is small framed and slender with long black hair and she has the most beautiful smile! We found out her favorite color is blue and her favorite things are shoes and bags :) :)  I am now preparing a photo book to send to Joy. It will include pictures of us of course, our house, the neighborhood, the community and some pics of the weather. I hope she likes snow because we've had plenty this year! I guess the first things I will be buying for her are snow boots, sweaters, and a coat! I am not sure what the weather will be when she comes home. It may be late spring, which will still probably be pretty chilly coming from a tropical island :) I lived here all my life and I've never gotten used to the cold winters. But of course, we will probably be hitting the 90s by June ;)   

On another note, we are STILL waiting on I800A approval!! We found out why, it has something to do with a new law that has changed in NC since we submitted our application. Chuck used to live in NC. Hopefully this will be cleared up in a few days and we will get our approval!

Thank you for all the prayers and support! I appreciate each and every one of you :)

Adoption Fundraiser-Shop for Joy!

We have been so blessed by people who have offered to pray for us and who have also offered to help us with the funds to bring her home. It has truly been amazing to see God’s hand in this and I give Him ALL the credit! One of those people is a very nice lady, Sarah, who has offered to donate $5.00 of every PENDANT sold in her Etsy shop towards our adoption. Please do not feel obligated to purchase, however if you do decide to purchase a pendant from Sarah I will explain how it works. She has some really really cute ones on there and very good prices too.

Sarah has offered to do this **starting MONDAY, January 24^th through Wednesday, January 26^th for us.

Go to www.etsy.com/shop/sarahstreasurebox   and shop for a pendant. Make your selection and when you go to checkout please put “FOR JOY” in the comment section. If you have any trouble ordering please let me know and I will try to help. Sarah said the fundraiser is for PENDANTS only and not custom orders. You can purchase a custom pendant, but there will be no donation towards our adoption. She has offered to do this on Jan. 24^th, 25^th, and 26^th.  

Thank you so much!!

Blessings,

Haley and Chuck McNabb

Yippee!!!! So excited for answered prayers today!

We got the call today saying we have been approved by ICAB to adopt the little girl we have been praying about and hoping for!! We are so happy and overJOYed!!!!! ;) We truly feel like God has led us to this little girl because it has been a process, or should I say roller coaster to get to this point, and if wasn't for some tough and trying times we faced in the beginning of this process I don't know that we would have opened our hearts up to "older" children, well our hearts were open, I should say opened up our minds to older children. The first thought of it was scary, to be honest, but God slowly changed our minds :)  We did a lot of praying and talking to God about this because I wasn't sure myself at first, but He has led me to believe and shown me that this is His plan for our family. 


We are waiting on an official letter and documents to arrive from the Philippines! From what I understand we will be given approximately 14 days to look things over and accept the match. I am excited for what God has in store for our family. I'm not looking for it to be a piece of cake, but I'm excited to be a small part of God's great big plan :) I'm preparing myself for challenges and struggles along this journey. I can't do it alone but with God I can do it! Also with all of the wonderful praying people in our lives, we can do it! I appreciate all the wonderful friendships I have made so far on this journey. I am so thankful God has placed them in my life at this time. Also, I'm so thankful for my wonderful friends who have been praying for us and been there for us from the beginning. I am happy to share this news with you!! Thank you!


Now, IF I can ever remember to start working on our passports I've got to get busy!! We haven't applied for those yet! I've been finishing up on some online training that needs to be done. We are almost finished with it. Oh......and we are still waiting to hear if our I-800A is approved! Sure hope so!! I had almost forgotten about it while waiting on approval of our dossier and match. So hopefully we will be hearing from USCIS any day now. I hope!!! Then......it will be hurry up on the I800.......and wait......Lot's of hurry up and waits in this process!

Answers to some of our questions....

I was so happy to get an email today with the answers to our questions we submitted To ICAB back in October! The orphanage answered every question we had. This helped out a little with my waiting anxiety, but we are still waiting on official approval of our dossier and to be officially matched with the little girl whom we feel God has picked out for us. Still praying for God's will to be done. I know the match will happen if this is His will, it's just in His timing also ;) So we wait......The email we received today stated that they are still waiting on some updates, so I think that is why it is taking so long. 

Waiting is the hardest part...

Well...our dossier has now been in the Philippines for 50 days waiting to be reviewed by ICAB. We  did hear from ICAB on December 30th. They had some very important questions to ask us about our parenting plans and about how we would deal with certain situations if they arose in our family. We prayerfully and carefully answered the questions and sent them back to ICAB. We had to get statements from each of our boys about how they thought the adoption would make them feel and how they felt it would change things. Difficult for a 3-year-old to answer.....but we tried. We have also inquired about the questions that they allowed us to ask (back in October). We have still not heard anything regarding those questions. From what I understand the questions have been sent to  the child caring agency so they can answer them. I am hoping we hear back soon. In the meantime, we are awaiting for ICAB to review our dossier and then decide whether they think our family is a good "match" for this particular child. We are also awaiting our I800-A approval from USCIS. Hurry up and wait............

Biometrics....DONE....still waiting to hear from ICAB

We took a quick trip across the mountain a few days ago to get our biometrics (fingerprinting) done. We were successful in walking in before our appointed time, so I am thankful for that. When we got home we had some specific questions to answer from ICAB, so we quickly but carefully answered those questions and have sent them to our adoption specialist who will send them to ICAB. So....still waiting to hear.......hopefully it won't be too much longer!