Adoption T-Shirts!

Trace and I had a last minute fundraising idea to help with bringing Micah home.  We started working on it, and loved it, so we wanted to share with yall!  We are selling adoption T-shirts!  By wearing the shirt, we not only want to advocate for Micah and for bringing him home, but also for the issue of adoption!

I believe with all my heart that the gospel of Jesus and adoption go hand in hand.  You can't understand one, without the other.  I have talked briefly about this in a previous post, but can't get enough of the correlation.
We all were hopeless, wrecked, broken without any hope before we met Jesus.  We are broken in our sin, and destined for separation from God.  But He CHOSE us to be His children!  We have done NOTHING to deserve this or to merit our sonship to our Heavenly Father.  But in His great mercy, as a believer, we are adopted by God, and share in His ONLY Son's righteousness and eternal blessings.  

"He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will."  Ephesians 5:1

Choosing to accept His gift of salvation, and giving our life to Christ and trusting Him with it, we are given an eternity with God our Father!  Praise Him for His goodness!

In the same way, we want Micah to grow up knowing that he was chosen!  Not only by us, but by God...first!

"We love Him, because He first loved us." 1 John 4:19

God led us, to him, specifically, and we went after him, and didn't stop until we came home with him!  We pray that all of our children grow up knowing how deeply loved they are.  How special and dynamic each one of them is and how crazy we are about them.   But even more than that, for them to know that Jesus loves them eternally more, and has chosen them before time began.  

It's our hope that by wearing our T-shirt, the issue of adoption would be spoken of hand in hand with the gospel of Jesus Christ, so that all may know of HIS saving power!  We want Him to receive the glory for all.  

We are selling these comfort color t-shirts this week!  The short sleeved shirts come in these 4 colors (or very similar based on the actual dye).  And the long sleeved shirt comes in graphite gray shown on bottom left!  

The long sleeved shirt is $20 and short sleeved is $15.  

If you would like to purchase one, we can take credit card, check or cash!  We are ready to ship them to you folks out of town!  Please email me at cassiejohamiter@yahoo.com or leave a note on the blog if you would like one, and we can get you on the order list!  

We will be closing sales on Sunday night, Nov. 3, so hurry, and get your order in if your interested! 

Through His grace alone,

Cassie 

Micah Ralls Hamiter

Micah Ralls Hamiter

"I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." John 14:18

We were about to leave for Disney World, a bit exhausted and maybe a bit discouraged in the spot where we were in the adoption process.  We had seen a couple of files, that the Lord clearly said, no, she's not yours.  And no, he's not your child.  I can't begin to explain how gut wrenching and heart breaking it is to look at a file, pray about the child, and hearing the Lord say, no, they're not yours.  When we began walking this adoption journey, we were just so excited to meet our child.  We knew we were walking the road of a special needs child from China.  Maybe I was naive, but I never dreamed we would be saying no to one.  When that day came, I was literally sick to my stomach.  But as always, God is good and gracious to provide the grace and strength we need when we need it.  I had to keep reminding myself, even though it would be so easy to disobey and say yes, (i mean, why would it be a "bad" thing to take ANY orphan!)  that this child was meant for a different family, and my son or daughter is still out there.  And sure enough, those children are now matched, and it wasn't but a couple of weeks that they were!  Praise Him!
Right before we left for Disney, we saw Micah on Lifeline's website.  His picture immediately struck a chord with me.  (the one above, bottom right)  It had been awhile since we had seen those other files, but I showed him to Trace and said, I would really like to ask about him...but when we return from Disney.  I was desperately afraid the Lord telling us no again.  Our trip to Disney was SO FUN, and such a precious time for our family, and when we got back...we asked about Micah the next day.  The days following were SO fast, and so clearly ordained by the Father.  We saw his file, could not let him out of our thoughts, prayed for him, and about our decision and within 2 weeks, he was "tentatively" ours.  (There is a long series of events that had to occur to make it "official.")
I mentioned that Micah is a special needs child.  He was born with a cleft lip and palate.  His cleft lip has been repaired in China, (and they did an OUTSTANDING job!) and he will have his palate corrected here in the States when we return.  I am so thankful for the doctors that took great care of him, and performed an awesome surgery on him!

We chose his name not long after we were matched.  We have always loved the name Micah, and have Ralls is a family name.  Micah means, "there is no one like our God" or "how great is our God."  It didn't take us long to nail down his name!  We couldn't find a more perfect name to name him other than one that shows God's faithfulness in leading us to him.  Ralls is Trace's grandmother's maiden name.  She has played a HUGE and integral role in Trace's life, and over the past 12 years, she been such an immense blessing and encouragement to me in every sense of the word as well.  We always want Micah to know, that although he was not born into this family, he is just as much a part of our future heritage as anyone else!  So we thought it was perfect to give him Ralls as a middle name.  

Micah is 3 years old, and has been living at Love Manor orphanage for about 2 years.  Here is a link to a great news segment on Love Manor of Chongqing!  We are SO thankful that while he was waiting for us, he has been living here.  Love Manor is being sponsored right now by Unicef, and is the model for every other orphanage in China.  They are working towards making their entire orphanage a "foster family unit" facility.  This is where they would have a legally married chinese couple, living in the orphanage with 3-5 children living, eating and sleeping with them.  Micah has not been in one of these families, but we are thankful for the good care he has received until now.  
I'll leave you with a few of the more recent pictures we have of him!

Evidently in China, a santa hat and birthday hat are interchangeable?!!

We were able to send him a "birthday party!"  Here he is celebrating well...with icing on his forehead!

Best vacation EVER!  May 2013

The beginning

Ok, so here goes nothing!  It's nearly a miracle already that I am trying to start this thing, so we can only hope it will last longer than 1 post!!  So why adoption?  You have 3 beautiful children at home, and 1 sitting at the feet of Jesus, why do you feel the need to bring another one into your home?  These are all questions that you may ask of us!  Trust me, some people have!  Besides the BIG fact that the Lord has called us to action by adopting a child, and we are walking in obedience, we couldn't think of a reason NOT to.  I realize the action of adopting a child into your home, is not a calling given to everyone.  However, for our family, this was beyond a shadow of a doubt, the right thing to do, and the way we are "caring for the orphans." James 1:27.  We also, cannot get away from the picture that adoption paints of the gospel, of our adoption in Christ. 
 We too, were hopeless, wrecked in desperation without the chance of survival. 

 "But God demonstrates His love for us, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Rom 5:8  

 Our prayer is that Micah's adoption will mirror the gospel, God adopted us.  We ARE children of the King of Kings!  But not because of anything we did.  He loved us SO much that He sought us out, bought us, and made us His own just as Christ, through His precious Son Jesus Christ and His death on the cross.  

"In love, He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ." Eph 1:4-5.  

David Platt has an awesome quote that says, "We care for orphans, not because we are rescuers, but because we are the rescued."  

I am fully aware we cannot change the fact that there are millions of abandoned and orphaned children here in the States and abroad.  However, we can change the life on 1 child.

We wanted to have a blog to document our adoption process, and keep our family and friends in the loop about where we are in the process.  The ironic thing is, we are almost at the end!  So I'm here to do a little recap.

"May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to You, my Rock and my Redeemer."

My prayer for the blog is that it would be a reflection of NOTHING but our Creator's faithfulness and power.  We are but vessels for His use on this earth.  My prayer is my life and words, and the lives I brag share on this blog would continually point you to Jesus Christ.  

"He is before all things, and in HIM all things hold together."  Colossians 1:17

We feel like God has been preparing us for this special time in our lives for years now.  This was no quick decision.  Trace and I will celebrate our 10 year anniversary next May, and since we've gotten married, adoption has always been topic of discussion.  I have wanted to adopt a child(ren) since, really as long as I can remember.  As I grew older, the desire only deepened.  As Trace and I got married, we talked about adopting would be something we would be open to, but weren't sure when the Lord would lead us to it.  About 3 years ago, we started researching adoption, and countries we felt led to adopt from.  So how did we decide on China?   I have a very cliche yet honest answer.  China was clearly the place God led us to.  During this time of research, we kept an open heart, and tried to be sensitive to when the Lord would give us a go ahead.
In September of 2012, we were sitting at a rehearsal dinner for some dear college students involved in the college ministry.  The groom to be was adopted at I believe 11 weeks, and had 4 older siblings.  I sat and watched this slide show of him growing up in this family, and it seemed so seamless.  Before I could catch myself, tears were streaming down my cheeks and I turned to Trace and said, "I think it's time." We couldn't have been MORE on the same page.
At the time, our 3 precious children at home were, Taylor, 6, Gray, 3, and Cayden was almost 11 months.  We went home and had narrowed our search down to 2 countries, and as we were closing in on making our decision, we discovered one country had closed adoptions down for the time being.  The decision to adopt from China was so very clear!  The Lord was so good and gracious to confirm this for us.  China, as do all countries, has requirements to be able to adopt.  The biggies were, both parents must be 30.  I had turned 30 earlier in July, and Trace had just turned 30 in September.  Also, the youngest child in the home, had to be 1 year old.  Guess what, Cayden turned 1, 3 weeks after we submitted application to Lifeline!   God. Is. Good.  He didn't have to give us confirmation in our obedience; He calls us to have blind faith, but He did confirm so very clearly!  Praise the Lord!

So there are the whys of our adoption, or at least the beginning!  We have been on our journey for 1 year and about 2 weeks at this point, and will post a timeline of our milestones on the blog!  
We are currently waiting on TRAVEL APPROVAL!  This means that everything has been approved and processed with the entire process, and now we wait for China to tell us they are ready for us to come pick him up!  After we receive Travel Approval, we should be able to travel within 10 days to 2 weeks!  

The kids are super excited about bringing home their new brother!  Taylor and Gray understand a lot more than Cayden, so I'm not sure Cayden is going to know what to do when Micah comes home!  It will be a huge adjustment to all, which frankly, I am just ready to start.  We have been educated, read books, watched seminars, and prayed prayed and prayed some more about this upcoming whirlwind.  And although I'm not naive to the fact that it will be a major adjustment period, I'm ready to begin!  We have been soaking up our time as a family of 5 the past few weeks, and will continue to do so until we leave!  I am continually humbled at the reality that the Lord gave me the family I have.  Leaving is honestly heart breaking for us to think about, but it's a means to an end, right?  We have to leave, to come back.  And then we'll be... The Hamiter 6.

I wanted to leave you with a few of our biggest prayer requests that we ask of you over the next few weeks!  

• safety and protection of Micah's heart, body and mind
• preparation of Taylor, Gray and Cayden's heart to welcome not only a new brother, but one that is 3, Chinese and can't understand a word that is spoken to him or spoken FROM him!:)  
• for Taylor, Gray and Cayden to NEVER doubt how special and loved they are over the next few months of adjustment
• preparation of my heart and Trace's heart to welcome this precious boy, and wisdom how to love him from the beginning!

Be looking for a post, where I'll introduce this 5th precious child that God has placed in our hearts and lives!