Our Christmas Boy

Here is our Christmas picture of Mateo! His foster mom sent us some great pic's of Te by the tree. What a treat to be able to have communication with her and to see from her perspective and pictures how he is doing. This weeks adoption news is that we got Mateo's DNA test back and it was %99.888 so it is a match! Yeah! Now we are waiting to exit Family Court and get Pre-approval to go into the last court, PGN. On the Christmas front Scott and I are heading up north next week and for Christmas break. Scott got us two nights at a Bed and Breakfast! What a great present, when you live with over 200 college students the best present I could ask for is some quite one-on-one time with my amazing husband. We then will spend time with friends and family until the 1st of the year! Though we are sad that we don't have the kids home for this Christmas season we are thankful that this will be the last year without them and that we are so blessed by the supportive and amazing family we do have. It also helps knowing that we get to go to Guatemala on January 18. We are wishing you all a blessed Chrismas season and that we all reflect on blessing the name of our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Merry Christmas!
Scott, Laura, Mateo, and Elizabeth Powell

Showers of Blessings

During the last week we have been so extremely blessed by some major financial gifts for the adoptions, we have been speechless on more than one occasion. Because the cost of adoption is so great it is only by God's hand at work that we could foresee paying for these adoptions. First we had some of our students take a donation for the adoptions and gave us over $600. Then we had a donation at church for another $500.00. On Wednesday we got a letter from Shohannah’s Hope the Steven Curtis Chapman's adoption foundation and they gave us a $4,000 grant. Then today we received word from Life International another adoption foundation that we go a $4,000 matching grant. That means we send out support letters and they match dollar for dollar up to $4,000 what people give! So we are well on our way to paying for these adoptions. What a great blessing right before Christmas. Now if we could only get the children home! All of you who were praying for these grants we want to thank you so much! You are all such blessing to us.

We will keep you updated on how we are doing with our matching grant, our goal date is February 1st so we have until then to raise the $4,000. If you are interested in donating or have questions about this grant please let us know and we will give you any information you would need to send your tax-deductable gift.

Slow but sure

So we are having a good adoption week and a half. The social work interview (SWI) and DNA testing for Mateo's case was done on the 30th of November! I am so glad that this part of the process is over. We also got word yesterday that the SWI for Elizabeth was being done, guess when? Yesterday, the 7th!!! What an awesome suprise! We still don't have DNA authorization to do the DNA testing but we are at least seeing some movement!

On to other news... We are going to visit Ellie and Mateo on January 18-23! Yeah! We got the go ahead to go visit the children for a long weekend. We wanted to go over Christmas break but we weren't able to get the tickets. This is not only to visit and meet our beautifl baby girl but to fulfill the requirement before we pick her up. We are so excited for this trip and for the fact that my mom Deb is going with us. So that is our new news and we are praying that things keep moving! Thanks for all your support and love!
Laura