And the Fundraising Begins!

This is the part of our journey that we are the least comfortable with.  We know that it takes A LOT of money to adopt.   We know that the Lord will supply every penny we need, but we know it will also require a lot planning and work on our end.

We are trying to get the money this month to complete our contract and start our home study.  We will be doing 3 different fundraisers this month.  First is a Scentsy order.  It will end on August 9. We are very thankful to Sarah Sanford for her generosity and love she has shown our family.   I have some catalogs or if you would like to shop online here is the link.  https://sarahsanford.scentsy.us/Scentsy/Buy?partyId=170703145.  


The next fundraiser will be a joint yard sale with Will and Casey Davis.  They are also on an adoption journey bringing home a child from Poland.  The date for this is August 24th.  If you have anything you would like to donate for us to sell, let me know and we will arrange to come and pick it up.  

The final fundraiser for August will be a BBQ chicken dinner on Saturday, August 31.  My brother is an awesome pit master and he and his wife have volunteered to help with endeavor.  I will post further information when it becomes available.


If you would like to be involved in any of these fundraisers, we would love your support.  Hopefully the fundraisers will provide services that you can benefit from.  More important than any financial support, we would love to have your prayers for our family during this journey.  

The Lytles Are Adopting!

The Lytle’s are going to adopt!  We are excited to walk through this faith-building journey.  So how did we get to this point?  I mean after all, we do already have children.  Aren’t the people who adopt those who don’t have children?  Well, here is the story of how we got to where we are now.

September 2011, I started the second year of homeschooling our two children.  Because I was homeschooling, I had the flexibility to go and do things that I normally would not do during a typical school year.  I attended the D6 conference in Texas.  It is a really great conference that focuses on connecting parents to their kids spiritually.   I heard speakers like David Platt, Dannah Gresh, (Secret Keeper Girl), Steven Curtis Chapman and many more.  Without looking at my notes, I cannot tell you what each individual said, but the main take away was that they all said YES to God.  He asked many different things of them and they talked about their journey.  I went away from the conference wondering what the burdened feeling was inside of me.  It was at that point that I started praying, “Lord, whatever you ask, I want to obey you.  I am willing to do anything.  I don’t know what you are asking but I am willing.”

November 2011, I went to a women’s conference in Indiana.  A speaker I had never of heard before was there.  Her name is Lysa Terkeurst.  She spoke about her spiritual journey from the beginning to where she was at now and it included adoption.  I sat there and kept asking, “Why am I hearing about all these adoption stories?  First D6, and now here.  What are you trying to tell me? I don’t want any more kids, I can hardly handle the two I’ve got.  Is there a friend I am supposed to be supporting who is adopting a child?  All these types of questions kept going through my mind.  I surrendered and said, “Lord whatever you ask, I want to obey you.  I am willing to do anything.  If this is what you are asking, you will have to tell Michael, because he sure won’t listen to me.”  I told Michael about the weekend and about how all this was going along with what I learned at D6 and with the Bible Studies that I was now conducting at church.  We started praying about the direction we should be heading in.  It seemed like every sermon, every Bible verse, every song on the radio was about taking care of the orphans and the widows.  (Did you know that November is Orphan Awareness Month? I had never known until this past year of 2012.)  We knew money was an issue.  I had been at home for one school year and now another half of one and even though we weren’t spending frivolously, we were going through the savings account pretty quickly.  It seemed like the month of November and December any big household item that could break did and had to be replaced.  We added me getting a job to our prayer list.  We knew going in that we would do this homeschooling thing one year at a time and evaluate each year.  I knew in my heart that homeschooling permanently was not going to be an option. 

May 2012, I was offered a job as the Preschool Director at Pleasant View Christian School.  I accepted the job. 

Mike’s parents were in from Panama.  We talked with them about our thoughts on adopting.  We knew they would be totally honest with us, and if they thought we couldn’t handle more children, they would tell us.  

We continued to pray about this matter.  We told our kids what we were thinking about and told them we were going to spend time in prayer seeking if this was really from the Lord.  We prayed many months.  Sometimes I even prayed that God would take this from me.  My thoughts were totally consumed with this and I just wanted them to go away.  I could not focus on anything but adoption. 

We had made a plan that we would get through my first year of work and try to pay off debt before making any final decisions. 

July 2013, I completed my first year of work, we have our debt almost gone and the thoughts are still on adoption.  They have not waned one bit.  Our kids are excited and so are we.  We just completed our application to begin the process.  It will take anywhere from 12-16 months and a whole bunch of money and a whole lot of paper work. As we read through all the paperwork and contracts, there were a lot of things that were a tiny bit scary to me. I told Mike that I am not going to fret and worry over one bit of this. The Lord began this work in us and HE will complete it. We are leaving every bit of it in his hands.  He will decide which child is best for our family and if that child will be a boy or a girl between the ages of two and four.  Our kids are praying about it as well.  Their biggest concern is which one of them will have to share a room!

We know that right now, in an orphanage somewhere in the Democratic Republic of Congo, there is a little boy or girl who is without the love of a family and at this very moment the God of the universe is preparing all our hearts to be united one day soon.