Thanksgiving Sale

In honer on Thanksgiving next week and us getting ready to move we are having a sale on our t-shirts on our store!!!!!

click here to go to our fundraiser store -----> (http://ourtriptoethiopia.storenvy.com/)

T-shirts are $5 off making them $15 instead of $20!!!!!

and we will give a free sticker with each t-shirt purchased!!!!

All proceeds will make it possible for Maggie and I to go to Ethiopia in March. We will be meeting the team that we will be working with when we move to Ethiopia, we are doing a The Little Bee Co. diaper drop, visiting and showing Gods love to the poor, visiting orphanages, and whatever else God places on our path. This will only be possible if we raise 100% of travel expenses. Please check out the store and help make it possible for us to go on this trip.

It's totally a God Thing

This goes back a few months ago...

I was at the point where I wished there was someone to take over Bottom Blessings for me while our family started support raising and moving to Ethiopia. I just didn't know who and I decided that it was time to go ahead and get rid of the last of the diapers and let that be it, the end of my "project". But it kept nagging at me and I really wished I could still keep it going.

I have people contact me every so often that want to take diapers and people who want to donate. I also have the lady that sews the diaper covers for me (which is super awesome!). So I knew that it could really be an ongoing thing and I could locate orphanages for people while living in Ethiopia. Again I just didnt know how this would work or even know anyone who would want to take over the part here in the U.S.

So I had a fellow AGCI mom contact me and say that they were collecting diapers to take to Ethiopia because they were adopting again and would be traveling there in the near future. I had a small amount at that point that I could send her and knew that I had some more coming in the mail that were being donated. But, I remembered an email from a lady named Holly about this diaper company that her and her sister in law, Betsy, had gotten diapers from when they were collecting them during Betsys adoption. It was called envibum and they really helped with there diaper collecting project. So I got on my email, which I barely checked to email her about it. (keep in mind that the email I had gotten from her was months earlier and we had had no contact since) I signed on and I had gotten an email from her! Here is the email..

Hi Christie,

I've been wanting to get in touch with you for a while, but have been busy with a move associated with my husband's job. I've read that you have been busy preparing to relocate to Ethiopia and I am so excited to see what God has planned for you. My sister (betsyandtheboys.blogspot.com) and I were interested in continuing the cloth diaper ministry on a semi regular basis. Possibly doing a drive a couple of times a year. I am connected with the owner of Envibum who helped Betsy and her husband take diapers and covers (at cost) to Ethiopia when they travelled to pick up there daughter and I know she is interested in helping long term.

I don't know how much of a priority the diapers are to you with your new developments?????

I am wondering if you would be interested in receiving the donations once you are in Ethiopia and distributing them to where they are needed.

We have also been curious as to how different orphanages view the diaper donations from a cultural stand point. (Do they view the diapers as a need?)

Please let me know if you are still interested in being involved or if it is a little much with everything else you have going on right now:)

Holly

This was totally a God thing! I told her that yes I would be interested in keeping with the diaper ministry and that we could use the Bottom Blessings name and everything. This was so exciting!!! We have kept in contact since and have been excited about doing this!

So back a few weeks ago a friend on Facebook posted about this diaper company called The Little Bee diaper Co. I took a look at their website and was super impressed but what they are doing! Here is a description of what they do on their website -

With every diaper purchased The Little Bee Co. will donate a diaper to an orphan in need. Once enough diapers are collected for each baby of one entire orphanage, a "Diaper Drop" is organized to deliver the diapers and help in assisting the orphanage workers with their transition to modern cloth. The diapers donated are the same diapers we sell. Every baby deserves the same high quality we choose for our own baby! Check out the organizations below to see how your contributions are changing the lives of babies worldwide! With every diaper purchased The Little Bee Co. will donate a diaper to an orphan in need. Once enough diapers are collected for each baby of one entire orphanage, a "Diaper Drop" is organized to deliver the diapers and help in assisting the orphanage workers with their transition to modern cloth. The diapers donated are the same diapers we sell. Every baby deserves the same high quality we choose for our own baby!

I emailed Holly to see if she could contact them to see if we could do a diaper drop or see how we could be involved. This is what she got back…

Holly,
Thank you so much for contacting us! I don't even know where to begin with explaining how excited I am to recieve your email. The second I read it my heart swelled with joy and my eyes with tears! It is a long story so please bear with me for rambling but I am simply overwhelmed with how amazing God's orchestrations are!

When my husband and I first began our journey into this mission/business it was actually just a business. I had begun cloth diapering my son and created a diaper that I thought was great and my husband and I set out to start our own "Cloth Diapering Business" It was going to be a boutique style store and there was no thought of using our diapers for a mission at all. One morning during my devotions the Lord spoke to me and told me that this "business" my husband and I were working on was not ours but actually His and that it was not to be a "business" but a "mission" to help babies in need, specifically orphans. I talked it over with my husband and shared what God had laid on my heart and he agreed that the Lord was speaking to him as well! We have both travelled on the mission field and missions are so close to our heart. We also share an intense love for orphan ministry. I have wanted to adopt from the time I was a little girl and my husband has a little sister who is adopted from China. He too has always wanted to adopt. We plan to do so in the future. We had no idea how to incorporate a mission with a cloth diapering business and didn't even know if cloth diapers would be a helpful thing for orphans. I started talking to our friends who are missionaries, thinking back to our previous trips and the diapering conditions we encountered and researching online diaper donations for orphans when came to a blog about a family whose sole ministry was taking diapers to orphans! It was Knowing No Bounds! I read their blog and it was during those moments the Lord said, "This is it! Use the profits you would have recieved to instead donate diapers to orphans in need." I shared the blog with my husband and we awwwed over baby Zek and Adam and Christie's journey to him! I put on my "to do list" to email them just to let them know what we were going to be starting up and that we would love to help them by donating diapers to them....and then life happened. The list was lost, we got overwhelmingly busy really fast, time passed quickly and I soon couldn't remember the name of their blog spot or the email info to contact them. I'm sure I could have sat and tried to find them via google but it always seemed that I was busy with something else.

When I read your email my mom and sister were sitting in my office with me and I literally yelled "THIS IS THEM!" "This is the family that God used to speak to me" I then proceeded to share with them the story I just shared with you! I am amazed that God allowed you to find me when for months, actually nearly a year, I have had on my "To Do" list to contact them!

So all of this to say I am so happy to "like" you on facebook and help spread the word about your mission! I would also love to offer Adam and Christie a spot as one of our "Diaper Drop Donations" We are currently working on one in Xian, China right now and have one scheduled after that for another organization in Uganda. Then we would love to add Knowing No Bounds as our next one! Our first major drop was a donation of 250 diapers to an organization called Serving His Children in Jinja, Uganda. Our China drop is 500 diapers and we would love to help Knowing no Bounds put diapers on all the babies of an entire orphanage they are working with in Ethiopia. Because our donations are based on sales we have no idea when we will have the donation available. As we sell diapers we load up the donation boxes and once we have enough for on organization we move right on to the next. If this is something Knowing No Bounds would be interested in we would love to partner with them or Bottom Blessings or however it works best for you all!

Thank you again so very much for contacting me! God is so good! Thank you for choosing to serve him with your amazing ministry! I look forward to talking with you in the future!
Loads of Blessings,

Jona

The Little Bee Co.

My eyes filled with tears and my heart was pounding. It was so amazing how God was working. He is awesome! I have often wondered how much of a difference what I was doing was making. (because I couldn’t witness the difference). Now I am in awe of the difference it is making!!!

Bottom Blessings has been amazing! What started out as a little project to send enough cloth diapers with Adam on his mission trip turned in to sending over 1000 lbs of diapers over so far, plus this! Plus who knows how much more! And how much more it’s going to be. I can’t wait to see all that God has planned for this!

So now we are going to be the next The Little Bee Co. diaper drop when I go on my trip in March!!! And I think I have already located an orphanage to take them to!!!

To top that off Bottom Blessings is going to be a Mission Retailer for The little Bee Co. diapers!!! How this works is

• For every diaper you purchase from us a diaper will be donated to Bottom Blessings.
• Any profits made from the sell of the diaper will right now go to help fund my trip to Ethiopia in March and once my trip it over the profits will go to mine and Adam’s ministry in Ethiopia and also back into Bottom Blessings for purchasing diapers to donate and any admin costs that may come up.
• You can buy the diapers for yourself or as a gift (so for every one you buy one is donated)
• You can buy the diapers to be donated (so for every one you buy to donate another one is donated)

I will have a store up and running sometime soon to sell the diapers. I am so super excited about this!!! So keep your eye out for the diaper store!!!!

In the meantime go ahead and check out our super cool shirts to help fund my trip to Ethiopia in March!!! Just click on the store button on the right side of this page!!! or click here... http://ourtriptoethiopia.storenvy.com/

Thanks for reading!!!

He will provide a way...

Okay, so many of you know that Maggie and I will be going on a vision/mission trip to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia this March. We have some awesome T-shirts for sale that my awesome husband designed to help raise money for this trip.

To be honest we cannot afford to pay for this trip. But, God has laid this on my heart as something I NEED to do. Our family will be moving there in approx 18 months to start ministering there. This trip will provide will provide me with a time to see what God's vision is for our ministry there and give me a sneak peak as to how ministering and living there will be. It will provide Maggie the opportunity to experience Ethiopia before moving there (this will help with the transition for her and for her 3 younger siblings).

I know that God will provide for this trip and it's with your help that it will be made possible. With Christmas coming up you could buy a shirt or two for loved ones. The shirts will have a story behind them and the receiver will know that their gift not only gave them a shirt to wear, but helped a family with their ministry in Africa. If you mention this post with your order we will throw in 1 of each of our 2 stickers that we have per shirt order.

Please take a look at our store and if you feel a tug to help out then that is fantastic! If you don't then thank you so much for looking.

If at all possible can you post about our family and the mission trip store on your Facebook and your blog?

Most importantly please be praying for our family through this amazing but sometimes a bit scary journey.

Thanks so much!!

click here to go to our store
or click on the store button to the right side of this page

sold

Our house was on the market for less then 3 months and sold...this is amazing for several reasons...

• In our neighborhood it seems that either houses are just foreclosed or they are for sale FOREVER before either they finally sell or they just take it off the market.
• Our realtor told us that what we had to ask was probably too high and we should probably take it off the market and try for sale by owner- so we could ask less. (though what we were asking was $10,000 less than what we paid for it)
  
• we heard that it is pretty much unheard of nowadays that the seller not at least pay some of the closing costs. (and we are not)

So back on September 21st (adams birthday) we had a showing...we got home and a few minutes later got a call from our realtor saying that the people wanted to come back and see it again in 20 minutes...the night before this showing (our 3rd showing in all) I just felt like I should pray through are house. Pray that the people feel at home when they walk in and so on. The morning of the showing the kids were crazy (pretty typical but overly crazy this day) and the morning just seemed to not be going very smoothly and there were times where we couldv'e gotten bent out of shape but we didn't. I just felt like satan was trying to get in a ruin what was going to be happening over the next few weeks. Well they loved the house and we thought we would get an offer. The realtor just felt that what we were asking wasn't what she was seeing in our neighborhood and she said it just wouldn't work. We knew these people loved the house so I prayed. I prayed that if this house was for them that something would change. So almost 3 weeks later we had a showing. We had no clue that it was them coming back. Same thing happened before the showing. It was just crazy and we had to get the house together quickly and again could've totally gotten bent out of shape. We got a call later on that day and got an offer. An offer that would totally work! We accepted. This was back on October 9th. Everything is going well and we will be moving before the 30th of this month.

We know that God has His hand in all of this. When we felt like we should go ahead and put our house on the market we thought it was because it would take a long time to sell it. Never would I have guessed that it would sell so fast. It's all pretty crazy and has put me in a whirlwind! We have been in our house for 8 1/2 years and it's hard leaving.

I know that God is ahead and of and God is behind us all of the way in this journey to Ethiopia. We feel so blessed to be called by Him to do all of this. There are days that we are completely terrified, though. But terrified in a way where we still know that God is behind it and there is a peace. It's so hard to understand. It's just not easy.

Back several months ago I was just flipping through my bible and came across this verse...

"But you will not leave in haste or go in flight; the Lord will go before you, the God of Israel will be your rear guard." Isaiah 52:12

I am taking things as they come and knowing that it is all in God's timing not mine.

We are moving into a 900 sq foot house...there are 6 people in this family...but we know that this is the house that we are supposed to be in. it may seem crazy, but it's what we are supposed to do. It seems super crazy to think about all of us living in this house. I just say it's going to make us a REALLY close family! and hopefully push us to get to Ethiopia even faster! We just pray that support raising goes well next year and we are able to get there sooner than we think.

We are to grateful to be sent on this adventurous journey. There are days, though, that it is super hard.

Would you please continue to pray with us through all of these changes? and begin praying for us as we will begin support raising in the next few months?

Here are some pictures of the kiddos on Halloween (didn't want another post with no pictures) :)

our packing up (so far)