“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."
(Mathew 25:31-46, The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats)
Our family is growing!
We are currently in the process of adopting a child from the Democratic Republic of Congo
Would You Like To Make A Tax Deductible Donation?? Here's how! Make checks out to: International Care, Inc.
Mail To:
I CARE Foundation
P.O. Box 1603
Bel Air, Maryland 21014
Please DO NOT write our name in the memo of the check. Simply send a separate piece of paper designating the donation to Brad and Amanda Kniep, or if you donate online specify that it is for us in the note section before confirming your donation. Thank you SO much!!
My husband and I got the chance to go to an orphan care conference over the weekend, along with other families from our church. It is so awesome to be able to learn together with other people in your own town and church family, coming together to get as much information as we can hoping to make a difference and also maybe getting to help educate others around us in the future!
Brad and I actually split up for two of the three electives, which was great, all the more info soak up!
One elective I took was about adopting/helping children with HIV. I've heard of this organization before (Project Hopeful), but when I saw that the founder of Project Hopeful and mother of HIV/AIDS adopted children was leading the class, I decided to go get some info. Before this class, I would have said that I would NEVER even consider adopting a children affected by HIV or AIDS, but now that I have more info, it is definitely not a NO anymore.
There is still so much more that I would like to learn before ever making that kind of decision, but I am so glad that I got the chance to hear her speak and learn a little more about something that I was pretty ignorant about. Here is a commercial her family and organization made hoping to get the word out!
So all in the all, the conference was great! Learned a lot about attachment issues, ways to finance an adoption, what is the church's roll in orphan care, and much more! I look forward to great things coming from our little Central Illinois community and can't to see how God is going to work!
Well, today was the BIG day! I made my way to FedEx and sent off a nice little packet made up of 6 months of work! Yes, it took us a little longer than most, but that's ok. God's timing is perfect!
Well Today Brad and I went to get our immunizations! I'm very excited because that means we're one step closer....but on the other hand, my arms now feel like jello and that I've been beat up! I'm sure once that feeling goes away, I'll be back to excited!
AND.... we are just waiting on one paper to get sent to us, and our dossier is complete! YAY! It took 6 months to get everything together, but I'm SURE it will all be worth it in the end!
Well everyone, I think I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel! Well, at least as far as our dossier goes. We just need one more thing notarized and our fingerprints to come back... hopefully, they don't take too long! I have seen some people's come back very fast and others....well, not so fast. As soon as that happens, we can send everything in! It feels like this stage of the adoption has taken us forever to get to, but it really has only been 5 months since we started working on our dossier. And when you take a step back and look at the big picture, that's not that long! Well that's our update for now! Hopefully in the next month we'll have more news to share!
In other news...the Midwest has finally gotten it's first real snow!
Not that I really like snow, I actually don't, but it is January now, and I guess Winter just wouldn't be the same without it!
Wife, Mom, Animal Lover, Coffee Connoisseur, Collector of Children's Books, Advocate for Adoption and soon to be Adoptive Mother, Volunteer Leader for YoungLife, And Most Importantly- Follower of Jesus Christ
