Saturday, December 21, 2013

LAR-15 Rifle winner!!!

Congratulations, Glover Manning won the LAR-15 rifle!! He is Matthew's dad. The drawing was held at Thunderbolt Guns at 5 PM on the evening of December 20th, with an audience, ticket drawn by the store owner. It is all on video & will be uploaded later today. Thank you so much for entering and supporting us! 

Monday, December 16, 2013

Tax deductible way to donate!

Any donation made via our official Both Hands project page will be TAX DEDUCTIBLE!!!

We are so glad to finally be able to offer a tax deductible way to give! We have been trying to figure that out from the beginning. It is harder/takes longer than you may think to start a 501 3C (non-profit organization).

Please follow this link

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Angels with skin on

A Big Thank You to my Daddy God and some of His angels with skin on.




This week has been a difficult one for me. I think mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion all came at once.

Adopting a child is hard. 
Adopting a child via fundraising is harder. 
It is humbling and exhausting.

Why do it, you may ask? 
Because God told us to. So, we will be obedient. He told me in the beginning days of this journey He wanted as many people to know about this as possible, because He wants to give the most people possible the opportunity to join Him in what He is doing in the world. 

He wants to BLESS US!! 
He wants to BLESS YOU!! 
He wants to BLESS MICHAL!!

He is a God of great love and comfort and provision. 
He is compassionate.

Psalm 116:5

New International Version (NIV)
The Lord is gracious and righteous;our God is full of compassion.


Psalm 145:9

New International Version (NIV)

The Lord is good to all;he has compassion on all he has made.

He saw my tears this week. 
He knew the days I was so weak, I didn't feel I could keep going. 
He knew when I was hiding under my covers. 
He could see me there when no one else could. 

He met me there. He wiped my tears and held me tight! 
He reminded me how important it is to open His word and DIG DEEP. 

He sent Angels to me. Angels with skin on. He sent Terri & Jason Rockwell and Becky Foxworth to pray over me and to take the burden out of my hands and lift it all the way to the very throne room of my Heavenly father. They lifted me up when my prayers alone were not enough. They joined me in the spiritual battle that is raging. I walked out onto the lawn at our church's Live Nativity with the weight of the world on my shoulders, and left there light and refreshed. Becky spoke the words of peace from the Lord that, "After you run a race, you are tired". I needed to hear that, because I was exhausted after all the preparation, planning, and all that went into the auction last Tuesday night. I was beating myself up, because I have always been told that if you serve the Lord in His strength you won't be tired, weak, and weary. Her words rang in my spirit as truth!! God's healing truth.

Then for a bonus, He sent Lisa Toub. The sweetest woman. She is walking a similar path beside me. She has become a foster mom, and so she knows  the joys and struggles of waiting for a child God allows you to parent that is not born from your womb. 

As much as I would like to say after Wednesday night, I continued to skip on sunshine. . .I can't. I ended up hiding under the covers again Friday afternoon, and then I needed another dose of encouragement sent via Ame Lane Sunday morning. 
Click the link to hear this BEAUTIFUL, OLDER SONG BUT OH SO GOOD!
 Angels Among Us by Alabama
I am so thankful for my friends that are FILLED with the HOLY SPIRIT. I am so thankful they SEEK God. They open themselves up to hear from Him and they are willing to share truths from His word and truths He speaks to their heart in the moment they pray!! 

It is awesome to walk with God. 
His love is AMAZING. 
There are no words! 
It is amazing how you can form a friendship with someone who is filled with the Holy Spirit in an INSTANT! 
I am a person that generally makes friends slowly. It generally takes years, but then there are times I meet someone who loves Christ with ALL their heart, and I feel closer to them than I feel to people I have known for years. 
That is how the family of God works! 

Thank you for my Sycamore Church Family!

Dear God,
Please bless my friends! Thank you for these angels you sent! Thank you for sending them just in time!
I praise you Father!
Amen

Donate Button

Somethings should not SEEM so hard. 

I wrestled with trying to add a Pay Pal donation tab months ago for hours and I finally gave up.

I got the motivation to try again today. 

Matthew Googled the directions for me, I followed them, and BOOM! SUCCESS! It is sweet!

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

OMG!! We are logged in!!!!

Total Shock!!! 

Our documents arrived in China 2 days ago. 

They told us it would take up to three weeks to get logged in. This is the VIP date that the entire rest of the adoption will run off of. 

3 weeks??? TRY 2 DAYS!
WE ARE LOGGED IN (LID)!!!

 THIS IS THE GREEN LIGHT!! 

IT IS GO TIME!! 

GAME ON!!

Things will move quickly in the Manning camp from now on! 
I think we better hang on for the ride!

Unbelievable!
His love is amazing! 
Steady and unchanging! 
Praise The Lord!!!

Ways to give if you missed Auction

We made $3,600 at our Silent Auction and we had a TON of fun!! 
 However, we feel short of our $5,000 goal for this event. 
If we can get up to $5,000 
that will really help us stay on track financially
so please check out the great ways to give below. 
Thank you for looking!

If you want an item please email me at mmbm31@gmail.com.
You can donate the money for the item by clicking one of the following links or email us for the address to mail a check.
Donate Now Pay Pal
or





Lexi's Phancy Photography Calendars 
$15




Buy a t-shirt $20

These are so cool and 
oh so soft!

Buy a Raffle Ticket for the LAR-15 
drawing at Thubdetbolt guns on 12/20 for
 $20.

Or

Buy this Portrait Session with a canvas print with Jill Page Photography!! A $300 value for only $150



Book Gary Strickland to play music for your party or event 
and he will donate the 
$500 fee to the adoption!!!
Give him at call at (912) 631-0926 or email him at gary@garylstrickland.com

Or

Brown chiropractic center has donated two more AquaMed Dry Hydrotherapy Massage Bed 100 hours each! 
That is up to 10 visits in this fabulous massage bed. 
This is a $100 value for $50!!!

Or

One of two $50 gift cards to North Beach Grill! We will sell these for only $25 each!!!

Make a bid on this beautiful painting!


Or if you don't want to buy anything, you can simply donate by clicking one of the following links



Or email us at mmbm31@comcast.net and we will give you the address where you can mail us a check.

Thank you for your support & continued prayers! 

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Dossier delivered to China!

As I lay here exhausted from our Silent Auction, 
I received the following email. . .

Congratulations!  Your dossier has been delivered to the China Center for Children’s Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA) on December 10, 2013. 

We will notify you by email as soon as we receive your official log-in date (LID) from CCCWA, and then you will be prompted to go to the CCAI website to download Dossier Log-In Date Packet.  This will occur within approximately 3 weeks from now.  Please notice that this wait time can vary due to CCCWA’s LID processing speed.  

Feeling Happy!

Saturday, December 7, 2013

Fine Art Piece for sale!






"Sunday Morning"


My name is S. LaDon Ware, and I am a multimedia folk artist out of Savannah, GA.
 The painting is entitled “Sunday Morning” It depicts the moment before CHRIST reveals himself to a distraught Mary Magdalene, after HE has risen from the dead. It is a 5 feet x 2 ½ feet multimedia piece in what I call the “Neo-Byzantine Icon” writing style.* With the inclusion of the various media elements (some of which extend up to an inch from the painting’s surface), a Shadowbox style frame will be required.
The multimedia elements used are: acrylic paint, watercolor markers, crayon, metallic paint, puff paint, colored pencils, found Styrofoam, casting compound, linen, fabric, sand, paper clay, craft fur, twine, colored/textured paper, silk/plastic leaves and vines, and bamboo. The project is near completion. The amount we are seeking for the shadowbox frame is $850.00 (this is mostly surrounding the cost of the UV coated acrylic "glass" necessary for the size, and the longevity of the paint, fabric,  and various other elements on the painting). With these factors, the frame is required in order to preserve and protect the piece.
The motivation behind the production of this work is a desire to help others with very limited resources. The hope is to gift any and all proceeds from the general sale of this work to assist The Manning’s in their efforts to adopt a baby girl from China. The price we are shooting to raise for the piece is $10,000.00. Our initial asking price will be $5,500.00 unframed and $6,500.00 framed, of course we pray to do much better than that for Matthew and Bethany. As a folk artist with limited income, the decision was made to donate my abilities and time as a means to support their noble goal.  Being directed spiritually on how and what to do with each media element, we realize it was only through Inspiration that this project was completed (my humble abilities falling far short of the mark to produce the piece's eventual outcome). So, in that spirit, we intend to bless them with the sale of this piece as I was blessed in delivering it. 
We thank you in advance for your support, help, prayers, and well wishes in bringing this project to fruition.
**TRADITIONALLY ICONS ARE DESCRIBED AS BEING WRITTEN NOT DRAWN OR PAINTED.

Dossier to CHINA!

Well everyone, drum roll please!! Our Dossier has FINALLY been sent to China! We are now waiting on our Log in Date (LID) date. That will take about 3-4 weeks. That will be the date everything else is based off of! Please pray for all the personnel that will be reviewing our final in China and America. Please pray God will lead each one of them to match us with the little girl God meant to be ours from before time began!! We know there is NOTHING random or happenstance about any of this. We can't wait to see the amazing little girl He has chosen for us!!

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

We are in the paper!!!

We made the front page of The Spirit Newspaper! 

http://thespiritnewspaper.com/mdetail.asp?hn=thespiritnewspaper&cs=&l=actions-speak-louder-than-words-p5448-1.htm