Sophie's Celebration

Lee and I are so blessed to be a part of such a wonderful church! We have been shown God's love through so many of our friends there. Sunday night, they really amazed us with the most wonderful "Sophie's Celebration" party for her. They couldn't just do a shower or little get together. They instead had a potluck dinner and invited the whole community! I'm not real sure how many people were there. It seemed like about one hundred or so. I know there were people from Rogersville First Baptist Church, Anderson Baptist Church, and Rogersville United Methodist Church. A whole group of WONDERFUL youth from Anderson came.

After reading my blog, they decided to do the whole party around sunflowers. It was so beautiful. They had beautiful arrangements of sunflowers, and around tables they had little sunflower cutouts with Sophie's picture in the middle. They had a huge cake made with a picture of a sunflower with Sophie's face imposed in the middle. That was just too sweet to eat! Every table had a small arrangement with sunflowers on it. You could tell that they really worked so hard on this celebration.
I think everyone in our church must have brought food to eat. There were long rows of food. We had dressing, chicken, potatoes, caseroles galore, and deserts everywhere. There was more food than we could possibly eat.

Sophie, Chase, and Jordan all received gifts from so many sweet people. It was so thoughtful of everyone to not only give Sophie gifts, but Jordan and Chase too! We received clothes, toys, books, Bibles, music CD's, DVD's, figurines, nightlights, money, gift cards.... Jordan and Chase have already spent their gift cards. They were so excited.

We were asked to speak about our adoption at this celebration. (I bet they were sorry for that!) I think we talked about an hour and a half, maybe more. We just had so much to say. So much has happened during this past month or so. God has touched our lives in ways we could have never imagined. I wanted to tell everyone what God had done for us. I wanted them to know that our faith had grown so much because of the prayers from our church and community. I wanted to thank them for holding us up to God in prayer when I didn't feel like I could pray anymore. I also wanted to tell about the sunflower in our life. God took something as simple as a sunflower and spoke to our hearts through it. He gave us the peace that we needed to see our adoption through exactly when we needed it the most. He provided for every need that we had, even before we knew we needed it.

I am so thankful for the opportunity to share this adoption with my church friends and family. We would have had unmeasureable joy if we had quietly left the country and came home with a little girl. Our joy was multiplied a thousand times for every person who has taken the time to read our blog, send us a message, pray for us, share in our excitement, and help us celebrate in so many ways. These are all blessings that I never expected!

I know if I start calling names I will leave someone probably rather important out. So I won't do that. I just want to say "THANK YOU" to all of you who have been a part of our adoption. Just one little prayer said was enough. One prayer made you a part of bringing a little girl home to us. Thank you all for your prayers, for the gifts, for the Celebration, and for your friendship and love.

Shannan

P.S. I probably won't post too much from here on out. I will try to post maybe once a week or so. We've been a little crazy around here, so I'm just now getting into a routine. I've got some pictures coming. I can really see a totally different little girl from what I brought home from Ukraine.

Please pray for those in the Gulf Coast area. I know you are!