Jan 18, 2015 Update
January 18, 2015
Hello and happy new year everyone!
Some people have been asking how we are doing, so I thought it's
time for another update.
Praise reports:
1. It has already been 5 weeks since we brought Miles home.
The past 5 weeks have been an adjusting period for mostly Alex and
I. The kids have been great! They can't be happier to have a
baby brother. Miles is growing fast, already growing out of 3
months clothes and sleeping through the night (5-6 hours). He
is the easiest baby we had so far~ but it's still hard taking care
of 3 little young ones . But overall, we are getting into our
groove and adjusting as a family of five. We are in love with Miles
and so thankful that he just became one of us so naturally from day
one.
2. Our housing: Our lease of our apartment was supposed to end
yesterday. Our landlord wanted to raise our rent $800.00 a
month which we couldn't afford, so we were set on moving.
However, there was no one that wanted to take over our lease for
that price. We just had to wait until someone moved in to get
our deposit money back because the owner didn't have it. This
became a problem when our home study visit date was set to
Jan.15-16 because if we were to move, we have to either delay our
home study or do the whole process over again with extra relocation
fee. When we were deciding what to do, our landlord wanted to
renegotiate with us and we were able to negotiate from $800 to $300
a month. This is still over our rent budget, but we decided
to stay to finish our home study as planned and not deal with house
hunting and moving on top of everything else, especially since
moving would have been more expensive then staying. So, we
signed another 15 month contract at our current apartment.
This is good because we were able to finish the home study and
Jacob doesn't have to move to another school. We are also
happy that Katherine got accepted to the same school that Jacob
goes to. This is a miracle because Katherine's class had over
340 kids on the waiting list and they only had space for 16
kids. We are so excited that Katherine could attend the same
school as Jacob starting this March. So looking back,
everything worked out with our housing, home study, and kids
schools. It's kind of crazy because if it wasn't for Miles, we
would've definitely waited out and moved. But from the day we
received an email about Miles, God has been forcing us to live by
faith!
3. Home Study: We had our home study visit this week. We had no
idea what to expect. We knew that we had to baby-proof our
house and she was going to interview us together and
separately. We cleaned up as best as we could and answered
the questions honestly as possible. I feel like Alex and I kind of
enjoyed the interview process; I guess we love talking about
ourselves. haha! Our agent came from China. Her
and her family are missionaries there and works for the agency part
time. She did mention that if we wanted to visit China, she would
love to host us! We took that as a good sign that she didn't think
we are crazy people. =) On another note, we just got
an email from her in China that she lost her phone on the airport
bus leaving our apartment. We called the lost and found and
they have the phone! They are even willing to drop if off at
our apartment tomorrow by giving it to the airport bus
driver. Sometimes I'm amazed at Korea (and God).
Prayer requests:
1. Now what?: We still have a lot more paper work to submit like
our health check up, taxes, finances, criminal background check,
etc. We also have to get all of our files translated to
Korean and notarized for Korean court. So far, everything has
been moving so fast. It's still kind of crazy to me that this
is all happening. Please continue to pray for us that we will
be able to get all the documents without any delays or problems.
2. Once we pass the home study, we will be able to apply for some
grants. Alex will send out more detail finance report, but it's
going to cost roughly 15-20K USD. We are hoping we will able
to receive some grant money and raise support to help us pay for
some of these costs.
3. This year is going to be a crazy busy year for us. We
didn't expect to have another baby, so last year was a set up year
for lot of projects that we are involved in. Please pray for wisdom
for direction for FiveTwo, jazzberrymom, and ministries
that we are involved in. When I have time to sit and really think
about all the work that needs to get done, it's overwhelming so
trying not to do that so much! ha! just take one day at
a time...
Thank you once again for all your prayers and support!
We will post our family photo session pics up soon!
love,
the Lims
