Furniture, Photographs and T-Shirts

For the last few days we have been working hard to refinish furniture, hang curtains (without saying one bad word) and find special items for our little girl's bedroom and playroom. We have been transforming our office into a playroom and guest room into her bedroom.It has truly been a labor of love. We've had so much fun searching out things at Goodwill, looking through Hobby Lobby and wandering around Lowes for hours asking for help from every single employee at least twice. We've found lots of great stuff and it is so cool to put our personal stamp on it all. It turns out that the dressing table we got from Goodwill was actually donated by a friend at work who recognized it from a picture on my cell phone! The amount of pink in our house has increased 100-fold and I'm sure it will only go up from here. It is really fun for us to think about what she will do, how she will play and even what she will be when she grows up. We've been dreaming and talking far into the future about a precious little one who we have yet to meet. During this time, we have been looking at pictures and reading about a sweet, little 3 year-old girl named Tesfanesh and today we officially committed to her! They call her the "sad little girl" because no one could get her to smile for the camera. We will call her Zoe Renae: A Life Reborn, which is our prayer for her. We pray that joining our family will be a rebirth and the days of the sad little girl will be no more. We pray for and dream of days filled with smiles and laughter. We have seen nearly 100 pictures of her and only 1 with a smile on her face. She is VERY small and extremely shy, for now. Her mother is still alive, works at a bar, doesn't know who her father is and can no longer care for this adorable child. In her most recent pictures, they have her dressed in boy clothes...aReebok basketball jersey and khaki shorts. I told Tori that we will look back on this with her and either say, "see you were born an athlete," or "can you believe you ever wore sports apparel?" A few people have seen her picture and say she looks like me. This might be my only hope, since my nieces and nephew look just like Tori's dad.

Thanks for praying with us and celebrating with us today!


Today, we also want to offer you the opportunity to create awareness and support our journey in a more tangible way by purchasing a t-shirt in Zoe's honor for $15. I designed the shirt with some of our favorite words forming the shape of Africa. They are American Apparel shirts in black and red for adults along with pink and blue for kids. The image will be in white ink on the front of the shirts. There is a picture below to show you an idea of what the shirts will look like. We want anyone to have a shirt, regardless of if you can pay or not, so let us know if you need help with one. We really just want tons of you all to share Zoe's story as it unfolds and promote adoption wherever you go. This shirt will hopefully be a reminder for you to pray and a conversation starter to help you share with others. There is a PayPal area on the top right-hand side of our blog where you can choose your sizes and colors as you submit your order. Thanks for partnering with us on this and we look forward to seeing lots of Zoe shirts around!


We will take pre-orders until September 13th before placing our first order of shirts. (Please go ahead and pre-order so we will know how many to order). They should be in shortly after that. We will let you know as soon as they come in! Thanks!!
Read More 1 Comment | Posted by Derek and Tori Jones

1 Comment

  1. Klein's on September 10, 2010 at 8:38 AM

    Just wanted to say congrats! My dad (Bill Price) and Pastor Rick are friends and he told me about your adoption. We are also in process for Ethiopia and are matched with a 4.5 year old little boy. Would love to connect! Our blog is www.chuckndabs.blogspot.com e-mail is chuckndabs@aol.com

    Blessings!
    Dabney

      


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