Big News and Changes!

Many big changes happening around here. Now that everything is up and running, it's time you hear about them! :)

In December, we found out the US passed some registration the Russian government didn't like, and in return, Russia closed their adoption program to US citizens. Both Lilly and Owen are in Russia, and now, they are no longer available to be adopted, even though both had interested US families when R closed.

We were, and still are, absolutely heartbroken over this. To have the children suffer for a government dispute is just wrong, and now there is so little hope for Lilly, Owen, and so many others (they still could be adopted by a family from Canada or another country, or be adopted domestically, which is highly unlikely). Some families who met their children weren't even allowed to bring them home.

Please keep praying for Russia to reopen or a special needs waiver to be passed. So many lives depend on it!!!

We have been praying about what to do with Handiwork for Orphans, and that decision was rushed a bit when Reece's Rainbow closed the grants of all the children in Russia. (Money in those grants will still be held for that child, but you can't make any more donations to them.) After many prayers, we made the painful decision to change it from Lilly and Owen, even though they don't have official families, to another sweet girl.

Introducing Handiwork for Maria!

Maria is a sweet princess in a different country, who is older, has Down syndrome, and it already living at an institution. She currently only has $10 in her grant account, but we intend to change that!! (Visit her on Reece's Rainbow here.) We look forward to raising money for her, and helping her find a family!!!!

Though that's big news, our other big news is our brand new website! If you reading this from there, you've already seen it, if not, go check it out here - Handiwork for Maria!

I (Sarah) have been wanting to do this for quite awhile, and actually started playing around with it late last year but that project got put on hold due to some big bugs to figure out like payment. But now we have that all figured out, and I have to say, I'm very happy with how it turned out. We are using a new platform, Weebly, and that is about the only reason it looks as good as it does! Not that I don't love blogger, but unless you pull in a lot of outside stuff and spend a lot of time on the coding, it's not ideal for a business website to sell things off of.

So go check it out - all all the fun things we have listed for sale, how easy it is to order now, and more cute pictures of Maria, and more!

Thank you so much for your continued support of us as we help the orphans!

Rachel and Sarah