Wow!

As I sit here, I really don't know where to start! As you know, we began the adoption process with an agency in the spring. We completed all the necessary paperwork and we just scheduled to have our homestudy done next month. On Wednesday, we were contacted by a young woman who has found herself in an unplanned pregnancy, and she would like for us to be adoptive parents! We are thrilled and shocked and so in awe of God right now! This honestly doesn't even feel like real life! So, we are putting off our plans with the agency so that we can be there for our birthmom. I'm not really going to give much detail about who she is because I want to respect her privacy. This is her story, too! Just know that we are the only support she has in choosing adoption and pregnancy has her feeling pretty sick right now. We covet your prayers during this time. Here are some ways you can pray:

1. Pray for the health and safety of our birthmom. She is having a rough first trimester!
2. Pray for peace and strength for our birthmom. She has no support in choosing adoption which has her feeling lonely.
3. Pray for the baby!
4. Pray for our family during this time. Pray that we would love our birthmom well. Pray that we would trust God's will, and not be afraid.

We are so thankful for all of our family and friends who are praying with us! We love you all!
Rocky

Week 10!

Yesterday was the first day of our last week of summer camp for SWO14! I can't believe how fast the summer has flown by. With camp and our adoption process we have been pretty busy. We are working on getting things completed for our homestudy: physicals, background checks, training, etc. We have training with our agency towards the end of this month so please pray for that! Also, at this point we have raised $2,795. That is a little over 1/10 of what we need to raise. God has been so faithful to provide for us through his people. We are have received support from missionaries, broke college students, and even some of our high school students that have come to SWO for camp! I want to share one story that really encouraged me. I was praying one morning for God to provide for our adoption and later that day Zach told me that a camper walked up to him and told him something like this, "Hey, I went on a mission trip to an orphanage and really felt God calling me to help take care of orphans. I can't adopt because I'm still in high school, but I want to help support your adoption". The young man handed Zach some money and that was that. I admit that I was stressing about money, and God used that young man to encourage my faith! It was so awesome! Please continue to pray for our adoption as we continue to raise funds and finish up our paperwork. We are shooting to have our homestudy complete by the end of September. Once it's complete, we'll be able to start applying for adoption grants and we will be put on our agency's waiting list (meaning we will be viewable for birthmothers). If you would like a support letter you can email me your address or you can give online here: http://www.gofundme.com/9limo4 . With camp coming to a close, we look forward to a stay-cation with our boys. We plan on swimming in the pool, grilling, and just enjoying eachother's company. It's gonna be great! Well, that's what's going on with us. Here are some pictures from this summer!

Rocky

Jackson loves the swing set at camp!

Parker and Sam enjoying SWO rodeo with Zach aka Luther.

Support Letters Are Done!

Family and friends
First off, today my brother and his family were able to bring home the children they adopted from Uganda! Praise the Lord! The past few months have been difficult for them dealing with paperwork  and government issues... But now they're home!! I am just so excited for them!
Today I finished our support letter for our adoption. Honestly, writing it was a struggle for me. I was having a difficult time expressing my feelings on paper. Many people have been asking me if we'll need to raise support for our adoption, and the answer is yes. We'll need to raise about $23,000. In our support letter is a cost breakdown, and info on how you can help bring our baby home. If you would like to receive a support letter, please email me your mailing address to: zradopt@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our adoption, but are in a tough place financially maybe you could take our letter to your Sunday school class, small group, or youth group and make it a group project. We plan on doing various fundraisers and applying for grants to help cover our adoption costs, but most of our support will come from our family and friends. My goal is to send out at least 100 letters and see what God provides. We know that God has called us to this and we know that He will provide. Please pray for us during this time. Pray for our faith and pray that God would use his people to help bring our baby home. Thank you for your prayers!

Rocky

Kind Words

We have been so encouraged by all of the kind words from our friends and family since we announced that we were adopting! We are so thankful! I've had multiple friends offer to help me with fundraisers and I've been offered a whole wardrobe of little girl clothes, in case baby Mabry is a girl. If there's one thing that our home is lacking, it's pink and sparkly things! I am in the process of putting together a support letter and a mailing list to help us raise the funds necessary to adopt. Sometimes I get overwhelmed thinking of what we need to raise, but I know that God has called us to adopt and He will provide. Trusting can just be hard sometimes. When I am finished with our letter, I'll update our blog and start putting a mailing list together! Please remember us in your prayers. Pray for the little life that God has planned to join our family, and pray for us to trust in Him!


PS- Right now, the most common question I'm getting about our adoption is pertaining baby Mabry's gender. I wanted to fill y'all in on who baby Mabry could be. We filled out in our application that we wanted to adopt a boy or girl, of any race, that was in the age group of newborn-2 years. We also said that we are accepting of a multiple birth or sibling group in that age range. So, we'll see what God does with that!

Rocky

We're Adopting!

It's official, we're adopting! We got an email today telling us that our adoption application had been approved. In the email, we were told that the agency requires that children in the adoptive family be at least 1 year old (Jackson turns 1 in September). So, until September comes we will be filling out more paperwork, getting a home study and background checks run, and raising funds. Then in September, when all of our paperwork, home study, and some training are complete, we will be put on their waiting list for birth mothers to look at. We are so excited to see what God has for our family in this next phase of life. Adoption has been on our hearts for a long time. I (Rocky) was adopted as a child, and it is a huge part of my testimony. We are so excited to have the opportunity to bring a child into our family. Please be in prayer for us during this time. I'll do my best to keep our blog updated, even though I'm pretty bad at it. We are so thankful for our family and friends who love and support us!

Zach & Rocky

Church Kids and PhD's

Hey y'all, I know that it's been a really long time since we've updated this blog, but we'll do better now. 

So... for those of you who haven't heard yet, we're gonna have another kid! We're really excited. Please pray for Rock and the new little baby inside her, that all will go well and that the Lord will protect them both throughout the term. 

Last week in a rare weekend off with SWO we were able to make a really fun reunion road trip where we spent a couple days in Whitesburg, KY visiting the Berry's (one of Zach's roommates in seminary). The Stubblefields (another of Zach's roommates) surprised us there by coming to visit. Then we all went and surprised Ben Dockery (yet another roommate) and his family for a surprise birthday party and national championship party. It was such a good time. We then spent the next day visiting all of Zach's friends from Louisville. It was an enjoyable trip.

And it looks like we may be spending a little more time in Louisville over the next couple of years because Zach has applied for the PhD program to study Apologetics. Please be in prayer as he prepares for the entrance exam that he will take on February 22nd. It's pretty intense, he has to read 9 books in preparation. So we'll keep you updated on how that goes. Here's a picture of the kids at church in Whitesburg. This only represents 5 of the 15 kids from the house where Zach lived in during seminary... Pretty crazy.

Under His Mercy,

The Mabry 5

Good Morning Class

Hey Everyone,

We hope that this finds you well. There is a lot to catch you up on in the lives of the Mabry's. We have been super busy since our last post. Camp is going great. We just had nearly 200 guys at the Be Strong Men's Conference and God did an awesome work in challenging us with what it means to really be pastors in our families. We are getting geared up for the Marriage Retreat (Oct 19-21), which only has a couple spots left and we leave this morning for our annual staff retreat at Cades Cove.

In addition to the goings on at camp, Zach officially starts today at Liberty University Online as an online professor in the School of Religion. We are very excited about this, for several reasons. As you know, Zach is kind of a nerd, and he loves the academic world. And the class that he is teaching is about a subject that he really loves. He's teaching on apologetics. Plus, this is a huge answer to prayer in that it will really take a large strain of us financially if he continues to get classes. Please pray that he is able to discipline himself well in order to honor the Lord in his work, and that LU continues to assign classes to him.

In even other news, Rock and Parker have started school together too. Yeah, he's still not even 3 but we decided to get an early start and Parker loves it. He's mastering very complex topics like: colors, squares, the location of his right and left feet,  the numbers from 1 to 10, and multifaceted use of the Greek participle.... okay, I lied... he's a bit shaky on his right and left.

We are so thankful at the way that God is working in our home. Please pray for us. And if you feel led to support Zach's upcoming trip to Orphanage Emmanuel this December, that would be awesome. We still need to raise $900. Thank you so much for your support.

Under His Mercy,

The Mabrys