praying for our own

We love babies!! We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning with some friends who have a 4 month old baby boy. We enjoyed playing with him and watching him smile! Lately every time I see a baby I think about our Ethiopian baby. I find myself praying for our child that he/she will be a happy, healthy, beautiful child!

 

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more storage!

Last week we added a couple more things to our storage room! A friend gave us an umbrella stroller that we liked! Another friend gave us some little boy clothes that their son has grown out of! Our small storage room is getting smaller!! 

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"What Ifs"

Well, this morning I woke up thinking about all of the "what ifs" in the logistics of our adoption. Both Tim and I have a strong desire to have two children from Ethiopia. We know that there are several possibilities. We also know that our God has everything in control. We would love to have two infants. We'd like to get them as young as possible. Twin infants would be a great solution to this issue!! 

We would consider the option of adopting siblings, but we'd want them to both be very young. Like maybe one is an infant and the other is 18 months old. That may not be very likely, though. 

Another option is that we could complete one infant adoption and then do another infant adoption right after the first one. In fact, we're preparing 2 dossiers for this possibility. 

We looked into the idea of bringing the first child back to the country we're living in until we can get the other one..... but the visitor visa for Ethiopians is very expensive (like $2,000 for 30 days). So, we would need to go directly to the States to take care of the visa and then return to our country. When we do the second adoption, we'd have to do the same thing. 

Even though there's lots of travel involved with this idea, we're really okay with it. (It would give us one more time to visit with family that we miss so much!) However, it would cost a lot more. We just have to trust that the Lord is going to take care of us financially. He is faithful to provide everything we need!! 

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THE crib!!!

Well, yesterday was a big day for us! Baby shop was having a sale, which ends Saturday. The next sale isn't until the summer. That's when we're hoping to be bringing home a blessing. (or two?) We decided to take advantage of the sale. We bought a crib!!!!!! wow! It's just hard to believe that we actually have a crib sitting in our storage room right now. :) It makes it feel a little more real. This is really happening. Each step has been a little bit shocking. Each time the process moves forward, we are excited and scared at the same time! 

Yesterday we also sent in what seems like the last few pieces of paper work. Our Dossier is almost finished. The Home Study is almost complete also. We have a rough draft of it sitting on the computer that we need to fill in some dates and send back. 

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what is a referral

We have some more paperwork to turn in and we're waiting for the final draft of our home study. Then we can begin officially waiting for a "referral." A referral is when we get a picture of our child/children. Once we accept a referral we will finalize the adoption and bring our family together!!! 

We are encouraged that two families from our agency just got their referrals this week!!! You can find a link to their blogs on the left side of this blog. Go check out their blogs and see how beautiful the babies are!! 

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first post!

Hello, I am new to the adoption blogging world! I want to start blogging our adoption experience for two reasons. One is to get more connected with other people who are adopting from Ethiopia. Another reason is to share our experience with friends and family. We have been dreaming and thinking about adopting from Ethiopia since May. Tim and I have been dreaming and hoping that the Lord will bless us with children since we were married seven years ago.

We have worked hard on paper work all summer long. We have sent in applications, questionnaires, security checks, etc… A couple weeks ago we sent in our I600A along with our fingerprints to CIS in Athens, Greece. Our social worker will send in the official home study document within the next few weeks. Of course we have some more paper work to take care of, but we are well on our way!!

We are both American citizens, but we are living and studying Arabic in the Middle East. We live in a small country on the Arabian Peninsula. This makes things more complicated, but not impossible. We are trusting that the Lord has all of the details worked out according to His perfect timing.

Just this weekend we had our social worker, Randy Barlow, come do our home visit. He is an American living in Germany, specializing in doing home studies for Americans living abroad. He works with a lot of military families. As we reflect on how things went, we feel like it couldn’t have gone any better. We praise the Lord that it went so well!

Randy has approved us to adopt two children from Ethiopia. We will see what comes available, but we’re hoping for two babies. The agency that we’re working with has decided not to adopt out two unrelated infants at the same time. So, we’re hoping for young siblings or infant twins. There’s another possibility of doing two back-to-back infant adoptions. So many details have to be just right. We just know that the Lord will work everything out according to His perfect will.

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