2 Trips

Well not much has happened since my last update. We are waiting for our homestudy to be finalized then onto our dossier. But as I said in my last post that Ethiopia was considering requiring two trips to complete your adoption we now know that this is the new law. Once we are referred our daughter we will fly to Ethiopia to attend the court hearing that makes our her legally ours=) Then you head back over there between 1 and 3 months later to bring her back home!! We are currently thinking that just I will go for the second trip. From all that we have heard from other adoptive families they really felt safe in Addis Ababa and I know of several other moms who went alone. We will continue to pray about it and see where the Lord leads us.
In the meantime we are very ready to get our other necessary documents to send over so that we can start our wait!!

New News

Our home visit has come and gone!! Everything went really well. I'm sure I went overboard making everything clean and perfect but it was a great catalyst to deep clean my house=) Anyways we only have one more document to turn in and then we can get going on our dossier!!
Stephen finally finished his Hague Training which I was VERY happy about. But during that training we both started to get concerned about this issue and that. So we just started praying and AGAIN the Lord confirmed to us that we are supposed to keep on. Stephen was on his way to work. His drive is about 40 minutes so he has a good amount of time to pray and just seek the Lord in quiet. On this particular day he was listening to love 89 and was about to turn it off so that he could focus on some different issues that were on his heart, namely our adoption. When he really felt impressed by the Lord to not turn the radio off. So he decided to leave it on. Shortly after a short bible message came on. He said the message was a very vague one but the gist of it was, if the Lord has called you to do something and it's getting hard, keep on. Don't give up!! He said he knew after that that he was free to turn off the radio. That the Lord had again spoken to him that this adoption is from Him and He alone will see us through. We are so blessed to see the Lord's hand in this and so thankful that He would use us to change someones life FOREVER and that He would bless our home with another precious child. To become a deadly sharpened arrow sent out from our quiver to change this world for the glory of God!! Praise the Lord~

PS. If you guys would please be in prayer about our adoption. We just found out from our coordinator that the Federal High Court in Ethiopia is debating on making 2 trips mandatory for each couple. The first trip would be to meet your child and attend the court hearing there that officially makes the child yours. The second trip would be to go get your child. We are not against getting to see our child any earlier, on the contrary I would LOVE to see them as soon as possible. But the cost of a second trip half way across the world and extra time off of work are what we are concerned about. I also would have a VERY VERY hard time finally meeting him or her and then leaving them there for several months=( All this to say, please pray that if this does go through that the time off of work and everything else will just fall into place!

Interviews

Well our interviews went great. It was actually a lot of fun to sit and talk about this adoption. The boys sat in the opposite room and Bethany sat on the floor in front of us playing with her toys. Stephen jr. was very curious after we left about all that we had talked about. They both are very excited about adopting and they also have tons of questions. So now our home visit is scheduled for the next week!!

Home Study here we come!

So we finally got our dates set for our home study!!! I got a call from our coordinator on Friday that all was well with our application and they had even gotten a lot of our reference letters back already (thanks everyone!). So we each will have one interview done alone. Mine will be Tuesday and then Wednesday stephen will meet with them. After that we will have a couple interview the following Wednesday and then Leah will come out to our home for one more interview. I'm so excited. I have been really trying to be patient about it. But we had not heard anything since we turned our application in and we didn't have any kind of time frame on when we should be hearing from them. So of course it felt like forever to me=) But once we finish this we will be on another paper chase with our dossier and USCIS approval. So much more work ahead but each one takes us one step closer!!
In the meantime we are REALLY enjoying the warmer temps and planning for spring. I am so looking forward to this spring. Since I'm not pregnant I can do so much more around here. We have a huge garden planned out again this year (minus the crops that didn't do to well last year ( carrots)). We are also actively looking for 2 calves and a goat to purchase. Our plan is to raise the calves for beef and use the goat for milk. Now we have never tried raw goats milk and from all we have heard it is VERY different from raw cows milk. But one of our main reasons for having a diary goat is that raw goats milk is one of the best substitutes for breast milk. So not knowing what ages our kids will be once they come home we want to have something that will help them along in getting healthy and well nourished.
But until spring comes we are keeping ourselves busy with finishing the boys fort ( which Stephen did a GREAT job building!!). I am also making LOTS of diapers to sell. I will post some pictures once our PC is back up and running. So if you know of anyone in the market for diapers send them our way=)

God did it again

As you know we turned in our application last week. We were so thrilled to have finished that part and felt one step closer. But that concern or worry is still there about the financial aspect of adopting. We are a single income homeschooling family who lives out in the country on a farm. I guess we are not the typical people you would think that would be considering an international adoption. But that is the coolest part about all of this. I'll get to that in a second. So we turned in our application and waited to hear back from our coordinator. Not 2 days after we turned in our application with the attached fee we got a letter in the mail. It was from a dear friend of mine whom I have not seen in about 7 years I'm guessing. She said she just wanted to stand with us and so she decided to give financially towards the adoption. That was such a blessing!!!! But when we opened up her check can you guess by now how much it was for. The cost we had just in faith paid out to the agency for our application!!!!!!! God knows our needs. He is faithful. I'm so thankful that He only gives us what we need when we need it. Like the Israelites in the wilderness. He was faithful to provide for their needs each day. And they were to trust Him each day by only collecting what was needed for that day. Some times I wish that He would just give us everything we needed for the road ahead. But then we wouldn't be trusting Him would we? This has truly been a step in faith. And as always He is more faithful than we could or will ever know. Thank you to my dear friend who decided to stand with us! We are so blessed. I pray each one of you will heed the call the Lord has on your life and take that step in faith you feel He is leading you towards. As Lucy from Chronicles of Narnia says. Each year we grow we will find Him bigger than before. So grow in the Lord. He is much bigger than you can ever imagine!
(PS. Sorry for the grammer mistakes and terrible writing skills...I'm writing from my heart so I just let it flow out=)

Step #1 DONE!!!

We finally turned in our application to adopt from Ethiopia today!! The kids and I ran to the Dr. for a few signatures and then headed to BCS (Bethany Christian Services). We met again with the adoption coordinator Leah and gave her all the paperwork that we have been working so hard to get together.

She said that we should be hearing from her in the next week or so to set up our homestudy!!! I'm so excited if you can't tell=) So now I have only to go get my passport which we really are not in a hurry to get. But I want to try and get as many things as I can accomplished now, while we are just waiting.

?????Questions?????

Well since we have shared our news of starting the adoption journey we have had many questions. But the one that seems to be asked more than anything is why? It's a totally valid question. There are many reasons why not to. But there is one reason why we are. So here is a kind of run down on what lead us to our decision to adopt.
Well it started back in 2008 when we thought we would not be able to have any more children as the Lord had closed my womb for over 2 years, so we explored the idea of adoption. It was then that adoption was knit into our hearts and I knew one day we would adopt (maybe more than once!). Well in January of 2009 we found out we were expecting in August of that year! We were so excited , but realized at that point that adoption was going to have to be put on hold indefinitely. Well Bethany was born August 18th 2009 and we couldn't have been more excited. Our first baby girl!!

She was so sweet and as I sat nursing her at only a few weeks old I couldn't get out of my mind all those babies with no mommy or daddy. No one to sit with them in the wee hours of the morning while they filled their tummies. No one to know their likes and dislikes. No one to comfort them when they are scared. No one to dote over them and how precious they are. Well the tears came and came and came. It was at that point that I started asking the Lord why it was that I couldn't get this thought out of my mind. Why when I looked at my sweet baby I always thought of all of the orphans in the world? Well after a few weeks of this when the thought was still there (as were the tears) that I started to pray that if this was God's will in our lives that He would speak to Stephen. I knew that if I brought up the subject of adoption that Stephen would think I was crazy. After all we JUST had a baby. We don't have the money. We want to buy land since we are just renting. It seems like a really bad time to be thinking about doing this. But never the less I started praying on a Monday. Well little did I know but that day at work a man just HAPPENED to come up to Stephen and started talking about how his daughter works for this adoption agency. And Stephen talked about our heart towards adoption.

Then on his drive home he just HAPPENED to take my Steven Curtis Chapman CD and was listening to it on his way home. Well the CD got to the song, 'All I want for Christmas' and he teared up (which is not like Stephen). So he came home that night and came up to me and said, “Have you been praying for me about adoption?”!!! I was floored. But I held my composure and asked “why”?...He explained his day and at that point I answered yes I have. So after discussing how strange the happenings of that day were ...we kind of put it in the back of our minds and went on with life. Not long after that we were again discussing adoption ( which stephen brought up) when Stephen said “Christa now is just not the time” and then proceeded to give me all the reason I previously gave. I agreed but I also challenged him to trust God for big things. If He was calling us to adopt that He would provide the funds. I then gave him the story of our pastor Mark. He tells this story of how when he first became a Christian that he knew he needed to tithe but he didn't have the funds for it. Not didn't have enough for tithing and going out to eat and movies. He didn't have enough to eat or pay rent. But he knew it was God's will for him to tithe so in faith he started to tithe. Well the Lord (as He always does) answered by providing for Mark in supernatural ways. So after we talked about that I just dropped it and again committed to pray for Stephen if it was God's will He would speak independently to Stephen. Well the next day was Sunday so we headed off to church as we always do. I was in the back with Bethany but I could see Stephen through the glass.

So Mark started his teaching and you'll never guess what it was on. TRUSTING GOD WHEN HE CALLS YOU TO DO SOMETHING BIG!!! I looked through the glass and caught Stephen's eye and was like, you have to be kidding me!! Then to top it all of he used the exact same analogy that I had used the previous night. Well that drive home was very interesting. I know Stephen was a little freaked out. He was trying to process all the things that had happened. But once we got to talking we agreed that the Lord was leading us to start the adoption process!! I could tell Stephen knew the Lord had lead us but still felt a little unsure about it all. So I continued to pray for him that he would have a peace. Well the next morning he headed off to work and around 9 I get a text from him... “so...you need to listen to 'come to the table'..don't ask why just do it please”...so I jumped on the computer and stream it from Calvary's website. And once again my prayers were answered ASAP!! Mark was teaching on Jonathan and his armor bearer and the message was about being afraid when God has called you to do something. That we need to have faith to trust God for big things and be obedient to his call. So now Stephen knew that he knew that God was calling us. Again it goes against human wisdom to do this at this point in our lives...but praise be to God that we can trust His leading!!

We talked with the boys about all that was going on and they are so excited. They asked us if we could stop and pray right then for their soon-to-be little sister(s). Their prayers were so sweet. And as I rocked Bethany to sleep today I couldn't help but think how special a frienship they will have being so close in age.