Christmas thoughts and almost 4 months down

Almost two months between posts is a *bit* longer then we planned. But honestly that's a good sign from my point of view. Two more months of waiting is done and it has flown by! Here we are a few short days away from being officially 4 months into our wait and something exciting has happened. Well, it was exciting to this mama's heart at least! The bedding that I have been eyeing for months for the baby's room finally went on clearance at Target! So we made a happy trek to Target amongst all the last minute Christmas shoppers and finally bought it. We were able to get many of the coordinating pieces because everything was 50% off. This was a big deal to me because there is so little I can be doing right now to practically prepare for him. And I'm a planner, an organizer... I like to be ready for whatever's going to come, whenever it decides to show up. I don't know how old he's going to be when he finally comes home or how big he'll be so buying clothes is not a smart option. (Now I may or may not have bought a few pairs of shoes, but I figure he'll need them at some point!) So being able to buy this bedding for him was a wonderful moment for me. It makes him real, tangible; it makes me feel connected to him because I'm doing something to prepare for his arrival. I need to be able to do that from time to time because this waiting can get old.

Our sweet boy, wherever he is, has been on my mind a great deal this Christmas season. It's so strange to not know if he's even been born yet; is this his first Christmas? Or will it be here with us next year? Regardless, he is on my mind A LOT. The Lord, in His infinite graciousness, allows that longing for my baby to come in small doses. I don't think I could handle it otherwise!

Christmas has also found me remembering that while we celebrate that He came as a baby, what I really need to focus on is that He's Coming Again! May I long for His return more then anything else!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

-kate-

Two months down...how many to go??

Our poor neglected blog! It's been a month since we last posted despite our best intentions to post once a week (ha!). Honestly, there just isn't much to say. I was amazed when I just looked down at today's date and realized that we have been DTE for two months already. Time is just flying past us and I know then next 2 months are going to be even busier for us.

So there is no real update to share...just us, waiting. But we're okay with that. We are confident that the Lord has the day planned for us to meet our son so we are trying to enjoy the closing moments of life as a family of three. Haven is going to be the best big sister! Her favorite thing to talk about is what she can do for/to her baby brother. We talk about it everyday, usually multiple times. I can't wait til she can put all those ideas into practice!

Two months down...four or five (hopefully no more) to go!

AWAA Ohio family gathering

Yesterday we were invited to join all the other Ohio America World families adopting from Ethiopia. We were delighted to meet the Richardsons, the Lows, the Harbaughs, the Mozombites and the Gomez family. We met up at a park in Columbus and then made our way to the Blue Nile for an Ethiopian feast together. It was nice to put faces to the names of all the people we've met through our Yahoo group and their blogs and to be surrounded by people who "get it". Most of these families are much farther along in the process (and one family is already home with their kids) so it will be exciting to follow along with them as they bring their sons home. All of us are awaiting referrals for sons! We laughed at the idea of how busy our get together will be next year with 4 more baby boys running around. We can't wait for that to be true.

Matt Low, Jose Gomez, David Mozombite, Cale, Roscoe Richardson and Seth Harbaugh at the Blue Nile
Jackie Gomez, me, Haven (!), Kristy Low, Amy Mozombite, Julie Richardson and Apryl Harbaugh

Thanks to Kristy and Julia for organizing. We look forward to gathering with these families again soon!

Another Z on the way!

We are DTE today! Basically that means that our dossier is on its way to Ethiopia. We have officially been added to the list! We are so thankful that this day has finally come and are praising God for His perfect timing. We have hoped for almost a year that we could be at this point in the process by the end of August. We just made it!

So from this point on we will be referring to ourselves as being "paper-pregnant". We're about 9 months away welcoming another beautiful baby into our family (5-7 months wait for referral and then 8-10 weeks to pass court and then travel). We are so excited!

We're off to celebrate. Let the wait begin!

Out of our hands

And it's off! Our dossier is on an overnight trip to our agency's office as we speak. I went this morning and made 3 copies of everything and then we crammed it all into a flat rate Express Mail envelope. Honestly, it's not as much paperwork as I thought it would be, but I am still impressed with our stack.

Three sets of everything!

Haven wanted to carry it down to the post office (we walk to ours), but then decided it was too heavy for her.
Not our best family portrait, what with the sick Cale, the glaring glasses and the goofy girl, but it's a historic day in the history of our family and we wanted to remember it. (Sadly, this is the best picture we could get after several tries!)

And just like that, it's out of our hands. It's certainly been in the Lord's hands all along, but physically letting go of all that we've been working towards for the last 5 months is a huge moment. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the idea that all these pieces of paper some how will add up to us adding another child to our family. I'm not quite there yet, but I've got a 5-7 month wait ahead of me to figure it out.

-kate-

We got it!

The mail this morning contained an especially happy piece of mail: the I-171H that we've been waiting on for exactly 4 weeks! We were so excited, and actually surprised by it's presence, that we decided to just drive up to Columbus today to get the necessary certification. Thankfully we made a few calls before going and knew exactly what we needed to have before we got there or we would have been in some trouble. So a few stops near home for a notarization, a county certification and we were off. It was really a quick and easy process once we got there and we couldn't be happier.

Tomorrow I will go make 3 copies of every document we have and hopefully by tomorrow afternoon all our paperwork will be in an overnight envelope on it's way to America World's offices.

We are officially done paperchasing! Praise the Lord!

-kate-

Ethiopia at the 2008 Summer Games

We watched the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics the other night (on 8/8/08) and saw the atheletes from Ethopia march in. They have 22 competitors this year, all but one of which are distance runners (the other is a flyweight boxer). We're excited for the distance running events to start in a few days. We'll be cheering them on!

Still waiting on the I-171. Hopefully it will show up soon!

-- cale

Goodbye July

I am having a hard time believing tomorrow is August 1. August has loomed in my mind as being very far away. For the last 6 months, before we even officially started the adoption process, August was our check point. August was going to be the month that everything was done and we began our official wait. August was THE month.

And here we are...ready to begin this new month and to finalize our paperchase. As of today we are just waiting for our I-171 from USCIS and then we can get everything certified, authenticated and on its way. On one hand I am thrilled that Cale and I have gotten our end of the deal finished with time to spare. On the other hand it's frustrating to be waiting on other people so we can move ahead. The Lord has been gracious to me and kept it far from my mind for the most part. There's nothing I can do to make it go faster so there is no need to stress and worry about it. I am certain in the Lord's perfect timing and have no doubt that His sovereignty covers the day that final piece of paper gets put in the mail to us. We will be ready and waiting...

In other news, we got an update from America World today that they met their goal of 10 referrals for July. While that in and of itself is fantastic news, what's even better is that the wait times are getting shorter for boys! Right now the estimated wait times are 5-7 months for an infant boy and 7-9 for an infant girl. If these time frames remain the same then it looks like we just might be adding a baby boy to our little family! Who knows but the Lord!

Track it

Who knew tracking numbers could be so exciting?! We got an email last night that our home study was on its way to USCIS! The first of many tracked packages...yippee!

-kate-

One step closer

Today we had our fourth and final meeting with our social worker. She was going to be in the area so we drove down to meet her and go over our home study and a few other items. It was a quick and easy meeting and part of me still can't believe that we are almost done with the whole paperchase process.

From here, our home study is being reviewed by our family coordinator and when she approves it will be on its way to USCIS. USCIS will then give us the okay in the form of the I-171H and then our dossier will be complete! Today we went to get a paper notarized and had our visa pictures taken so that means we only have ONE paper left to do in our dossier packet. And if I had been on top of it I would have done it when we were at the bank today! Oh well- we certainly have a few weeks of waiting ahead of us.

We are one step closer to bringing that baby home! Praise the Lord!

-kate-

Paperwork progression

The last week or so has been a flurry of paperwork activity. We got several things we had been waiting for in the mail that I then had to run around and get notarized. It's amazing to me that there are only a few things left on our big list of paperwork that we need to finalize. And most of them are out of our hands- we're just waiting on other people.

We also had some good news- our doctor's physicals were supposed to be notarized. When I made our appointments I made sure there was a notary in the office who could take care of this for us. Well, unfortunately, she quit the day before our blood work came back and thus, the papers were not notarized. We were trying to figure out an alternate solution and mentioned to our family coordinator the situation. She told us it was okay that it wasn't notarized and I was excited! I had run out of ideas of how to get this fixed and am so thankful that it's okay. And honestly- this has been our only real issue through our whole paperchase process. We are so thankful at how quickly and smoothly everything has come together.

We had an email from our social worker that she is going to send us a copy of our home study for review this week and then we will meet with her for the last time next week to finalize. We are thrilled that our August timeline seems to be a reality. Now we will still be waiting for one more piece of paper from USCIS, but I am believing that it's going to come quickly. Please, Lord!

-kate-

A night at the Blue Nile

Tonight we had our first Ethiopian dining experience. We ate dinner at the Blue Nile Restaurant, a little place on North High Street in Columbus. We sat in the traditional seating section and ate around the Mosseb (the common tray/plate). We had a combo meal which consisted of the following dishes:

- Doro Alicha: chicken legs and hard boiled eggs in a rich, tasty, not-too-spicy curry sauce.

- Key Fit Fit: lamb stew that was a bit spicy

- Fasolia Bekarot: potatoes, carrots, and string beans cooked in a curry-ish stew

- Cooked Cabbage

Of course, all of these dishes were served on injera, a crepe-like bread that was slightly sour tasting. We ate with our fingers, scooping the food with small pieces of injera. There was also a small portion of cheese (i think - it was somewhat neutral in taste) served. Here's a rather unappetizing picture of our meal; unfortunately we didn't think to take a picture of the meal before we started eating. Overall the meal was quite good and we enjoyed each of the entrees.

--cale

Home studied

We are officially home studied! We had our second meeting this morning at our house and the 2+ hour meeting was mostly comprised of individual interviews. Cale and I both felt like they went well and are feeling very relieved to have that huge piece of this process almost completed. Our social worker will get our report written up in the next few weeks (in the midst of her daughter getting married!) and we will meet with her one more time to go over everything.

We also received our Child Protective Services clearance in the mail today. That means that we have EVERYTHING done for our home study! Now I need to get busy on all the dossier paperwork waiting for us! Honestly, it has not been bad at all. Yes, there are a million little details, but I'm thankful and amazed at how fast we have been able to get things compiled. I'm hopeful that the rest of the paperwork process will go just as smoothly!

-kate-

And a special thanks to Jenny who pointed out to us that there was no place to leave a comment. We've been wondering why no one has left any! Problem fixed!

First Home Study Visit

We had a very successful first home study meeting at our house on Tuesday. We really like our social worker and we felt like we were sitting down with a new friend. She had a good deal of background information about us because we had already submitted our autobiographies. We spent a lot of time talking about our motivation for adoption from Ethiopia, how we intend to talk about adoption with our child, how we might educate ourselves about Ethiopia, parenting style, grief and death and our home. Haven could not have behaved better during the two hour meeting and I was so thankful for that.

The best part of our meeting was finding out that we were able to schedule our second (and last!) home visit for Monday, June 23. We are flying through this process and I couldn't be more excited about that. We will sit down with her one more time once she writes the actual home study report and then we can submit it to USCIS and get that ball rolling. Lots of progress this week and we are praising God for that!

-kate-

Dad's day

Well, today is father's day, and it's got me thinking a bit about being a dad (well, I am a dad already, but... you know what I mean). I was thinking about what the Bible has to say about dads:

1. Women and children need taken care of. James 1:27 tells us that those who take care of widows and orphans are considered to be truly of God. One of the primary duties of a man (dads in particular) are to provide for, love on, and take care of people, and that isn't limited to those in one's immediate family. Everyone out there needs someone to help them out, watch their back, be in their corner - this is what dads are for.

2. God is our Heavenly Father and dads are made in His image. What an honor and a calling it is for us to be made in God's image! That is true in general, but even more so for dads. Jesus, though not a dad in the sense that we're talking about here, made it his main goal to emulate what he saw his Father doing. How much more should we then strive to be like Him!

3. Dads are blessed to have kids. The Bible says in Psalm 127 that they are a reward, and dads are blessed to have "a quiver full" of them. Now I know that kids can be trying and exhausting (and I only have 1 at this point), and require a lot of sacrifice to love and care for - and that is exactly why they are a blessing: God uses kids to train us in righteousness. You can't live an independent, self-centered life when you have kids; you are (for better or worse) forced to live sacrificially and seek the best interest of others. We would all be blessed to live this way more often.

So being a dad is a big job, and it is a great honor to be one. I'm constantly challenged by the calling to be a father, but it has so many joys and rewards. I have a long way to go, but the Lord has definietly brought me a long way by His grace. Hopefully next June I'll have another child in my home which I can joyfully father.

--cale

Some information and a correction

More things crossed off the list this week: physicals, blood work, random paperwork stuff. I'm very aware that we are in a hurry up and wait scenario. I'm surprisingly okay with that. We received an update from the African Director of America World today. She recently spent a month in Ethiopia to see first hand how things are working over there. Positive things happened during her time there including our agency working with a new orphanage. Here are a few excerpts from her email that I thought would be interesting to share with everyone:

As most of you know Adoption from Ethiopia has grown popular in the past year. In the last two years the number of adoptions from Ethiopia by US citizens has increased by 100%. While there were only a handful of US adoption agencies working in Ethiopia two years ago, there are now over 30. Most people are attracted to the program for the same reason: compared to other countries it has proven to be the quickest and there is a need for adoptive families as there are many orphans. Because of this increased interest families should expect to wait longer for a referral than some of the families who adopted a year ago when the number of prospective adoptive families applying to the Ethiopia program was not so high.

As most of you know, power is currently rationed throughout Ethiopia because of the lack of rain. There is no power two to three days out of the 5 business days. This has created all processes to slow down. For instance MOWA cannot write recommendation letters to court on some days because of power outages resulting in rescheduling of court dates. Or the Vital office cannot issue a birth certificate because of the same problem. Families should expect some delays after a referral and leading up to travel because of these reasons.

The current wait time for both infant girls and boys is 7-9 months. The wait time is also 7-9 months for toddlers and children up to 5 years old.

So if you think of it please pray for rain for Ethiopia, not even because there's no power but because people are dying from lack of food. Crops won't grow, food costs are astronomically high and there is literally nothing to eat. It is a desperate situation for an already desperate country. Read more here if you're interested.

And one more thing...I have had a number of people ask me recently if there would be a chance that the child we adopt will have HIV. My answer was no and I explained that Ethiopia doesn't allow children who are HIV positive to be adopted out of country. Children that are put up for adoption are generally tested twice for HIV. I read something today that contradicts that information so after a bit more research I discovered that I have been misinforming people. It is possible for Americans to adopt HIV positive children if the petition for and receive special permission from both the US government and the Ethiopian government to do so. With that said, it is not our intention to adopt an HIV positive baby at this time. I stand corrected and I apologize to those I misinformed!

-kate-

Progress, slow but sure

We've got quite a bit of our paperchase done in the past couple of weeks. Here's a list of accomplishments:

• fingerprinted by USCIS
• written our autobiographies
• completed half of our Hague training online
• each read a book off of our required reading list
• had our home inspected by an official from the fire department
• had our local and FBI background checks conducted
• scheduled our first home study in-home visit and physicals
• had our daughter tested for TB
• verified my employment
• had umpteen documents notarized
• several other things (I'm sure) that I'm forgetting

Getting each piece done isn't that overwhelming; when you look at the hundred or so things that you have to do, then it's overwhelming! But we're getting through it, and it's not actually that bad. We're pretty optimistic that we'll be able to submit our dossier by the first of August. We'll keep at it!
--cale

A surprise!

This is what greeted me when I walked out the front door this morning:

The following poem was stuck in the basket:

Little Black Z****

Little black baby left at your door
Little black baby will cry no more

Little black baby don't drop on her head

Little black baby come put her to bed

Little black baby a Z**** to be

Little black baby for a nominal fee

To whoever left this on our doorstep- thank you so much! It has made our day and it's so wonderful to know that people are supporting us!

**To those of you that know our last name the poem sounds better when you insert in the appropriate spot. For those that don't, sorry! *Z* is all you get!**

Forms and fingerprints

Progress is being made as we cross things off the list in preparation for our home study. Our long weekend got extended due to flooding in Cale's office so we made the most of him being home this morning and went and got our fingerprinting done. We have lived in Ohio for many years, but because we had that brief stint in Namibia, we haven't been here for the last 5 consecutive years. This isn't a huge deal, but means that we had to do BCII and FBI fingerprinting which really just means to us that it cost more! Hopefully there won't be any other complications in light of our international travel.

Other exciting news (to us!) is that we got our appointment with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services office for next week. We have to go there to "have our biometrics taken." (I know- three set of fingerprints seems silly, but we're just following the rules!) This is the office that basically approves us at a national level for adoption and once our home study is complete we wait for their clearance. That magic piece of paper called an I-171 is what holds many a family up in submitting the dossier. We are already praying that our case gets processed through this office in a timely fashion with no major bumps along the way.

-kate-

Home Study Orientation

We spent a good part of yesterday driving in the car and attending our home study orientation. Thankfully, we were able to drive up with the Wings which made it a fast and fun car ride. Not that I don't like to get to spend alone time with Cale, but I could not tell you the last time the four of us sat and had uninterrupted conversation. It was nice!

The meeting was really informative and helped me to have a better grasp on where we're at in the process and what we need to do from here. I didn't really get that we could be working on and submitting things to her piecemeal. If I had understood that I would have had a lot more done before we went last night. But I've more then made up for it and have gotten a ton of it written and gathered today. By the end of the weekend we should only have a few things left to do and will be able to schedule our home visits.

I really like our social worker, Therese, and look forward to working with her. She is very relatable and has been doing this for a long time. She was so helpful with all our questions and is going to know more about us then most of you do when we're done with this process!

So today I'm thankful for making lots of progress and for friends that are along the journey with us!

Paperchasing

The paperchase is in full swing! We got our dossier packet in the mail on Monday and we've already started gathering the appropriate documents. The dossier includes birth certificates, marriage license, financial standing, letters of recommendation, proof of health and life insurance and a ton of other stuff. We will spend the next few months compiling all of this paperwork (hence the name paperchase) and that packet is what gets sent to Ethiopia's Ministry of Women's Affairs. There's also a complicated process of things being notarized, then certified and then authenticated. I don't fully understand how that works, but I'm trying to remember that we aren't there yet so don't need to worry about it!

In the last two days I've managed to get Cale's birth certificate, our marriage license and a promise from our insurance provider to send us a letter of proof of coverage for us and our adopted child. Cale's written his proof of employment letter and hopes to get it signed and notarized later this week. I need to make a trip down to our court house to get my birth certificate sometime in the next few days. We are praying about who to have write our letters of reference and hope to get that started sometime in the next week or so. There's lots to do, but my goal is to get something at least started every day. We would love to have our dossier ready by August 1, but there is only so much that we can do to make that happen. So we'll do our part and trust that the Lord will work the rest out in His perfect time.

-kate-

Two thoughts

This Mother's Day my mind has been mulling over two thoughts in particular. The first one- that by next Mom's Day I will hopefully be a mother to two. This is exciting and wonderful and fills my heart with joy as I think about who Haven will be a year from now and who else will be joining our family.

The second thought has been about who are adopted child's mom is. Is she pregnant already? What's going on in her life right now? Does she have any idea of what circumstances are going to change her life and bring her to a place where giving up her child is a reality? I can't even imagine what her life is like...but my heart is heavy for her today. I don't know who she is or anything about her but I've been praying for her a lot the last few days.

Two thoughts that have been dominating my mind- one impossibly joyful and the other makes my heart hurt. But I think I'm really starting to understand that that's the reality of this whole adoption thing. Pain on one side and joy on the other. Someone is going to go through great agony and heartache to ultimately bring us the great joy of a new member of our family.

And isn't that what God Himself endured in sending His Son so that we could be adopted into His family for eternity?

"For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves."

Ephesians 1:4-6

-kate-

Baby steps

Well, we're one step further along in the process; tomorrow we will submit our USCIS I-600A form - Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition - to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). This informs the USCIS that we are intending to adopt a child from Ethiopia and gets us signed up for FBI fingerprinting. We had to dig up our marriage license and birth certificates and send in a copy of them; it's pretty interesting to see the info they recorded back in the day - FYI, I was born at 11:40PM. Anyway, off it goes!

We also are in the process of getting started with our home study. We have a (tentative) first meeting with our social worker next week. This orientation meeting will be one of three with her and serves to get the ball rolling and cover the basics (we assume). The next two meetings will be here at our house to look the place over and get into the nitty-gritty of parenting an adopted child from another culture. We'll let you know how things go and what's next.

-- cale

Because He/She doesn't have the same ring to it

When we first started talking about adoption I always imagined us bringing home one little Ethiopian baby to be part of our family. Cale had a different idea. From the start he has wanted to adopt a sibling group. Initially that made me laugh because he couldn't possibly be serious. Then I started to think about it more and realized it would be wonderful in many different ways. We weren't 100% sure that is what we were supposed to do, but wanted to be open to it if that is what the Lord had in mind. So for the last several months we've planned on saying that we're open to a sibling group, but one is fine too. Kind of a "leave it up to the Lord so we don't have to make a definitive decision" thing.

Only a few weeks into the process and we feel like there is some clarification about this. Ethiopia recently passed a law that there must be 24 months between and adopted child and a child already in the home. We weren't totally surprised as we had heard this might be happening, but it started to clarify things for us. To continue to be open to a sibling group the children would have to be approximately 15 months and younger. That is very, very rare. Not impossible, but doesn't happen ever really. The reason that this is an issue is because we have to start filling out paperwork and stating how many children we plan to adopt. To put one child down and then get referred two would mean a whole lot of backpedalling, extra money and agony as we tried to get our paperwork changed. It isn't such a big deal to put that we hope to adopt two and then only get one, but we are feeling like we just need to make a decision here and now. To move forward saying maybe siblings, maybe not when it's not really a possibility seems like it will only bring confusion.

So, we are going to apply for only one child. We certainly believe that the Lord can do anything He wants and if He wants us to adopt two kids then He'll make it happen. But we feel like we need to look at this realistically and set aside our hopes of a sibling group (for now.)

Which brings me to the title of our little blog--Bringing Them Home. I realize using the word them infers more than one and since we are only going to (probably) adopt one child right now, it doesn't really fit. But neither does Bringing He/She Home. So we're sticking with Bringing Them Home and calling it a day.

-kate-

Figuring Finances

One of the issues regarding our adoption that has been an unknown to us is the time line along which the finances would be due. By combining some info from the AWAA blog with financial estimates included in our first info packet we were able to lay out a sort of time line of expenses associated with our adoption. Since I'm a hopeless engineer, I made a spreadsheet and a graph (see the figure to the right) to help formulate a plan for paying the adoption expenses.

It turns out that about 40% of the costs are due in the first few months (up through dossier submission) and consist of two program fee payments, home study, and other documentation fees. There is a break while the dossier documents are being reviewed, translated, and reviewed again, and while the referral is being arranged. The last major chunk of money is due around the time of referral and travel to pay for travel expenses and child care program fees. All of this is based on our interpretation of anticipated costs - it is possible to work out a payment scheme with AWAA to facilitate different financial situations. Our plan (at this point) is to take out a loan for the first chunk of expenses and another one for the second portion, while specifically saving money for the process as we go along. By dividing them up we won't be paying interest on a large part of the loan which won't necessarily be needed until later. We managed to find a pretty good deal (interest rate) on the first loan, so we're off and running!

--cale

In process

I have had every intention of writing some posts this week about how we arrived at this point in our lives. Unfortunately, life has been too complicated for much of that. However, we did receive our big pack of info from AWAA on Saturday that literally gave me heart palpitations as I read through it. I was just completely overwhelmed in every way; the paperwork, the money, the home study, all the details. Not to mention that all of this represents what is standing in the way of us and our child.

But the Lord let me just take it all in, feel what I was feeling and then realign my focus back to Him. He's in control of this whole process. And it is exactly that...a process. It can't be rushed, it can't be forced and it will unfold in His perfect timing. I need to not fight that or be scared of it, but embrace the truth of Who is guiding this whole process and that He is working every last minuscule detail out for our very best. He's good like that.

We've spent the last few days making some financial decisions and are ready for the next step...and the one after that and the next one, too. All of them leading us closer to bringing them home.

-kate-

We're in!

I got a phone call this afternoon from a very nice woman at AWAA congratulating us on our acceptance into the Ethiopia program! We were not overly concerned about actually being accepted, but it is still a huge relief to have this first step out of the way. Only a million more to go til we actually get to meet whoever God is going to add to our family.

There won't be a whole lot of progress to report in the next few weeks so we plan to share part of our story and how we got to this point. We really want to record this process so we have a record to look back on of how the Lord moved and worked in our lives. I'm confident it's going to be an amazing story!

-kate-

Off it goes

We're sending in our application tomorrow! Out into the wide, wide world it goes. Hopefully it will arrive in Virginia safe and sound.

The Beginning

It has taken us a while (for various reasons) to arrive at this point, but we're ready to dive in!

God has been showing us His heart for adoption for quite some time now and it's finally time to move forward with it. We've long had a desire to be a part of the solution for the AIDS epidemic that is ravaging families around the globe, and at one point served for several months with Christ's Hope International in Namibia. God has combined that desire with a yearning to experience Him through adoption and to share His love with a young child who is orphaned; the result is that we're starting the process of adopting a baby from Ethiopia (which has one of the highest AIDS orphan populations in the world).

We're so incredibly excited to start this journey; at the same time we are a mix of many other emotions. We know that the road ahead will be challenging, frustrating, humbling, and extremely rewarding as we watch God move to add a little baby from another continent to our family.

This blog will serve to document our journey and show God's faithfulness throughout the process. Thanks for following along! Feel free to leave a comment while you're here.

-- cale