Catching you up

Today I sent the link to this blog to a few far away friends, then realized that some of them didn't even know we were adopting until I sent them the e-mail with this link. I thought I'd better give just a bit of background, as well as explaining where we are in the process.

Jim and I have dreamed of adopting for about fifteen years, but for various reasons (including four children coming along!) the time was never right. About two years ago we started talking more seriously. We were convinced of God's heart for orphans, and knew that we wanted to adopt, but we weren't sure exactly what to do about it. As we were sort of just thinking and praying, some friends of ours (who you can read about here)began the process of adopting two children from Ethiopia. At some point they sent us the link to their blog, which included a video of a family uniting with their adopted son in Ethiopia. Tiger (six years old at the time)came and watched the video over my shoulder, and when it was done he had tears streaming down his face. From that day on, he began to storm the gates of heaven for an Ethiopian brother. That boy prayed almost daily for months that God would let us adopt from Ethiopia, and as the weeks went by we all caught the bug. When people ask us now why we chose Ethiopia, I still have to say that God just chose it for us, through Tiger. (By the way, we have "renamed" our kids on the blog in order to protect their anonymity out in cyberspace. I'll try to get pictures of them on the sidebar soon, with their pseudonyms!)

Due to various situations in our family, we delayed starting the process until this year. On Christmas day we told that kids that it was really going to happen. We started the paperwork in January. If you're at all familiar with the adoption process, we've finished our homestudy, applied to USCIS, and are waiting for immigration approval. We hope it will come in late June, and then our dossier will go to Ethiopia, at which point we will be waiting for a referral. If you're not familiar with the process, we've been filling out lots of papers, waiting, filling out more papers, waiting some more, and we really have very little idea how long it will take. We do know that at the end there is a little boy who will be a son and a brother in our family, and we do know that we are incredibly blessed to have this privilege. We don't know yet who this little guy is, but God knows and is preparing us for him every day.

We'll definitely keep you posted!