an ethiopian sisty

hopeful.

2012-01-16T19:51:00.000-05:00

our december number was 2. it was nice to move up, however we had already been unofficially #2 for an infant girl for quite awhile (over 14 weeks now), so it wasn't too terribly exciting.

was bummed to realize that AGCI was closed today for the holiday. my birthday is on Saturday, so i'm holding out hope for a birthday referral this week. please?!

back to 3.

2011-12-19T20:38:00.000-05:00

well, an infant girl referral FINALLY went out, after over 2 months of nothing. so we're back to #3. how's that for being anti-climatic? :P

we've been waiting 529 days.

SO ready, but also trying to be excited in God's will for us and for our daughter.

no progress.

2011-12-04T17:26:00.000-05:00

well, our November number remained the same on the girls list. #3 again. and now we've gotten news that we've actually been bumped back to #4. which puts us where we were 3 months ago in September.

i can't believe we used to move an average of 6 spots a month! now we only hear of a referral MAYBE once a month. even less frequently than that lately.

i don't anticipate getting a referral this year.

my hope.

2011-11-03T12:50:00.002-04:00

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs
And works His sov’reign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flow’r.

Blind unbelief is sure to err
And scan His work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.

456 days.

2011-10-07T23:41:00.002-04:00

so emotionally exhausted. i'm ready to see my daughter's face.

unofficial number.

2011-08-22T21:11:00.001-04:00

i know, i know... this blog has kind of died. though i do still faithfully update my timeline!!

as of tonight, we are unofficially #6 for our baby girl. the crazy thing is, we only know one of the families ahead of us. they are currently unofficially #4. so there are four mystery families in front of us. it makes for a pretty suspenseful month!

so so so glad we're going on vacation 9/2 - 9/10. i so need a distraction....

good news.

2011-05-27T10:02:00.000-04:00

so we had been anxiously awaiting the news of whether or not the families who were submitted to court after the March 8th MOWA cut off - where they said they would start doing only 5 cases a day - were going to pass or not. there were 6 families who had court last night/this morning, and these were the first ones we knew of that should have officially been under the new way of operating. we got news last week that their MOWA letter was NOT at their preliminary hearing, which was discouraging. but this morning we got news that all 6 families passed court! which means their MOWA letters made it. this is very very very good news. now i know that things can change at any second, and this isn't necessarily indicative of the way things will continue to go, but i am still very thankful that their MOWA letters were written, against all odds. praising God!

in referral news - we've only moved one spot so far this month. we're unofficially #14. i'm not exactly sure why referrals have been terribly slow. hypothetically, they should continue to move at regular pace for the time being, even if there is a slow down with court, etc. there's plenty of room at hannah's hope right now for more kiddos to come in. maybe with these families passing, things will start to move along again. trusting that the Lord has our daughter in His hands and is perfectly working out His plan in His timing. though my heart still very much longs for her.

i'm expecting.

2011-03-30T14:00:00.001-04:00

no, not pregnant! and if that's what you thought from the title, then my point is proven :) it's really hard to not be perceived as "expecting" a child simply because she's not in my belly. especially when so many people around me are pregnant. it's such a different experience. people rarely talk about it, or acknowledge it. there's no big belly as a visual indicator of the joy and anticipation and anxiety in my heart. we're approaching the 9 month marker of being on the wait list... but it can still be months before we even see our daughter's face. it's hard, if you've not experienced adoption, to comprehend the love and longing you can have for a child you've never even seen. but my heart can testify that it is every bit as real as the love for the child growing inside of you.

part of this post about adoption and assumptions really resonated with me:

"There were days when I did nothing but cry out to God to move heaven and earth to bring our son home to us. Days when I was capable of nothing but thinking of him and longing for him to be in my arms, and praying that he was safe and healthy and loved until I could go and get him. Days when just the sight of the crib waiting empty in his room was enough to make me burst into tears. Months that went by when friends became pregnant and had their children in the space of time while we waited just to find out who our son was. He wasn’t in my womb for nine months, but God placed him in my heart and mind and soul in the years that we waited for him."

update.

2011-03-23T11:00:00.000-04:00

i figure it's about time for my bi-monthly update :)

ada's surgery went really well. they ended up doing a procedure that required no incisions and was much shorter. we didn't even have to stay overnight. she currently has two stents in. we go back on april 5th to have them removed and Lord willing, the stents will have done their job and she will be done! then we will be praying for renewal of kidney function.

in adoption news - i'm not even going to comment on all the craziness that has been going on in the ethiopian adoption world. it's not worth getting into, because i hope none of it even comes to pass. it seems to be going in that direction, praise God!

our new number for march was 24. that's 9 spots since february, which is a great month! plus we're unofficially 19! in the teens! this is very exciting for us. hoping for a few more referrals before april.

if things continue to move as they have, we could see our daughter's face in the next 3-4 months!

finally!

2011-01-25T14:41:00.001-05:00

some movement! finally, a referral went out yesterday for a 8 month old girl. which means we move ahead one spot. it's about time! i believe the poor mama had been waiting somewhere around 7 weeks at the #1 spot. what torture!

we're unofficially #34. hope hope hoping that we move some more before february. we'll see.

in other news, ada is having surgery again on feb 11th, so please keep her in prayer. her urologist told us that it's not likely that the surgery will improve her kidney function - just prevent it from getting worse. so we're praying that it DOES improve significantly. so God will receive the glory.

anecdotally, we were told that there was an 85% chance that evie would need surgery to correct her kidney issues. and we were told she would definitely need her cleft palate repaired. well guess what? they were wrong on both counts. God is able :)

january number.

2011-01-16T18:25:00.000-05:00

our official january number was 35. we were expecting it to be 36, so that was a nice little surprise. we were really hoping for a lot of movement this month, but there's been none. i believe the family who is currently #1 on the girls list has been in that spot for almost 6 weeks now. ouch! not quite sure what the deal is there... there have been quite a few families traveling over and bringing their children home, so i know there's room at HH. we keep waiting and waiting for this huge influx of referrals, and every week it's nothing. really hoping we get tons of good news this coming week... not till atleast tuesday though because AGCI is closed on monday for the holiday.

new number

2010-12-10T22:21:00.000-05:00

so we're now officially number 41. there were several referrals that went out right before we got our new numbers, so we're actually unofficially 37. which i like a lot better! hoping for a lot more movement this month!

not much to report other than that.

our [belated] story of God's marvelous provision.

2010-11-30T13:04:00.000-05:00

okay, so i know i was supposed to post this a long time ago, but well, i didn't.

October was pastor appreciation month. it was also Mike's first month as being the full time pastor at our church. on the last Sunday of October, we were asked to come up to the front before Mike started preaching. one of the elders gave Mike a card and asked him to open it in front of everybody.

when he opened it, this is what we saw:

this is the amount that we still needed for the adoption. words can't even express. God is so good! from the start we never knew where the money for this adoption would come from. and i've mentioned several times that it never worried us. we knew that God would provide. but we didn't know so much of it would come all at once!

we can't even describe what this gift means to us. we love our church family so much. it is such a blessing to know that they are behind us in this adoption. we know that we will not just be bringing our daughter into our immediate family, but into our family of Christ who will love her and is anxious for her arrival.

i think it's also worth mentioning that our church is not large. we have less than 100 regular attenders. God's provision is not restrained by numbers.

i hope our story will act as an encouragement to any of you who have stepped out in faith to adopt and do not know where the next fees are coming from. or for those of you who are considering adoption, but haven't quite gotten there yet because you don't think you can afford it. God is more than able to provide! if He has called you to a purpose, He will also provide the means.

wow.

2010-11-04T10:02:00.000-04:00

i have some really wonderful news of God's provision, but i'm probably not going to get to write it out in a way that will do it justice until after the weekend. stay tuned.

things have been a bit crazy around here. still trying to adjust to mike leaving the usps and being full time with the church. ada had her one year post surgery appointment last friday at the children's hospital of philadelphia. she had an ultrasound and a renal scan. thankfully the testing went rather smoothly, but the results weren't really what we were hoping. her left kidney is functioning very poorly. the doctor is unsure if there is still a blockage/scar tissue, or if her kidney is just going to be lousy because of her history. so we have to go back down again next friday to get an mri. she needs to be put to sleep for the test, so we're not looking forward to that. she won't be able to eat or drink anything that morning, so it's going to be rough. depending on the results of the mri, we may be looking at another surgery. trusting that God will sustain us, as He always has.

tomorrow is finally the mid-atlantic orphan summit! we're so pumped. we registered in july, ha!

and then we have orphan sunday. we've been really praying that God would use it in big ways, so we're excited to see how it goes.

by the way, no official numbers yet, but we're pretty sure we're unofficially 44!

one more!

2010-10-20T09:22:00.000-04:00

we got news of another referral this morning! that means that we're unofficially 49 and we've met the 6/month average! anything else this month gives us surplus movement to make up for slower months, or of course for a sooner than anticipated referral :)

by the way, 6/month would put us at a july referral. it's all very unpredictable obviously, but that's what i base it on.

sorry.

2010-10-19T22:08:00.001-04:00

ok, so i realize i've gotten really bad at this!! i'd say i'll try to do better, but i'm not entirely sure that i will. we'll see.

our october number was 54!! we moved 10 spots! praise God! that was very much needed after only moving 3 spots the month before. also, there have been four more referrals, so we are unofficially 50.

my big thing is maintaining the 6/month average. after getting our october number, we are actually 1 spot ahead of that. so with our unofficial number, we only need one more referral this month to maintain 6! this may make absolutely no sense to you, and that's okay!

i have more good news. we qualified for a $2500 matching grant through lifesong and the james fund! we are praising God for His wonderful provision. i will post more of the details on that later.

AND - this week is mike's last week with the united states postal service! yessss!! he is officially going full time with the church (though one could argue he's been working full time for the church this whole time). we are so excited for this. he will actually have A DAY OFF each week! you have no idea how much that's going to rock our world. he hasn't had a regularly scheduled day off in years. i'm serious. he's been working 7 days/week for way too long.

so lots of great stuff going on!

back home - and new number.

2010-09-12T19:05:00.001-04:00

we made it back from vacation. can't believe it's over already. we had a great time, and the weather was awesome. will post pictures in the next couple of days.

we got our number call while we were away. it's 64. we thought for sure that we would be 63, so that was a little bit disappointing. there have not been any referrals in quite a long time. i keep expecting every week that there will be this huge influx, and there's never anything. tomorrow is a new week (again), so we shall see!

vacation!

2010-09-04T08:33:00.000-04:00

we're getting ready to go to cape may for a week! we have no internet there, so i won't be posting until we get back (not that i post all that often anyway). hopefully i'll have our new number when we return.

have a good week!

hi.

2010-08-26T13:16:00.000-04:00

i know it's been awhile. i've been busy and/or not in the mood to blog. not that i dislike blogging. i just don't have much to say. or i have too much to say, and i feel like i can't do it justice, so i just don't write anything.

but anyway, we did get our fingerprinting done on friday. it was a tiring day because we got up at 4:30, drove two hours up to syracuse, got fingerprinted - it took a total of 20 minutes - and drove two hours back home. but atleast mike and i got to spend some time together. that doesn't happen often!

we think we're either 64 or 63 unofficially. we won't get our new numbers for a couple more weeks. we would like to move an average of 6 spots each month in order for us to be waiting a year. though quicker is fine with us too!

august number.

2010-08-11T08:58:00.000-04:00

we got our number email yesterday. i tried to get a picture of both girls.

and then i gave up on that. ada was evidently not in the mood.

so i was glad to hear that we are indeed 67. that is good news! unfortunately i also found out that agci has decided to reevaluate their estimated wait times and they are now quoting 12-18 months for a referral. when they said 9-12, i knew that it must be closer to 12. but 18? i wasn't ready for that...

i know that God is in control. i know that this did not come as a surprise to Him. He knows our daughter and He will bring her into our family in the appointed time. i just need to remind myself of this constantly.

no numbers, but...

2010-08-09T16:43:00.001-04:00

well i was waiting to get our numbers before posting, but they still haven't come yet..

but i do have other good news! we've already received our fingerprinting appointments! we had three letters from USCIS today in the mail. one was a confirmation letter that they received our application, and the other two were the appointments. they are on august 20th at 8:00 and 9:00 in the morning. and they're in syracuse, ny, which is a two hour drive. which means that we have to leave the house by 5:30. which means i'm not getting much sleep that night. but well, it certainly won't be the first time.

i will update again if/when we get our new numbers. i still have hope that they will come by the end of the day today. they're 3 hours behind us, so there's still plenty of time.

also want to share this video of our friends who just brought home their sweet son from India!

Waiting is the Hardest Part. [Mike]

2010-08-07T21:22:00.003-04:00

We just got to spend some time with our friends who recently picked up their son, Sanjai, from India. What an awesome, almost-four-year-old boy he is! He seems to be adjusting so well. He interacted with me better than Evie does sometimes the first time she meets new people. It was such a sweet visit.

So naturally I am filled with so much longing to bring my little girl home. I want her here, right now. Seeing our friends filled with joy to have their son home simultaneously was joyful and sorrowful. It was joyful because who wouldn’t want to see an ex-orphan running around with his new family? Who wouldn’t want to see that? Wow. To see his face was worth way more than all your savings, time, energy – everything.

It was sorrowful because it was a big reminder that our adoption journey is not over. It was a huge reminder that a chunk of my heart is over in Ethiopia. The Lord has His wise, perfect, inscrutable reasons why we must wait now. I know that this waiting is part of His design in all of our lives: my own, my wife’s, Evie’s, Ada’s, and our future daughter’s. Perhaps His reason is to draw our hearts closer. Or, to teach us to rely upon Him; to cry out to Him and find our satisfaction in Him alone. It certainly is to give us the little girl that He has determined will be ours before the foundation of the world.

I trust in the Lord to work all of this according to the purpose of His most glorious, orphan-defending, gracious plan. And my heart cries out for the daughter I haven’t met yet. They are both there traveling alongside of each other: joy and sorrow.

Tonight I rejoice with my friends, I rejoice with little Sanjai who is a beam of a smiling, eating, playing, laughing, jumping, hugging, dancing light to my cold heart of what God has done for me in Christ, bringing me into the family of God. I rejoice with my wife and my children and I rejoice in the Lord. Tonight I also bleed inside with sorrow, anticipation, and eagerness to have my living room filled with my whole family.

I-600A.

2010-08-02T08:58:00.000-04:00

we were finally able to mail out our I-600A on friday. hopefully they don't take too terribly long to schedule our fingerprint appointments. our last fingerprints came back super quick, but i don't know if that's any indication or not.

i can't believe it's august already. it's been a really busy summer. we don't have a single free night this week. that seems to be the norm these days. atleast it keeps us from getting impatient, because the time is flying by.

in september we'll be going to cape may, nj. i'm so excited for it! we haven't been on a real vacation in over two years. we're going after the season because it's ridiculously cheaper. plus it will be a lot less crowded and the water will still be warm. can't wait!

mid-atlantic orphan summit.

2010-07-27T17:16:00.000-04:00

we are really excited for the mid-atlantic orphan summit in november. russell moore will be speaking there, and tom davis of children's hopechest. but i'm especially excited to hear eileen mestas speak. and her son, solomon, is doing a break out session, and in my opinion, that will be worth the cost of the entire conference. if you're not familiar with his story, he is 19 years old and has spent his life in an orphanage in ethiopia called kolfe boys' orphanage. eileen mestas sponsored him through children's hopechest, and to make a long story short, he is now attending the college at southeastern baptist theological seminary on a full scholarship. you can read a more detailed account of the story here. it's amazing how God has worked in this young man's life and i am busting with anticipation to hear him speak.

anyway, if you're anywhere remotely close to hershey, pa or even if you're not, it's going to be an awesome conference.

annoyed.

2010-07-23T10:08:00.000-04:00

so i'm a little irritated with the bank right now. i transferred over the rest of the needed money into our savings on tuesday. it said it would arrive on wednesday, but i know sometimes it's pending for a little while, so i thought for sure it would be available by today. it's not listed as pending anymore, but it's not showing in the available funds. i called them to see what the deal is and the lady told me it won't be available until the 28th! what in the world. so our money is no longer in our checking, but not yet "available" in our savings. so it's just floating around in the air, not able to be used.

i guess we will just pray that our I-600A doesn't take a really long time to process and that they don't take forever to schedule our fingerprinting, etc. i know this part can really hold things up, so i wanted to get it out asap.

i have to remind myself again that none of this is outside of God's control and His timing is perfect.

grants.

2010-07-20T14:58:00.000-04:00

we have sent out applications for two different adoption grants. one is a regular grant, and the other one is a matching grant - we would ask friends/family/church to donate money to our adoption, and the organization would match it dollar for dollar up to a certain amount.

please pray that God would show favor on us for one or both of these grants. we still need around $15k more before this whole thing is over, so it would be a HUGE blessing.

in I-600A fee news, we are almost there! in fact, we are just waiting for some money to transfer over from our checking into our savings. should be there by the end of this week. God provided in all sorts of unexpected ways, including a rebate check from pampers for falsely advertising their new drymax diapers as the original. (the drymax give ada a rash, and i wouldn't have bought these packs if i had known they were drymax). so that was $46! :) praise the Lord for His goodness to us!

Hope in Numbers [Mike]

2010-07-12T14:35:00.002-04:00

Wow. We have a number. 73. Crazy, right? We are actually on the list now. Time is ticking away from when we will see and hold our little girl. There are just 72 somethings standing in the way.

There is so much hope packed in this number for me. I’m not talking about our future daughter – I’m talking about myself! Our number is not just a plain, abstract, mathematical number; there is life breathing at the other end of it, there is a new family waiting to be formed, there is a Gospel waiting to be proclaimed to someone new! This number is weaved between earth shattering realities: hunger, loneliness, acceptance, Gospel, eternity. It’s huge, really. Bear with me as a ramble a wee bit:

Adoptive parents always think of things like: what am I going to do so that my new child feels accepted? Or, what will I do to help them face questions of identity in the face of standing out in such an obvious way in my family? Or, how will they face their past and know who they are and where they stand? All of these questions are worth asking and laboring to answer and live out.

But, you know what? I’m figuring out who I am through all of this. I’m seeing myself more and more clearly every day we move through this. The more I pray for my orphan, the more I see myself as an ex-orphan. The more I weep over all the pain orphans in Ethiopia and all over the world face, the more I know that I don’t suffer any of that now that God has welcomed me into His family. The more I long for my new daughter to sort through identity issues, the more resolved I am to find my identity in what my adoptive Father has given me alone.

The more money that slips through my fingers, the more liberated I am! Wow! How scared I was when I first thought about these things. It sounds a little bit nuts, right? I mean, I know that I am rich if we think globally. I know this. But, here in America we are by no means rich. We still need a lot and we have given almost everything we have away. And, puzzlingly, I’m not scared. This is teaching me about life. It’s not about money. I just joyfully pleaded with my Evie about how awesome Jesus is before bed. I cried to her that Jesus is better than all this stuff; heaven is only great because He is there. And she said, “If there isn’t a pool in heaven, I won’t cry.” Maybe she is getting it.

It’s been through this, getting the number 73, that I’ve been learning all this. So, yeah there is a lot of hope in this number for me. The hope is: God is working in this weak little man showing him that Jesus is everything. I want to learn this more. I want to be so convinced of this that I’d act like the man who found a treasure in a field and then, in his joy, sold everything he had to get it. I know this doesn’t always mean giving everything away. I haven’t - just my savings. I want to live this way all the time. What else makes sense?

So, I don’t just hope in numbers. I hope in the God who has taught me many things through this one particular number - and all the theology, joy, sacrifice, expectation, and hope that’s packed into it.

we're a number!!

2010-07-09T19:53:00.000-04:00

yesss!! we are finally on the waitlist!! i am in shock that there were no corrections needed in our dossier! praise the Lord! we are officially expecting from ethiopia! :)

our number on the girls list is:

number 73! it's high, but honestly i was just hoping it wasn't up to the 80's by the time we got on, so i am very thankful! it is SUCH a relief to be done with our dossier. i can finally breathe!

so excited!!

God is providing!

2010-07-09T13:13:00.000-04:00

no phone call yet on our dossier!

but i had to share that God is already starting to provide the funds we need for our I600A. yesterday we received a donation from a friend and today i received a retirement check in the mail for $76.85. yep, i've retired! quite the retirement savings, right? but i wasn't expecting the check, and it's really neat to see God's obvious provision for us the instant we need it!

at this rate, we'll have the $830 in no time!

where's the money?

2010-07-08T13:56:00.001-04:00

we just sent in a check with our dossier for $5000. when agci deposits it, our savings will be down to $200. and i don't mean our adoption savings. i mean our savings, period. so we're really praying for no unexpected expenses to come up right now!

now that we have our home study back, we need to file an I-600A form with the US government. also known as an "application for advance processing of orphan petition." along with this form, we need to include a check for $830. this is the first time in the process that we don't have the money needed for the next step.

excited to see how God will provide :)

our dossier has arrived!

2010-07-07T15:52:00.001-04:00

so you missed out on all the dossier missing in action craziness because we were on a mini vacation while it was happening.

our home study copies arrived on saturday so we gathered everything together and got our dossier in the mail later that day. the only thing open was a post office at the mall, so we used usps express mail. which is normally overnight, but because of sunday and the monday holiday, it was guaranteed by tuesday at 3:00. tuesday rolls around and the last place it was scanned was philadelphia on monday evening. i had a scheduled call with our caseworker on tuesday evening and they had not received it. monday morning comes and we think for sure it will be atleast scanned in somewhere, but nothing. i called the usps 800 number and they apologized and said i had to call back because they couldn't document it until 3:00 oregon time and then they would put a "trace" out on it. we were starting to panic a little bit at this point.

finally a couple hours ago, it showed up as scanned in oregon and then about an hour ago i missed a call from agci and they left a message saying our dossier had arrived safely! praise the Lord!

on friday they will review it and let us know if there are any corrections needed. we're assuming there will be something. simply because there are so many possible mistakes to make. however, i would be more than happy to receive our numbers on friday!

approved!

2010-07-01T15:46:00.000-04:00

i had emailed our caseworker at agci to review a reference letter that we had to have redone. turns out that our patient, gracious reference will have to write and notarize the letter again, for the third time now. i felt terrible! however, our caseworker also wrote that our home study has been approved! yesss!!

i haven't heard from our social worker. she may not have gotten the email yet, i don't know. i'm guessing we won't get our notarized copies until next week. and like i mentioned before, there's no mail on monday, and we will be out of town on tuesday. we're not actually coming back home until wednesday, but we'll shoot to make it home in time to mail out our dossier - i have serious doubts that we'll make it back in time. so typical that we'll be away when its finally time to mail it!

update!

2010-06-30T16:38:00.000-04:00

i got a surprise phone call from our social worker today! she said that she received our reviewed home study and she was working on the revisions. she had a couple questions she needed clarification on. then i received an email from her saying that she finished the revisions and sent it back to agci for final approval!

i was really not expecting to hear from anybody for a few more days, so this was really exciting! hopefully it gets final approval quickly and our social worker is able to get the notarized copies to us in the mail tomorrow. if she does, we will receive them by friday or saturday. unfortunately if it takes her longer, there is no mail on monday because of the 4th of july. and then we will be out of town until wednesday. however, if this ends of being the case, we could still overnight our dossier to agci because they only review them on fridays anyway. obviously we won't have it in by this friday, so july 9th looks like it will be the big day!

pressure's on now to get our dossier in order! we basically have everything done, but there are a few minor details. we have to get a couple of things re-notarized because of stamp and date issues. and i have to find or take a family picture. also a couple more photos of the interior of our house.

i'm nervous now! it's starting to feel more real!

it's june 28th.

2010-06-28T17:05:00.000-04:00

today is the day that the education coordinator at agci returns to the office. our social worker should also be back from her vacation today. i don't really expect to hear from anybody today. i'm not sure how far along our home study is in the list of home studies to be reviewed. it was turned in a couple weeks ago, so hopefully there are not too many in line before it. after they review it, they send it back to our social worker to make revisions. then she sends it back and they approve it. our social worker will then mail us notarized copies. it is my hope that we are able to mail our dossier in in time to be reviewed by july 9th. they only review them on fridays. so if not the 9th, then definitely the 16th (i hope! a lot of this is dependent on how quickly - or slowly - our social worker gets everything done and back to us). then of course, we have to make any corrections that may be needed with our dossier. praying there are none! and then we get on the waitlist!

happy birthday, ada!

2010-06-22T14:39:00.000-04:00

no more babies in this house... we now have a three year old and one year old. how the time flies!

the party was a blast. we had awesome weather, friends and family, lots of good food, sprinklers, water balloons, etc. i can't believe my baby is one already. she's starting to take her first steps now too. my oh my.

nothing much to report on the adoption side. we're just waiting for the education coordinator and our social worker to return back to work next monday. we may have to have another party to celebrate when we finally get on the wait list!

also, happy belated father's day to all the dads! i would tell you how wonderful of a father my husband is, but you can see that for yourself in his previous post :)

Is it Crazy to Fall in Love with Someone You've Never Met?

2010-06-18T23:39:00.003-04:00

I love my daughters. Evie and I went out on a date last night, this is something that we are try to regularly do together. It was great! We were silly, we laughed, we talked, we played, we ate, and we shared a milk shake. It definitely ranks up among the greatest dates I've had (sorry Liv! Maybe if you did a little arm dance when we went out, you would rank up there!). I'll do this with Ada once she starts eating real food. I love these little women.

I also already have so much earnest affection in my heart for my daughter that is not even born yet. I am filled with just as much love and longing to see her as I had with each of my biological daughters when I knew they were on the way. I just long to hold this little girl as close to me as I possibly can. You know what's funny? Liv's post below, the reason of expense keeping people from adopting, will never even come to mind as I stand in Hannah's Hope, hugging my new daughter. I won't, not even for a second, think, "Wow. I bet I could have gotten a really nice car with this money." A car? Give me a break.

So, is it crazy to fall in love with someone you never met? I don't think so. I don't think there is a time that I pray for my future daughter without tears streaming down my face. I feel like her father already. This is in God's hands. I'm not legally her father yet, obviously, she is not even born! And we haven't gone to court! But, the Lord is so working through our adoption process as to bring to us the daughter He has ordained for us to have. She is mine. When I pray for her, I always ask a few things:

1.) That she would know a Father greater than me. I plead that the Lord would be pleased to graciously, freely, and miraculously reveal Himself to her as her Father.

2.) Keep her safe. I won't be there when she is born. I won't be there as she must be abandoned or relinquished, in whatever way it happens. This kills me, but this is the reason why we are adopting her - she will be an orphan. So I plead that my Heavenly Father watch over her and protect her and to help her not to feel so alone. You know that tears are even more freely flowing down my cheeks as I write this.

3.) That she would come, quickly! I pray here that God would work through this process and keep it moving fast. We trust Him when things seem to slow down. Yet, I always pray that it go quickly. Even as I pray that the Lord Jesus would return for His bride quickly. We long for these things, and even though they are fixed, we plead that they come fast.

4.) That she is successful in a way that never gets calculated in America. What I mean is: that her life would count for the sake of the Kingdom of God. I pray that she would live for the glory of God, love the glory of Jesus, and gladly serve Him. I pray that she would not get hung up with the things in this life, but that she would look beyond them and see Jesus and the Final Day.

That's what I pray everyday for my daughter. I also pray 1, 3, and 4 for the two that I can hug now. It's through this time of crying out to my God that my heart is being melded to her. It just goes to show: fatherhood is not mainly about biology. It can't be. So, that's my answer. That's why I don't think I'm crazy for massively falling in love with someone who is not born yet, who I won't see being born, who will be thousands of miles away from me when she is born, and who has no clue about this weeping, fountain-eyed man who will be her father. I'm not crazy. If you are adopting and you don't feel like this - you are crazy.

i can't afford it.

2010-06-16T21:14:00.000-04:00

i think one of the greatest reasons people give for not adopting is the cost. atleast it's the easiest reason to give without actually having to consider adoption in more depth. i'm not saying it's not a real reason. it's huge. adoption is expensive. really expensive. but with that said, i think that its a pretty reasonable assumption that if God has called you to adopt, He will provide the means.

we don't have a lot of money. i mean that in American standards. in worldwide standards, calculations estimate that we are richer than over 85% of the rest of the world. but since i'm assuming most of my readers are from America, i can say we're not "wealthy". this adoption is going to cost us more than half our annual income. that's a pretty big deal. so far, we have paid out $9,257.59 towards it. we'll be sending another $5,000 in with our dossier. there are more large fees to come. and the travel alone can run around $10,000. that's a lot of money! where in the world is it going to come from?

i don't really have an answer for that.. i've said from the start that i don't really worry about it. i know the Lord will provide the means for the calling He has put on our life. that doesn't mean we're running around doing all sorts of frivolous spending. we've always lived well within our means. we're pretty good at saving. and we're being especially frugal now. apart from that, we've been exceedingly blessed by the generosity of friends. we have not done any sort of fundraising or petitioning of any sort, but God has been pleased to direct the hearts of several of His saints to give towards our adoption. we've received a total of $3581.21 so far. that's mindblowing! we're so humbled by it!

this may not be the way it always plays out. lots of people apply for grants and do specific fundraisers. there are even several organizations which give interest free loans for the sake of adoption - what an awesome ministry! and on the other side of the coin, some people could easily afford adoption if they just practiced a little bit of self denial.

i guess the point of this post is just to encourage you to look past the finances. toss it out of the equation for awhile and really consider adoption. not every christian is called to adopt. every christian is called to orphan care, but that's another post for another time. but take a minute to examine your heart and see where God is leading you. and trust that He will provide the means to get you where He wants you to go.

a little update.

2010-06-15T20:39:00.002-04:00

we received the draft of our home study on saturday morning. it needed several corrections, so i sent those back to our social worker. she leaves for vacation on thursday, i think and won't be back till june 28th. that is also when the woman who reviews the home studies at agci is coming back. thankfully we've been ridiculously busy so the month of june is flying by.

ada's party is this saturday. i can't believe my teeny little baby is turning one! we thought for sure she'd be walking by now. she crawled sooner than evie and has been standing for quite awhile. she cruises around holding on to things, but hasn't really attempted much on her own yet. five days till she turns one. she still has some time!

after this weekend, i'm going to tie up some loose ends with our dossier and get everything prepared to mail out. i want it to be totally ready to go when our completed home study arrives so we just have to stick it in and ship it out.

i want my home study.

2010-06-09T22:58:00.005-04:00

i received an email yesterday from our social worker saying that she was working on our home study. she made the mistake of telling me that she may even have it done by the end of today. so i of course obsessively checked my email every 4 seconds all day long. to no avail. she said if not by today then not until friday because she's out of the office tomorrow. argh. friday it is. i hope!

in the meantime, i'm getting started with some serious party planning for this little critter:

my precious youngest child is turning one in 11 short days. it seems like just yesterday we were driving down to philadelphia as our newborn was rushed via ambulance to the children's hospital. such memories. ha. no really though.. it flew by. yet i can't remember life without her. more reminiscing to come.

i'll take this opportunity to give a plug in for the fabulous photographer of above picture, kim winey. love love love her. i'll share more of the photos from this session another time. we're getting the girls' photos taken again in july. i'm really excited. she seriously does awesome work. so if you're anywhere near the lancaster, pa area (we coordinated the photo session with a trip down there for evie's cleft palate appointment), look her up.

radical discipleship.

2010-06-05T14:10:00.002-04:00

this is a clip from one of mike's recent sermons. it's just a couple minutes long, so listen to it :)

not an update.

2010-06-03T08:32:00.000-04:00

i don't really have any news. we will definitely be waiting for the education coordinator to get back before our home study is reviewed. i believe she said she will be back in the office on june 28th, so atleast that's not quite july. i haven't heard from our social worker on her progress lately, but its not really a big rush anymore. however, the home studies will be looked at in the order in which they are received, so i did shoot her an email to make sure she does submit it as soon as she finishes up.

other than that, i found out that some of our notary stamps might be a little too faint. we may have to get a couple things re-notarized. i'm a little bit bummed by this, but it's a not a huge deal because there's no rush at this point.

in non-adoption news, my girls have had some seriously high fevers the past couple days. and evie has a terrible cough and ear infections. ada was already on meds for ear infections before her fever, so i'm not really sure what's causing it. hopefully today they'll be on the mend.

pretty babies.

2010-05-28T15:32:00.002-04:00

no, this post has nothing to do with the previously posted pictures of my sweet little ada bear.

i've been the unfortunate recipient of some highly ignorant anti-adoption comments. same comment. two people. it's one i've never heard before. i mean, i've personally never been the recipient of any adoption comments prior to these. but i've not even heard of this one in reading other people's experiences either. so do share if you've heard this one.

"you make such beautiful babies, i don't know why you're adopting." or some variation of that.

what?

no seriously, what?! are you kidding me?

i kind of brushed this off for awhile when the first person said it - on more than one occasion. and then the second person said it. and i brushed it off again. but while thinking about it this morning, i was getting really upset. and defensive.

defensive of my children in general, because they're not just pretty little things that i like to show off around town. and i don't love them because i find them beautiful. i can't imagine anything more irrelevant.

and defensive of my future daughter, because i'm not getting her because she's pretty. we're adopting because (among many reasons) there is a little girl in ethiopia who has no home and no mommy and daddy to care for her. she may be sick. she may be starving to death. whether or not i can give birth to another pretty little child is SO far from the point it's absurd.

i know this is just the start of what will most likely be a lifetime of ignorant comments. so i guess i'll consider this my pre-adoption ignorance training.

photo shoot.

2010-05-26T14:05:00.001-04:00

my little baby ada will be turning one next month. i can't even wrap my mind around that. we're going to be having a big ole birthday cook out to celebrate. i wanted to make photo invitations, so i needed to take some new pictures of her. i got some really cute ones. and the outtakes are fun too.

the following came close to winning.

but ultimately i had to choose the one below, because it so encapsulates her personality.

freed to visit orphans.

2010-05-20T08:41:00.001-04:00

God's timing.

2010-05-19T08:13:00.000-04:00

we got an email last night from agci saying that the education coordinator will be getting married on june 9th and will not return to the office until july 1st. this means that we have to have our completed home study draft in by june 1st if we want them to be reviewed before she leaves. i forwarded the email to our social worker. i just got an email from her saying there's basically no way that's going to happen. she has a bunch of other things she needs to get done first, and the earliest she might have it done would be june 7th. i figured this would be the case, but i was kind of hoping against hope.

ultimately i just have to trust in God's timing with this. i know this issue is going to come up again and again throughout this process. it's a little strange to think about, because if we get our home study in a month earlier or a month later, we will end up with a totally different child. that's why i'm so thankful for God's sovereignty. none of this is happening apart from His exact purposes. He is in absolute control of every step of this process. He knows who our daughter is. He may be forming her in her mother's womb at this very moment. we can rest completely in the knowledge that God will cause each step to take exactly the amount of time that He has predetermined in order that we bring home the daughter that He has chosen for our family. praise God!

educated.

2010-05-18T14:31:00.002-04:00

we got word yesterday that our with eyes wide open workbook was received and reviewed and we have now been sufficiently educated to adopt :)

i noticed in the hague home study guidelines that at one point it refers to state and local criminal checks. if you recall, we were having a heck of a time trying to get a local criminal check, in letter form, signed and notarized. we actually ended up finding a way to get our pennsylvania state police checks signed and notarized, and brandi (agci) said that this would be fine. so we had sort of given up on the local thing and assumed we didn't need it. now our social worker never asked us to get a local check - we just had to get the state one and the fbi clearance. but like i said, it mentions it in the guidelines. so just to be safe, we stopped by the sheriff's office today (thanks, gini!) and they were extremely helpful and compliant. we just told them we needed a local criminal check for international adoption and the sheriff asked how fast we needed it, because it would take him a couple hours. a couple hours! ha! i told him we just need it within a week or two, and he said he'd have it in the mail by the end of the day. awesome! we're officially fans of the local sheriff. so just in case our social worker or agci asks, we will have it.

congratulations, jeremy & shelley!

2010-05-16T16:01:00.000-04:00

mike performed his first wedding yesterday. he had the privilege of marrying a dear friend of his, jeremy (who happened to also be one of our references) and his beautiful bride, shelley.

for some reason when i'm at weddings, i get a permanent smile pasted on my face. it's just so sweet to watch the bride and groom so full of joy and excitement. and what a glorious reminder of our future union with Christ and the joys that await us.

as mike exhorted jeremy with his duties as a husband and to love shelley as Christ loves the church, i was reminded of how blessed i am to have such a loving, godly husband and what a wonderful picture of Christ he is to me daily. i am very much unworthy of both of them. i pray that i would become a wife more worthy of my husband and a Christian more worthy of Christ.

we also got a date out of the deal :)

torn.

2010-05-14T18:34:00.001-04:00

i have been thinking a lot lately about the two trips to ethiopia. we haven't talked about it extensively yet, but our first thought is that i can't possibly go on both trips - leaving the girls for 7-10 days twice in a matter of weeks is not something i want to do. evie will be four and ada will be two - maybe not even.

i've been thinking about what it's going to be like to go to ethiopia and meet our sweet daughter and then have to leave her. in ethiopia. across the world. for weeks. 6-8 weeks? seriously. how do you just up and leave your baby halfway across the world? what if she gets sick? hurt? scared? we'll have spent a whole week with her. she won't know that we're coming back. we'll just be gone.

and then i think about the trip back, to bring her home. and not being there. what is she going to think? how is that going to affect attachment? is she going to be forever bonded with mike more than with me? what would i be giving up? what is mike going to experience in ethiopia with our daughter that i won't?

my heart is going to be aching either way. for my daughters at home or my daughter in africa. so hard. more discussion is needed and much prayer will be offered up regarding this decision. atleast we have a lot of time.

training complete.

2010-05-14T15:49:00.001-04:00

we've been almost done with our training for quite some time now, but we've finally finished! there had been a couple of sections in the eyes wide open book that we had skipped over. one of them being the section about eating at an ethnic restaurant. but we were finally able to finish it up, and it feels really good to be done. the book is on it's way to agci.

moved!

2010-05-13T20:16:00.000-04:00

well it was really easy to move over here to blogger! this will make things much easier for me in the adoption blogging community :)

bear with me as i'm still messing with the design, colors, etc.

pressure's off!

2010-05-12T17:35:00.001-04:00

i'm a little bit behind with updating. we were really busy preparing for our final home study visit today!

on monday, we went down to philadelphia and met with our social worker at her office. we talked for about an hour - mostly about our training material, etc. then we headed to CHOP for ada's ultrasound. everything went smoothly and she got a clean bill of health, praise the Lord! she still has severe hydronephrosis and megaureter, but these things don't really cause any problems. the doctor said she may always have it. but her kidneys looked wonderful. we have to go back in another six months for a renal scan and ultrasound.

after that, we headed over to kaffa crossing, which is a little ethiopian restaurant/cafe. mike ordered tibs, i ordered doro tibs (they were basically the same thing, except his was beef and mine was chicken).

everything was really yummy! we're thinking our injera proportion was off, because we ended up feeling really stuffed, and there was still a lot of food on our plate. the waitress said we didn't eat anything, and we felt really awkward because we didn't want them to be offended - we really did like it!

all day tuesday was spent cleaning and preparing for our final home study visit. i wish the house always looked this clean! :)

and today was the big day. our final visit, and the home inspection. almost the entire two hours was spent on the rest of our couple interview. there were actually quite a few tough questions. and as far as the home inspection - i had read all over the place that its way easier than you expect and not to stress out about it, etc, and that was definitely the case. we just briefly walked through each room and she asked if we had smoke alarms. that was about it.

i am so, so, so relieved that we're done with all our visits! it's such a load off. she's not going to be able to start writing up the home study until next week. but she is going on vacation on june 18th and is planning on definitely having it completed by then. we're really hoping she has it done sooner though.

we owe the home study agency $1000 before she can do anything with it. which we definitely have. but we will owe another $5000 to agci when we submit our dossier (which is just about complete minus the home study). we need to save up about $800 more before we will be able to do that. so maybe it will actually benefit us if she takes her time with the home study, haha. but either way, the Lord's timing is perfect. we know that the funds will be available when He so chooses and we can rest in that.

party recap.

2010-05-08T09:40:00.001-04:00

our notary party was a success! everybody was able to make - except for mike's postmaster, but that's not a big deal, because we don't need that letter quite yet and it will be notarized soon anyway.

it was fun to have all our references there together. all people who are supporting us in this adoption. we were also very humbled to read everybody's letters. they all meant so much to us - we love you guys!

here are some photos:

our turn! we had quite a few to sign.

and, my mom even surprised us with ethiopian colored cupcakes :)

and a special thanks to our wonderful neighbor who donated her time and notary services to us and saved us quite a bit of money!

picture post.

2010-05-05T12:21:00.001-04:00

because i noticed that all my posts with pictures got bumped off the first page and i hate it when blogs have no pictures.

wednesday.

2010-05-05T11:08:00.001-04:00

as it turns out, we may have found the solution to our criminal check letter problem. we found out how to get signed/notarized clearances from the pennsylvania state police and i scanned it and sent it to brandi (agci) and she said it would work fine! i got mine back, so now we're just waiting on mike's. his always take longer.

we finished up all our online courses and i emailed our certificates to the education coordinator, so we're done with that! we just have to finish up a couple more pages in the eyes wide open workbook, and then i will mail that in.

one of the sections we skipped over was visiting an ethiopian restaurant. there are definitely none around here. however, we have to take ada down to the children's hospital of philadelphia on monday for her six month post kidney surgery ultrasound/check up. this turned out to be really good timing for two reasons. our last home study visit is next wednesday. but a requirement of agci is to have six hours of face time with the social worker. we would only be up to about five with the next visit. so i emailed our social worker (who happens to be in the philly area) and asked if we could do an office visit with her on monday since we'd be down there. she said that would be a great idea. we have to check in for ada's ultrasound at 12:30, so we're going to plan to meet with kelli from about 9:30 - 10:30. then we will head down to the ethiopian restaurant i wanted to check out for lunch, which is conveniently located only 1.5 miles from CHOP. we may even park at CHOP first, and walk over, depending on timing and weather. i'm really excited to try ethiopian food!

mike and i tend to look forward to these trips, because its really rare for us to get to spend the whole day together. and the 2.5-3 hour drive is a really great opportunity to just relax and talk. evie probably wouldn't appreciate the trip as much as us, so she will be spending the day with my mom.

so that's my update.. tomorrow is our notary party!

a notary party!

2010-04-30T11:30:00.001-04:00

so, as it turns out, our very next door neighbor is a traveling notary! go figure!

she has offered to notarize whatever we need. what a blessing!

so in order to take advantage of this offer, but also to keep things as convenient as possible for her, we are having an official notary pizza party next thursday. as soon as we confirm with our new personal notary, we will be inviting all our references over to get their letters notarized in addition to our pile of paperwork.

then, on wednesday, may 12th, we will be having our final home study visit - the one with the home inspection. we may also be stopping by our social worker's office on monday the 10th because we will be down in philadelphia for ada's 6 month post surgery check up. i have to wait to hear back from kelli on whether or not we'll need that extra visit.

things are moving along quite nicely.

we're not criminals.

2010-04-29T06:02:00.001-04:00

forgot to mention that we attempted to stop by the sheriff's office yesterday, but they were closed. we are going to try again today. it's proving to be very difficult to prove that we're not criminals. locally atleast. it was super easy to get clearance from the fbi and from the state of pennsylvania. who would have thought that it would be so hard to get a simple letter. though from speaking with brandi (agci), it seemed like we might not be the only ones who have had trouble with this part. she said if we have no luck at the sheriff, she will help us figure something else out.

also, we successfully completed two more online courses last night. we only have one remaining.

the elusive traveling notary.

2010-04-28T16:25:00.001-04:00

we had been having a heck of a time trying to find a notary who would come meet us at our doctor's appointment today. i had gotten in touch with one guy last week. he quoted us $40, and then said to call around and let him know if we wanted to use him. i was unable to have any success with other notaries, so i called him back. many times. and left messages. and he never got back to me. monday came around and i started to panic a little bit. our appointment was two days away and i still didn't have a notary. yikes. i searched around on a bunch of websites and finally found a guy who was willing to do it. and for $35. so i set that up with him yesterday. today we went to go get our physicals. the appointment was at 11:00, so i told him to meet us at 11:30. we finished up pretty quick and went back into the waiting room to wait for him. we actually had no idea what he looked like, so it was kind of funny when a man walked in and we were all like staring at him, waiting for him to approach us or say something, and half standing up to meet him, only to realize that it was simply a poor, unsuspecting patient. 11:45 rolled around, and i decided i better give him a call. to which he responded, "oooohhhh, i'll leave right now." haha! he totally forgot about us. but he did finally show up, and the deed was done. so we can cross that off our list.

we also had him notarize two copies of our power of attorney for the agency representative in ethiopia. one of which we will actually have to get re-done because he stamped right over his signature, ha. but its okay, because we only needed one for the time being - to send to harrisburg to get state certified. i brought that over to the ups store while evie was napping (mike was home with her!), and they charged me a whopping $26 to send two pieces of paper about 3 hours away, along with a self addressed pre-paid envelope for them to return it to me in. wildly expensive. but on the state website, they recommended using ups. so i was simply following directions. i tend to get a pit in my stomach after i feel like i've spent an unnecessary amount of money. yep.

i spoke to our agci case manager again today briefly. she called to see if we had anymore questions about the dossier process after the conference call. she was very much impressed with where we are at already. we're much further along that the other families that contracted at the same time as us. that was nice to hear, because we've been working like crazy on this stuff.

in adoption training news, we finished up the online course last night about medical issues in international adoption. it was super long. and all the other courses we had done up to that point had audio, and little activities. the medical one, we simply had to read in entirety. boy were we tired by the end.

and on that note, we're about to start another course. hoping to get two done tonight and then we will only have one more left. and then we get to schedule our final home study visit.

the gospel.

2010-04-27T04:04:00.001-04:00

for anybody who is interested, here's mike's sermon from this Sunday. it was really good. yes, i'm biased, but it was :)

Prepare to Die

home study visit #1.

2010-04-26T18:24:00.000-04:00

we had our first home study visit today. it went well! i had tried not to think too much about it, because i didn't want to freak myself out. but it was really not a big deal at all. our social worker is really nice, and i felt pretty much comfortable the whole time. she asked mike and i a couple questions together, then i had my individual interview, and then mike had his. the whole visit was about 2 hours long. now she wants us to finish our training and then we will schedule the next (and final) visit. we are just about finished with the eyes wide open workbook (and my hand hurts from all the writing!), and we have 4 online courses left. we plan to finish everything up this week.

we also had our dossier conference call with agci today with a couple other families that are starting the process. we got assigned our case worker as well (brandy) - though apparently we will switch case workers after we receive our referral. i'm not sure if that's normal, or if its because brandy is new. anyway, i figured out that the fbi fingerprinting we had done electronically is the same fbi fingerprinting that they wanted us to get. this was very good news, because if we had to send in a hard copy, the estimated wait time right now is 13-14 weeks to get them back. so praise the Lord for that!

what else... i finished my autobiography and mike is almost done with his. we are still waiting on our child abuse clearances to come back. i'm guessing they'll come back this week. our social worker gave us guideline papers to give to our references. we need FIVE references for the home study. and they all need to be notarized so that's a bit of a pain.

as far as the darn criminal check letter, i've atleast got a positive lead on it. i called our county's sheriff's office today and they weren't really sure what i was asking for, but they are atleast willing to help me figure it out and said i could bring in the example letter and see what they can do. i'm going to do that either tomorrow or wednesday. so thank you, thank you, thank you to gini - and if this actually works out, i think i might buy you dinner! :)

still bewildered.

2010-04-23T11:21:00.000-04:00

i think i'm even more confused today than i was yesterday.

agci did call me back and apologized for sending a messed up cd. apparently it happened to one other family as well. they sent a new one out, and we hope to get it by monday. megan also scheduled us for a dossier conference call, which will be on monday at 6.

i am seriously having the worst time trying to figure out how to get a criminal check notarized. we had previously gotten criminal checks for our agci application - but its just a form they sent us in the mail that says we have no record. for our dossier, they want a letter typed up on police letterhead that states we are clear, and it's to be signed by a police officer and notarized. i have called two state police offices and two local police offices, and nobody knows what the heck i'm talking about. the last one i called (local) said that they will have the chief call me back within the next couple of days. but i'm trying to get this done as quickly as i can!

we have no idea if the electronic fbi fingerprints we got count as the same thing that they want us to get. they sent us cards to get actual ink fingerprints done on. and as i'm typing this, i'm speaking to the state police again, and now she's telling me if its for adoption, then we have to do it through cogent - which is what we just did. wow, this is confusing. and she's utterly confused about the letter thing for the criminal check. she put me on hold... several minutes ago...

i'm going to have so many questions during the dossier call.

atleast mike and i finished two of our online adoption education courses last night. progress.

bewildered.

2010-04-22T12:40:00.000-04:00

so, we got our adoption planner in the mail today. the big ol' binder of information on how to compile our dossier (compilation of documents, etc that will be mailed to the ethiopian government), adoption training, etc, etc. very exciting!

however, there is supposed to be a cd included that has all sorts of useful templates and examples that we need while gathering all this information. well, there's a cd, but it doesn't have any of that stuff on it. i think they copied the wrong file. so i called megan (agci) and she was on a phone call with somebody else and then was going to be going on lunch. so they left a message for her to call me. i hope she calls me soon. i really, really want to get started on this stuff, and i can't figure any of it out. i already have a whole ton of questions. like is the fbi fingerprinting the same fbi fingerprinting that we just had done? and can we get our criminal record check that we already got for the home study notarized, or do we have to get an entirely different one? and do we really have to take the "adopting an older child" online course if we're adopting an infant? etc, etc, etc.

i'm probably jumping the gun here, because i think we're going to be having a dossier phone call coming up and i can ask all my questions then. but i get a little bit neurotic with these types of things. and the cd issue has really thrown me off.

my head is spinning.

the pain of adoption [humor].

2010-04-18T16:45:00.000-04:00

my new full time job.

2010-04-15T16:18:00.000-04:00

so when we had our orientation call, megan joked about how some people get the home study/dossier done a lot quicker than the norm. she jokingly said that these are the people who treat it as a full time job. yeah, that would be me :)

we got a packet in the mail from our social worker today. things to do while we wait on our first home study visit, which, by the way, will be on monday, april 26th. so, there was information on how to register for fbi fingerprinting - i called and registered both mike and i and we will be going tomorrow to get that done. there was yet another dreaded financial worksheet. i was able to reference one of my screw up copies from the agci application - done! there were child abuse clearance forms for mike and i - filled them out and mailed them, along with a $10 money order for each. there were physical forms to be filled out for all members of the family. i called and scheduled appointments for mike and i (wednesday the 28th) and spoke to the girls' pediatrician office - they both just had well check ups, so i can just drop their papers off at the office and they will fill them out for me.

there were also criminal record checks. we just had those done for the agci application, so i emailed the social worker and asked her if those would be good to use. didn't hear back from her yet, but i'm assuming they will be.

the only other thing i didn't get done today is the autobiographies.. in fact, i didn't even look over the guidelines yet. i know it's pretty extensive. our whole life stories. we both have to write one. we will plan to have them done by next monday.

tomorrow, in addition to getting fingerprinted for the fbi, we will sign and notarize our contracts and mail them off! i emailed megan (agci), as instructed, to tell her that we would be mailing them. in anticipation of them arriving, she will get the ball rolling there at agci for us. hoping to get our adoption planner by the end of next week!

orientation call.

2010-04-13T07:53:00.000-04:00

so we had our orientation call last night. it went really well! it was almost an hour long. come to find out after the call, mike was on the second floor of a parking garage, leaning out the side for the sake of reception for the entire call, haha. but yeah, we were very happy with the answers to the questions we had, and we are so ready to get the ball rolling.

the social worker from our home study agency also got in touch with me yesterday and asked if she could call me today to schedule our first visit. so i spoke with her this morning and its either going to be april 26th or april 28th. she will let me know for sure soon. in the meantime, she's going to be emailing me all sorts of stuff so we can get started - autobiography guidelines, child abuse/criminal history clearances, the information we need to get FBI fingerprinting, instructions for physicals, etc. so we hope to get as much done as possible before we even meet with her. so glad she's sending us all that stuff ahead of time!

we want to get everything done on our side of this process as quickly as we can so we can get on the wait list. it's currently somewhere between 6-10 months for a baby girl 0-12 mos. then keep in mind its another 2-3 months after that before we would be bringing her home.

monday.

2010-04-12T06:35:00.000-04:00

creative post title, right? i'm really terrible with those. anyway, my dear husband is on his way to kentucky. ada has croup and evie has some sort of nasty cold and cough that she always seems to get. it totally wipes her out. she just put herself to bed while i was in the shower. poor thing.

my mom is going to come over to sit with my sicklings while i go to the court house today to get copies of our marriage certificate. i'm also considering filing our I-600A prior to getting our home study done. does anybody who has a clue what i'm talking about have any opinion on this? it seems like a perfectly acceptable thing to do, but maybe i'm missing something. i know it takes a long time to process, and i don't want to have to be sitting around waiting on it.

speaking of our home study, they received our application on thursday (we got delivery confirmation) and i didn't hear from anybody yet. yes, i realize only one business day has passed since thursday :) but i've been in touch with the social worker previously via email and she's normally super fast at getting back to me. so hopefully i'll hear something today.

we have our orientation call tonight. we made it through all of the contracts and only have two minor questions. then on friday we'll sign and notarize them and mail everything back!

contracts, etc.

2010-04-10T16:51:00.000-04:00

mike and i are working our way through the seriously extensive adoption agency contracts. man is this thing long. we need to finish reading everything over by tomorrow night because mike is leaving early monday (for t4g). i did get to talk to megan from agci and she said it would be fine to just do a conference call with mike on his way to louisville, so i am thankful for that. the bummer thing is that we won't be able to sign and send in our orientation packet until friday because we have to get it notarized. and we can't sign it until after the orientation call. mike returns late on thursday, so friday it is. atleast he has the day off work, so we will have plenty of time to hunt down a notary and get everything mailed out. along with a very large chunk of money. after they receive that, they'll be sending us the 'adoption planner' which will help us along the rest of the process.

while mike is gone, i plan on going to get copies of our marriage certificate. hopefully on monday.

approved!!

2010-04-08T13:53:00.000-04:00

thanks to my persistent phone calls, i just received notice that we have been officially approved by agci! hooray! megan (my contact at agci) was out of the office on tuesday, like i previously mentioned, and then the social services lady was out of the office on wednesday. so megan brought over our application this morning and it got approval.

next step, she will be emailing the contracts to us either tonight or tomorrow morning. then we will have to have them signed and notarized. she asked me if we could do our orientation call on monday at 6:00 PM. i said sure! then i called mike to tell him and he reminded me that he'll be on his way to together for the gospel in louisville, ky. ha! my mistake. well i'm hoping she'll let us do a 3 way call, because mike won't be home until super late on thursday and we don't want to have to wait till next friday to do the call.

exciting!

approved?

2010-04-07T17:40:00.000-04:00

so i had my phone glued to my body all day on monday. 8:00 rolled around and i let my guard down a bit, assuming that we weren't going to be receiving a call. at 8:24, i MISSED the call from agci. there was a lengthy message stating that our application was received along with everything they needed and was passed on to the social service worker who basically gave us conditional approval, pending clarification on one question. she said she was going to be out of the office on tuesday (of course), but would be checking her email all day and said she would be connecting with me tomorrow (which would have been tuesday). so i sent her an email with the clarification she asked for as soon as i got home that night. tuesday came and went, as i obsessively checked my phone and email. and now wednesday has passed and still no news. i even called and left her a message earlier today. sad. hopefully this means that she doesn't need any additional information and has sent out our orientation packet. i will definitely be trying to get in touch with her tomorrow.

go local.

2010-04-03T10:53:00.000-04:00

i've heard the objection raised that we should adopt from our own country before adopting from another. on one hand, i disagree. a child in need is a child in need. i have more loyalty to the orphan in general than to some form of ethnocentrism. on the other hand, we do have a desire to help the children closer to home. i wouldn't be opposed to adopting from here in the future. i am not, by any means, comfortable with saying our family will be complete after this adoption. we also have a desire to get involved with foster care. but we want to do so when we can mentally and emotionally prepare our children for it. and i would very much like to look into adopting an older child once our children are older. i am excited about all of these things! i am excited for what (and who) God has in store for our family.

but for now, we are so excited about bringing home a new little daughter from ethiopia :)

agci deposited our application fee check yesterday. hopefully that means we will be getting a call on monday.

the waiting begins.

2010-04-02T17:41:00.000-04:00

so we didn't receive any notice about our application this week. i have to beat this impatience thing now or i'll never make it through this adoption!

we did, however, choose a home study agency. and our application for that came in the mail today. i was hoping to get it back in the mail tomorrow, but it may have to wait until monday, because its not finished yet and i'm beat.

that's all i've got. i have started several posts about various things, but they're only half done. i'll try to get them up soon. also i think we're definitely overdue for a video post from mike.

in the mail.

2010-03-29T15:28:00.000-04:00

mike took our official application along with him to the post office today and it is officially in the mail! we are so excited to have started the process!

unfortunately agci is all the way in oregon. so it will probably be a few days before they receive it (though we did send it priority mail), and then it takes a few days for them to process it. we are hoping to receive a phone call by the end of the week - or by early next week at the latest.

once we get approved, they will send us an orientation packet which includes: service agreements, ethiopia program overview, and audio and video resources about agci.

so that's where we're at!

we did it!

2010-03-27T16:59:00.000-04:00

we have officially met our savings goal! praise be to God for providing for us so abundantly! we are mailing our application on monday.

i finally finished the financial worksheet, and am so glad to be done with it - though i know this is just the teeny tiny tip of the iceberg in terms of paperwork. we also finished our official application. so we have to mail those in to agci along with the $300 application fee, a family photo and a photo of the exterior of our house (which i'll have to take tomorrow).

let the fun (and waiting and stress and emotional roller coaster unlike anything we've ever experienced) begin!

good news!

2010-03-24T09:36:00.000-04:00

so as it turns out, there's actually some really good news in the health care reform! the adoption tax credit has been increased by $1000 (so its now up to $13,170), extended through the end of 2011 and it has been changed to be refundable!

refundable means that you can take advantage of it even if you don't owe a lot of taxes. previously we wouldn't really have benefited that much because you only got back the money that you would have owed. and that wouldn't have been anywhere close to $12,000. basically the only people fully benefiting from it were people that already made an awful lot of money. but now we get the full $13,170 refunded to us (i believe you claim it the year that the adoption is finalized). praise the Lord!

i pray this change will encourage more Christians to consider/pursue adoption.

date night!

2010-03-22T17:34:00.000-04:00

mike and i are going on a date on friday night. we're going to a murder mystery dinner theater being put on at bbc. i'm super excited. a) because i've always wanted to go to one of those. b) because i actually get to spend some time with my husband for a change! my parents are going to have the girls. and it doesn't start till 7:00 and ada will go to bed around 7:30 (hopefully), so i won't even have to be worrying about her (though i probably still will). can't wait!

in adoption news (because i feel obligated), i spoke with someone at agci today about my application questions and got that all figured out. so we're very close to finishing it. can't mail it in though until we reach our goal!

application in process.

2010-03-21T17:32:00.000-04:00

so i've been working on our financial worksheet for awhile now. you need to figure out all your monthly income and expenses and net worth and liabilities and insurance, etc, etc, etc. i don't really mind paperwork - i actually kind of enjoy it - if i know the answers, ha. but trying to figure out my monthly automotive expenses, and what in the world my total coverage is for life/auto/health/disability insurance and all sorts of other numbers that i couldn't even begin to guess at... well, not so much fun. i'm getting close to the end of it though. hooray!

i've also almost finished filling out our official application. i just have a couple questions about it. i will hopefully talk to someone from all god's children tomorrow. one of my questions is about the church information section. it asks for the pastor's name and number and the such, and i'm not sure if they want me to put mike or maybe put one of the other elders. because i'm not sure if they were going to contact the person or whatnot, and in that case, it wouldn't make much sense to put mike's name. so we shall see.

we also have to include a family photo with our application. we really don't have a lot of photos with all of us in it, because usually one of us is behind the camera. so we're going to work on that.

then we just need a photo of our house, and the $300 application fee. which also happens to be the amount remaining until we reach our savings goal - thanks to some awesome, generous friends of ours :)

adoption sermon.

2010-03-21T16:22:00.000-04:00

mike preached his sermon on adoption today. it was very well received. i love our church body. i almost cried near the end when he was talking about our little girl being welcomed into our church.

you can listen to it here.

9 months ago today.

2010-03-20T10:22:00.000-04:00

getting closer.

2010-03-18T10:27:00.000-04:00

our prospective agency (can't wait to drop the prospective) had another webinar on tuesday. it was to give an update on the new two trip policy and to answer any questions. i didn't have too many questions, because i've been reading up a lot on the change. but it was still nice to hear from them. the neat/scary thing is that once we receive our referral (this is when you get a phone call from your case manager telling you that they have a child for you and you get photos via email) then you will have a court date within 2-4 weeks of acceptance. meaning you have to plan all your travel/take time off work/arrange for child care/buy your plane tickets/etc really quickly! its neat because you get to meet your child so soon after getting the referral. but its scary because, well, you can see why it would be.

anyway, as of tomorrow, we will only be ~~$381.21~~ $300.00 away from meeting our pre-application goal. and ada turns 9 months on saturday. so the two won't quite be matching up, but not too far off!

after we meet our initial goal, i have no idea where the rest of the money will come from.. the total estimate is approaching 30k now with the two trips. we will definitely be penny pinching, applying for every possible grant available, fundraising (any ideas?), etc. i'm actually excited to see how the Lord will provide!

choosing an agency.

2010-03-15T16:25:00.000-04:00

choosing an adoption agency is no easy task. there are so many to choose from, and so many variables.

our first variable was christian vs non-christian. we decided to go with a christian agency, because if we're going to be giving so much money, it might as well go towards an agency that is also doing christian ministry in ethiopia.

that still left us with quite a few agencies. thankfully they were further narrowed down for us just by the nature of our ages and the ages of our children. most of the agencies required both parents to be 25. i'm 26, but mike is only 23. other agencies require your youngest child to be atleast 12 months, or sometimes even 24 months.

we also looked at whether or not the agency let you specify age and gender, income requirements, how long the wait time is, the total cost, travel time, etc.

then when you've finally chosen an agency and are so happy with your decision - you're bound to hear a horror story of a family who used your agency, and people saying they would NEVER use that agency. it will happen, i guarantee it.

so after this happened, and i re-researched all the agencies multiples times over, i still kept coming back to agci. they're just a good fit for us. i'm really looking forward to sending in our application and making it official. $609.09 to go. and then the real saving begins, haha.

doctrine/practice of adoption.

2010-03-12T08:37:00.000-05:00

sorry that mike looks half dead. we're still recovering from pukefest 2010.

ch ch ch changes.

2010-03-11T15:34:00.000-05:00

if there's one thing certain about international adoption, its that nothing is ever certain. things are constantly changing - agency rules, government laws, timelines, etc. we haven't even applied yet, and we're already experiencing this.

ethiopia is one of the few countries that only required one trip. you'd go to ethiopia for 5-7 days (in country - so its 7-10 with travel, i think) at the end of the whole process to pick up your child and finish up the legal matters. this is one of my biggest concerns of the whole process, because its going to be so hard to leave my girls for so long. so hard!

as of yesterday, ethiopia is now requiring two trips. previously, you didn't have to be in country for your child's court date, because a representative from your agency would have power of attorney to speak on your behalf. that is no longer the case. both parents must be present for court.

from what i'm hearing, there have been 41 past instances where parents have passed court and gone over to get their child and then returned home without them. whether they had been misled about medical issues or age, or if they just weren't prepared for the reality of the situation - i'm not sure. but in ethiopia, after an orphan has been legally adopted and passed court, they are no longer eligible to be adopted ever again. so in these cases, the child must live out the rest of his/her life in an orphanage or on the streets.

this new travel requirement will prevent this from happening because you meet your child now before their case goes before court. we will also get to meet our child earlier than we would previously. so overall this is a positive thing for both the children and the parents.

my biggest concern, as mentioned before, would be leaving my girls for TWO trips. and they're only like a month or two apart. we have quite awhile to figure this out, but my immediate thought is that we will both go for the first trip (we're required to), and then maybe just mike will go back to bring her home. it would be so hard to not go back the second time, because we will have already met her and spent a week with her and she would legally be our child, but then we would have had to leave her in ethiopia for several more weeks (there are some sort of documents - visa maybe - and other paperwork that needs to be obtained during this time). it will break my heart to not go back and be there with mike when he sees her again. but it would also break my heart to leave my girls for so long. both trips are around a week long. but we have time to figure it out.

the other concern is money. this second trip will add atleast a couple more thousand to the total. as if it wasn't expensive enough! this isn't causing me much grief though, because i've always been fully confident that God will provide the funds. there's no question in my mind about that.

in sick news, we've all been taking turns throwing up the past couple of days, but i think this dreadful thing is finally making its way out of our house - praise the Lord! we're anticipating feeling much better by tomorrow morning.

sick house.

2010-03-09T05:25:00.000-05:00

we had a lovely night last night. mike was up most of the night with evie, who was periodically throwing up all through the night (and is continuing the trend this morning). and i was up with ada who has developed a really yucky cough and drippy nose. its not croupy sounding though, so i think that's a sign of improvement? she just sounds terribly congested and still has a fever. they both have appointments at noon. i don't think there's anything that can really be done for them, but i'm glad they're going anyway. and i am praising God that i am thus far feeling healthy.

this is a totally non-adoption related post. i'm planning my next post to be on why we chose ethiopia. also, mike is going to be preaching a sermon on adoption (mostly the doctrine of, but also earthly) in two sundays, so i will be sure to post that on here. i think he is also planning for another video post soon.

a response/clarification.

2010-03-07T05:12:00.000-05:00

i'm missing church and am not very happy about it. but we had an exciting trip to the ER on friday night. ada woke up screaming and breathing really crazy, with a nasty cough. she had a respiratory scare in the hospital after her kidney surgery, and my family (myself included) has a history of asthma, so breathing issues in my children freak me out. my mom came with me to the ER (she works as a nurse on second shift, so had just got off work when it happened), and mike stayed home so Evie could sleep. conclusion: ada has bad croup and is on steroids for 5 days. she's doing well, but i wanted to let her rest today.

i received the following comment in response to mike's video post. i thought it would be worth re-posting here, along with my response, in case anybody else had the same thoughts.

Not so much following…this video made my stomach turn, and I would hate for my son to see this one day.
I would argue that children are born as part of the family of God, you have no power to “bring them into the Family” or “make the part of the family”. We are part of God’s family, it is a family of unconditional belonging.
They belong in Ethiopia long before you are a part of their lives. Yes, you may teach them about Jesus, but they are able to see Jesus and learn about Him just as easy by living in the beauty that is Ethiopia and land of God’s glorious riches.
The good news is the love and Lordship of Jesus Christ is a love that we all belong to by grace alone (nothing that any parent teaches or shows can increase how much they belong to the family of God). Every person is included in the redemption and reconciliation of the world accomplished by Christ on the cross. Your child will be a part of the kingdom before you get your hands on him.
“God was reconciling the WORLD to himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has given to us the message of reconciliation.” ( 2 Cor. 5: 19)
Think again…We as parents are not saving their souls, or bringing them into a Kingdom of God…this is the work of God, not man…we as are parents are loving them with unconditional love through God’s love, this is the only reason to adopt, to show a child love.
God loved them before us. Our son was a part of God’s family and in God’s grasp before we were given the privilege of loving him as well.
As for the $24,000…it is not that much….Our lovely US gov’t and state gov’t gives up to a $12,000 tax credit…so it’s more like $12,000 out of your pocket, and our adoption was a total of about $18,000, so really about $6,000 to give a child who has experienced unbelievable suffering love.

and my response -

As far as children being “born as part of the family of God,” I disagree.

I believe that God has preordained the salvation of His elect way before their birth and even before the universe existed. [Ephesians 1:4-5 "..even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.."] There is nothing we, in and of ourselves, can do to bring upon our own salvation or the salvation of others.

However, we also believe that God ordains means to accomplish ends. And we believe that the children of believers have a tremendous blessing in growing up in a Christian family, saturated by the gospel. I think God very often uses parents as the avenue of the gospel to their children.

As far as my (future) child belonging in Ethiopia – well, not if God has already ordained that they come to America. And being able to learn about Jesus just as easily there? Faith comes through hearing – not by seeing a beautiful landscape. [Romans 10:14 "How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?"] The true gospel is sorely lacking in Ethiopia.

Love, if not manifested (and I would argue verbally manifested) in the gospel, is a “love” that hates. Hugs and kisses won’t save a child’s soul. Food and clothing and warmth and video games and an education might make a child’s life on earth a bit more tolerable, but if its not accompanied by a saving knowledge of God through Jesus Christ, then we’ve done NOTHING.

And in response to the money aspect – our agency has quoted 24k. It’s an estimate. And it’s really wonderful that you were able to take advantage of the full 12k in tax credits. But for us, we don’t make nearly enough to owe that much in order to take full advantage of the credit.. even taking it over the three (?) years they allow – we won’t even come close to 12k. This is also assuming that the credit doesn’t expire as its set to this year (I don’t think it will). But if we do get money back in grants, credits, etc, then praise the Lord! Maybe we’ll put it towards the next adoption

Hope that acts as clarification and gives you a clearer idea of where we stand. Mike may also want to respond, considering it was in response to his video. But well, he's at church right now, ha.

why so much?

2010-03-05T17:12:00.000-05:00

our prospective agency gives a total estimate of costs at $24,000. it's hard to imagine why adoption costs so much money. i can give you a general idea of where all the funds go in international adoption.
the following are included in the estimate -

application fees
homestudy
social worker travel expenses
agency fees
orphan care expenses
document and translation fees
various international fees
various US govt fees
fingerprinting
visas
medical check ups and testing
airfare (a good $1500-2000 per person rt)
lodging/transportation/food

etc. this is definitely not an exhaustive list, but you can atleast somewhat grasp how this would all add up to be so much.

why adopt?

2010-03-04T11:00:00.000-05:00

a video post from mike.

$$$.

2010-03-03T16:47:00.000-05:00

yesterday i spoke to our agency again. i had a couple more questions. i wanted to know what would happen to the money we had invested if ethiopia was to close to adoption at some point during the process. she gave me a very thorough explanation. basically, the money we pay is only due as they are actually paying it out. therefore, we would basically be out the money if anything happened. but its just one of the risks of international adoption. the good news though, is that they have not heard any rumors of closing or anything of the such - and they really do not see any reason why ethiopia would close anytime in the near future.

also had a couple questions about the home study. we have to use one of their cooperating agencies, and the closest one is almost 3 hours away. she explained to me that even though an office may be located in a particular location, they may have social workers all throughout the state.

however, i contacted all their listed agencies, most of whom have already gotten back to me, and they are all pretty far away. so we may end up having to compensate for some travel expenses. i have to figure out what they'll all add up to.

march.

2010-02-28T17:45:00.000-05:00

tomorrow is march. hopefully the month we will be applying! ada turns 9 months on march 20th. so its just a matter of saving up the rest of our goal (which is about 41.6% of the total estimated expenses). we just got our tax money back, so now we have about 1000 to go. not sure if we can feasibly save that much in the next 20 days or not, but i guess we'll just see what happens. i fully believe that the Lord will provide - whether it be through additional work hours for mike, or some other means. if we go into april, its not a big deal. we've committed to a specific number, so the timing is in God's hands, and I'm fine with that. it won't be very long, either way.

evie's three.

2010-02-25T11:18:00.000-05:00

so my firstborn turned three today. that's crazy. i don't know when she got so big. but on the other hand, i can barely imagine her as a baby. it went by too fast. she's such a sweet, smart, funny girl.

we're also having a big snow storm today. we're supposed to get a foot of snow. needless to say, evie's birthday party is not going to be tonight. we're postponing till tomorrow evening, with hopes that the weather will be better by then.

i attended the agci webinar on tuesday. mike missed it because he had gone down to ikea to pick up a new couch and hit bad weather on the way home. so what was supposed to be a two hour drive turned into five hours! but anyway, they didn't really say anything new. just general information on the agency and their different programs.

i'm really excited to get this process started.

webinar.

2010-02-22T20:17:00.000-05:00

tomorrow we'll be participating in a webinar with our perspective adoption agency. we'll get to learn more about the agency and their programs and be able to ask any questions we have. and hopefully other people will ask questions that we don't think of as well. i'm looking forward to it. its our first official step towards applying.

adoption is greater than the universe.

2010-02-14T22:13:00.000-05:00

soon.

2010-02-13T17:10:00.000-05:00

i spoke with a representative of our prospective adoption agency (agci) the other day. i had a couple questions for her.

firstly, i wanted to know where their children came from. obviously they can't take in every orphan in ethiopia, so i wondered what exactly the process was. a child first has to be declared an orphan by the ethiopian government. most of the children they receive at their transition home have been relinquished (vs abandoned - or left without any family). mothers or other family members often simply cannot afford to raise a child. they sometimes already have several children who are in the streets begging. sickness is also a dominant factor. one or both parents may have died and other relatives may have cared for the child for a time, but are unable to continue doing so.

they have close relationships with several government orphanages and get most of their children from these. i was also informed that quite frequently a mother will travel many miles by foot to bring their child specifically to hannah's hope (agci's transition home). i'm assuming hannah's hope has a better reputation than most of the government orphanages. however, they still have to go through the government system to be declared an orphan, so agci brings them to the appropriate facilities and walks them through the process so their child can go to hannah's hope.

agci also sponsors over 750 families who wish to stay together. so that was nice to find out.

i was informed that we can technically apply now if we want to, even though ada is not 9 months old yet, because apparently there's a window of time before you actually go into contract with them. but we are committed to have about half of the money needed in savings before we apply. which will actually probably coincide with when ada turns 9 months anyway. which will be march 20th.

soon!