Homestudy: Take 1

Today was our first homestudy meeting.  I saw first because contrary to popular belief, those don't happen all at one time. I intended to write earlier this week regarding our upcoming homestudy but a few things prevented that.  #1 was getting ready for the homestudy.  I'm pretty sure our house is the cleanest it has been since we moved in.  It also now has child locks, appliance locks, outlet covers, and lots of other child-proofing type things.  This took a lot of time and work for a variety of people.  I am so glad that we are surrounded by people who love us and support us in this journey.  Reason #2 was I could not quite figure out how to put into words how I was feeling.  I was excited, nervous, anxious, stressed, happy...sometimes all at the same time.  I don't know how my husband survived the week...or the day for that matter.  I am so thankful for him and how God matched us.
Of course the day did not go as planned (welcome to the world of adoption, right?).  Last night, I went to clean out under our sink and found that we had a leak.  After locating the source I called our landlord.  He said he would be here sometime Monday or Tuesday.  He arrived 30 minutes before our caseworker.  Its been raining for 2 days straight so muddy footprints were all over my kitchen.  When our caseworker arrived, the landlord's son was laying on our kitchen floor, half in our cabinet...this was not at all how I imagined the day.
However, she was gracious and happy to meet everyone.  We went through lots of paperwork.  Some was finished already.  Some we worked through together.  Some she left for us to work on.  We walked through the house together.  We passed all our safety checks!  And to no surprise, I stressed out about this step way more than I needed to.  We set our next interview meeting for next week.
We also discussed countries.  We have said for quite some time that we were adopting from Ethiopia.  When we first got involved we were encouraged to consider South Africa because it shares so many qualities with Ethiopia.  We had discussed it and were open but we have still felt like Ethiopia was a much stronger option for us.  Today, we were asked to consider a country that was not even an option when we first began this process...Colombia.  It shares many similarities with Ethiopia as well.  Our agency is also getting a lot of referrals from Colombia right now and it may speed up our process.  It is so hard for me to think about a country outside of Africa because it has been the picture in my head for so long.  Again, we are asking God to make it abundantly clear if this is the direction we are to be heading.  Please pray along with us for this and our homestudy process as a whole.  At the end of the process we will have to declare a country.
We know God has been taking care of our children and weaving their story until it joins ours.  We are excited to see and be a part of what He is doing.

Celebrating with those on the journey

I know a lot of you are waiting to hear how our day went with our first homestudy meeting.  I will update everyone on that soon.  However, first we want to celebrate along with those who are on this adoption journey with us.  You see its a journey that so many do not understand.  Once you are in it or have been in it, you become part of this unspoken family.  You understand things no one else does.  You feel the pain of waiting.  That means you also get to celebrate some of the milestone moments.
Today dear friends of ours John & Rachel saw their daughter's face for the first time.  They will be adding a little girl from China to their family of 4 very soon.  We are so excited for them and hope you will join us in praying for them and their family as their journey continues.

Whirlwind: What's Next?

So the last few weeks have been a bit of whirlwind.  We decided we were officially ready to jump in.  We then made some final updates to our formal application and submitted it to Bethany Christian (our agency).  It was approved within 24 hours!  Crazy, right?
So that meant we needed to kickstart getting ready for our home study.  We took a day off work together and cleaned for 10 hours straight.  We also downsized a lot of things.  (We are in the process of continuing to do so.)  We still need to attack the basement and go through some of our storage but we are a lot closer.
We also started our Spare Change project.

The concept is at the end of the day you throw your change into a jar (which we will provide if you want).  Once you fill the jar, if you are local to us, we will pick it up from you.  Then we will cash it in for our adoption account.  If you do not live local, you can cash it in and send it to us through paypal (link on the side), check, or cash.  We also still have our envelope project and we are planning to do shirts some time in the next few months.

This morning I mailed our contract back to the agency.  All these steps may seem minor but knowing that each one brings us a little bit closer to bringing our children home keeps us going. 

We are excited to see what else God has in store.  This journey has not looked the way we expected so far and we know the future will be the same.  Please pray along with us as we continue to follow His leading.