Your blog has been hacked!!!

While my sister, Jackie, is heading over the seas to Ethiopia, I will be helping her post some pictures on here. It's been a very long time since I've blogged, so I thought I would try before she left. Cheese!!!!

Ready for Takeoff!!

We are so excited to be leaving on Monday morning Jan, 17th! We leave out of Charlotte at 7:35am for DC and then DC to Addis at noon! We will be in the air 12 hours and 25 min, but we will land in Addis at 8:25 am! We will be 8 hours ahead of our time. According to our travel director ,we will land, get our visa's, check in at the guest house and then go meet our children!!! Wow what a Tuesday that will be!

My sister is going to try to keep my blog up, but I will more than likely be able to update from facebook too.

We will spend the week in Addis doing some shopping and site-seeing in the mornings and then visiting the transition home in the afternoons.

Our court date will be Monday, Jan 24th. This is not a court date to decide if we are good parents ( that was what our home study was for) , but a court hearing to see if all requirements of our case are fulfilled. One of the requirements is our testimony that we do indeed want to adopt and we have been given our children's history, have met them etc. Once we have given this, our part is completed.

The biggest reason most people do not pass court is that MOWA ( Ministry of Women and Children) have to write a recommendation letter that all documents are there and they are basically signing off on the case. For some reason, they are very random in getting letters there on the proper day. They are sometimes late or not at all. Not to be pessimistic, but I do not think we will pass court on the 24th. MOWA will have only had our paperwork on the baby for less than a week AND they have to write two letters for us because our kids are not siblings.

God could work a miracle on our behalf, but I am prepared to go, give our testimony and then come home and wait for all the documents to fall into place later on in the next few weeks. The only big bummer about not passing court is that we are not allowed to post pictures of our kids until we pass court and they are legally ours.

Once we have been given word we have passed court, all our files are gathered again for the US embassy. It takes a few more weeks for that to happen and then the US Embassy gives us an embassy date where the kids will get there Visas. They give our agency 10 slots every other Wednesday for embassy dates. So.. We are looking at Feb 16, March 2, 16 or 30th as to when our embassy appointment might be.

If you would like to pray with us, here are some specifics..

Safe travels ~ Greg has been out of the country before, but this will be mine and Abby's first time. We are excited, but scared too. Also pray we have good flying weather to Addis and coming home.

For Nathan and Esther ~ They are really excited to go to Nana and Gramp's house for a whole week and it does my heart good that they are nor homesick about us leaving. Please pray that they keep this attitude! :) And for my parents as they watch them all week.

For Micah and Sarah Faith~ That we have a good bonding experience with them

For our Health ~ Illness is common when traveling overseas with the strange food and also Addis is a very high altitude. I have a whole pharmacy packed, but I am praying I wont need any of it!

For Abby ~ I can't imagine what a trip like this will be like for a 13 year old girl. I am praying God uses this trip in many ways to mold her heart and life for HIM.

We arrive back in the US early Tuesday morning Jan 25th and then will eventually land in Charlotte around 3:15pm.

Thanks so much for joining us on this journey! I will check in next time from ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA!!

PINK!!!!!

We received the call today at 11:51. The first thing Caitlin said was, "I have some good news for you.." Right then and there I just prayed a big Thank you JESUS! Then after we got Greg on the speaker phone she told us that she had a referral for a 5 month old baby GIRL!!!!! I was so shocked! I really thought that it was going to be a boy! We are so excited! I honestly didn't hear much she said after that! She did say she was very healthy. :)

All three kids, ( but especially the girls) were just running around the kitchen yelling and screaming ," a sister..we have a new sister!!!" :) They all three told me after the call they had all been secretly hoping for a girl..even my mom said that!

We got off the phone and we all five very impatiently waited for the email to come with pictures and when it FINALLY popped up in my inbox we all squealed! We opened the email and oh my..she is just beautiful! So SO SO pretty! She has big brown eyes and the prettiest bow tie lips. Oh I cannot wait to scoop her up and love on her!

We finished up on the paperwork and then went to Target to buys some PINK clothes! All I have is blue! I have some old clothes that I had saved from Abby and Esther, but when I pulled them out to wash them Abby said, "Mom, those clothes are so late 1990's. " LOL :) I really don't think the baby will care nearly as much as big sister.

We are naming her Sarah Faith and my, has this been a faith walk for us, but we are sooo very thankful for God blessing us with this special sweet baby girl.

AND we get to meet her and her big brother Micah in just 4 days!!! Whoo Hoo!!

Conference Call Today

We had a conference call with the director of African adoptions and our family coordinator this morning. They assured us that they were doing everything they possibly could to get us our referral as soon as possible and that they are speaking with the Ethiopian director daily about our case.

So here's the deal..there are babies in the Transition Home that meet our request. They are missing a "clearance paper" from the government office of the region they came from in order to be adopted. Until this paper is obtained their file cannot go to court. So really AWAA goes everyday and tries to get this paper... to no avail. We don't know if it is political or backlog paperwork or what, but that is where we are at.

They are very hopeful it will come in next week and everything will go off as planned. If not, we are going to talk again next Thursday and decide if we should not attend our court hearing. Then on the 24th, the judge will hear our case ( without us there) and AWAA will ask for an appeal and a second court date and we will then go and attend that one for two children. She said that more than likely the second court date would be only a week or two later and not into March or April.

Soooo we are still PRAYING HARD that a referral will come in this coming week ( like MONDAY!!) and all will go as planned. If not, it looks like we may be going to ET in February instead in January. (I keep telling myself that...the worst part of this is that we have to wait..the baby is there. Micah is there and ready..we just have to wait...I can do this.)

Thanks for the prayers and the encouragement you guys have given to us as we go through this.

No News..Prayer Rally!!

No news yet! I have been up since 2AM praying about all this. We leave in 12 days. I just am struggling with do we call our agency, demand answers and fight for this baby we don't even know or do we just rest in the Lord and wait for Him to work it all out for us?

I cant even think about flying to Ethiopia and not having a baby there Or going into the baby room at the Transition House and not knowing which one is ours. Our agency isn't really even addressing this yet and so I don't know which way to even think.

I guess we could just not show up for court in Jan, get a later court date and hope we get a referral soon. OR go and try to sign some sort of power of attorney when we get there for a baby we have never met? But then this leaves Micah in Ethiopia longer too and he is so anxious to start his new life here with us. Oh if we would just get that phone call today everything could fall into place!

Y'all please please please keep praying! I KNOW God has called us to this and I KNOW He wants these children to be rescued and I KNOW the enemy would like nothing better than for this to be a testimony for others to see how hard and not worth it adoption can be. I so want to show others that it is worth it and it is God's heart!

I am clinging to Psalms 37:5 this morning.

"Commit your way to the LORD, Trust also in Him, and He will do it."

__________________

Pink or Blue??

So we talked to our adoption agency Wednesday and told them that we would like to change our infant request to boy OR girl 0-10 months! The agency seemed to think back in Nov. we would get our baby referral in a few weeks and there was no worries about our Jan 24 court date. Then it was pushed back a few more weeks and now we are leaving for ET Jan 17th and still have no baby referral. It is really getting down to the wire now....

We can actually submit the paperwork up until Jan 19th , but if it goes that long there is no guarantee the judge will accept it. So we very well may be flying to ET not even knowing if a judge will accept the baby's paperwork or if we will even have a baby referral.

I am trying to rest in the Lord and be calm about it..but ....about 75% of the time I am freaking out! We have been on this adoption road for SO LONG and I am just so tired.

We changed to boy or girl because our whole family decided we were good either way and it would be fun to be surprised and we will increase our chances of getting a referral sooner. There have been 4 referrals for girls since the last boy one.

PLEASE PRAY with us that we will get our referral call next week and have time to submit the paperwork before we fly out!! There are a bunch of families flying out soon and they are all excited and packing and I just can't even get into it right now until I know there is a baby there for us. I KNOW God has a special one for us...I just cant wait to see who it will be!

I will let you all know a soon as I do if we are pink or blue! Thanks!

One month from today..

One month from today ( January 18th) I will meet my new baby boy that I have not even laid eyes on a picture of yet! So surreal. There has been a delay on our referral for a baby boy, but at the moment, AWAA is not worried about our court date. It will be 5 weeks away from this coming Monday and they seem to think since we have a court appointment and it is for two children, we can submit the paperwork still.

Still I am sooo desperate to know what my baby boy looks like and how old he is and his history. I feel like I know Micah so well. We have sent him care packages , we have tons of pictures and we have been given monthly updates from our agency on him, we have skyped with his sister. I just feel like he is my son and i am SOOOO anxious to meet him and give him hugs and kisses! But with Isaac, he just doesn't even seem real yet. I mean, who has a court date and no baby? The only thing I do know is that God timetable is sometimes early but NEVER late!

The babies in the TH are all sick and they will not refer one until he is getting better, so we "think" our baby boy is there and recovering from a upper respiratory infection. They have also mentioned babies there that are missing documentation for a referral. So I am thinking that it is kind of a race to see what happens first: Babies getting well or documents arriving. Kinda cool that God knows exactly which baby is Isaac and so He can allow the right baby to become referral ready when it is time. AND since there has not been a baby boy referral since NOV 13..I think it should be time pretty soon!

My birthday is Monday and then Christmas is Saturday, so I think this coming week would be a PERFECT time to see what our son is going to look like. :)