Last Wednesday, we received an unexpected (wonderful) surprise. The FedEx truck came to our house delivering a cardboard envelope holding something we will treasure forever. Inside was a DVD with live footage of our future son!!
We had no idea when/if we would get any more information about him and certainly were not expecting it this soon! Seeing him play and clap to music was amazing and I knew that I was in love with this little boy! The video cleared up a lot of unknowns in my mind. I saw what he really looked like (quite a bit different than the little blurry picture we saw when we chose him) and let me say, he is even more of a cutie than I thought! We saw him observe the children around him and really seem to be thinking deeply about his new surroundings at the intake center. We saw him build with blocks and share with another child. We also saw him eat big spoonfuls of food and watch a beautiful smile come across his face.
Next weekend we are spending two days in Omaha participating in classes about international adoption and the adjustments we will need to prepare for. We are now more excited than ever and still beg you to pray for an efficient flow of paper work and task completion so this process can move quickly!

"All children are beautiful when they are loved."---Bertha Holt

We have chosen to adopt through an agency called Holt International. This is a national agency with a main office in Eugene, Oregon and branch offices all over the country. Our home study is being done in the Omaha branch. The experience we have had with this agency so far has been phenomenal! It is so evident that they are committed to putting children into families and have the process streamlined. They are incredibly efficient and helpful.
The founders of Holt are Harry and Bertha Holt, who decided to adopt 8 Korean children back in the 1950's. They quickly found out that international adoption would be impossible unless Congress would pass a special law allowing it. This couple, believing that God wants His children to care for those without families, championed this law and brought their 8 children home. A few years later, Holt Internat'l was incorporated and since have put 40,000 children into homes in the U.S.
One of the things that Micah & I love about Holt is that they have staff abroad as well as domestically. The children who are put into Holt's care in other countries, are considered individually and only when there is no other option than international adoption are they placed with U.S. families. The children being placed in homes are never put up for adoption due to poverty alone--otherwise our money would be better spent providing for the family instead of taking the child away to a different country. In order to be placed in the program, the children have lost one or both parents, are homeless, or have been abandoned. Holt offers assistance and counseling to the birth families if possible. Of course, it is best for a child to stay with their birth families and to stay within their culture, so it is good to know that our son's unique circumstances were considered and being placed up for adoption was absolutely the best option for him. We are also incredibly thankful that he is in good care during the time we will be waiting to go get him!
If you are the least bit interested in adopting a child who needs a home check out www.holtinternational.org.

First Steps

Even though Micah and I have been licensed with a home study to adopt in the U.S. we will need to do a "do over" in order to make a home study specific for Ethiopia. A bummer in the way of time and money, but we want to make sure everything we do sets us up for success in the Ethiopian courts.

This last week, we began to work through a large pile of paperwork (the first of many large piles). It seems to be going faster this time because we are familiar with the process now and already have many of the documents that will be required.

Just like we did last year, all of the adults in our home had to go to the county jail and get fingerprinting done for our background checks.



It is good to have started this process as it takes 6-9 weeks to get a clearing from the FBI. This will be the longest part of the home study. Hopefully, we will have everything else completed by the time these are cleared.

Last Thursday, we all got inked, all of our papers got notarized, and we headed to the post office.


Good-bye stack of papers, soon someone special will make you seem very worth it!

When God is silent He is still working....

For those who have been praying for our family and our adoption journey, we are finally seeing the handiwork that God has been fashioning together-- even before he put the desire in our hearts. We have been selected to be the forever family of a 3 year old boy in Ethiopia! I hope that you will take this journey with us through this blog and by praying with us! We are praying for our son's safety, health, and for God to touch his broken heart. We are also praying that God would prepare our current family to accept him wholeheartedly and for a supernatural bond to be formed even across the miles.