LONG overdue update!

Hi All!
So sorry for the delay in updating this thing! We had a standstill and so my recording of events died!!
After we finished our classes we turned in the application to our home study agency. They have to send out and then receive back all of our references. We are waiting on that to get done and then we will have our home study scheduled... after our home study is done we will be waiting on it to be approved and then we can start all the document gathering with our adoption agency. That is about all I know for right now!!

Keep praying for us! The same requests from the pasts posts would be great! I'll get back to this after we get our home study scheduled! Thank you for your support!!!

Classes 2 and 3 DONE!!!

Hooray! We had our last pre-home study class today. It is good to have those all done. Now we will be scheduling our first of three home study visits. I believe the first 2 are at the agency and the last one will be in our home. We are excited to get all this done so that we can concentrate on our dossier, which is going to be the biggest headache of this whole process.
We have already ordered our vital records, which was a difficult and not quite completed task (as well as very expensive! Who would have thought!). After we receive the actual documents we have to send them back into the Secretary of State (of whichever state they are from) and have them authenticated and sent back to us. Apart from these vital records there is LOADS of other legal documents that we will need to gather, medical exams, police reports and fingerprints... I am feeling very overwhelmed. There are many times when I wonder if this is really worth it. I am continually reminded of passages in the Bible that tell me "this life will not be easy" and that I am called to reach out to the "least of these". We know the Lord has us on this journey for a reason, and we trust that he will mold us and shape us even more into his image through this process.

Thank you for going on this journey with us! We love you guys!

Continue to pray for us and with us:
*Pray for perseverance, that we will not be discouraged but that we would trust the Lord to be our strength
*Pray that we are able to gather the appropriate documents quickly and efficiently
*Pray for our future child/ren, that the Lord would be preparing them for this adjustment
*Pray for our family as we travel on this road, that we would be ready to accept these new children with love and joy and patience

First class down, 2 to go!

We spent 8 hours at Children's Home and Aid today. In Illinois you are required to be a licensed foster home before you can adopt. In order to become a licensed foster home you are required to have 10 hours of training. Today was our first class and it was 8 hours long! Crazy! We learned all about the different psychological issues of adopted children and while I am sure some of them are true, I am thankful that I know Jesus Christ and the redeeming work he can do in hearts. He is the true healer and relationship mender and a Father to the fatherless. We were able to take a stand a few times and share what we believe and why it was different than what they were teaching. We pray God uses us even in this group to glorify his name.
We will have two more classes, this coming Friday and then the Friday after that. When these classes are done our paper work is submitted to the state and we become an approved foster home. Once that is in place we can then schedule our home studies. Our home studies will consist of 3 meetings. 2 will be at Children's Home and Aid and the final one will be in our home. When those are done all the paper work is submitted for our approval to adopt. It's a long process and I have never seen so much paper work in my life!

Prayer:
*I think the biggest thing we would like prayer for right now is that the Lord would be preparing the hearts of the child/children that he has for us. That the transition would be smooth and that we all would adjust well.
*Please pray for us as we continue to build relationships with these other couples that were in the class. Pray that the Lord would use us to shine a light into their lives and that he would be glorified.
*Continue to pray that the paper work comes together smoothly.

Paper work, paper work and more paper work...

We had our meeting! It was great, the Lord really went before us in the assigning of our home study agent... We feel very blessed and that the Lord is walking right beside us on the adventure. We have a lot of paper work to fill out and information to gather and are feeling a little overwhelmed. There is a lot to do! But we are still very excited!

Prayer:
*That the Lord continues to go before us and we are sensitive to His leading.
*Pray that we would be able to find all that we need as far as legal documents and that they would be processed quickly.
*Pray we continue to trust the Lord to lead and direct our steps and that we would be a testimony to him all along the way.
*Pray for the children the Lord has for us, that he would be preparing them even now!
*Pray for our own kids that they would adjust well.

Orientation...

We have our initial orientation meeting scheduled with Children's Home and Aid here in Rockford. After this meeting we will have our 3 classes then the home study. We are moving ahead, kind of slow, but moving ahead non the less. We have finished our application for Celebrate Children International and are just waiting on a few references and we will get that sent in. Continue to pray for us! We know it is a long road ahead!

*Praise the Lord we received a Christian social worker that will doing our homestudy! We are so thankful!
*Pray that the Lord will continue to provide financially.
*Pray that we will trust in Him in all that happens through this.
*Pray the Lord will guide us in all we do and that we will reflect Him well with our attitudes, our actions and our words.

New Policies, Same God

We found out today that Ethiopia just changed it's laws and requires adopting families to come to the country for the court hearing. This means that in order to adopt from Ethiopia you are required to make 2 trips instead of one. This adds quite a bit financially to the process. We are continuing to pursue this and trust that God will provide the extra funds! Please continue to pray that the Lord would grant us favor each step of the way. We understand that this does not guarantee us from hardships and pain, so I pray that this favor he grants would be the power to bear up under these trials with grace and love. That we would bear his name well. That we would reflect him in our attitudes and actions. That we would grow to trust him more and that we would love with his love.

Passports and classes...

Well, yesterday we decided to make the trek to the Post Office to get our passports... it's been raining here in Rockford for the last few days and I LOVE the rain, but for some reason I have been feeling the "gloom" taking over. So, we are driving, both letting the gloom take over now, not really talking, we get to the Post Office go in and wait in line. We finally get to the front of the line and of course their is a lady there who has no idea how to work the digital camera. After fidgeting around with it for about 2o minutes she finally says, "would you guys mind going up to Walgreens to get your pictures done?" WHAT??!!! Okay, fine, we smile and say "of course, no problem" Exit Post Office, head the wrong direction three times and finally arrive at Walgreens. Smooth sailing there, we get our photos and head back to Post Office. As we are driving back I am lost in thought and finally start giggling. I turned to Michael and said, "Honey (yes, I call him honey) this is probably going to be the EASIEST step in this process and here we are grumping about it!" So we both kind of chuckle and realize how silly we are being, we return to the Post Office in much better spirits and were able to truly assure the incompetent women behind the desk that we are REALLY okay with the trouble. Passport applications submitted. Step One done. HOORAY!
Step Two, classes, classes and more classes. We are required to take three classes before we can schedule our home study. We are going to be out of town during one of them and found out today that they are willing to work with us and so we will be able to make up this class privately! Praise the Lord! He is faithful indeed!

Prayer Requests:
*Illinois has some pretty cooky laws when it comes to adoption, they provide many hoops for us to jump through, pray the Lord will go before us in each of these steps.
*We are in the process of getting our home study going, pray that pans out smoothly and that we are given an understanding case worker as we are going through a secular agency for this.
*Pray that we keep our eyes on Christ, that we don't ever let ourselves become the heroes and that we are reminded often that we can do this only because in His great love he first adopted us into his perfect family.

The Decision

And here we begin! God has laid it on our hearts to begin this beautiful process of adoption. So here it will be that we keep all our family and friends updated on how that is going and what stage we are in. We are excited, nervous, anxious and trusting! God is good, he is big and he delights in proving himself greater than we can imagine! We know that he will go before us and that he will provide for us! With each update I will post current prayer requests and we would greatly covet your prayers for us through this time! So here we go!