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!