Passing the Time

Since we know that we have at least a year before we are going to be matched with a child, I decided that I needed something to help me keep track of the time. I came up with this idea to do a prayer chain. I've talked about how important prayer has been to us during the whole process. So, I made a chain with 52 links, one for every week. I wrote out a prayer on each chain link and each friday we get to remove a chain and that is our prayer for the week for our baby. We pray everyday for our baby or babies but this just helps us focus on one major theme for the week. We will keep each link and put them altogether, so one day our child will be able to see all the different things that we prayed for.

Now, I recognize that we don't know exactly how long our wait time could be and it could be longer than a year, but I just have to remember not to get discouraged if the links run out and I have to make another chain.

Here is a picture of the chain after we finished it.

We are having a good weekend and spending some time together. We have spent some of our weekend moving furniture around and doing some cleaning. I didn't realize how dusty everything had gotten, until I started moving furniture and one thing led to another so most everything is clean now. Hope you are having a great weekend!

Waiting

Now that we have our immigration approval we have been put on a referral waiting list. So, we are waiting to be matched with a baby or babies. We were originally told that the wait would be about 6 months before we go matched. However, since then we have been told that the wait is probably going to be more like a year. Ouch! Our first set back. I was trying to prepare myself emotionally for a 6 month wait and now I have to prepare myself for a year long wait.

We know that God has a plan and He knows what He is doing, but this is still a downer for us. So, yes we are a little sad that it is going to be a little longer than what we had expected, but God has a plan and He is working all things out.

That is really the only update that we have as of right now. We have some paper work to get done before we get matched, but I have some time to get it done now. We have had a great start to the year. We have been really busy but we have been saving time to spend together and just enjoy our time that we have together. We were able to go home to celebrate my dad's birthday last weekend and we had a great time with family. I have gotten horrible about taking pictures, so I didn't get one picture the whole weekend. I'm so mad that I didn't get any pictures! But I guess that just shows that I was having such a good time, that I didn't want to stop and take any pictures.

Finally!

After three months we finally received our official immigration letter! Basically, what that means is that we got permission to bring children back into the U.S.. We are so excited and honestly shocked that we got the letter already!

It takes a long time to get this approval and there is not much that you can do while you are waiting to get approved. So we have just been waiting on this letter, so that we can move on to the next step!

While we are in the process of adoption we have been taking advantage of some of our free time. All of our friends with children have encouraged us to go on dates, go to the movies, take vacations, etc. Just because we won't have as much free time after we get the baby. So, we have been taking peoples advice. Last night Matt planned a date to go to a painting class. We had so much fun! Here are some of the pictures I took from last night.

This is my painting just after having started. We went to a place called BYO Brush in Ocean Springs, MS. We also went on a night that all the proceeds were going to Sisters with a Purpose, a non-profit for abused women and children. So we were happy to go and support them.

The picture above is part way through the painting class and then the picture below is us with our finished products! We had tons of fun and it was nice to get some creative energy out. I felt so relaxed when we left. So if you ever have a chance to go to one of these classes, I would recommend it!

Update

I'm sorry it has been so long since I posted. Someone asked me about the blog the other day and I was explaining to them that we really didn't have anything to update about. However, I should just update about other things that are going on. So, I'm sorry!

Well, we are still waiting on getting out official approval from immigration, but we went last week and did our biometric fingerprints. We had been waiting to hear about this appointment since some time in October and finally when we got back from Christmas we had a letter with our appointment date and time. We were so excited! So last week we went and had our fingerprints taken. We were there about 10 minutes total for our appointment. I asked the lady that was helping us about 2 or 3 times if that was all we needed to do. She reassured me that it would be ok and that we had done everything. I just couldn't believe that was what we had been waiting on for close to 2 months!

So here we are again....waiting. Even though we are waiting and have been for some time now, we are in a good place emotionally. We definitely have our moments of impatience but we know that God is working out all things for His Glory. He has already worked out so many things with regards to our adoption. God is so good!

I'll try to do a better job of keeping you informed of what is going on!

Registration

We talked to our adoption agency this week and they let us know that we are a good 6 months away from being able to travel to Africa to go pick up our baby. Six months is on the good side of the spectrum, there are any number of delays that could occur and prolong our adoption process. However, while we recognize that these delays are possible, we pray against them and we pray for a smooth and speedy adoption process.

Because we are six months out from being able to travel to Africa, our agency advised me to go ahead and register for a full load this semester. If you don't know already, I am a student at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. I am pursuing a masters degree and I'm am trying to get in as many hours as possible before we get the baby. So, I registered for classes tonight and now we owe the seminary a bunch of money. Ugh! I'm trying not to freak out about the amount of money that we owe and the number of hours that I am taking, but I know that God has called me to take classes at the seminary and to pursue the adoption.

Being in grad school and pursuing an adoption are two major events in life by themselves, let alone doing them at the same time. However, I know that I am doing what the Lord has led me to do right now. Praise the Lord that I don't face these things alone. God has given me a wonderful husband who helps and encourages me every step of the way. There are some days that I know that I wouldn't have been able to make it through the day without Matt. I also have awesome family and friends who support and encourage us. Our families have encouraged us through every step of the adoption and they are so excited to see the ways that God is working in our lives.

We are so excited that Thanksgiving is this week and we have a lot to be thankful for this year. I am so thankful for my husband and our family and friends who are so encouraging to us. I'm still a little shocked that Thanksgiving is this week, but I'm so grateful for some time off and getting to spend that time with Matt and our families.

Now what?

So, in the last couple posts I've explained all the background story for all the decisions that we have made regarding the adoption and how the Lord has led us to this decision. So now, I want to get you updated on all the steps that we gone through up until this point. We have been accepted to an adoption agency, and finished our home study. We meet several times with our social worker while we were doing our home study. I was really anxious about the home study process, but once we met our social worker, she put me at ease almost immediately. I really didn't have anything to worry about with regards to the home study. Looking back now I wonder what all my fretting was about. Now that our home study is competed we are waiting to get approval from immigration.

When adopting a child international you have to get approval to bring a child back into the United States. That is where we are now. We can't do anything else without this approval, so we are in a waiting stage right now. We have heard that this process could take up to 3 months. It's been a month already and we haven't heard anything, so we are continuing our wait.

Please continue to pray for us as we are waiting to hear back from immigration. Please pray that we would be patient as we wait. Please pray that as we wait we continue to rest in the Lord and continue to grow in our relationships with the Lord.

Please pray for our baby or babies that God would protect them and provide for them while we are separated. Please pray that the Lord would provide someone to hold our babies, until we can hold them. Please pray that the Lord would provide food for our babies, until we are able to feed them. These are some of the things that Matt and I pray for everyday and we will continue to pray for these things until we can be with our baby or babies.

How we chose our agency and country

The decision to adopt came quickly for us. God knew his divine plan for us but the opportunity came suddenly for us, and we were not expecting the opportunity to come in the way, and at the time that it did. Don't hear me wrong, we are really excited about the opportunity to adopt but the way that it came about was just a shock.

We had not really done any research on adoption agencies before this point. We made the decision to start the adoption process and then we had to decide what agency we were going to use. Some people know the country that they want to adopt from and they chose their agency based on the country that they want to adopt from. We had no idea where we wanted to adopt from. We decided that we wanted to approach all the decisions about the adoption prayerfully. We made the decision that we wanted to chose an agency that we trusted. We put a lot of time and prayer into the decision of what agency to use, we talked to friends of ours that had adopted to see what agencies they used and the experience that they had with those agencies.

After a lot of research and prayer we decided to use Lifeline Children's Services in Birmingham, AL. Once we chose an agency we started praying through all the countries that were available for us to adopt from through Lifeline, including both international and domestic adoption. We both felt very clearly that God was leading us to adopt internationally at this time. We are not ruling out domestic adoption for the future but we just felt very clearly about the decision to adopt internationally right now.

Lifeline had a list of countries that you can adopt from through their agency. We started praying about each one of those countries and looking at the requirements to adopt from those countries. Each country has it's own requirements for adoption in that country. When we read the requirements for Uganda, Africa we fit each requirement. As we read about Uganda and prayed about adopting from Uganda, we were both filled with such peace. We knew right then that we were supposed to adopt a baby from Uganda. The age range for our adoption is 3 months old to 2 years old. So, our baby will fall in that age range somewhere.

We sent in our application to Lifeline and a few days later we got our acceptance letter via email. Matt and I had run an errand to TJ Maxx and we were standing in the checkout line, when we got the email. Matt read it to me as we were waiting in line and we had our own public moment of rejoicing and praising God for His blessings. We were able to pay for our items and get out to the car before I lost it. I just sat in the car and cried because I was so happy.

I told Matt, "This has got to be what it is like to find out your pregnant. I don't even know this child, I don't know if they are a boy or a girl, I don't know what their personality is like, I don't know anything about this person, but I'm already in love with this child!" We know that God already has a child picked out for us and we know that one day soon we will get to meet this child.

Sorry this post is so long, but I am trying hard to get our blog up to date. Thanks for bearing with me as I'm trying to explain our thought process and decisions that we have made up to this point. God has bless us so much through this whole process and we want to be able to share that with others, so that they can see how good God is.