Struggle

There has been a lot going on with us lately. There has been a lot going on with us with regards to school and work but also with the adoption. Honestly, we have been going through a hard time emotionally. We know that there are a lot of people that are praying for us and want to support us. We are so blessed by you, and thankful to have you in our lives.

Our struggle is surrounding the adoption. We chose Uganda because we felt like the Lord was leading us to adopt a child from there. Recently we have received some news from our adoption agency, about the Ugandan government, that was unsettling to us. So we have a decision to make, whether to not to continue our adoption in Uganda or switch to another country.

I don't know how to explain the struggle that we going through trying to make a decision. We still haven't made a decision honestly. The only way that I know how to describe what we are going through is grief. We are grieving the idea of how we thought the adoption was going to go and now everything is changing. We have spent a lot of time talking through our options, and we've had our fair share of tears and break downs. Honestly, I feel like I've cried so much, that I can't cry anymore. It has taken us a few days to even feel like we can share this with other people. Honestly, we are hurting and we are emotionally exhausted.

Today I was reading Psalm 18. I started to read verse 1 out loud, but no noise would come out. I was so overwhelmed with emotion that I began to sob and the only noise that was coming from my mouth were squeaks. I had to stop and pray.

The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;

my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge,

I love you, LORD, my strength.

my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

God has not forgotten us. We are not alone. We seek our refuge in God and when we don't have anymore strength, we can find our strength in him. I was so overwhelmed with a feeling of gratefulness for God that the only thing I could do was stop and pray and cry out to God for forgiveness for trying to deal with all of this on my own and not giving the whole situation and all the struggles over to Him. God is so good to us, and I get so overwhelmed by His love and faithfulness.

Please continue to pray for us, while we are trying to make a decision about what to do. Pray for clarification in our decision making and pray for peace. Also, please know that you can talk to us about our struggles, we will talk to you about what is going on. Don't be afraid to bring it up or ask questions, it helps us to know that people are praying for us and supporting us.

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.