Everyone loves coffee!!!!

When my husband and I were first married, we knew we wanted to have children. However, I was born with a very serious heart condition and was told I might not be able to have kids.
But God surprised us! And we were soon blessed with our two daughters.
We felt our family was complete and decided we were finished having children. Until recently.
God has been quietly speaking to us, gently letting us know that we have more love to give-love to share with another child. And so, my husband and I began to pray earnestly that God would show us His will.
God was faithful, as He always is, and has placed it on our hearts to adopt from Africa. We know our child is there, and we cannot wait to bring them home!
The costs are overwhelming to us, but we will put our trust in God.

"With man, this is impossible. But with God, all things are possible."
Matthew19:26

We would love and be humbled if you chose to join us on our journey!


A quick update:

At this point we are currently waiting to finish putting together our dossier to be sent to Ethiopia. Once that is accepted we will see the face of our sweet child(ren)!!! We have complete trust that God will place the child with us that was always meant to be part of our family!

In the meantime we have been talking with lots of families that have adopted from Ethiopia as well. We have been reading lots of books and learning as much as we can about the culture. We bought the girls a globe and it was really cool for them to finally connect where their new brother or sister will be coming from compared to where they live.

 We are so excited to be doing our first fundraiser!! Our sweet friend works for Starbucks and has donated 5 pounds of coffee and a mug. Those who donate $10 through the paypal link on the side bar are eligable to win! We will let the fundraiser run through January 26th. Thanks so much for supporting our family.  We are so blessed and excited to see how God will use this fundraiser to help us to bring our baby home!!!

Thank you

The past couple days have been crazy.  Two days ago we opened the blog to public and posted a link on our Facebook accounts and the response has been amazing.  We have been overwhelmed by all the kind words, prayers, and support from everyone.  We are very grateful and blessed...thank you.

We did an exercise in our foster care/adoption class where we made a diagram of our "support structure." For Shabree and I there wasn't enough room on the page to put everyone on there, and many of you were listed.  That was not the case for all the participants, and even some of the teachers :)  I don't say that to be  rude or arrogant, I say it to proclaim how amazing our God is and how much he cares about relationship.  While we are so blessed and thankful to have so much support, we are also broken thinking about our prospective child and others around them with little or no support.  We have learned a lot in the last few weeks about early childhood development, attachment, and cycles of need, and at the heart of it is the need for relationship.  No wonder our Lord said it is not good for man to be alone.

We got a call this morning from our adoption agency about some paperwork. In the course of the conversation she brought up some twins that had come into the orphanage during the last few weeks. We have known about them for a little while but she gave us some more info today. They are twin girls and are just a few pounds. Because of their small size it is hard to get blood from them necessary for their medicals. It will take a few months to finish the medicals and then they will be available for adoption.  They are possible candidates.  She also mentioned a little boy that came in today too so we will see what God has in mind :)

Progress

At this point we have started the paperwork/preparation process. Wow! this is a lot of work!  Worth it of course :)  As I write this we have completed all of our initial applications and paperwork for our homestudy and are waiting for interviews to begin in the next several weeks. 


The next step is to have a homestudy interview.  Once our homestudy is complete it will be sent to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to be translated and then we will be considered for a referral (prospective kiddo :))  


We are praying to add a sister or brother to our family, but we are also open to a sibling group. 
It will be hard to say no to any child we are presented with, so please pray that God gives us discernment and presents us with the one(s) He wants right away :)


I want to thank everyone for being so supportive and curious about our family and this process, as this is an exciting time for us and our loved ones.

More for the family

After having Alli we were sure that we were done having kids.  Funny how God works, he put it on our hearts that He was not done with our family.  Over time, he also made it clear that His plan was not for us to have any more biological children.  I have to admit that adoption was not really something I was interested in until somewhat recently.  Shabree has thought about adoption for a long time, but we are now convinced that this is a reality for us.  As much as we would like to have more children of our own, the need for adoptive parents is tremendous.  The numbers are staggering at over 145 million orphans in the world.

We are excited about bringing another child into our home and sharing the love that God has given us.  There is no way to predict the challenges and joys that are to come with this new chapter in our lives, but we can't wait to see what God has planned.

I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. John 14:18