Thanksgiving!!!

What a wonderful time of year to celebrate with your family and friends and to think about what God is doing and has done for you and your family.  We are just so blessed to be His children and to be going through this life with Him.  He is so amazing to show each of us His love through this life and we are forever grateful and thankful.  With each day that goes by we long for our child that is in Ethiopia and even though we don't physically know them we feel them and pray for them each and every day.  It is hard to explain for others to understand.  I guess I can compare it to being pregnant and longing to see your babies face and hold them because you can feel them inside of you, but with adoption you don't have their presence in your body, but God is so gracious to give you that feeling in your heart and it is amazing that He can create that sense of feeling inside you without a physical baby being there.  I am so thankful to God for this journey to adopt another child of His as we are all adopted into His family through knowing Christ!!!!  I pray you know the living God and if you don't please ask! 

Current Fundraising Efforts

Well I will be going to another craft show this weekend with my sister and I will be selling those cute hats with bling on them, you know everyone needs one or two :)!!!  They sold great at the last craft show I did a couple of weeks ago which we also sold some beef jerky which went pretty well and we still have a little bit left so if you would like any-just let us know and Isabella had her cocoa stand which did awesome!!!  She is so funny and quite the little salesperson.  She would call to people when they would walk by saying "Cocoa here-it will make you warm inside".  She is so beautiful to help raise money to bring her brother or sister home and she can't wait!  She had a lemonade stand in the summer and we are thankful to all who came out to support her efforts!  I love how she comes up with the ideas to raise money and it is so precious that God gave her a heart of compassion!  We appreciate all of your support and we greatly appreciate your prayers-we could not do this without them!!!   Also we just started our T-Shirt shoppe through Adoption Bug and there are some great designs on there, so please take a look and pass along the info to you family and friends and Christmas is right around the corner!!!  wink, wink  :)

More of the Story

So, we sent our application in and started our process of going through the paperwork and scheduling our home study.  I was so nervous about the home study, but it was great!!!  Our social worker was just wonderful and made us/me feel so at ease through the process.  We meet with her on three different occasions and received our completed home study the end of June.  During our waiting time we continued to complete our physicals, background checks, financial info etc.  We also had to have letters of reference and we are so thankful for those who did that for us and our family!!!  After we received our finalized home study we were able to apply for our I-600 (immigration background clearance)  we had to be fingerprinted (which I thought was very interesting, Matt not so much since he has had to do it several times with being in the Army).  This is probably the most important piece of paperwork, this piece of paperwork will tell us if we are approved to adopt from Ethiopia and they approved us.  We received our clearance pretty quickly.  So, after that last piece of paperwork came in we got everything notarized and took the items to be State Certified and then made three copies of all the paperwork and mailed it off to AWAA with lots of prayers and we became DTE (Dossier (all our paperwork) to Ethiopia) on 9/30/11.  So now we are in the waiting phase of our adoption and this can take between 10-16 months for us to receive a referral.  During this time we are going to be fundraising like crazy and trusting in God for His perfect timing for Him to bring us our child!!  Please be in prayer for us as we continue our journey to meet our beloved child of His!!!