The Journey Begins

First and foremost I would like to say that we would not be at this stage in our adoption journey without our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Since this is our first blog post, I would like to take a minute and tell you a little bit about ourselves and how we decided on adoption. Trey and I have been married for over 3 1/2 yrs. and have 2 beautiful little girls. Before we even ever got married, Trey and I talked about the future: how many kids we wanted to have naturally, how many kids we would like to adopt, and where we would like to adopt from. We have always felt a call to missions, traveling to Africa several times, the desire to help orphans around the world has always been something we've taken to heart. Scripture is so clear about how we, as Christians, should be helping the orphans and we knew/know just how God has called us to help. One of the ways we have felt God call us to help is through international adoption. We've prayed and sought God for the timing, and so here we are! We have chosen Holt International Adoption Agency, out of Oregon, and we have decided on the Ethiopia Adoption Program. On Sat. Dec. 4, 2010 we sent our adoption application out and on Thurs. Dec. 8th, 2010 we were contacted and told WE WERE APPROVED!!!! How do I describe our excitement? Well, it was as if we had just found out we were pregnant! (that's the only thing I can think of to compare it to) We then contacted a local agency to conduct our home study. A home study is a 2-3 month process in which a social worker comes into your home, asks questions and investigates everything about your life, you go through adoption training, and you fill out a whole bunch of paper work and pull together endless amounts of documents. So, that's where we are. We are 2 days away from sending in our pre-application for our home study. Once approved (which should be about a week or two from now) we will then schedule our International Adoption Training sessions that will begin in mid January and go through mid February. Please continue to pray for patience, as this is a long and seemingly exhausting process, but it's definitely well worth it! GOD IS SO GREAT and we are so blessed to even have the privilege to adopt. Allow this blog to keep you updated on all that's going on with our Ethiopian Adoption Process and to allow you to be a powerful part of our journey through prayer and financial contributions.