Families in Ethiopia

This is an exciting, emotional, exhausting, amazingly wonderful time for some AWAA families. They are picking up their children from Ethiopia this coming week! Please pray for these families and their children as they get to know each other. If you want to check out pics of their beautiful kids and read about their adventures, check out their blogs. I've listed them below. I love to look at their updates because it gives me a picture of what it might be like for us when we meet our baby!

http://daveandrae.blogspot.com/
http://www.wegnersethiopianadoption.blogspot.com/
http://www.ouradoptionstory-blessed.blogspot.com/
http://emilyandmichaeltreadwell.blogspot.com/

Dossier update

Our dossier arrived in Ethiopia on 1/29! There are two entries on the FedEx tracking site. The first entry says "International Shipment Release" in Addis Ababa, and the second entry says "Delivered" to front desk/reception. I think that means the front desk/reception at the local FedEx office. I don't know if that means it has been picked up by our agency rep yet, but it's there!

Joy!

I attended a women's conference given by Joani Tabor this weekend at our church. The theme of the conference was the joy of the Lord. One of the things I took away from the conference was the reminder that God has this whole adoption process under control, and I can just rest in Him for the journey. I've known that all along, but I was reminded not to let myself be fearful of the unknowns (how long will it take before we get a referral?, how old will our baby be?, how long will we wait for a court date?, will the Ethiopian courts pass us through?, how will we get the rest of the money we need?, etc). God already knows the answers to all those questions! His PLANS are PERFECT, His WAYS are PERFECT, and His TIMING is PERFECT! We're not waiting for just any baby. We're waiting for the baby that God has chosen since the beginning of time to be our child, and nothing will stand in the way of that! If God is for us, who can be against us?

Lamentations 3:22-24
22 Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed,

for his compassions never fail.
23 They are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.
24 I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion;

therefore I will wait for him."

Treasured

Here's a song we (we being mostly Ray) wrote for our baby:

Treasured

Treasured one, we’re your mom and dad/And you have made us so very glad

You don’t know us yet, but you soon will/A place in our hearts you will fill

When you make family our name

Half a world apart but have no fear/For one day soon we will appear

Then we’ll take you home, you’ll be our very own/Never again will you be alone

And family will be our name

But until then, Jesus will hold you near/Because to him you are so dear

He’s known you from the start/You own a special place in his heart

And that’s why we pray that you’ll know him some day

Treasured one, we hope that you will see/Jesus livin’ in your mom and me

‘Cause our Father above sent him down in love/So we all could be set free

And be a part of his heavenly family

Not flesh of our flesh or even bone of our bone/But God has made you our very own

And until we meet we want you to know/That we love you so

And family is our name; family is our name; family is our name

Our dossier is on it's way!

We got an e-mail from our family coordinator that our dossier left for Ethiopia on Friday!! We were given a FedEx tracking number and were told not to worry if it makes some stops in Europe for long periods of time. HA! While I don't blame it for wanting to vacation in Europe, I hope it doesn't stop for too long! It's got a job to do!

We are officially waiting for our referral now. Woo Hoo!

Not quite finished!

We heard back from our agency on Friday that they reviewed our dossier and found a mistake. My passport wasn't signed, so I had to sign it and make 3 new color copies of it to send back. So, yesterday I headed back to FedEx (we're becomming regulars there) to send out the corrected copies. I guess our dossier will go through the authentication process this week. I was bummed about the hold-up, but Ray reminded me that if there had to be a mistake, we should be thankful it was something so easy to correct!

The beginning of a journey...

Hey everyone. As most of you know by now, we're in the process of adopting a child from Ethiopia! Sometimes it's hard to keep everyone in the loop, so we had this idea to keep our family and friends up to date on everything adoption-related by creating this blog.

We started this process back in August of 2007. For the past few months we've been gathering what's felt like millions of documents, signatures, and certifications for our dossier. The dossier is the collection of paperwork that will be reviewed in Ethiopia before a child is referred to us. In the end it felt like we had gathered our entire life on paper! Last Wednesday we got the last document back from our state, and I spent an hour and a half making copies of everything. Thursday morning Ray took the originals and 2 copies and sent them by FedEx to our agency. Friday we got confirmation that they received our precious paperwork!

This week our dossier is being taken to the US Dept of State and the Ethiopian Embassy to be certified some more and translated into Amharic, the native language of Ethiopia. Our family coordinator said that process should be done this week, and then our dossier will be sent to Ethiopia!!!! One step closer to our baby!

There is much more to our story -- things that have happened and things yet to happen -- and we'll save that for future blogs. But thewait4you isn't only about our journey to adopt our first child; it's a testimony to God's faithfulness in our lives as we wait for the child that he has made to be our very own.