Wowzers

Well, studies are going okay. I'm just about ready to finish off another paper, and so far my new schedule has been working well. I've only got about six weeks of classes left, and then I graduate on May 24th!!!!! I'm sure they'll hear Lisa rejoicing all the way in Addis Ababa! lol

But this blog isn't about my progress in completing my MDiv. It's about our journey to adopt our first child, and, wow, do we have a big part of that story to share!

About a week ago I was leaving the office when Anita, one of my co-workers and closest friends, said, "Hey, Ray. Someone stopped by and put something in your mailbox." So I went over to my box and saw a white envelope.

Whoever dropped it off had typed "To: Mr. Raymond and Lisa Hammond" on a computer, printed it, cut it out and taped it to the envelope. I held it up to the light and could see the outline of a bill but couldn't tell the denomination. Thanking Anita for letting me know, I put it in my pocket and went home.

After pulling into the driveway and parking the car, I entered the house, greeted Lisa and said, "I think someone gave us some money for the adoption," and proceeded to tell her about the envelope. She was as curious as I was about it, so she told me to open it.

I opened the envelope and stopped, staring inside it. My hands began to tremble a bit and tears came to my eyes. Lisa, who was standing a few feet from me washing dishes, said, "What is it?" "It's a stack of hundreds," I replied, my voice barely above a whisper. She started to cry and came over to where I was standing. I began counting and realized that someone had just given us $1,000. I was speechless. There was nothing inside to indicate who had been so generous to us. Only another computer generated, cut-out message that simply said, "Hope this helps with the adoption. God bless!"

God bless indeed! We knew from the start of this journey that God was going to provide for us as only he can when it came to financing the adoption. We have been saving and doing our part, but we knew that God would have to make up the difference. He has been providing for us since day one of our marriage almost seven years ago, and we have never doubted his provision. But this latest time blew us both away. He is so good; in fact, his goodness and steadfast love is so great that we can only struggle to find adequate words to express it. Yet despite our inability to adequately verbalize it, we shout our praise out to him, for there is no god like our God. None compare to him. He is the one who said, "I am the first and the last; apart from me there is no God," (Isa. 44:6b).

Sleepy Time

Hey everyone. Been on vacation for a couple of days trying to get caught up on my seminary studies. I was able to get a 14 page paper completed, so that's good. But I have a lot more to do and hope that I can knock off a couple of smaller papers in the next two days.

In mid-January, Lisa started talking about getting a crib. Somewhere along the line she decided to search Craigslist for one, and she found a couple of promising ones only to get return replies that the cribs had already been sold. In mid-February, she found one posted by someone in Hamlin -- which is like 15 minutes from our house.

We went to look at it and really liked it, so we ended up buying it. It's like 4 years old, and we got it for a good price. I don't know anything about crib styles, but it's a cherry finish and it looks pretty sweet. It goes together really easily, and it can also convert into a toddler bed. In the pic above, you can see the cats underneath it trying to figure out what it is! [btw, if u click on the pix, they will enlarge] Thankfully, they didn't get the idea to jump inside of it, but they'll prolly figure it out sooner or later.

For Christmas, I had bought Lisa a bedding set for a crib, so once it was put together, she wanted to see how the sheet, bumper pad and comforter would look. The pix to the right show the crib decked out in the crib set. You might be able to see the chairs behind the crib, which is in the living room. The night we got the crib, I set it up in the kitchen and then we carried it into the living room to take some pix. I didn't want to set it up in the baby's room because it hasn't been transformed from a home office yet. So there's a couple of desks, a file cabinet, a bookcase and some miscellaneous stuff that would have made setting up a crib a difficult thing to do. I figured that, once I got it put together, Lisa and I could just pick it up, carry it in there and set it down in a space along the wall where it would be out of the way for when we move the other stuff out of there.

Of course, I never figured on the doorway being too narrow for the crib to fit through! lol! I figured that since it went through the doorway from the kitchen to the living room it would fit fine going into the baby's room. But it didn't. And even if it had, I'm not sure we could've made the turn required to enter the room anyway. So I took it all apart and carried it in piece by piece. Now it's stacked in the corner, and I prolly won't put it together until sometime in mid-May because by then I'll have graduated!!

Well, gotta go, but one more thing before I do. Lisa told me that a couple of you want to hear the song I wrote. That's a bit of a stretch for me to put it on the site for peeps to hear, but I'll get over it and figure out a way to get it on there so you can hear it.

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.