Pray of the Ethiopia program

So, we heard from Bethany Christian Services that there are some worries about the program. I guess a lot of the American families are taking their new Ethiopian babies/kids out shopping and staying in hotels while in Ethiopia and Ethiopian citizens aren't happy.

Given that the vast majority of American and European families adopting from Ethiopia are Caucasian or other non-black, the adoptive families and their Ethiopian child are easily distinguished and are often a point of curiosity among Ethiopian citizens. Understandably, due to misconceptions about adoption some Ethiopian citizens even look upon American and European adoptive families with suspicion. Cultural differences in parenting and child behavior are contributing to this suspicion.

It's a cultural thing so I don't totally understand it. The locals are complaining to the government. So, Agencies are asking that adoptive parents stay in guess houses and not take their babies/kids out in the local shopping centers. Some families are not following these recommendations and are jeopardizing the program.

Please pray that this will get worked out, that families will be sensitive to the culture and that the program will continue to thrive. They are expecting over 3000 adoptions out of Ethiopia this year. That would be amazing for these kids who need forever families.

online training & thinking about my baby

sigh. . . it's a lot of reading. Dave and I have to do the training on separate computers but we're doing it side by side cause they recommend that. We had to print a bunch of articles that we're required to read and it's probably around 100 pages. The hard part is that they assume you know nothing about adoption. Since we've educated ourselves a lot so far most of the training is old news. So, it's a little tedious. I know it's important though so we press on.

I was thinking about our baby today wondering if he or she is born yet. Wondering if he/she is alive today, how are they doing? Are they in a good and safe place? Are they in the orphanage yet? I get so excited when I think about the first moment I lay eyes on God's gift to us! The day our baby is united to his or her forever family! What a glorious moment!!

Pacing the excitement

I remember our social worker asking me during my one on one interview if I was excited (about the adoption, obviously). Of course I said 'yes'. She then proceeded to tell me to pace myself. Right now a lot of the time line is in our hands. We're working on the Home Study training. We are doing a 8 to 10 hour online course and have finished maybe 20 minutes of it. It's tough because Dave's taking correspondence classes to get his Masters and it's hard for me to ask him to set aside that home work to do the adoption home work. So, I just don't know how long it'll take to finish. But then we also have a couple in person classes we have to take. We need a total of 24 hours. I don't know if that'll be in town or in Denver. Who knows. Anyway, my point it that right now we have a little control. Kendra reminded me that once the dossier (all the paper work) is sent to Ethiopia then it's out of our hands and only God knows how long we'll have to wait. So, I must pace myself. I want to keep posting on this blog but I just don't have any news. I must keep my head above water or I might go crazy.

people who get excited with me

Today I got to talk with a few friends about the adoption. They hadn't heard the news so they were excited and asking a lot of questions! I can tell when someone asks questions because they are simply unsure of what else to say or how to react. These dear friends were very obviously thrilled and asking questions only because they truly wanted to know the details. Numerous times they said they were so happy for us and thought it was wonderful. I need to talk with people like them to keep my spirits lifted. It's so different when my belly isn't growing. People don't 'notice' when we make progress towards the day we are united with our baby. Some people just have a hard time grasping the 'why?' in our choice to adopt. No one ever asked us, "why did you get pregnant?" when we announced Liam or Gabriel were on the way.

grace

please make sure you've read my post on October 5th otherwise this one will not make sense. :-)


Yesterday in church there was a couple visiting from Kenya. They are staying with Thom and Shari who are the ones who started the orphanage in Kenya. Keith, who's American, shared some prayer needs. He introduced his wife. Her name is GRACE.

home study interviews

Dave and I had our one on one interviews with Kendra today. Painless. She asked a lot about our childhoods and our siblings and parents. I felt like I was just telling a story. Anyway, the crazy thing is that she is going to give our home study approval for TWO. Yes, that would be two kids if twins might end up needing a home WE would have the option of adopting two without having to go back and do everything over again. This is what she said, "You never know what God has in store for you guys."

First meeting with the social worker

WOW! We just got done meeting with our social worker, Kendra. She was a very nice lady and very excited for us. We thought this meeting was just to talk about what would happen during the home study. Well, we're in the middle of talking about 'why Ethiopia", 'what age child', 'family traditions', 'square footage' etc when she says "we'll go ahead and do the inspection today and then we should only have to meet two more times. WHAT? we felt there was a lot of things we needed to get done before we were comfortable with having the inspection done. So, we warned her that there were a couple things we knew we needed to do (put up a banister in the stair case and get fire extinguishers). She was so cool about everything and just told us to get them done soon. i asked if she'd need to come back to check on us and she said, "nope." Then she told us the only other things we need to do as far as her involvement is concerned is for both Dave and I to meet with her one on one for an interview. We set up both interviews for THIS Monday! Then we're done with our social worker. Isn't that incredible?! We still have to do our 8 hours of online training and I think there's a couple classes we need to attend before the HS is approved. Bonnie thought we might be done by the end of Nov. but at this rate we could be done a lot sooner.

YEA!!

hmm . . .

As you know, we are not requesting a specific gender. We know God has a baby for us and just like with Liam and Gabriel, it wasn't up to us what gender our kids would be. We had a girl's name picked out when we were expecting Liam. We changed our minds and picked out a new name when we were expecting Gabriel. We also have a couple other boy names picked out. However, we have NO idea if we'll even want to use these names as our baby will probably have a name. I know a lot of people will change the baby's name to an American name, others might give them a new first name and make their given name their middle name. I don't know what we'll do. I don't think we'll even be able to think about that until we see a picture of our baby and know the gender and name. However . . . a very dear friend gave me this black angel as a gift today. It brightened my day (after my last post). Adoption is dear to her heart too. Anyway, as I walked over to my wall (where I display all my Willow Tree figurines) I looked at the bottom of this angel. It is called "The Angel of Grace". Hmmm, Grace? I looked at Dave before placing the angel in it's spot and said, "Maybe this is a sign. Maybe our baby is a girl and we should name her Grace." Dave smiled and said, "I like that name."

An update on my heart condition

I don't have any news. As I shared the home study starts next week. That's exciting. I just have been struggling a bit with my emotions. We decided not to share the news with Dave's family until we can do it face to face which will be in December. I imagined a huge announcement and a million friends and family over joyed with us about this whole adoption. It's been anticlimactic to say the least. A lot of people know but not everyone. I think we'll start to share with our small group and my ladies Bible study as now we're getting into where we'll need prayer. But I am reluctant for some reason. God laid adoption on our hearts and most people don't have the same passion about it that we do. I am trying to prepare myself for a lot of "whys" and a lack of enthusiasm. I am praying that somewhere through out this journey we'll run into someone who is SO stinkin' excited for us that they read this blog religiously and ask us about the journey on a regular basis. May God bless my heart with that. I have been feeling a little lonely in this whole thing for some reason. Don't get me wrong, Dave is super excited about it but I am doing everything. I make the phone calls, fill out the paper work etc etc. He's working full time and taking correspondence classes. He has no time to dedicate to the adoption stuff right now. Which is ok, cause I can get it done. But I find myself thinking about it all the time knowing Dave (and everyone else in my life) has other things consuming their thoughts.

Anyway, there's my heart right now. Please pray for me.

Home Study begins on Oct. 8th

The lady who worked for the local Bethany branch moved and I assume no one has filled her spot. We were excited to have a local contact with Bethany and that's part of the reason we chose them. So, it's a bit disappointing that we can't work with Deone. Anyway, We got a call today from a social worker. She was contacted by Bethany but does not work for Bethany. She seemed very nice on the phone which was a relief. For some reason I had a picture in my head of what social workers would be like if they weren't working for a Christian company. I think Kendra will be good though (from what I felt through our phone call conversation). She said the state requires she have four meetings with us. Two will be with us as a couple and the other two meetings will be one on ones with only Dave or myself and Kendra. We set up the first meeting for Oct. 8th. I am excited and nervous. It'll be so nice to get it moving though.

Oh,it's not set in stone yet but we most likely will be changing our child's age preference to 1 year or younger instead of 2 or under. We heard that 4 families recently got referrals for 4 baby boys all under 5 months. I asked about the wait time and was told that it doesn't seem the wait for younger kids is any longer.

Nothing new

I just thought I would drop in for a quick second. We are still waiting on a reference to get sent back before Bonnie can send everything to the local social worker. After that we can start the home study. I hope this is within the next couple weeks. I'm anxious.

Liam is starting to understand

So, I've been talking with Liam a lot about different colors of skin. We got a bunch of books from the library like The Colors of Us and Please, Baby, Please. Liam loves these books. We asked him if he wanted a new brother or sister and he said 'yes'. I asked him if he wanted a brown baby and again he said, 'yes'. So yesterday we had a couple from church over for dinner. They didn't know yet we were adopting and Dave asked Liam, "Do you want a new brother or sister?" And he responded with a huge smile and said, "A brown Baby!" He ran and found his Please, Baby, Please book and showed the couple the baby on the cover and said, "That's a brown baby!"

It was so cute! I think he's really understanding and excited! He can quote the whole book and we've only had it a couple days.
My camera died so I couldn't get him reading the whole book but you can catch him saying, "Not on your head", "Keep off the wall", "Share that ball" "Don't be so slow"