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Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Adoption News!!

It has been a long time since we have posted any kind of update on our Ugandan adoption. There hasn't been much to report. But that changed last Thursday morning!!

We woke up Thursday morning to an e-mail from our orphanage that included a referral for TWO adorable children!! We are going to be a family of SIX! We will be adopting a little BOY who just turned two years old and a little GIRL who is not quite two months old!! We could not be more excited!

The kids have the same birth mom, so the orphanage staff was really hoping to keep them together. They had thought about asking us if we wanted to adopt them, but had decided to give us a referral of just the little girl because there was some question as to whether the boy was free to be adopted. But the e-mail had not been sent. Meanwhile, God has been working on our hearts in the last few months (and especially in the last couple of weeks) and has been giving us an increasing desire to open our home to two more children. We e-mailed the orphanage director early last week and expressed this desire to her. We were a little nervous about it, but decided to step out in faith and see what God did. After getting our e-mail, they decided to give us the referral for both children! We were thrilled and said we'd love to adopt them both, and the orphanage has since been able to confirm that the little boy is free to be adopted!! I love the way God was working in our hearts and the hearts of the staff at the orphanage to take care of both of these children. It is an illustration for me of how much God loves the orphans of this world.

"I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." John 14:18

Our next step is to send more paperwork to our lawyer in Uganda, and then wait for a court date. It will probably be at least a few months before we can get a court date and bring them home. I'm sure the wait ahead of us will be a hard at times, but today we are just REJOICING in these two blessings!

We can't post any pictures of them until they are legally ours, but if you are someone who sees us on a regular basis, we'll be carrying pictures with us that we would love to show you! They are super cute and we think they will just fit perfectly into our family!

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Preschool!

Isaac had his first day of preschool today! He was so excited. He got a little nervous when I was about ready to leave, but when I came to pick him up he was all smiles again.

No Training Wheels

Emily thought Isaac was ready to take his training wheels off. She was right.
This is one of his first attempts.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Adoption

My good friend Melissa wrote a BEAUTIFUL post today on our adoption in Christ - her thoughts after reading the book "Adopted for Life". It's worth your time! Awesome truths!

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Adoption Day!

We had Luke's adoption hearing last week! He was already legally our son, but now he can become a US citizen and his name changed from Amanuel to Luke!

Here we are with our judge. Not the greatest family picture (the boys were both very restless!), but it commemorates the event!

Faces

I have to work hard to get a good picture of these boys. They move too fast! But here are some of my recent favorites.
Running!

I told Isaac to make a mad face.



Sunday, March 14, 2010

Happy Birthday Luke!

We have a one-year-old! Here are some of our birthday pictures.
We had an early party at Grandpa and Grandma's house.
Why would you want to open a present when you can stand on it??
My favorite boys! (Notice I'm holding them both back from the cake.)

Luke is way more interested in throwing the food in front of him than eating it, so this plate did not stay there long.


Monday, February 8, 2010

Back to Africa!

We are excited to announce that we are adopting again! From Uganda!

Where to begin? Shortly (within weeks) after returning from Ethiopia with Luke, we started to feel God begin to put the country of Uganda on our hearts. We started reading/hearing about it all over the place as God truly opened our eyes to the needs there. Although the timing was sooner than we anticipated, we are thrilled to begin this journey of adoption again. I think our time in Ethiopia had a big impact on this decision too. We stayed at a guest house with several other adoptive families, most of whom were bringing home sibling groups and older kids. I cannot tell you how inspiring it was. All I could think was "We can do more. We need to do more."

Many who have gone before us in Ugandan adoptions have done so without using an agency, so we have decided to do the same. We are having our home study updated, and working directly with a baby home (orphanage) and lawyer in Uganda. A little scary but I feel like we have good resources to help us figure things out as we go.

So that's our news! Please keep us in your prayers. I will try to keep the blog updated as we know more!

Sunday, January 3, 2010