Paperwork Round 2!

It's that time! We have reached the time period where most of our adoption paperwork is going to expire, sad, I know.  And lucky for us, everything expires at different times, fun! Our USCIS fingerprints expire in August, but we already got those redone earlier this month.  Our Home study expires in October, which we have to start working on now! And our immigration approval expires in December. Lucky for me, our awesome caseworker got me on the right track to know when to start working on this stuff, because there's another catch, most things can't be updated unless you're within 90 days of the original expiring.  Which is why we have to start working on our home study update in July, but we can't send it in to immigration until September.  Are you confused yet? :) So today and next week we've got all our appointments lined up to update documents for our Home study that I plan to send off before I head down to GA for one of my best friend's wedding! Our home study agency says to plan on a few week turn around since they have such a huge case load right now.  Our amendment we did 2 months ago took a LONG time to get done, and we want this update done ASAP, so I've already been working ahead making sure I've got everything ready to go before I go out of town next week!  Hopefully everything will go as planned and it will be a smooth update process, and we will be that much closer to seeing our baby's face!! I won't have a number update until next week, they got a little backed up from having an exciting week of movement, praise the Lord!! But we are so close to the 30's, praying we get there by the update next week :)

Yard Sale- Round 4!

We're having another yard sale this weekend!  We have graciously been donated literally car-loads of stuff from our church family and friends and we are hoping and praying to put a dent in the last chunk of money we need to raise for this adoption!  We've got furniture, toys, clothes, home decor, books, baby items, etc. So if you're local, we would love for you to stop by!  These yard sales have been a huge success for us in the past, and Lord willing, we won't be encountering any snow on Saturday, but it will be quite warm!  Apparently, we only do yard sales in extremes around here :)  We are beyond thrilled that we are working towards raising the last amount of money we need to fund this adoption. As I mentioned before we are about $3500 away from being fully funded, praise the Lord!  Only God could do this, only he could have provided so much, and we want all the glory to be his!  Even after 18 months, he is still providing a way for us to bring this baby home, we are so blessed! Email me at scoalson104 (at) gmail (dot) com if you would like to come by this weekend and need the address. We would love to see some of you and would appreciate the prayers for Saturday!

Finding the Crib

Yep, that's right, I found a crib!  One of my summer projects this summer has been to start working on the nursery.  I've been scouring websites and craigslist to find the perfect crib, and about 2 weeks ago I found it!  I looked on craigslist one last time one night after being frustrated about not finding anything, and this beauty popped up!  I was so excited and snagged it right away.  It might still be early, but it helps to have this and know that things are coming together! I've had the bedding for a year now and I was excited to finally have something to put it on to see what it looks like, and I love it! I didn't take a picture of that yet, but I had a couple from us putting it together until hubs told me to put down the camera and help him :) So, here is where our sweet baby will be sleeping!!

It's practically brand new and we got too good of a deal on it to pass it up!  Can't wait until there is a little one sleeping in there!

One Year and May Numbers!

Today, exactly one year ago, we got our very first wait list numbers. It's hard to believe that we finished our dossier one year ago!  We started this journey at #98 for a girl and #78 for a boy.  Today one year later, we are for a girl:

and for a boy:

That's a pretty good amount of movement in one year!  We have moved 40 spots on the girl list, and 33 on the boy list.  This means that many more children are orphan's no more and we praise God for that!  Obviously, from my posts lately, we have seen a significant slow down in the number or referrals each month.  We are uncertain about whether or not we will ever get back to where we see 5 or more referrals a month, and this honestly puts a damper on our spirits some days.  Hubs and I were talking the other night about how nothing about this process is easy.  Adoption involves beauty and loss.  And the pain of this seemingly never-ending wait is heavier than we would like to admit at times.  These are days when we cry out to God on behalf of our child and ourselves.  We know that the days of this adoption were numbered before it was even a thought in our mind, but the waiting is still hard.  One year later, and we are starting the process of renewing some of our paperwork and updating our home study.  Today and yesterday were filled with fingerprints at 2 different offices, once again.  It feels weird to be doing these things again, but also feels like we are on the move again, working towards the light at the end of the tunnel.  After one year on the wait list, we can say that we have grown so much.  We are not the same people who started this process 18 months ago.  We are saying yes to things we said no to at the beginning.  God had been working on our hearts and we feel there are exciting things ahead for our family.  If you are still hanging on this journey with us, thank you! We appreciate the prayers more than you will ever know!  We have no idea when we will see our child's face, we are still praying fervently that it will happen before the end of the year, and invite you to pray with us.  We are trusting this unknown future to our God, who has made himself known to us more than ever over the last year.  We know everything is in his hands, and there is no better place for it to be!

Mother's Day

Yesterday was Mother's Day, and it was the 2nd Mother's Day I have had on this journey, yet without a baby.  This journey is long, this journey is hard, this journey is not convenient, but it is MORE than worth it, and it is beautiful!! I have gotten to know my Father so much better.  He is doing things in my heart, in our hearts, that never would have made sense to us at the beginning of this journey.  I thought back to this post that I wrote over 1 year ago...wow, time has flown! And I still echo every word of that post.  We are currently on the latter end of the time frame we were first quoted to get a referral at the beginning of this process.  And had we not made it to this point without a referral, our hearts would not be in the place that they are now.  Our Father knows exactly what he's doing, and he continues to reveal HIS plan, in his timing.   I am blessed to be surrounded by people that get it and are constantly encouraging me in this walk, as I got many "Happy Mother's day" notes yesterday letting me know that even though my arms may be empty this mother's day, my heart is full and ready to welcome this child into our family!  And even though this was my 2nd mother's day on this journey, and I'm praying like crazy that I will not experience a 3rd with empty arms, I am blessed to have realized that Christ is better! He is the best of all his blessings, even this blessing of a child that I am longing for daily. My friend Rebekah wrote this post yesterday and I am so thankful for it and her heart.  I pray that we all realize that Christ is better than whatever it is we are longing for today, He is the only one that can satisfy!

April Numbers

Well, another month has come and gone and I'm here to post our April numbers.  We didn't see as much movement on the list this month....even though several referrals did go out, they were just older kiddos that went to families that were behind us on the list so it didn't affect our numbers.  So for girl we are:

and for a boy:

The gap between the 2 numbers is slowly closing, so who knows what we will end up with!! Even though we didn't see as much movement as we would have like this month, God is hearing our prayers and we feel like he is getting ready to move in a big way.  I have heard story, after story this week that has pretty much brought me to tears of how God is working in the lives of those around us.  It is so encouraging to see our Father taking care of the little details.  It encourages us and our journey to hear how he has worked in the journey of others.  It just seems like our Father has been showing himself mighty lately, and we have no doubt he will continue to do so.  We cannot wait to see how he will be glorified in our story in the months to come.  We are trusting and believing great things on behalf of our precious baby!!!

And just for some cuteness...head on over to our friends blog, they are in ET right now picking up there son for forever!!!! He is absolutely precious and we are thrilled for them to finally have their boy in their arms, never to leave! Praise God, who sets the lonely in families!!

Awesome Friends

            We have been so incredibly blessed by the friends we have made here in NC.  I firmly believe that God has been working in each of them and the way they have contributed to our lives.  I can't say that I've ever experienced doing life together in this way before and it has been so good for my heart.  We have been studying the Holy Spirit at church over the past few weeks.  We talked about spiritual gifts last week and our pastor was explaining how the body has different gifts that allow other parts of the body to see a different part of God.  It's so amazing to see the detail with which God created us and this world, but hearing that made me think about our friends here and how we each are gifted with different gifts, and it truly does allow us to know God better by seeing how he works differently in each of our lives.  So I thought I would share some of the ways we have been blessed by our friends recently.
             First, we have some friends who have also adopted from ET, through our agency, so our baby will have a Hannah's Hope buddy close by :)  They have been such a huge source of encouragement throughout this entire journey.  They were the first ones we told when we officially decided to adopt because we knew we would have their support and they would be just as excited as we were, and they were!  They are in the midst of a very busy season of life, they just had baby #2 a few months ago, and they have a 2 year old Ethiopian running around :) and yet they still found the time to put this together for us:

An amazing care basket of encouragement for us as we wait! This basket is filled with cards and coordinating items/baby dates for those days when this wait seems endless and discouraging.  They get it! And they are praying and celebrating every movement with us, and we are forever grateful!  I cannot wait to find out what all is in this basket(it's very tempting to open them all now :) ) but I know it will be much better to open them on days when it feels like I can't wait another day for our baby to come home.  My Father is ministering right to my heart through them, so so awesome!  I can't really explain how good it is to have someone in my everyday life who knows the ache of having a baby on the other side of the world, other than to say it is an unbelievable blessing.
             We also have some somewhat new friends here in NC that have blessed us a great deal as well.  I say somewhat new because my hubby grew up with the husband, so that's not new, but as a couple they are new :)  Anyway, they made and gave us this awesome item to add to our nursery a few days ago:

Seriously, how awesome is this?? I cannot wait to see what it looks like in the nursery.  It's just another great reminder of faith and our journey to our baby. It means a lot to have someone think to do something like this for us.  We are so blessed to have so many people walking this journey with us, who don't think I'm crazy for having wait list numbers posted in our house, or talking about official and unofficial numbers. They are just as excited as we are for our baby to come home(maybe not just as excited, but pretty darn close!) and I can't wait to introduce our baby to this amazing group of friends that God has blessed us with!