18 Months Old

Baby girl,

Today you are 18 months old! It has also been one month already since we first saw your sweet face! We so wish that we could be with you to celebrate another month of your life.  Instead, we are here and you are on the other side of the world. And we are thinking of all the things that we have missed in your 18 months of life.  We have missed your first smiles, steps, words, and so many other things that we wish we could have been there for.  You have already stolen our hearts baby girl, and we are longing to hold you and tell you how much we love you.  We have been waiting for you for even longer than you have been alive! We've been praying for so long, not knowing whether you were born or not, and now we know, that you have been waiting for us almost as long as we've been waiting for you.  God's plans are so perfect baby girl, and we pray that you see that in your life.  And even though there are so many things we have missed in these 18 months, we are so looking forward to all the firsts we will get to experience with you.  There is so much in front of you! We love hearing stories of your little personality from people who have met you in the last 2 months, and seeing new pictures of you.  You are going to fit right in with us! We are so ready to meet you, and we are praying not too much longer goes by before we are getting on a plane to fly to meet you.  There is so much we don't know about the first 16 months of your life, but we are so grateful that you are in a place now where you are being taken care of and loved until we can get there.  Your nanny has so much love for you, you can see it all over her face in the pictures with you and her, and we are so thankful.  This is just one of the many graces in your life.  We love you sweet Ryah, and we are hoping to hold you soon!
Happy 18 months from across the world!

Her Name....

It is still so surreal that I am writing posts about our daughter.  We have a daughter! And I stare at her picture everyday, so read to get her home. Yesterday I spent the afternoon in her room organizing all of her clothes that her grandparents have already bought her, she is so loved, and she is going to be so spoiled!!  But, this post is about her name.  We are not allowed to share her ET name until she is legally ours and home, but we can tell you the name we are going to give her.  Aaron and I both feel strongly about changing her name and giving her a new identity as a daughter, as God did many times throughout scripture for his children.  We are still trying to find out the meaning of her ET name, because we will be keeping it as part of her middle name. Because of her age, her name is a part of who she is and is a connection to her culture and we don't want her to lose one of the few things she has from her home country.  The name that we have chosen to give our baby girl is:
Ryah Grace!
You would think that after waiting 2.5 years we would have the name ready to go, just waiting for a face, but we didn't.  We could not agree on anything we came up with, even when we saw her face, we still weren't agreed.  So we kept tossing around ideas, and I remembered that I liked the name Ryah.  When we looked up the meaning, we knew this was meant to be our daughters name.  Ryah means "flowing" in greek, so her name means "flowing grace", which we thought was very meaningful and appropriate for her little life and our journey to her in itself. We are already praying that her life will be a testimony to this name, and we thank God for giving her to us! We finally have a face and a name to be praying specifically for and we are overjoyed! Please keep praying for our paperwork from here on out- things are being translated and we are praying for a quick court submission and date! I will leave you with a picture of the sweetness of our girls little arms and legs- we can't post identifying pictures but I can show you her adorable hands! 

What's next?

Well, if you missed it- we have a daughter! See the post below.  I know many of you are wondering what is next and where do we go from here. Don't worry- I'm going to tell you :)

So- bringing our girl home is going to look a little different than we anticipated.  Because we found her as a waiting child- she is not with our original agency, which means we have had to switch.  But it's not really a switch, more like pressing pause with the other agency.  We will continue to stay on their waiting list, frozen at the same numbers we are now: 30 girl and 22 boy.  We will be frozen for one year and after that time we will be reactivated at those numbers and be back in the same position we were before we found our girl- just waiting.  Now, there are some things that have to take place in order for us to be reactivated, and there is always risk involved in doing simultaneous adoptions, because the things that need to happen may not happen in the time they need to- it's just the risk you take in international adoption.  But we firmly believe God led us to our girl- and that wouldn't have happened had we not been with our original agency, so we don't consider anything loss if the things don't fall into place the way they need to.  But we do believe we will have 2 Ethiopian babes when all is said and done :)
Now, since we had to start with a new agency- we are basically starting from scratch with them paperwork and money wise.  Good news is, this is not my first rodeo and after all the updates we had to  do I was able to get all the paperwork done in a week and it is already on its way to Ethiopia to be translated!!  So right now, we are, surprise! waiting some more! Haha! We should be used to this by now right?! So we are waiting for all of our paperwork to be translated and submitted to court.  Once we are submitted to the court we will wait a little longer and receive a court date!! This is something you can really pray for.  Our new agency's court time line is a little slower than our original agency(with them you wait longer on the front end but court goes faster, it's the opposite here).  We are praying that we receive a court date before the rainy season starts in ET, sometime around mid-August to September.  It could be a long shot- depending on how long everything takes- but this is what we are praying for! Now, I know this sounds like a long time, and it is, but every agency is different and we have done everything we can do on our end to get it done as fast as possible. After court we will come home, wait some more, and then take our second trip to the Embassy and this is when we will bring our girl home!! It will probably be about 2 months after court.  And all of this is a general time line because things can change in a moment's notice with international adoption as we have experienced many times!
 You can also be praying for the rest of the funds to come in that we need.  We have been able to use some of our grants and money we had in our adoption account to pay the first fees, and now we need to finish paying her fees for care and for travel.  We are trusting God to provide- and have no doubt that he will, as we have seen him do over and over again through this process.  We are filling out more grants and may do another fundraiser or two, so please be in prayer for that! And also, pray for our sweet girl.  Her world is about to be rocked- as is ours, and we are already praying for that transition.  Seriously, she is so precious! Can't wait to be able to share her picture! Thank you all for sharing in our joy and for your constant prayer and encouragement, it means so much!

That wonderful, amazing, beautiful day.....

 The day that we have been waiting 892 days for finally happened!!! We have seen our baby's face! I still can't even believe this is real.  There is so much prayer and faith involved in this process, that it feels so surreal when it actually happens after you have waited so long.  I'm writing this several days after it happened, because the weekend was a whirlwind but I don't want to lose the freshness of the moment. Things went down a lot differently than we imagined, but this whole process has been different than we imagined, including the end result!
      So, last Wednesday afternoon I was checking Facebook, and on our agency's page someone had posted about a beautiful little girl who needed a family.  There's a backstory here- in the adoption world, there are what's called "waiting children", which basically means that they are on a list, waiting for a family to pick them.  Normally it is because they are older or have some sort of special need, or there aren't families working with the agency that match their parameters. There are websites where you can view these children and we had been doing that for months now.  Our hearts were broken that there were children who needed families that were waiting, and we too were sitting on a list waiting for our baby for so long.  Over this 2.5 year process we have several things that we believe God had put on our heart.  So, in looking at these waiting children, none of them really matched that, and after the last door was shut on our latest inquiry a few weeks ago, we decided to stop looking.  We would finish the process the way we started.  And then last Wednesday happened.  So I clicked over to the website(technically breaking our rule!) to look at the little girl mentioned, and she was beautiful.  And directly below her I saw another little girl, who seemed to match our parameters.  I clicked on her profile and found out more about her, and found out that she did in fact match our parameters.  So I told Aaron about her, and he whole heartedly agreed we needed to get more information. So I quickly emailed the agency and got her file sent to us.  Mind you, all of this happened about 1 hour before our small group was meeting, and they just happened to be coming to our house that night, so we were a bit frazzled.  We talked with the agency that night, and they advised that if we still felt so strongly about her in the morning after praying through the night that we should send in the application.  So we asked our friends for prayer and wisdom.  I anxiously sat through small group while Aaron led, waiting so that we could talk more about this little girl. We talked and prayed into the night and we both felt that we should keep moving forward until God shut the door if she wasn't meant to be ours.
      The next morning we both got up super early and spent some time in the Word together, praying and seeking God's face and we still felt confident to move forward.  So we filled out the application and emailed it over to the agency.  About 2 hours later I got a phone call that said our application looked great and they were putting her on hold for us until we said yes or no!! Basically meaning they wouldn't give her info to anyone else until we gave them an official answer. I couldn't believe it- this was really happening! We were both in shock.  So I frantically made all the phone calls I needed to make to the doctors, social workers, etc. We had her information reviewed, even though we knew we would say yes either way, and then we called the agency that evening to give them our official yes!!!!!!! And they said, "ok, she's yours!" So, we have a DAUGHTER!!!!!! A beautiful, precious, amazing, 17 month old gift from God.  Seriously, I can't wait to show you her picture, she is adorable!  And it was so amazing to get her referral the weekend of Easter.  I had been praying all week that we would have some sort of news this week.  I mean, how amazing would it be to see our baby's face the week leading up to our holiday celebrating our redemption? And we did, and it was beautiful, and I am still walking around in disbelief that we have a daughter on the other side of the world, and she has no idea that her little world was just changed forever. But it has sweet baby girl, it has!  We are praising God for his goodness and faithfulness. He is just so, so good! And we are humbled that he chose us to be her parents.  And that's our referral story :) Nothing like we imagined, but so special! I will update tomorrow on what this means for the rest of the process.  We can't post her picture online until she's home, but if you see us in person we will gladly show her off! I truly believe this is where we are now, that I posted in my last post: "I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage, wait for the Lord" Psalm 27:13-14
He is good!

Baby girl,
We love you so much! We have been waiting so long to know who you are, and now we know and we cannot wait to have you in our arms! We pray this next part of the journey will be short and we can get you home soon.  Everyone is so excited to meet you! God has written such a beautiful story for you and his hand is so evident in your life already. We are honored to be a part of it.  
Love,
Mommy and Daddy

Pressing Through

This weekend, I sat in church and bawled my way through an entire sermon.  I'm not sure if I have ever done that before.  I'm not sure if a sermon has ever spoken so clearly to me before in my current situation.  In fact, it was clear to both my hubs and I.  We looked at each other through tear glazed eyes and knew that our Father was speaking directly to us.  We just started a new series on prayer.  Our pastor started preaching from Genesis 32, where Jacob wrestles with God.  He was wrestling with God for a blessing.  And then the pastor said, when was the last time you wrestled with God?  And he started talking about prayer, and how God's blessings are released in our lives through prayer, and most of the time, persistent prayer.  Um, yes, this is hitting pretty close to home.  He told the story of the woman who persistently went to the judge time after time, asking for justice, until he finally gave her what she wanted.  She had made her presence and her request known time and time again, she had faith that he would answer. And he did. So the pastor asked, does the judge know who you are? Does he know your request? Yep, checked that one off too.  These past few months have been discouraging to say the least.  We had an answer to our prayer, but not what we expected. And now, referrals have slowed down even more, seeming to be trickling out.  And we've been discouraged.  After all the prayers we have prayed over the last 2.5 years, we were beginning to wonder, is God even hearing us? Doesn't he love this baby more than we do? Why is he not home yet? Will this ever happen?  So this sermon could not have come at a more perfect time.  We are asking these questions, discouraged, and wondering.  And then we hear this sermon on persistent prayer?  Not a coincidence.  So, the sermon continues to go on, and then he says: sometimes, God appears hostile(or silent) in prayer so that we can resolve in faith to see his goodness. And I was reminded of a Psalm that I had just read the day before: "I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage, wait for the Lord" Psalm 27:13-14
And this is where he encouraged us to press through.  Press through in prayer, even when you don't get the answer you are looking for, or it takes a lot longer than you expected, press through.  God's blessings are there for us, we must press through.  Do not lose faith, wrestle with God, make your requests known.  We have been talking the last few weeks about how all of God's promises are "yes" in Christ.  Children are a blessing, and we know that God called us to to this, he promised that he would complete this adoption, so we are pressing through, we are claiming this blessing. The last reminder that the pastor gave us was that God is really the ultimate blessing that we seek.  So while we are pressing through, we pray that he gets the glory from this wait, and from our family.  We had gotten so focused on bringing our baby home, that we had let his glory slip our minds momentarily.  We know it's all because of him, and we can't wait to see even more glory revealed when we see that precious face.  So for now, we are resolving in faith to see his goodness, we are waiting, and we are pressing through.

Music for my soul

There's not much to post about these days in this waiting stage- we are still waiting to hear whether our update has been approved or not.  I was listening to some music earlier and just found myself longing for Africa and our baby. These are some songs of where my heart is at right now- longing, but knowing that God's love never fails and we will get there one day!

I have seen this video somewhere before- but randomly ran across it again today. It says so much of where my heart is right now. A father wrote this song waiting to bring home his children from Haiti- so beautiful!

These next 2 we sang at Created for Care and they have been stuck in my head since then- such truth and comfort:

Praising my Father- who we are hoping in today! Praying for good news soon!

January Numbers and Created for Care

This is our girl number for the month of January! We moved more than we anticipated- which is always exciting, especially this far into this journey.

This is our boy number! Slowly but surely these numbers keep going down.  Kids are being matched with families, and we are getting closer to seeing our baby's face! We are confident this is the year! 2013 will be the year we finally become parents.  It is sometimes discouraging to get on this blog and look at the ticker I have, ticking time away, and right now is says 2 years and 3 months waiting for our baby to come home.  This journey has been long- way longer than we ever anticipated, but it has been so good. We have been forever changed by this journey and I wouldn't trade it for anything! We have met some amazing friends along the way, and had the privilege of praying their children home, there's just nothing like seeing an orphan become a son or daughter.  Only God can do that, so amazing!  So while the wait is hard, and we would much rather have already had our love home, we continue to wait. We are waiting with anticipation- God is doing great things and we are trusting in our Father who is good.

 

This past weekend I had the awesome privilege of getting to attend Created for Care for the 2nd year! This retreat is such a blessing.  We loaded up a friend's van at the crack of dawn Friday morning for our road trip to Atlanta.  Fun times were had! We spent the weekend worshiping with 450 other women who's hearts are passionate about the same thing- God and adoption.  It was such an incredible privilege to be in a room where over 1000 children were represented-only God! This weekend was such a sweet time of encouragement for those of us still in the wait- to hear that God is faithful to his promises, we are not alone, our baby will come home, and God has big plans for him or her.  I bought the perfect shirt from the Ordinary Hero booth while there: a tiny little shirt that says "I'm gonna change the world" and we are believing that for our baby! God gave me a very specific burden for our adoption while there and we are excited to see it come to fruition.  We were encouraged in the Word- hearing about our God who sees us and meets us where we are, no matter where we are.  I was so blessed to share this weekend with the girls in my small group- and we are blessed to have each other in our lives, to be able to share our week to week with each other and have people who get it around us.  I wish I could recap every part of the whole weekend- but God just did so much! I already can't wait for next year- I have a feeling the weekend will take on a whole different meaning once we have our babe home.  This week we had our home study visit done for our move- so pray that it gets written and approved quickly! We are praying that is the last update we have to do! Thank you for continuing to walk with us on this journey, your prayers are much appreciated.