Prayer Request!

Hi everyone,

We got a little update on our case this morning.  It seems that we are missing one tiny bit of information, and the person who can fix it is out of work for training and his return date is unknown.  Major bummer :(  This is all that is standing between us and getting submitted to court.  So, would you all please pray that this issue would be resolved soon?!! We are still praying that we can make it to court before they close in the next few months.  Our hearts are longing to meet our girl! She got our care package last week and finally got to see our faces! It is so surreal that she is now holding things that we sent her!  We also got some video from the friend that I mentioned was traveling, such a precious gift! But our girl needs to be home! Thank you for praying with us, it means so much to have friends all over praying our girl home! I'll leave you with a picture- she's holding the pictures we sent her, my heart!! Can't wait to show you her sweet face!

Give1Save1/Pure Charity

Alright friends, I have a little something I want to share with you, and I hope you think it's as awesome as I do!  I want to tell you about a little project called Give1Save1-Africa.  This project is so great!  It's a blog started by several women who have a heart for helping families bring their children home through adoption- and I love it!  As most of you who have been reading this blog for a while and know our story know- adoption is expensive, it's hard, and it's long!! And just when you think you've got everything figured out- God shows you His plans, that are so much better than anything you could have dreamed up.  And that is exactly what happend on our journey to our sweet Ryah! So here is what their blog says about what Give1Save1 is:

                                                                          

GIVE 1

Every Monday I’m going to ask you for a dollar. I’m going to tell you who it’s going to and what it’s being used for. We’re mostly funding adoption for the people, by the people. We’re just going to rain down a crazy blessing on a family, organization, orphanage, or project and we’re going to do it every week. We’re going to get huge. And the world will be changed for lots of people because of your generosity. That sounds exciting, doesn’t it?! Let’s do it.

I’ll tell you who we’re sponsoring and where to send your dollar. Then once you’ve donated your dollar spread the word to get some more dollars in here. If you have a voice, an email account, a blog, a facebook page, a twitter account or a pinboard USE IT! The only way we can make a big difference is to make it viral!

SAVE 1

And your dollar will be saving and restoring lives in all kinds of ways. Removing a child from an orphanage gives that child a family and a future, something everyone needs. It also frees up a bed in an orphanage for another orphan. Your dollar will change lives and save lives in ways you may never know.

So, every week they feature a new family's video in an effort to help them raise money for their adoption, and the goal is to get the video to go viral and have tons of people donate.  All they ask is that if you watch the video-you donate a dollar and share it with someone else so they can donate, and most people will give more than a dollar, but one dollar is all they ask.  We can all spare a dollar to help those in need!  One dollar can change a life- it's that simple! What an awesome and easy way we can all be involved in God's command to care for orphans.  I have seen several families have their fundraising efforts funded through this blog and I just think it's an awesome blessing!

Now, in the last month, Give1Save1 has also teamed up with Pure Charity to do their fundraising.  Pure Charity is an awesome organization that allows families a tax deductible way to give to projects that they would like to support.  You can shop pretty much anywhere you normally would online and get a percentage of that money back in your giving fund to go towards whatever project you choose, and there are so many amazing projects to choose from!  It's pretty awesome and we will definitely be taking advantage of this great opportunity! Check out this video:

Rewards Network Promo from Pure Charity on Vimeo.

Also check out this post to see an adoption friend of mine explain how this works with adoption fundraisers!

Now, if you've made it to the end of this post, you may have guessed that this was the opportunity I hinted about in my last update post.  And you can see that I think all this is awesome-from the obnoxious amount of times I've used that word in this post :)  Keep checking the blog this week for further updates, and you may just see some familiar faces on these sites soon! And please head over to Give1Save1 today to check out this week's family!

Update

Well, there's not really much to update on at this point, but I did have a few things to share and some things you awesome readers can be praying about!  We are currently still waiting to hear that we have been submitted to the ET court.  I received an email last week with a general sort of timeline on how we can expect things to go from here.  It says that it generally takes about 8 weeks for all the paperwork  that is needed to be gathered and submitted to court, but it could take longer.  We are sitting at week 7 right now! Talk about suspense- it is driving me nuts!! We know that it could take longer, but would you join us in praying that we would be submitted by the end of the month?  It is totally doable- God is able and bigger than any timeline we are given.  If this happens, we should be in ET sometime this summer for our court date!! So please keep praying for that as well- we are SO ready to hold our sweet girl!  Speaking of, I met a new friend last week who is also here in Raleigh, and also has a daughter in the same care center as ours, and they are leaving for court in 2 days!!! So excited for them to meet their girl- and they are also taking a little package I put together for Ryah- she's finally going to get to see our faces!! Words can't even describe how awesome it is to have other families love on our girl while we aren't there and let her know we are coming, this also means we will hopefully have some new pictures and video soon!! Please pray for safe travels for this family!
On the fundraising front- we are waiting to hear back from a few grants we have applied to- which will hopefully happen in June as well.  And we are also waiting(this theme just continues!) to hear if we have been chosen to have our story featured on a blog that will hopefully be an awesome opportunity to share our story and raise funds.  We had a video done for this by one of hubby's CFA friends and he did an amazing job- I can't wait to show it to you!  So, that's where we are right now- lots of waiting and praying to be done! And while I'm doing that I'm occupying myself by trying to finish girlie's nursery! It's coming along nicely! I was reminded this weekend that there are so many people praying for our girl and our family that we aren't even aware of, all because of this little blog.  I have no idea who and how many are reading this, but we are forever grateful for the prayers and will have one amazing story to tell our daughter one day, thank you!

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