our dozen beautiful feet

This is just a quick and short way of celebrating:  ALL OUR PAPERWORK IS IN THE STATES AT THE APPROPRIATE AGENCIES!!!! Ahhhhhh.... Now, we are just waiting on the home study report to be finalized and mailed off to complete our dossier.  Oh. My. Word.  How did this happen so quickly?!  Thank you, Jesus.  Seriously.  And, in other good news, we’ve been told it’s an 8+ month wait for an infant girl. But I got a note from our coordinator yesterday saying the last four families have taken between 5-6 months each.  Ahh!  This may happen sooner than we thought!   In the coming days, I will be adding a “Be A Part” page to the blog.  We want you to be able to enjoy being a cheerful giver in whatever ways you can to be a part of this little girl getting a forever family.  So please check it out!  And let us know if you want to help make a home for her.  We’d love for you to be a part of our journey! ...

This week, something significant happened.  I feel like I know it.  On Monday, I was driving the kids to the grocery store. I was pretty overcome by an urge to pray for our daughter.  It will probably be at least a year before we even get to meet her, let alone bring her home.  But God just pressed on me to pray for her RIGHT THEN.  So I told the kids, and we prayed for her the rest of the way to the store.   All day long, I kept having this feeling... “pray for her! pray hard! pray now!”  It was May 9th, 2011.   As I’ve thought about it all the rest of this week, some many scenarios have run through my head.  What if she was born on Monday? Will we ever know?  I feel like if she’s even close to being the right age, we will claim that day as her birthday, feeling like the Lord gave it to her.  But it could have been any number of other things.  Maybe her birth mother is pregnant and is having complications and things...

Our social worker actually came this past weekend.  It actually happened.  This is nothing short of a minor miracle.   Our social worker is Australian, but lives in Bahrain.  We had all booked the tickets and everything for her trip.  Then two weeks before she was scheduled to leave, we realized she hadn’t thought to get a visa.  So she applies on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday is the weekend.  The following Monday, things got much worse in Bahrain (there’s been a lot of political unrest, google it, it’s bad), and their family decided they needed to leave for awhile.  I got a short message saying, “If you haven’t sent money yet, don’t. I’ll explain when we reach. Had to leave Bahrain.” or something like that.  We were a little concerned, obviously for their safety, but also for the future of our home study and entire adoption.  What did this mean?  Did she not get her visa?  Where are they going?  When will they go back?...