AND YET ANOTHER GOD-STORY FOR THE DAY!

About a month ago we sent off our request to the State of Cal*if*ornia for John's birth certificate. Early last week we received a little post card stating they had received our request, were working on it, and we'd have it within 12 weeks.

12 weeks?!!

oh my! that is the longest I've ever heard of. My heart sunk, I nearly started to cry, and was just so sad. We were hoping to have our dossier to Ethiopia by Christmas, early December if at all possible...and if we had to wait 12 weeks just for John's birth certificate...well that meant our dossier wouldn't go until late Feb/early March.

I rested in the fact that God is in control and that if this was His timing, well, I would need to be OK with that.

I went ahead and called the office last week...spent nearly 2 hours waiting to talk to a live person. :)

As nicely as I could, I explained that we were requesting the certificate in order to adopt from Ethiopia and that 12 weeks seemed so long to wait, was there anyway to expedite the process?

The lady I spoke to was SO nice. so so nice. She explained that sadly, there was no way to speed the process up as well as that we probably wouldn't be waiting 12 weeks...the wait was more like 12-18 weeks because of the holidays.

She could tell I was dejected and so placed a call for me (how nice was that?!) and found out the county John was born in could provide us a certificate much quicker....so we sent off for that today.




BUT............GUESS WHAT JOHN FOUND IN THE MAIL TODAY?

His birth certificate.

Somehow.........his request was processed immediately.

I had to keep myself from jumping around the room like a crazy person. :)

Isn't that just like God to surprise us with fun things like that?

IN AWE OF WHAT HE IS DOING

This post has been swirling around in my head for a few days now and after our last 24 hours, I just have to share.

About 2 weeks ago I posted here that we were adopting from Ethiopia. Along with this blog post, I emailed our friends and family to share the news of our upcoming adoption as well as to inform them we were having a garage sale this coming Saturday, 10/31.


John and I were hesitant to even have a garage sale but thought we'd at least give it a whirl. As of yesterday, one of the stalls of our 3 car garage was completely full....so John is going to be parking our Yuk*on in the driveway so we can organize and expand into a 2nd stall of the garage.

Just today my sister called to say a friend of hers (and they're aquaintances of mine too) had some things for our sale and to give them a call so we could pick the stuff up. I just got off the phone with the gal and she said she was with a group of friends this weekend and one mentioned she had a pile of things she was taking to go*od *will...another said the same thing....so our friend mentioned "hey, I have a friend having a garage sale to benefit orphans in Ethiopia...would you want to donate your stuff to that?".

Guess what? they're bringing their things to us too!


And last night, we got home from our neighborhood's Hall*oween Carnival to find several boxes of things on our doorstep. Later found out they were from some new friends of ours from church....donating them to our garage sale too. You know the neatest thing? They are just a few weeks ahead of us in the Ethiopian adoption process. And yet they were selfless enough to donate to our endeavor.

AND -As if this wasn't enough, last night I placed a large order for coffee and cocoa at 963 Coffee. If you look at our blog -the upper left hand corner -there is a button for 963 Coffee (and cocoa). We became "affiliates" and a portion of every order will be given back to us and we will in turn, be giving that $ to YWAM's Ethiopian Adoption Ministry. We had several friends and family contact me, wanting to order coffee and cocoa thru our affiliation with 963 Coffee. What a HUGE blessing.

I am in awe and humbled at what He is doing.

IF YOU GUESSED.....

that we're adopting a young boy from Ethiopia, you'd be correct. :)


We are most of the way thru our portion of the paperwork and are waiting on the Dept. of Hom*l*land Sec*urity to process our I600a ("orphan" visa), then our paperwork can go to DC for authentication, then on to Ethiopia.

We are hoping our paperwork is in Ethiopia by December...Christm*as at the latest.

We are using YWAM's Ethiopian Adoption Ministry ( http://www.ywamethiopia.com/ cuz I couldn't get my copy/paste to work on this post!). Their blog is http://www.thatwemightbeadopted.blogspot.com/ -they have a really neat 3 minute video right at the top of the blog, showing the work they are doing for the widows and orphans of Ethiopia.

We've already fielded alot of questions about:another adoption? why Ethiopia and not China again? have you thought about how this will impact Elizabeth?

So let me answer a few of those now. :)

*yes, another adoption and no, we didn't just wake up one day and say "hey let's adopt again". :) We have been praying over this decision consistenly for over a year now.

*Ethiopia instead of China was a tougher decision than some might think. We truly believe this is the Lord's leading and it did take awhile for me to let go of MY wanting Elizabeth to have a sibling that looks like her. When we made the decision to start another adoption, we fully thought we were heading back to China for a boy....then thru a series of circumstances, God halted that path and continued to put Africa on our hearts. We started researching various African adoption programs and felt that the Ethiopian one fit us the best.

I do still want Elizabeth to have a sibling that looks like her. She seems to struggle enough with things, I don't want her to feel "different" in our family...so we'll just have to see how the Lord handles that one.

*have we thought of how this will impact Elizabeth? YES. She is one of the main reasons we didn't start this 2nd adoption sooner. We wanted to make certain we were on our way with attachment counseling, that she was getting better, and that we felt she could handle a sibling.

let's face it, any child is going to have some adjustments to make when a sibling is added -that's just life. With Elizabeth, we are accutely aware of how this will affect her, that this will probably set our attachment work back a little bit.....BUT we also have 9-12 months before a sibling is added.....9-12 months to continue to help her heal and give her tools to better deal with her insecurities...we also are going to be heightened to her cues of insecurity when the new son/brother comes home and will hopefully be able to act upon those cues so as to minimize her insecurity.



For those familiar with the China process, the Ethiopian one is a bit different. We still do our paperwork and submit it to the country and then receive a referral. From here, the process is a bit different. The simplified version is: Once we have been matched with a child, our paperwork will go to court where the child will become legally ours....then we get an Embassy appt and travel to Ethiopia to meet our child, go thru the Embassy process, then bring him home.

We will have medical information and pictures of our boy, but we can not post them publically until we have passed thru court, because he will not legally be ours. So, I will post when we get a referral but no pics...isn't that a bummer?! But as soon as we pass court you can bet your bippy a big ole pic will be on the blog. :)

The kids are all very excited, Andrew especially. Since Elizabeth came home, Andrew has been praying for a younger brother, then he added in to the prayer "an older brother too" and now his pray is "a younger brother, an older brother, and a brother my same age". :) He may have to wait awhile to get ALL of those requests, but we love how consistent he has been in praying...for nearly 2 years.

Thanks for hanging on for this long post, but wanted to get all the info in 1 instead of having to do 2 or 3!

We'd appreciate your prayers as we go down this road again. For the Lord to prepare us and ready us for a new child and sibling...and for our boy in Ethiopia -for God to comfort his little heart and prepare it for the huge change he has coming.

2 HINTS

the kids, led by Andrew, have decided to "donate" all of the $$ they earn from doing their chores towards a certain endeavor. the $$ is being collected in a baby bottle. :)

Becca with our 2 most recent garage sale finds....she is rocking her new baby boy in her new recliner rocker...both the baby and the rocker were found just this weekend and fit perfectly into what is going on around here. :)

WHAT COULD THIS MEAN?

*making copies of our last 3 years taxes

*getting "certified" copies of such things as birth certificates and our marriage certificate

*tweaking our autobiographies

*getting passport photos

*updating my passport

*spending ALOT of time with our bank notary

*spending alot of time in prayer


any guesses? :)

hints will follow soon so check back for 2 really cute photos. :)

but for now I leave you with a darling pic of Miss Elizabeth.

We spent nearly 5 hours yesterday driving all over our town -getting our marriage certificate (which took over 30 minutes cuz they moved the files) and then nearly 2 hours trying to get my birth certificate AND Elizabeth's new US birth certificate. They couldn't find E's birth certificate on file for nearly an hour so I lost my original place in line...then when my number was finally called again, they lost where they had originally found her file. OY VEY!!! I was on the verge of tears cuz it was past 1pm -none of us had eaten lunch, nor did I bring snacks INTO Vital Records cuz I didn't expect it to take so ridiculously long,.....the kids actually did better than I did. They played happily and were such troopers.

Once we had what we needed (which ends up just being a receipt cuz they couldn't GIVE the certificates to me -they have to mail them...UGH!) we raced to the nearest fast food joint, inhaled lunch, and then set off on the 45 minute drive back home.

I couldn't get a pic of Becca cuz she sits right behind me, but suffice it to say, she looked just like Elizabeth -EXHAUSTED! :)