Adoption!

So I am really bad at updating our blog!! And for the most part I just use it to post pictures of our girls. But I love reading everyone else's blogs and hearing what's going on in their lives! So I've decided to try and be better at just journaling on our blog also!

As many of you know we are currently in the process of adopting from Ethiopia. (I read a lot of blogs that are about adoption also and that has made me want to blog more about this part of our life.) A week an a half ago we received a referral for a 3 year old little girl! She is so cute and looks like a little sweetie! We are excited to go and get her, but don't know when that will be yet. Patience is not something that I'm good at, so this is hard for me :)

So I thought I would share a little about why we chose to adopt. Adoption is something that has always caught my attention, but having our own biological children I never gave it too much thought until I became involved in the orphan ministry at our church. Through this ministry I learned more about the orphan crisis in the world today, and it truly is a crisis! I learned even more by going to some Bethany (our adoption agency) dinners and meetings. I learned that there are more than 143 million orphans in the world today and that as Christians we are called to care for these kids! Christ tells us over and over to care for the orphans, the fatherless, the poor, the helpless. He tells us that whatever we do for the "least of these" we do for Him. And to me no one is more helpless than a child who has no one to care for them. I was convinced right away that adoption was something we needed to do, it took Tim a little longer :) We've just realized that we have so much! God has always provided what we need. We knew that if we could help just one orphan that was something we needed to do! In August 2008 I was able to go on a mission trip to Jamaica and work with some orphans first hand. While there I was surprised at how much these kids had. They had phones and access to the internet and we brought them so much stuff! Yet with all this "stuff" they still were hurting. All they wanted was a family, someone to take care of them! So after that trip we filled out our adoption application.


So here we are today. Things have actually happened faster than we were expecting. We were told the wait would be about 12-14 months before getting a referral and we only waited 6 months! Ethiopia is changing the way they do somethings, which may require us to travel twice. I'm praying that we will make the cut off and only have to travel once, but we will see what happens! Whatever happens, we know that we have a little girl waiting for us to bring her home! And we are so excited! So there we go.....my first attempt at being a better blogger! We'll see how it goes!