What's taking so long?

Things have been slow on the adoption front. Our initial excitement to see a picture of our baby girl has given way to weeks, and now months, of waiting on something to happen. It seems there is a bit of a hold-up administratively and until some things get resolved we won’t be able to go to Ethiopia for our court date. This time has been more difficult than I would have expected. At one time we would have expected to have her home for Christmas.

We would so appreciate your prayers. On Sunday night I preached that the prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much. This is a promise that is easy to miss as we read over verses in the Bible we have heard all of our lives. But it is timely for us to be reminded that God our Father wants us to bring our requests before Him. In Luke 18:1-8 the widow persistently brings her request before the unjust judge who eventually relents out of selfishness and annoyance. “Will God not bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them?” (vs. 7)

So we’re believing this promise and will be bringing our little Mae before the throne of our Father in Heaven constantly until we can bring her home. After all, He is a father of the fatherless and a judge for widows. (Ps. 68:5-6) As it says at the top of this page, “He sets the lonely in families.” We can be confident that we are asking Him to do something that He will be happy to do.

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It's a Girl

We knew it would come eventually. We’ve waited for weeks to hear word about the baby God had for us in Ethiopia. We began this process over a year ago now. At 3 o’clock yesterday afternoon as we prepared to go meet some dear friends visiting Savannah Erika decided that we wouldn’t hear this week. For Erika, weekends had become one long exercise in patience since referral calls only go out on weekdays.

Having greeted our friends at their hotel we headed for River Street. We hadn’t even had time to tell them where we were in the adoption process when the phone rang. Right there on River Street on a beautiful Savannah afternoon Erika looked at her phone and said, “I think this is it!” Lucy, Harry and our friends continued down the street as Erika and I listened with tears welling up in our eyes. We are now the parents of a 5 week old baby girl. Even as a massive cargo ship from who knows where in the world sailed into the port of Savannah we became aware for the first time of a little girl in Africa who is now our sweet daughter.

From there the afternoon was a whirlwind of excitement and fellowship with good friends. We walked around downtown Savannah telling each other of all the things God is doing in our lives and churches. After walking them back to their hotel to say goodbye we drove to my parents’ house where, for the first time, in the company of Grammy and Granddaddy, we saw our daughter. No doubt it will be a story that we tell her over and over again.

Sleep came slowly for Erika last night. This morning we’re busy filling out papers and contacting friends. We are blessed to be able to write a check for exactly the amount we need to accept the referral. If you remember, God provided almost exactly that amount at our garage sale late last spring.

This morning our prayers have changed. For months we have asked God for help as we believed He was leading us to adopt a child from Ethiopia. Now we pray for a specific baby girl that He would keep her safe in His loving arms until we can get there to bring her home.

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We're on Deck!

Great news today. We got official word from America World that we’re on deck. We could be just weeks away from receiving our referral. Like I said in my last post: things are happening and we couldn’t be more excited.

We started this process almost exactly a year ago. It has been a long process and at times things have seemed so quiet. People come up and ask for an update and all we can say is, “We’re still waiting.” You can only imagine the joy to hear that we’re truly getting closer to our goal of meeting our baby.

Thank you so much for the prayers and for those who are keeping up with us on this journey.

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Things Are Happening

Things are starting to move again toward our adoption. As of this past week we believe that we have moved into the top 10 on the list of those waiting to adopt from Ethiopia. We’re getting closer and closer to receiving our referral. Erika tells me that we’ll get a call from America World and then an email with a picture of our baby. She says that most families wait until they’re all together which means she’ll have to go crazy until I get home from work. There’s no doubt that there will be some exciting days ahead.

Regardless of where we are on the list we are seeing God continue to provide the money that we need to bring this baby home. Last Sunday our pastor called me into his office to “give me something.” We’ve been working on changing our insurance at the church and I assumed that he needed to give me some documents. Instead, he handed me an envelope with twelve one hundred dollar bills from an anonymous person. We're so thankful. We also have received a travel grant of $3000 from Show Hope.

I could not possibly have imagined the ways that God would provide for this adoption. Over and over again He has provided exactly what we needed.

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Huge Adoption Yard Sale

We’ve been on blog silence for the last couple of weeks due largely to our garage sale preparations. This last week has been very intense. We’ve been dealing with health problems, several unexpected schedule changes and the looming presence of jury duty. I had no idea how this garage sale was going to turn out. I was reluctant to begin with and as of Thursday night I had no idea what to expect.

All I can do right now is thank the Lord for His great kindness to us. First of all, I am so thankful for our church. So many of our brothers and sisters in Christ came out in a super-sacrificial way. Not only did they donate some really good stuff, dozens of people donated countless hours to making our sale the success it was. Right now we are amazed and humbled.

Second, He gave us wonderful weather and great crowds. The sale was set to start on Saturday morning. By Friday night when we left to get a little sleep we had already raised almost $1500.00.

Third, and I can hardly write this without tearing up, God provided us $4800.00 which is exactly the amount we need when we get our referral.

Right now above all I am thankful. I am thankful to God. I am thankful to my parents for all of their help this weekend. I am thankful to our church for their incredible love and support.

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Why International Adoption? Part 3

Erika says I’m becoming obsessive about creating short posts. I’ve got this thing right now about making sure that I communicate what I want to say before my reader gets bored and goes back to surfing facebook. This is going to be a short post but mainly because there’s just not that much to add to the point.

Why international adoption you ask? (Did someone ask this or did I just start answering the question?) My third respond is: Why not? I know. I’m not supposed to answer a question with a question. But we need to be careful that we don’t deem the things we love and do more sanctified just because they’re the things we love and do. There are many ways to adopt/serve orphans. Every way has positives and negatives. Hopefully in every case the goal is to serve God by serving these children. So it’s really not up to me to decide which way is best for somebody else.

From my experience it is best to be very settled in whatever you choose. Adoption itself isn’t for everyone and certain types of adoption won’t be right for everyone called to adopt. The process can be challenging at times and it is important in the midst of those challenges to be resolved that you’ve made a wise decision. So when it comes to how one intends to adopt I suggest you do good research, seek good counsel, and pray that the Lord will give you wisdom (trusting that He will! – James 1:5-6).

See also:

Why International Adoption? Part 1
Why International Adoption? Part 2

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Weekend Report

One nifty little feature of this process is that we’re able to follow our dossier as it travels to Ethiopia. They gave us the FedEx number so that we could keep track of the progress. As of yesterday morning it had arrived in Newark where it remains as of the last time we checked. Hopefully it will soon be on its way to some airport in Europe and then on to Ethiopia.

This has been one of the most eventful times of this whole process. It’s nice to be moving forward after having been stuck waiting to send the dossier away for so long. I’m sure we’ll be back to feeling like nothing’s going on soon enough.

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Why International Adoption? Part 2

One of the things that has driven Erika and I to international adoption is the overwhelming need. There are 143,000,000 orphans in the world today. That is a staggering number of children. Many of these children spend their early lives in the care of government institutions until they are deemed old enough. At that point most end up on the streets with little or no education or skills to support themselves. Many of these are forced to turn to prostitution and other illegal activity just to survive.

Last year Erika and I read a book that helped put some faces on these 143 million orphans. There is no Me Without You is a biography about a woman in Ethiopia who somewhat reluctantly became a caregiver to dozens of children. In Ethiopia the AIDS epidemic has decimated whole villages. Girls as young as 7 or 8 are left alone to care for their younger siblings. Haregewoin Teffera began sheltering children reluctantly after the death of her daughter. By the time she died in March of 2009 she had cared for over 400 children. Yes, her ministry to 400 children seems like a drop in the bucket compared to 143 million. But her love was hardly meaningless to those 400 little lives.

The same could be said (and has been said) to us. What good are you going to do for 143 million orphans? While it is true that this adoption won’t make a dent in the statistics, we believe that to one child who is created in the image of God we can make an eternal difference.

See also:

Why International Adoption? Part 1

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Why International Adoption? Part 1

It’s hard to maintain a blog. I’ve published 3 blogs now and typically ideas come faster at first and then become progressively rarer. Frankly, sometimes it’s nice to have an idea to blog about. Someone in the comments section of the post titled “DTE” raised a good question: Why adopt internationally? This is an excellent question and one that Erika and I spent a lot of time thinking about before we started the process of adopting from Ethiopia. So after this post I will begin a little series in which I will attempt to answer this question.

I am actually thankful that people are wrestling with adoption in general and international adoption specifically. Erika and I are praying that our experience in Ethiopia might raise awareness about adoption in our church and community. It is exciting to us that another family in our church has just recently begun the process of adopting domestically. If you’re reading our blog and have questions or concerns we would invite you to contact us personally or by making a comment. It’s actually nice to have someone express their concerns rather than force a smile, say, “That’s great!” and then turn away as fast as possible.

Let me start just briefly by addressing one of the specific questions raised by our anonymous commenter, “Why adopt a child from a godless country so far away?” Because God our Father adopted us to be His children even though we belonged to a godless country far away from Him. Distance and sin didn’t stop God the Father from bringing me into His family. And for this I am eternally grateful.

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DTE

We need how much right now? That was my response when Erika told me that we needed $7,200 to be able to take the next step in this adoption. We hadn’t been clear on exactly what was due when and so this amount was a shock to me. At that time our “adoption fund” had about $800. Last Wednesday Erika wrote a check for $7200 and sent it with all of our paperwork to AWAA to be reviewed. Our family coordinator, Nicole, told us on Thursday that our dossier looks good and will be sent to Ethiopia on Friday, April 23rd. We're excited to be done with the paperchasing stage and amazed that God provided so much money in such a short amount of time.

We are so thankful to all of you who the Lord has used to get us to this point in the adoption. Not very many weeks ago it did not seem possible that we would have all that we needed at any time in the near future. But God has been faithful to provide through many different ways.

As of Friday we’ll be DTE (dossier to Ethiopia). Now we begin this new phase of waiting for the good people in Ethiopia to connect us to a child. We still have to raise more money for some final fees and our travel costs. But we look forward to see how God will provide just as He has done until now.

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