It Takes a Whole Village...

For the past 6 weeks I've wanted to brag on our community a little bit because of how awesome they are! Seriously, our friends have walked us through the thick and think, pains and celebrations, every single seemingly meaningless detail - they have cared about. It moves me to tears to even think about how they have expressed such real love for us and our babies over the past 18 months.

When it came time to "announce" our referral, our small group was among the first round of people we were dying to tell. We found out about our referral on a Monday morning and planned on telling our small group on Tuesday night at small group. It was an agonizing 36 hour wait, but totally worth their reactions...

We made the announcement by presenting these t-shirts [below] to them. Brian calmly pulled each t-shirt out of a bag and excitedly announced that WE GOT OUR REFERRAL and they were finally going to be ah-gots [uncles] and ah-kasts [aunties]! Shock and awe and screaming and laughter and tears erupted! This is a picture of our amazing small group: Tony and Erin [left] and Loc and Christina [right].

After the intitial shock wore off, they wanted to know every single detail. This beautiful picture of me with my eyes closed is describing the past 36 hours and our kiddos. Erin got her kids out of bed to hear the news! You can see Christina here totally being Christina - thoughtful, introspective, totally crying, and overwhelmed at God's faithfulness.
The next morning I got to tell our staff at Newsong. I had already told my staff [minus Abe who was on vacation...SAD!], so when I made the announcement to our entire staff these guys ripped off their 2nd layer shirts to proudly display their new Ethiopian ah-got and ah-kast shirts.
This last pic is just another classic example of how supportive my girlfriends are. Christina and Erin held my hand through Babies R Us, carefully helping me select the 2 items I need from a walls of 100s of items. In a little over an hour, I registered for most everything we need for them. True love! NOTICE: I'm wearing my very own "eh-my-ay"/mama t-shirt that Erin got for my last birthday!!I have to say, we have the best village ever to bring our babies home. Though it breaks our heart not to have biological family in the area, our understanding of family is so much deeper and wider than blood...in more ways than one! :)

Paperwork Submitted!

YEAH! This is a great morning already! We got an email from our case manager this morning that our paperwork will be submitted to the courts on Tuesday morning. Guess when the courts open? TUESDAY!

Since we got our referral 5 1/2 weeks ago, we've been praying that our paperwork would be completed and on the judge's desk when the courts re-open! God's answered that prayer plus one: the courts were scheduled to open on the 30th, but are now opening on the 28th. THANK YOU JESUS!

This paperwork includes our dossier [huge stack of paperwork that we submitted to Ethiopia on 10/20/09] AND all of Lil' A and Baby T's paperwork. Our paperwork is together, submitted to the Ethiopian courts to officially, legally join their lives to ours. MIRACULOUS!

I'm beyond convinced and compelled that it's your prayers that are moving mountains and expediting our process. We've been praying that prayer - EXPEDITE - for over a year. It seems like God is answering that specific request these days. Please keep praying these babies home!

In the upper left-hand corner of the blog I'm posting the most important and current prayer requests. This is the request God answered this morning:

Our paperwork would be waiting on the judge's desk
when the courts re-open on September 30th [9/7/10].

NEXT?

2 court dates scheduled by the first week of October [requested on 9/24/10]
2 successful, Ethiopian court dates before the end of 2010! [requested on 9/7/10]

A Family Affair

This may surprise some of you, but I am a white girl from the Midwest. I like to think of myself as half Puerto Rican [because when 2 become 1 it only makes sense that I'm half Puerto Rican...thanks babe!], half black [mainly because of my love for rap/hip hop and Ethiopia], and half Asian [Korean probably fits me best, but I'm a melting pot of Asian ethnicities...thanks Newsong!]. I know those fractions equal more than "1", but I gotta lot of personality!

My entire extended family is very white [minus my Hispanic husband, a Jamaican-by-culture sister-in-law, an Aussie cousin-in-law, and a Guatemalan cousin-in-law] - born and raised in the corn fields of Central Illinois. I don't even remember knowing anyone with another color or from another culture until late in elementary school when we moved from the small Midwestern town we lived in to Dallas, Texas. Pretty much everyone I knew growing up looked like me, even though I sang "Jesus Loves the Little Children". The "red, yellow, and black" children I sang about in that song were more theoretical than real.
But God's doing a crazy cool thing in my family!!! I'm not sure where it started but loving the little children of the world has caught a hold in the hearts of our family. I have 12 cousins and 2 brothers and the call to care for orphans is taking off!

• My cousin, Erin, and her family are looking to adopt a little girl from China.
• My cousin, Jeff, and his family are adopting a special needs boy from China.
• My cousin, Todd, and his family are adopting a Downs Syndrome little boy from Eastern Europe.
• I know other cousins are sponsoring kids through organizations like World Vision and Compassion International.
• My entire family has been prayerfully and emotionally supportive as we've sought to adopt our 2 kiddos.
  
• A number of my family have financially supported our adoption in ways that have brought head shaking and tears.
  

God is growing our hearts for caring for orphans!!! I never would've imagined our homogeneous family becoming so colorful, but God often does what's beyond our imagination to grow our faith and his Kingdom. Ever so grateful today for my increasingly colorful and diverse family! I am utterly convinced that it will grow us so much as we experience God through orphan care and different cultures.

Excited and proud of the Getz and Neukomm familia today!!! What a fun journey we are on together.