SHOCKING COURT DATES

God is ridiculously good! We received a court date - NOVEMBER 7th!!! The judge approved our 2 Ethiopian court dates to be combined into 1 date!!! We are leaving to see our babies next week!!!!! Unreal. We are in shock.

Here's my best attempt at coherently communicating our news today...

• TODAY :: Received a phone call at 8:00 this morning from our case manager letting me know of our court dates. They normally just email this information, but because it's so last minute she needed to call me to see if it's even an option to go this soon. I screamed on the phone and then started crying! Of course, we said "if it's at all possible, we'll go!"
• November 4th :: We plan to leave next Thursday for Ethiopia. CRAZY! A very generous person has gifted us with miles to pay for our tickets. Overwhelmed by radical generosity.
  
• November 8-9th :: We will visit our kiddos for sure, but we'll spend as much time with them as we are allowed.
• November 10th :: COURT! In the morning, the judge will see the police or any bio family to confirm these children are eligible for adoption. We go to court in the afternoon to testify before the judge. We hope to become their legal parents on this day!
• November 11th :: We will fly out of Ethiopia.
• November 11-13th :: We will take a 48 hour layover (or so) somewhere in Europe together. We want to use this moment in time to wrap our heads and hearts around our new family as a couple. We feel like taking a couple days before we step back onto U.S soil, to baby preparation craziness will be good for our souls and family.
• Court to Embassy Timeline :: Our case manager told us this morning that it's "very realistic to believe that we'll have them home by the end of the year". It's been taking between 4-6 weeks between successful court dates and Embassy to bring them home. This reality is beyond me. Mountains being moved. Systems being changed. Policies revisited. Amazing act of God. Having our adoption finalized in 2010 has been our prayer for MONTHS, but I really stopped believing it could happen! We were told in August not to expect court dates until 2011. So all this is a huge mental shift...exciting and overwhelming and sooooo good!
  During this 4-6 weeks, our kiddos will receive their U.S passports, visas, birth certificates, immunizations, and prepared to come home.
  

Pray for the seemingly hundreds of things that we need to do between now and next Thursday. My mind is swimming. My face is glowing. My heart is racing. Amazing. THANK YOU for your prayers and support.

I can't believe I get to hold and kiss Baby T and Lil' A in less than 2 weeks. Shaking with amazement...

Orphan Sunday

I'm proud of our church for a lot of reasons a lot of the time. But I'm never more proud of our church then when we care for the least of these in the next generation. On Sunday, November 7th, I have a feeling that I will burst with pride and emotion as we take an entire day to honor, challenge, advocate for, encourage, and inspire our community to care for orphans globally through foster care and adoption.Orphan Sunday is a national day of awareness. This is the first year that Newsong is participating, and I'm gitty with excitment! "On Orphan Sunday, Christians stand for the orphan. We are a people called to defend the fatherless…to care for the child that has no family…to visit orphans in their distress.' [from their website]

If you are a part of the Newsong community, check out our new WEB PAGE for more info and resources. I know at Newsong that we are praying for MIRACLES to happen on this day. We are praying for hundreds of people to respond to the need through foster care, adoption, intentional prayer for how God would like them to respond, mentoring a child in the system, supporting those who are presenting adopting/fostering...

If you'd like more info for your community, visit Orphan Sunday's official WEB SITE.

Here's a sneak peak that will hopefully expand your heart:

Why Love Orphans? from Christian Alliance for Orphans on Vimeo.

So Far...

Our adoption agency asked if I could write our story for their blog. Of course, I said YES! The prompt was mildly overwhelming, "focus on what God has brought you through and taught you in the process". I should just point them to the previous 188 posts, but I will attempt to summarize our 3+ year journey. Here's what I submitted:

Our journey has been devastating. Our journey has been heart-wrenching. Our journey has been utterly transformational in our marriage, our finances, our mindset, our passion, our future. Our journey has been defined by waiting and loss and hope in God and disappointment and joy.

A thousand times we have said, "we would never wish this kind of pain on our worst enemy, but we'd do it all over again and we are beyond grateful." Our journey began with the dream of starting a family. It turned into the confusion of infertility and countless medical tests, procedures, and failures.

But long before we carried the title "infertility", God had also planted a dream in our heart for adoption. Throughout our infertility treatments, we knew that when we reached a certain point in our treatment, we would pursue adoption. When our last procedure failed, we immediately, whole-heartedly jumped into adopting a baby girl from Ethiopia.
We always knew Africa. We always knew a baby girl. But God shaped our dreams toward Ethiopia and for 2 little ones. Through the metaphor of a butterfly, God taught me about the transformation my soul needed from one form into another. I am a different wife than I was 3 years ago when we started trying to start a family. I'm a different pastor, friend, sister, and daughter. And I know I will be a different mother because of the challenge and transformation of this journey.

Today, we bite our fingernails (for so many reasons!) awaiting the arrival of the 2 beautiful little ones God's prepared since the beginning of time to be our children - and us their parents. In many ways the journey is only continuing, but we are different people now then we were when we began 3 years ago.

Grateful. Broken. Healed. Strong. Tender. Changed. We are...