Good News

For a very long time, our prayer has been "EXPEDITE". God is now answering it in unprecedented ways!!!!

We heard this from our agency today:

"Once [our agency in Ethiopia] has all the documents from a successful court date - which can take several weeks - we can schedule your Embassy date two weeks from the time we submit your documents to the Embassy! We no longer have to wait for the grass roots investigations to occur, we no longer have to wait for the Embassy to give us a green light for families to travel. This will make scheduling Embassy dates much easier. This is indeed good news."

Basically, this means that our wait time from court to Embassy dates [the 2 different trips we have to make] have been shortened by as much as a couple weeks! Perhaps from 8-10 weeks down to 6-8 weeks. This is amazing!!!!!

Please keep praying. We received confirmation today that our paperwork is at the courts and it could take anywhere from 10 days to weeks to get our court dates scheduled. Please continue praying that our 2 scheduled court dates by the end of next week!!

As I posted on my Facebook status tonight, "It's hard to describe the love I feel for these 2 Ethiopian beauties whom I've never met and didn't come from my womb. Supernatural."

What 1 Year in a Church Can Do...

This past year at my church, Newsong, we've been on mission to raise money, awareness, and relational partnership with our friends in Malawi. God's done a ridiculous amount in the hearts of our people toward the widows, orphan, poor, and lost of Malawi. This 4-minute video shows an inside look into what has happened in the past year. This is cause to CELEBRATE! The videos stories and facts challenges me, humbles me, inspires me, and definitely moved me to tears. Please check it and and share with a friend!

Newsong Church Unleash Campaign - Malawi Update [Newsong Irvine | 09.27.2010] from Newsong Church on Vimeo.

If you want to know more about the organizations we've partnered with or how Newsong has arranged ourselves toward this kind of transformation, I'd LOVE to share more. Email me or comment here and we'll talk!

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep...

...I pray the Lord my babies keep.

As Brian and I fall asleep tonight, the courts in Ethiopia will re-open and our paperwork will make it's way on to the judge's desk. We are praying for expedient attention to our file and swift court dates assigned.

While we've been told not to expect court dates until 2011, our faithful family and friends have been praying in faith, hope, and love that we'd have our babies home by the end of '10. I lack faith in that reality, but if you also feel compelled to pray that please do! He can move the mountains and anything is possible with God. I do believe that [just not for our family, I guess].

In other news...this weekend I received 4 more pics of our Ethiopian beauties from a mom picking up her son at the same orphanage our kids are at! Included in these pics were the first pictures I got of our kiddos playing together!!!!! Of course, I cried.

She wrote from Ethiopia: We saw your sweet kids. Oh my. They are precious. I just can't tell you. They are sooooo sweet. They had them in the upstairs room, the same room where we spent our third day with Isaiah on our first trip. They were sitting on the rug, and the nurse and nannies had them sitting close with some toys. they asked your son to share with your daughter, and he did it right away. So sweet!!! His eyes. . . yes, you know how striking they are.

They had to wake Baby T up from her nap, so she was a little groggy, but she was still just precious.

My cup overflows...