Marked By LoveMark me with your sign of love. Plan only the best for me, God!

Two days ago, I think the neighbors were wondering if I was crazy or if I won the publishers clearing house sweepstakes because I was running up the driveway waving an envelope with the final two documents we have been waiting for for our dossier. So yesterday we passed our completed dossier on to Nikki (who has been a huge help and answered all our calls) who sent it to Washington DC and it should be on its way to Ethiopia next week. Once it is in Ethiopia it will take about two weeks to get translated and then the wait for a court date begins.

As you can imagine we are so excited and cannot wait to bring our girl home. Please pray for us as we still have a lot of bills coming our way. If you would like to help us out we still have bags and shirts available (we can also do kid shirt sizes).

Waiting and Dependent,
CJ

Well CJ and I just went on a very over due date afternoon. One of my husbands favorite things to do in the world is to go see a movie. There’s something about the large screen and crisp sound that causes him to act like a kid again. Seriously, a few minutes before our babysitter arrived, he was singing in our kitchen, “We’re going to a movie….we’re going to a movie!”

The movie we saw was “The Blind Side”. Awesome movie…..everyone should see it! Really hits home for us. I cried through the real family photos at the end. It’s so beautiful the difference having a family makes to a kid. It makes me so thankful for my family, and so privileged that we get to provide a family for a child that doesn’t have one.

If I could sum up in one word what God is trying to teach us it would be:  Trust.

Today, I’ve been reading chapter 7 in Crazy Love by Francis Chan.  He’s talking about the disciples in Luke 9:3.

“Jesus sent out his 12 disciples and told them to “take nothing for the journey-no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra tunic.”  Why did Jesus do this?  Jesus was forcing his disciples to trust Him so they would have nothing else to fall back on!  This place of trust isn’t a comfortable place to be; in fact, if flies in the face of everything we’ve been taught about proper planning.  We like finding refuge in what we already have rather than in what we hope God will provide.”

Wow this hits home with CJ and I.  Our whole lives we’ve tried our hardest to be “proper planners”.  Now here me when I say, I am definately not against proper planning, but the best place to learn how to trust is when you don’t have anything to fall back on.

-Katie

We came across this great opportunity to raise some money for our adoption.  If you shop online this Christmas, click on the link below, choose your favorite stores available through “onecause” and select Marked By Love as your cause.  A portion of every purchase you make will go toward our adoption!

Shop Now to Support
Marked By Love

This video will help you understand how difficult life is in Ethiopia. The video is about 45 minutes long.

Click Here to watch

Thank you all for your excitement in this process with us!  I was thinking I should explain what the time frame looks like now that we have completed our Dossier.  This basically means that most of our work is done and the waiting begins.  It can take 3 months for our dossier to get approved by Ethiopia; 6 more weeks to get a court date; and 6 more weeks before we travel to pick her up.  We are hoping to bring her home sometime in Spring???  Ya never know with these things though….anything can happen!    If you are getting this e-mailed to you, you will know the play by play as it unfolds!

On a more personal note, CJ and I were looking through old pictures today of all the people who have been a part of our lives over the years.  What precious memories we have with so many.  Thanks so much for leaving a “mark of love” on our lives and being a part of this journey with us.  We love you!

Our dossier is finally complete!  It will be sent to Ethiopia for translation and then we get approved to adopt an Ethiopian child.  This is a big milestone in the adoption process.  After we put this in the mail tomorrow, we will get matched with our daughter hopefully soon and then wait.  And Katie will be looking for a job!  :)

CJ called my today while I was at Walmart…he forgot to tell me this morning that he had a dream about our daughter last night!  I thought I would share it with all of you (with his permission of course)…

We were in a large building and our daughter was somewhere in the building too.  The person said we could go see her, but not together.  When they left I said to CJ, “Come on let’s just go sneek in (of course I would!).  She’s never seen you before so I’ll walk up to her and you just act like you are a stranger and just walk by.”  When we walked in the room our daughter wasn’t facing us.  She turned around and was all dressed up really cute and looked so beautiful!  CJ was suppose to act like he didn’t know her, but instead, when he saw her, he couldn’t help himself and started crying because she was so beautiful and had to run out of the room!

What a beautiful dream God gave him.  He is preparing our hearts for our new daughter!

Who knew so much could have happened since my last post, but I shouldn’t be surprised cause that’s how God works….mysteriously! This morning we had our last home study meeting, and in a matter of 3 days, we spent about 8 hours with our social worker digging into our marriage, childhood and basically the most personal parts of our lives.
To make a long story shorter here’s the amazing news…. instead of taking 2 months to draft the home study, she thinks it should be done in about 2 weeks!!!! Woohoooo!
In the meantime, we are heading up to St. Paul, MN on Monday to be fingerprinted by Homeland Security and will start diligently finishing up our dossier so that when the home study is complete, our dossier will be complete as well and can be looked over and translated by the Ethiopian government!
All that to say, we are one step closer in this long, tedious process to adopt our daughter!

Katie

We have already had many ups and downs in this adoption process thus far, but I won’t get into all of them. I think I’ll start with the good news first…
We should be done with our home study this Thursday! We have been so bummed because our last 2 appointments have been cancelled, leaving over a month between meetings with our social worker, and now this coming Thursday we will have a 5 hour appointment and hopefully finish up our home study….Amazing news!
Here’s the bad news….
Our social worker is very backed up and won’t be able to write up a draft of our home study for about 2 MONTHS! This is so disappointing!
CJ and I try to keep reminding each other that this process……all of it…..is in God’s hands, not our own. And so, we’ll wait……and wait some more.

Trying to sit still-

Katie