Adoption - Next Steps

Many of you have asked what the remaining part of this process will look like. Here is an overview to give you a better idea!

Step 1: We will receive a call from the adoption agency saying they have kids ready to be adopted. (We have NO idea of how long it will be until we get this phone call. It could be one month or 10 months or...)

Step 2: We will schedule our Ethiopian court date and purchase plane tickets for our first trip. Usually, a court date is set a month or two after we get our referral.

Step 3: We will fly to Ethiopia for our court appearance. We will meet the children while we are there and get to leave them with small gifts and pictures. Then, we have to fly home while the court processes our paperwork and prepares the children for immigration to the U.S.

Step 4: About six weeks after we get home from the first trip, we get back on a plane and fly to Ethiopia to finalize the adoption and bring our children home!

Then...we try to figure out how to be parents! :)

Our New Beginning

It was never a question of "if" but "when" for us. When we were dating, we frequently talked about adoption -- When God would provide the opportunity. Where we would adopt from. How many children we should adopt. What that will look like for our family. The more we talked, the more excited we became about starting our family through the beautiful gift of adoption.

About six months before we got married we took a trip to Tanzania with a wonderful group called Trekking for Kids. (http://www.trekkingforkids.com/). We worked with children from an orphanage in Moshi, at the base of Kilimanjaro. It was there that we got to see each other's hearts for orphans lived out. The majority of the orphanage was populated with young boys who were drawn to Josh. They played soccer with him, sat on his lap, held his hand and fell asleep in his arms. One boy in particular, six years old, captured both of our hearts and we wanted so badly to take him home with us. It was so hard to pull away after several weeks with the children, not knowing if we were ever going to see them again. A big piece of our heart was left in Africa, and we knew that someday we would make the journey back.

That day is coming soon!! Fourteen months after our wedding, we started the process of adopting siblings from Ethiopia. Exactly five months later, we are done with part one of this journey - the paperwork - and finally on the waiting list.

There are an estimated five million orphans in Ethiopia alone. We know that God has our two children picked out for us and is preparing all of our hearts to meet each other and grow as a family. We are waiting with all the patience and faith we can muster, and want share our adventure with you.

Adoption was a journey we used to dream about and now, with every ounce of our emotional, spiritual and physical being, are finally living.

This is our new beginning!