Long time no blog

It's been a while since I have been able to write an update. We have been super busy and for a while we had no internet.

    First of all, YES we are still in the process of adopting! We are still in the waiting stage and have not received any updates lately.  Allan has completed his physical and I have mine next week for the home study and then we start updating our other documents in June. We found out that last year Allan was misdiagnosed and he does have Tuberculous so he will be taking medication for 9 months! We are unsure how this news will affect our home study.
    We have finally moved into our 3 bedroom home! We are so glad to finally be in and this will help us with the home study because our child in Ethiopia has to have a room of their own.
     Well, we have officially given up on that puzzle we were working on for the adoption. We are going to start looking for a different one and transfer all the names over to the new puzzle. Apparently, we picked a REALLY hard puzzle, we had a lady who does puzzle all the time give it a try and she couldn't even do it! It's a disappointment but we will just move on and try a different one!
     We do not have any fundraisers lined up at the moment, but we are looking at doing another Online Auction in the coming months.
    Hopefully I can get back into updating the blog more often now that we are settling into our new home! Please join us in prayer for our little one and for all the children waiting on their forever families.

Patience...

Wikipedia defines Patience as the state of endurance under difficult circumstances, which can mean persevering in the face of delay or provocation without acting on annoyance/anger in a negative way; or exhibiting forbearance when under strain, especially when faced with longer-term difficulties. Patience is the level of endurance one can take before negativity. It is also used to refer to the character trait of being steadfast.

 This adoption process takes a lot of patience! I feel like we are always waiting... I know God has great plans for us and our family and we have to be patient but sometimes it is hard. We have been looking into moving into a bigger house since we found out we were expecting a baby in addition to our child in Ethiopia. It took months to get land and now it is taking months to find out if we are approved for a home loan. I know if it is God's will then it will all work out.

We decided to try and get ahead on all the paperwork that has to be updated starting in January. I printed out pages and pages of documents and filled out what I could. I left the address blank in hopes that we will be moved into a bigger home for our growing family by then! Hard to believe it's almost time to renew our home study again. This year has flown by! Everyday brings us closer to bringing home our little one from Ethiopia!
If we are not moved into a bigger house by the time our home study in April, she will have to come back again when we do move and it will cost us a lot of unnecessary expenses that could be used for other documents and has the potential of delaying our referral process.

I just continue to pray and trust that God knows exactly what He is doing. I pray for our child waiting for us in Ethiopia and all the children waiting on their forever families...

Baby Shower

God has blessed us with so many great friends! Two of our good friends threw us a baby shower yesterday and it was great! We have two babies on the way and it meant so much for them to include our adoption into the baby shower. I'll post pictures below, but they set up a table and asked people to bring a book for our baby in Ethiopia and had a money tree where they could put donations. That was so special to us and we appreciate everyone who continues to support us on this long journey!  All I can say is God continues to bless us with the amazing people He puts in our lives and we are thankful for how He uses them to teach us things.