New President and lots of Praises!

First off, the winner of the 2nd Presidential election in the Democratic Republic of Congo was finally announced today: Joseph Kibala, the current president, was re-elected by a majority of the vote. However, please keeping PRAYING for the DRC, because the opposition leader who ran against him is rejecting the results and has declared himself as president, according to the BBC.  This has a lot of people worried about violent protests. Your prayers for peace & God's protection of the innocent are much appreciated!!

In other news, we have been PRAISING THE LORD this past week or two for so much answered prayer in lives of our brothers and sisters in Christ!

*We're praising God with our friends Weyland and Katie who've been waiting years for their 2nd domestic adoption, and they are at this moment on their way HOME with a baby boy! They had around 17 birth mothers look at their profile and then change their mind and not pick them to adopt their baby. Heartbreaking. But our entire church family at Immanuel has been crying out to God on their behalf and He has answered in His timing! He has given them a son!

*We're praising God with another couple from our church who are currently in Ethiopia with their kiddos, hoping to bring their children home by Christmas. We are PRAYING God would do it and work out every single detail for His glory!

* We're praising God with our friends, April and Everett, who are in Ukraine right now hoping to rescue 3 precious children!! We're praising God for the way He has worked out the details so far and that they were able to meet their 2 boys just the other day!! (You can read April's super sweet post here.)

* We are also Praising God for the encouraging posts we've been reading on David Platt's (author of Radical) blog! We are rejoicing in their beautiful story of adopting a little girl from China! Their story and the pictures make me so excited for the day that we get to go to DRC to bring our children home!

We also have gotten little tidbits of information lately that help us know how to PRAY for our adoption more specifically. So if you are out their pleading with God on our behalf, (we are SO thankful for you) here is how you can be praying right now:
1. Pray that God would grant us a referral for a little girl before we get baby R's birth certificate!!!
(Our attorney is changing the way he's doing referrals slightly,so that he isn't giving a child as a referral until he has their abandonment decree in hand. This is probably wise, and will be better for families coming after us. So when we get a referral for our little girl she will already have her abandonment decree & we can hopefully get her birth certificate in time for court.)
2. Pray for continued protection of baby R and our little girl from harm, disease, neglect and hunger. And pray that we could bring them home soon! We're hoping by some time in the spring to be home as a family of 5. =)

"The Lord is righteous in all his ways
 and kind in all his works.
The Lord is near to all who call on him
to all who call on him in truth.
He fulfills the desire of those who fear him;
he also hears their cry and saves them.
The Lord preserves all who love him,
but all the wicked he will destroy."
Psalm 145:18-20

Calling on the Lord,

PRAY WITH US

No referral for our little guy yet. Nothing too exciting on our adoption front yet... but our Director, Sue, from Celebrate Children is in Ethiopia right now!!! And we are praying that while she is there, she will be given the letter she needs to get many newly adopted children out of UNICEF's custody and into CCI's Transition house so their parents can come pick them up SOON!!
{If you aren't aware of how ANTI-ADOPTION UNICEF is, just read this article! It will help you think twice about EVER giving any money to them ever again!! As she says in the article,"Somehow in the process of developing a system to eradicate child suffering the very people that system is designed to help—orphaned children—have been forgotten." Go read it!!}

Please pray with us specifically for our friends Justin & Bonnie and the 4 other couples they traveled with just weeks ago!! They passed court and are officially the PARENTS of these precious children made in the image of God!! PRAY that they would get an embassy date soon and and be able to return to Ethiopia to bring their children HOME sweet HOME forever very soon!!!

We are also PRAYING for Sue's trip to Congo next week! She will be going from Ethiopia to Congo to meet with our Attorney, check on our children, and hopefully get lots of pictures and even VIDEO!!! We are PRAYING that we would get a referral for our little boy BEFORE she leaves CONGO so we will be able to get pictures & video of him too!! She'll also be giving our care package to "Little Sister"!!! {We went ahead and sent one to "Baby Brother" too, just in case!!}

Thank you for praying with us and for helping us bear one another's burdens as Christ-centered families labor to rescue orphans!

Christmas morning

We received a Special Delivery in the mail today from our Adoption Agency!

Opening that box was like being a kid on Christmas morning!!! It was so exciting as I pulled out each book and looked at the titles, just imagining all that we are about to learn to better equip us to parent our children, and saw the sweet soft monkeys and adorable shirts. I am so excited as I sit here looking through it all! CCI calls it our "Adoption Education Toolbox," but it looks way more FUN than any tools my husband has!

Those 2 little monkeys caused a lump in my throat... as I look at them I think about the 2 children that we had planned to adopt, to rescue, to bring into our family, to teach what the unconditional love of a mother and father is. They are in the Lord's hands. Our Adoption details are in His sovereign control. We just want to be obedient and follow down the path of His plans for our family.

I'm so excited to start reading these books with my husband, preparing ourselves for what lies ahead.
Even now as we are uncertain about where God is leading, we are trying to be obedient to follow Him in faith, even if we can only see our next step and not the miles of road ahead. We know that the Lord cares for the orphan, the fatherless, and we know He is calling us to adopt. So we will continue to pray for wisdom and clarity, and we will GET TO WORK on our adoption reading! =)

So encouraged by God's heart for orphans throughout scripture! Here are just a few that I'm meditating on:

 “Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless.  If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword." -Exodus 22:22-24

"He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing." -Deut. 10:18

"Do not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge." - Deut. 24:17

"When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands." - Deut. 24:19

"But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted; you consider their grief and take it in hand.
The victims commit themselves to you; you are the helper of the fatherless." -Psalm 10:14

"Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation." -Psalm 68:5

"Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed." -Psalm 82:3

~Bethany

Ethiopia Cutting Adoptions by 90%

Well in the midst of our season of REJOICING with several friends who get to finally bring their children home from Ethiopia, we received some very sad news this weekend via this news article.

God's word instructs us to"Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep." Romans 12:15

So now, we are rejoicing with Ryan and Lesli and Dave and Stacey and so many other families who passed the US Embassy and got their travel dates! We cannot wait to welcome their children home! (I'm super excited to meet them at the airport and rejoice with them and probably  get a little teary-eyed at seeing God's goodness in working out the details of their adoptions and seeing their precious faces for the first time!)
But we are also weeping.

We are weeping over the 90% cut in Ethiopian adoptions.
We are weeping for the 4.7 million orphans in Ethiopia right now just waiting and hoping for a family.We are weeping with our friends further along in the adoption process. The result of MOWA processing just 5 cases a day instead of the 50 cases per day they have been doing is that our friends, like Justin and Bonnie from our church, will be waiting much longer than anticipated to bring their children home. Basically, it will take MOWA 9 months to process the same number of cases they used to do in 1 month. So our friends are looking at major delays. I know their hearts are breaking as they look at the pictures of their children and yearn to have them HOME. So our hearts are broken for them and the approximately 1,000 families like them, who are caught in the middle of this.

This cut-back also causes us to weep for the orphans. They are saying that only about 500 children will be able to be adopted in a year, as opposed to the 2,500 that were rescued from Ethiopia last year by U.S. families. It saddens us that millions of legitimate orphans will be kept from loving families because of a couple of dishonest cases! We are all for a system of checks and balances, but like we've heard other adoptive families saying, let's PRAY that instead of cutting back to only 5 cases per day, they add adequate staff to be able to still process 50 cases per day thoroughly!!!!!

Obviously, this has major implications for our adoption plans as well. We had just approved our t-shirt design to be printed last Friday, but I called first thing this morning to tell them to put our order on hold while we pray! So here's where we need your help:

"Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute.
Defend the rights of the poor and needy." -Proverbs 31: 8-9

Please join us in PRAYER!
1. PRAY that Ethiopia would remain open for Adoption for generations to come, so that millions of the 4.7 million orphans there would come to know the love of Christ through being adopted by loving, Christ-centered families!
2. PRAY for Bonnie & Justin and the thousands of other families like them, who have a referral and have seen the precious faces of their children, but have no idea when they will be able to bring them home! Pray for them to have patience, perserverance, and PEACE that transcends all understanding! Pray for them to TRUST in the Lord's plans for their family and WAIT on His timing.
3. PRAY with us that Bonnie & Justin would be able to bring their son and daughter home SOON, like nothing-short-of-a-miracle soon!!
4. PRAY for us, and all the other families like us, who are in the adoption process, gathering documents for our dossier, but don't even have a referral yet and have been hit with this news.  Our agency has informed us of the possibility of being able to adopt from a different African country. Please pray for Jon and I, that the Lord would give us wisdom to make a decision quickly about which direction He wants us to go with our adoption.

Thanks friends for walking this journey with us that the Lord has called us to. We really appreciate the encouragement and support that we've received from so many of you. We are so thankful that even as we WEEP, we are believers, and therefore do not weep as those who have no hope. For our hope is in Christ in every circumstance. We know that He is sovereign over all things.

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, present your requests to God. And the peace of Christ, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." -Phillipians 4: 6-7

(Almost) Home Study Ready!

We have had a wonderfully busy week getting things ready for our Home Study so we can do our first interviews soon. We only have a few things left to check off the list!

-Jon had his medical forms completed yesterday, and I have my doctor's appointment today.

-We already received our birth and marriage certificates from KY. (still waiting on mine. Yes, I have lived in Louisville my whole life, but this may come as a shock to some: I was born in Illinois and lived there a whole 6 weeks before moving to Louisville.)

- Got "good standing" letter from our bank

- Sent my passport in to be updated. (I was sort of putting it off because I really didn't want to write that check for $110. I keep kicking myself for not getting my name updated the year we got married because it would have been FREE! Grr.)

-Sent off for background checks to all the states my hubby has lived in during the last 10 years: IN & SC.
We had to pay about $20 per state to get a paper that said "nothing." There is nothing on his criminal record anywhere. (I guess I should be relieved that he isn't and never has been a criminal. haha)

- Went on a date for our 4th Wedding anniversary and ended up looking at baby name books in a bookstore. I think we finally found two we can both agree on... =) But we're not telling YET. =)

I also just want to mention this so I don't forget. We have been SO blessed to get to meet with 5 couples this month who are going through the adoption process for Ethiopia right now or who have already adopted children from Ethiopia. Four of the families adopted a boy and girl under 2 through the same agency we're using, so we have been so blessed by them sharing their experience and have gleaned MUCH wisdom. We feel much better prepared for the process and know a little more what to expect.

We know that, much like the 9 months of pregnancy, the adoption journey will  have its ups and downs, highs and lows, Joys and Pains, and in the end it will ALL BE WORTH IT!

Please feel free to check out my Etsy store to SHOP to support our Adoption! I have cute new handmade satin flower headbands for adults, and lots of hair bows, headbands, pacifier clips, Key Fobs, nursing covers, and more. And the best part is that 100% of the profits from the store go directly in our Adoption Fund!

Why Ethiopia?

Since 2009, Jon and I have both felt a confirmation of God calling us to care for orphans, specifically through adoption. Through many friends, books {such as "Adopted for Life"}, sermons {this convo w/ Drs. Moore & Stinson is very good}, scripture passages and other resources in our lives God seemed to steer us to the 4.7 million orphans in Ethiopia. Here are just a few reasons why we are planning on adopting from Ethiopia:

(I borrowed these statistics on Ethiopia from this family's adoption blog )

•1 in 6 children die before the age of 5

•1 in 10 children die before the age of 10

•44% of the populate is under 15 years old

•60% of children are stunted from malnutrition

•The median age is 17.8 years old

•Their are approximately 4.7 million orphans in Ethiopia (a country the size of Texas)

•The doctor to child ratio is 1: 24-THOUSAND

•Per capita, Ethiopia receives less aid than any other African country

•Half of the children will never attend school

•88% will never attend secondary school

•Severe drought struck the country from 2000-2002 (2000-no crops; 2001-no seeds; 2002-no animals)

We're so thankful to know other families who God has called to adopt from Ethiopia. Families like Lesli & Ryan, our friends from college, and Jack & Heather, Dave & Stacey, and Dominic & Rebecca, friends from our church.
 
We are feeling called to Ethiopia right now, but we are still praying the that Lord would give us wisdom as to all details of our adoption. We are confident that the Lord will guide our footsteps in a way that glorifies Him and sanctifies us.
 
We are so thankful that "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8) that we might be adopted (Eph 1:5) by God into his family, the Redeemed!!