Adoption Update: Waiting to Apply

Here's my Addie Beth rockin' her new Africa shirt.  As usual, her mouth's wide open because Baby Girl's got lots to say!  For example, "I wanna' hode-ju-me, Momma!"

I've been feelin' the love from many of you asking recently where we're at in the adoption process.  Thanks for asking!  Here's a little update:


Have we applied yet? Nope.

Do we have the initial funds (in other words, we have $5000 of the total $35,000) we need to start? Shockingly...YES!!!  God has been so kind to bless us through the incredible generosity of friends, family, strangers, Etsy, and photography (plus saving/renters). How can we thank you enough?! Every single time the Lord brings in more money for our adoption fund, I cry. I really see each gift as the Lord Himself looking at me and saying, "This is about Me and I'm in this." After all, people don't normally just dish out money without someone even asking! We've got the first chunk of the funds needed to apply and do a homestudy.

Then why on earth aren't we banging down the doors to start this process officially? Multiple reasons but the primary one is that we don't think that it's God's timing quite yet.

Huh? When we initially began thinking about adoption, our hearts were drawn to Rwanda.  But soon after that, Rwanda closed its doors to international adoption to revamp their policies.  It seemed like Rwanda was out and we began looking into Ethiopia as our hearts feel particularly drawn to East Africa.  But changes started happening with Ethiopia's adoptions, too.  We stopped, re-evaluated, and prayed more specifically, "Lord, where?"  We asked Him about the U.S., about Cambodia, about Uganda, Ethiopia, pretty much the whole world and didn't feel any definitive answer.  But over time we've been more and more stirred towards Rwanda so we're waiting.  It's likely that it will re-open over the summer or in the fall, but it's pretty unpredictable. We're waiting for a while to see if they open back up to international adoptions.

(Side Note: I've heard multiple questions about why we're not adopting from the U.S. given the vast amount of children in need here. To answer that really simply: even though our hearts break for the children here without a mommy and daddy, the U.S. is not where we feel that God is leading us to adopt.  We want to go where He leads us.  We rejoice with those of you God's stirred towards domestic adoption and pray for more people to adopt right here where we live.)

So what are we doing in the meantime?  We're loving the kids we've got and praying for the Lord's provision for this adoption!  We're planning a massive garage sale and excited to see how God uses that to bring in some more funds.

And if you've read all the way down to this point, here's a little extra fun tidbit:  We're praying about bringing home 2 little ones into our family instead of 1. It's our hope that God will give us 2 but we'll see...