Feb
20
52home
Filed under Biblical Womanhood | 52home 6 years ago today.
Yesterday we heard from the US Embassy that we are officially cleared to travel. We snatched up the first available appointment and will be leaving next Sunday to go bring our children home! I can’t help but smile every time I see the airline ticket confirmations in my inbox.
The past week has been full of phone calls, paperwork, obsessive checking of email on my phone, anxious waiting for the final details to come together—“just labor pains” Janelle reminded me on one particularly challenging day. 
But we’ve also been doing lots of fun stuff like hair lessons from a wonderful new friend and adoptive mom, trips to Old Navy and Target for cute clothes, and turning the boys’ sailboat room into a sports room with a few new pillows and accessories. We’ve filled our scabies prescription at Target (just in case!) and scheduled doctor’s appointments. We’ve stocked up on hot sauce (which apparently Ethiopian children love to put on everything!) and bought ingredients for homemade Ethiopian stew. And filled out more paperwork.
Our second trip to Ethiopia will be very quick. The morning after we arrive in country we will be reunited with our children and we will never have to leave them again. They will come with us to our Embassy appointment and then we will spend two days doing fun things around Addis before our visas are issued and we can fly home.
Home. We are bringing our children home.
Thank you for your prayers! More updates and pictures to come.
Where There’s a Praying Mother, There’s Always Hope - Tony Reinke posts encouraging thoughts from J.C. Ryle over on the Desiring God blog
Are You Happy? - Nancy Wilson pairs some key verses on happiness with insightful application
Free Trusting God audio book - In case you haven’t seen this already, make sure to download one of our favorite books
We are counting down in days now, instead of months and weeks. Eight days until the US Embassy in Ethiopia has completed their paperwork and interviews and God-willing, gives us the all-clear to travel and get our children. Eleven days until we (hopefully!) get on a plane, thirteen or so days until the final step—an interview at the Embassy, and fifteen days until we get our children’s visas and fly home. All very subject to delays of course so we would greatly appreciate your prayers that all would proceed smoothly and speedily.
Right now my house is turned upside down redecorating the kids rooms and Jack and Tori talk daily about what they will play or share with their new brother and sister. There’s not much more to tell actually. Isn’t that the way with waiting? It is the uneventfulness that makes it hard. Our agency warned us this would be the most difficult part of the wait and they were right. Knowing our children, having held them in our arms, being their legal parents but having to leave them behind is excruciating. But just as the day and hour of our biological children’s birth was ordained by God, I know that the day when our family will be complete is entirely in His wise, powerful, loving hands. We’ll just be so excited when it gets here.
Thank you for all your prayers.
