God is so Good!

So here is the latest update on our adoption process. First off, we have been blown away by the support of family & friends. God has been more gracious than we deserve. The first payment has been paid and we have had our first home study meeting. It is amazing how God always provides when He calls you to do something. This has been so true with our adoption and The 1418 Project. I'll share more about The 1418 Project later. God has provided funds to cover the expenses for the adoption so far, which is a huge blessing. Family & friends have busted their tails to help raise funds. I could not imagine going through this process without them.

Our first Home Study meeting went very well. Andrea Germany, our Social Worker, is an incredibly unpretentious and down to earth person. For some reason I had in my head that all social workers would be pretentious and would have unreasonable expectations. What we found in Andrea was someone who LOVES adoption and LOVES helping adoptive parents through the process. Most of my fears about the Home Study process were alleviated during our meeting. For Christmas, Lauren (little sister) got us some handmade necklaces for me, Christen, mom & herself. The older I get, the more I cry. I about lost it when I realized that the necklaces were a project that took Lauren months to pull off. She started with the video that Christen posted a while back, fought my mom over who was doing the necklaces and then tricked us all into thinking Mom was still doing them when in reality Lauren got us each a necklace.

If you want to help us with the adoption process here are a few ways.
1. PRAY
2. Donate, buy Mary Kay or Ugandan Necklaces.
3. Get me to come speak at some Student Ministry event or something of the sort (all speaking money goes to adoption)
4. PRAY If you have helped so far in any way, THANK YOU! Thanks for taking time to read.

Grace,
Bean

Money Money Money Money.......Money!

Wow! That is pretty much all I have right now. We are still just completely blown away by the support we have received from everyone. One of the first questions that people have asked us is "How much is this adoption gonna cost?".

.....GULP.................

$25,000.00 - $30,000.00

.....GULP.........................

Yep. It is that much, and yes, it is a shame that it cost that much to adopt a starving child with no home. HOWEVER, "...Once our eyes are opened,we can't pretend we don't know what to do. God, who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls, knows that we know, and holds us responsible to act." Proverbs 24:12.

There is no doubt that God has called us to adopt from Ethiopia and there is no doubt that HE will provide the funds to do so. With that said, we have alot of work to do.

Some of you may be aware that Eric is available to speak at any event; DNOW's, youth camps, retreats, fill in on a Wed. or Sun. etc. EVERY dime that he is paid to do so goes directly into our adoption fund. So, to all of our minister homies, HIT US UP PLEASE!

Also, in an effort to earn extra income for our adoption I have become a Mary Kay sales consultant.This is a total God thing and I am so super excited about it. Many of you know my love for make-up and all things skin care...lol :) so this is a great fit for me! I worked for Precsriptives and Clinque all thru college and one of my favorite parts was doing make-up for weddings, prom, pageants, etc. So if any of you ladies need a make-up artist for any event, I'm your girl and I will come to you! LADIES, my debut party is November 5th at 6pm at the following address. If you don't need any make-up or skin care right now, come anyway! I would love for you to come visit, eat some great food and hear all about our adoption story (thus far).

302 Patrick Rd. Hattiesburg, MS 39401

Finally, several people have asked how they can donate to our adoption so we added the chipin link to our blog. We've tried it out and it works so if you would like to make a donation just click on the financial support link to the right on this page! This is such a God sized task and every dime helps out!

As we filled out more paperwork tonight, reveiwed all the cost, and signed our names on the dotted line, I was reminded again of my life verse "He who called you is FAITHFUL, and He WILL do it" 1 Thessalonians 5:24.

Hugs and Kisses,
Christen

Here we go....

Over the past two weeks we have been totally overwhelmed with the love and support from our family and friends as we "formally" announced that God has led us to adopt a child from Ethiopia.  We also realize that we have lots of family and friends who we don't get see very often so we wanted to create this blog as a way for everyone to be able to keep up with us and the process of bringing our lil baby bean home!

About four years ago God planted adoption in our hearts. Since that time we have prayed about all the different aspects of adoption. There were so many things to think though and pray over. Probably the biggest decision was what country to adopt from and when we would start the process. God's timing was crucial in all this and it has been so amazing to be able to look back over the past four years and see God's complete sovereignty in our lives. We have had sooo many late night chats about where our child would and what it would take to bring them home. I (Christen) went into crazy research mode and by the time we went to our first adoption information meeting (about 2 yrs ago) there was nothing they told us that we didn't already know :)...lol! Also,  two years ago God revealed a little bit more to us about our adoption journey. I called Eric one afternoon to let him know that God had clearly spoken to me that we are supposed to adopt from a country where the Gospel is either not available at all or where Christians are persecuted for their faith. I could hear him grinning on the other end of the line when he told me that God had revealed he same thing to him a couple of months before and he was just waiting for God to reveal it to me! I'm pretty sure I shed some tears that day and it was just one more confirmation that we were on the path that He has laid out for us before the foundations of the world.

There is so much more to tell and I have so many thoughts running through my head right now that it is really hard to form a coherent sentence!  To keep a really long story short we have been (sometimes) patiently waiting for God's timing to begin the adoption process. He has finally put eveything perfectly into place and we are crazy excited to finally "officially" be on this journey.
So many of you have asked about the process so here is an attempt to explain it. We have submitted our formal application to Lifeline Adoption Services in Birmingham, AL and just today they sent us a crazy amount of paperwork for us to complete!! Once we finish this round of paper work, then we will begin our home-study, which consist of more paper work plus interviews and an inspection of our home. After our home-study is complete we will gather lots documents for our dossier and once that is done it will be submitted to the Ethiopian government and then we will wait for a child to be referred to us. Once we receive a referral we will have to make two trips to Ethiopia to finish the process. Both of these trips will take 5-7 days.  On the first trip we will meet our precious little one and petition the court to allow us to adopt him or her. Then it will take the Ethiopian gov. 6-8 weeks to finalize our adoption. On the second trip we will go pick our baby up for good!!!!!!! The timeline for the whole process is 9-12 months but we are preparing ourselves for at least 16 months just in case.

I know this has been a ridiculously long post and there are so many questions still left to answer. Eventually we will get around to answering all of them ;-) but for now we ask that all of you will continue pray for us and our sweet little one who is waiting in Ethiopia for a forever family!