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!