Big Changes

As I am learning more and more, adoption is not typically a straight path to a final destination.  It is a process that twists and winds, dips and dives and eventually you end up exactly where God wanted you all along.  And, for us, we have twisted, winded, dipped and dived and now find ourselves adopting from a different country!  Yep, it's true, after much prayer and thoughtful consideration, we have decided to pursue an adoption from China, rather than Ethiopia.  This change did not come quickly and was not easy to make.  But, we do so now with confidence that this is what God is calling our family to do.  When we first started this process about a year ago, we looked into many different countries and adoption opportunities.  The two countries that kept coming back up were China and Ethiopia, but China seemed to have all of these huge barriers and so we decided that door was not open to us and moved forward with an adoption from Ethiopia.  Since then, without us seeking or asking him to do so, God has stripped away all of those barriers and has pointed us back to China instead.  I don't think we are saying "no" to an adoption from Ethiopia forever, but for the time being.  We are SO incredibly excited about this change and to see what and who God has in store for us.  And, speaking of the WHO...it is always so amazing to see God's perfect timing play out.  We made the decision to change countries this past Sunday night.  I spoke to our case worker on Monday morning and she started the process to change over our paperwork (which at this stage doesn't require much additional work).  On Tuesday evening, I got a call from our agency about a sweet 3 year old boy.  So, my request to those of you that are following and reading this rarely updated blog, is that you join us in pray for God to give us His confirmation as to whether or not this is THE child God intends to join our forever family!  A few weeks ago, my bible study teacher, gave us this quote, "When you are walking with the Lord, change is always in your favor."  Well, I sure hope so because "change" seems to be our family motto right now.  Stay tuned...

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son.  He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins.  He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding. (Ephesians 1:3-8)

Step One...DONE!

We are one step closer to meeting the next precious member of our family!  YAY!  We have completed our home study and are just waiting for our case worker to put it all together.  I say waiting, but we are not quite to the waiting phase of this adoption yet.  Now, we are on to our next set of paperwork for our dossier (the set of documents that gets sent to Ethiopia).  So, what does that mean, you ask?  Well, from what I can tell so far, that basically means that we get to re-do all the paperwork from our home study, but this time it has to be notarized.  FUN!  We even get to do our fingerprints AGAIN!  Sometimes in this process I find myself getting really worked up and annoyed by the insane amount of paperwork, but then I just think about that sweet little one waiting for us in Ethiopia, and I find the strength to sit down and get back to work!  Thanks for all of your thoughts, prayers and support!

New, but Old

So, as some of you know, I have another blog.  It's a private one about Trip and Mady and other Kuehn family stuff that I have been writing for a few years now.  I keep it private because it has lots of details of our lives that I don't want just anybody to have access too.  But, a few months ago, I wrote a blog about why we are adoption that I thought would be good to share on this blog as well.  It is below:

We had our first of potentially 5 Home Study meetings with our adoption case worker last week.  I was incredibly nervous beforehand because I wasn't really sure what to expect.  I knew she would be asking us lots of questions, but I wasn't sure how intense or hard to answer they would be.  I also knew she'd be introduced to our kids, and you never know what secrets they might reveal.  And, I knew she would be sort of checking our house to make sure it is "safe" to raise a child in...this I was the least worried about since we've done a pretty good job with the two we are currently raising here.  :-)  I have to say that it went really well, and I really should've spent my time worrying about something else, like "why do I waste my time watching reality tv?"  Anyway, I'll tackle that embarrassing question another time.  The best part about the meeting was getting to reminisce about our past, about how we met, what it was like when we dated, about our wedding and honeymoon and how our marriage has changed over the last almost 10 years.  We laughed a lot and even the hard questions were not that hard to answer.  One of the questions Jamie (our social worker) asked us that we've been asked a lot since we've begun this process is "Why are we adopting?"  That seems to be the question we get most frequently, followed by "why Ethiopia?"  So, I thought I'd use this next blog post to explain how we came to this decision for our family.

As seems to be the case with most families that have a heart for adoption, we did not get here on a straight and narrow path.  TJ and I never planned to adopt.  It was not something we had ever really talked about, especially since we'd been able to have our own children.  But, it was something that God started to put on our hearts about a year ago.  It all started with a little boy named Eli (which I think is slightly ironic, since we refer to our adopted child as "Little E")  Eli was a little boy that attended my Mom's school.  In a conversation with her last fall, she mentioned him to me and asked me to pray for him because he'd already lost his mother and his father had just passed away. He had older brothers and sisters, but they weren't sure where he would go.  Mom said he was such a sweet kid, but had not had an easy life so far and she just wasn't sure what was going to happen to him.  I told TJ about Eli and our hearts went out to him.  We sat on our couch for a long time talking about how much we wanted to just take custody of Eli (a boy we'd never even met, but whose story touched our hearts) and bring him home and show him what it meant to live in a loving home and be a part of a real family.  And, this is where God began to prick our hearts and prepare us to advance to the place we find ourselves in today.   Eli was taken in by one of his siblings and is doing well.  But, our conversations did not end with his story.  We started talking more frequently about our desire to love the unloved, to take care of the abandoned, to share the love of our family with someone who otherwise would never know that kind of unconditional love. We felt like we had been so blessed with two amazing children and we wanted to pass those blessings on and love on someone else.

And, so we started doing some research.  That was OVERWHELMING!  There are so many ways to answer God's call from James 1:27-to care for the world's widows and orphans that it was hard to know where to begin.  And, then as we started narrowing down the options that fit best with our current family situation, we began to feel strange thinking and talking about it all, like we were shopping for a child.  It is a strange experience to talk about "picking" a child to adopt.  All of our research led us to the place we are today...adopting from Ethiopia using an agency called Lifeline.  God continues to show us that this is HIS perfect plan for our family.  He continues to place people in each of our lives to help us learn and prepare for what this change will bring to our family.  The newest confirmation and blessing comes from Trip's soccer team.  He was placed on a team that is being coached by a pastor whose family just adopted a child from Ethiopia who is playing on Trip's team.  His name is Abiti and I can already tell he and his family are going to be a special part of our adoption story.

 Thank you to all of you that support us and this call that God has placed on our family.  Thank you for all of your questions and answers.  And, thank you most of all for your prayers.  Please keep them coming!  Before our next home study, we both have to complete auto-biographies.  I can only imagine what this project will stir up.  Stay tuned to find out as we continue to answer more of those "why" questions.  :-)