Changes....

I have been avoiding updating the adoption timeline because frankly I am not sure what to write. I finally received my passport on Gabi's birthday. We rushed around over the weekend making copies of everything so we could send off the official dossier to our agency and then on the Ethiopia.

I have had this nagging feeling for quite awhile that this wasn't what we were supposed to do. We decided to adopt our youngest child to provide a home to a girl in need of a family. With the way Ethiopia's process is going it seemed that we could be waiting for years to be matched up with a child. This just didn't seem to be the way to help. The need is there and the need is great, but because of terrible people out there who take advantage of children, the number of orphans available to adopt is decreasing. So we once again started soul searching. And looking for the little girl who we knew was out there waiting for us. Searching for our Hope. I put a few calls into other agencies who seemed to have more children on their "waiting child" list. These are the kids that don't meet the "requests" of the people in line for children.

After searching and asking others to help in the search and dragging my feet on mailing off the dossier I finally gave up the search and headed to Fed Ex to send of the dossier for Ethiopia. It was a hot day and Andy and I stopped off at Chik fil A for a drink on the way. As we were pulling away and on our way to Fed Ex I got a phone call. One of the other agencies was calling me back. The director I spoke with said she did not have any girls in our age range (0-4 to keep birth order) in her Ethiopia program. But just that morning she had added four girls to the wait list for Congo in that range. Would I like her to email me the link and password to the list? Ummm.. Yeah!!!!

So I open the email on my phone and there she was. My Hope. One look and I knew! Three years old. Adorable. Abandoned. Alone. Waiting. Waiting for us! I sent the email on to Chad and called him to quickly open it up and tell me which one he saw. He agreed. We then started researching what it would take to switch agencies and countries and did we have the money left and where will she sleep and all the crazy questions that came to mind.

After a LONG Holiday weekend we sent in the new application to the new agency. And again we waited to hear. After another long week we finally hear that we are accepted into the program and that shortly we will be receiving her medical info and the list of documents we need for our new dossier. Shortly in the adoption world is not the same. After agonizingly staring at my email for hours, the time clicked past the end of the work day and I knew I would be waiting until at least the next day. To see. What is her birthday? What challenges lay ahead of us? Is she healthy enough to make the wait until we can pass court and go get her?

So I waited two days and then called to ask a separate question. But found out that the administrator had not seen that she was supposed to forward me the info and so had not intended to do so. Anyway, all this to say we received the email today and Hope is healthy! And we can move on with the process. One little problem is she has no last name. So we cannot officially accept the referral through the Secretary of State until she is assigned one.

Also, please pray for our social worker. Her newborn is in the NICU. Of course she is busy with two kids and being with the baby. So she will not be able to update our homestudy to say we are also approved for Congo until the baby is more stable.

Hope has a name! And a face! And we already love her. Pray her home for Christmas with me!!!