Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Drumroll please...



We are finally on the list! Our agency assigned us number forty-four today. That means there will be forty three other referrals made before we receive the special call from our case manager, Julie, when we will hear the words, "I have a little girl I would like to talk to you about." The referral should take anywhere from 8-10 months. After we receive "the call" we will immediately be given access to her picture, her story and any health and background information our agency can provide. So getting on the list means we have made it through all the hoops to get to the point of being ready to adopt from Ethiopia when the right child is meant for our family.

Going through an entire redo of all paperwork in less than a year certainly has presented us with challenges but the paperwork is done. There will be little for us to do now except wait and pray. We can now begin to prepare for her. We can slowly begin to prepare her space, further prepare our boys and prepare our hearts to endure the joy and challenges that international adoption can bring. Waiting to know her will be hard but now it feels real. We really are adopting our fourth child, a little girl from the beautiful land of Ethiopia, into our family and into our lives forever. To many it is only a number, but for us it is a milestone and a marker as we continue on our faithful journey.

4 comments:

"Are These Kids All Yours?" said...

CONGRATS on a number!!!!! YEAH!!!!!!!!! Very happy for you!!!!

Anonymous said...

Congratulations! I started at #33 on the girls list and it took me 6 months and 1 week to get a referral...hope this gives you hope. :) Love your blog!

Amy said...

Congratulations! I can't wait to get official wait list numbers!!!

the andersens said...

Congrats on getting on the list!!! SOOOOO exciting, I know! I wanted to let you know that the picture on our blog for our #1 was off of flikr, I believe. You are more than welcome to download it from our blog should you want it.

How exciting to start this wonderful wait!!!

Melissa

Into Our Arms Forever!

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welcome home ava! from melanie Strobel on Vimeo.

Meeting Ava during our first trip to Ethiopia

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Meeting Ava Ethiopia Trip July 2010 from melanie Strobel on Vimeo.

Korah- Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

During our recent visit to Ethiopia I felt very called to the village of Korah in Addis Ababa Ethiopia. There have been numerous rumblings lately about the tremendous need to help the children of Korah who are growing up in and around the local trash dump. The village was established 75 years ago as a place to send people with leprosy who were said to be cursed. Now there is a 3rd generation of people living in Korah with nearly 100,000 suffering from such things as leprosy, HIV, misc disease and of course malnutrition. There are many children of Korah who have been forced to live and work at the trash dump in hopes of finding food and possible items to sell in Korah's center of town. With the start of the Great Hope Church in Korah and the building of a shelter, along with the ministry of local Sammy Liben and Sumer Yates, there is now a feeding program and a sponsorship program in place to rescue the forgotten children of Korah and send them to boarding school where they can escape the horror of the conditions of living and working in a large trash dump. For more information please visit: www.help4korah.blogspot.com or www.p61.org where you can learn more about how you or your organization can help the people and the children of Korah. Please send me a message or email Erin Allen at erin@p61.org to request sponsorship information. I will soon be posting the photos of my day recently spent in Korah. I must tell you it was life changing and beyond anything I have ever done to stretch, change and rearrange myself. God helped me to help the people who I met. Much of what I could offer was nothing more than the snap of my camera or a warm touch or an inviting smile. The needs in Korah are beyond our wildest imagination yet God is over Korah and there is already amazing work being done. I invite you to view the following videos to learn more about the beauty and the needs of Korah's people.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN HOW TO SPONSOR A CHILD

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Hannah's Hope Orphanage- Ethiopia

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