Deep into the Dossier

A new term to learn...what is a dossier? It is all of the international paperwork that goes into this process. Once we finish this it all goes to the agency and then it all heads out to Ethiopia...unbelievable. We are really getting close to the official waiting process, where we wait for Ethiopia to submit to us the child/children whom they think will fit our "criteria", which is really the Lord's criteria. And I mean wait! I turned the radio on today, in the 2 minutes it takes to pick up the kids, and heard on the radio a lady talking about adoption. The next thing she says is how amazing it is, (she works for an agency), to be a witness to how God can bring a child to their waiting family, in what seems to be such a random experience and journey all across the world. It is far from random. Then I read a verse today that is now posted permanently on the blog on the upper right in bright red "I feel hopeless and I cry out to you from a faraway land". Psalm 61:2. I know God is leading us in this direction and although not everyone will share our passion or understand what God is doing in our lives, it is exciting that God chose us to be parents to a child who needs desperately to be rescued. ( 2 Samuel 22:20 He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.)

I didn't sub today, so I cleaned, ran errands, visited a friend on her birthday :) and then spent a bunch of time this afternoon really looking hard at what is required as I dug into the Dossier paperwork. Lots of notorizing, but "T" helped me out today so so much, by talking to a friend who is a notary, and will graciously do it all for no charge if we go to her. That is so awesome! So I will keep plugging away at it. It is a lot of paperwork, but nothing to complain about in the grand scheme of things. Sometimes people ask me why we should have to do all of this, pay all of this money, go to all of this work, to which I say, you know what? I don't mind. I know the humanitarian work this agency does with some of the money. I completely support that. They are the most affordable agency around actually. And of course we want the children being adopted to go to good stable families. We did it for "J" and we'll go do it for this child/children. No questions asked.

"M" and I were talking today about what it might be like for her to have a sister and I said, maybe you can help us choose a name. She said, you mean we can do that? I said, sure. We might change their Ethiopian name to sound more American, but some of their names are just beautiful so we might not, we'll have to wait and see. She said, well, if we do, we need to see them first because they might not look like the name we think is right at first. I said, you are exactly right! We'll wait until we see them! I can't wait for that day.