Care Packages!

It has been an eventful last couple of weeks! One of the exciting things is that we sent 4 

CARE PACKAGES to our children in Ethiopia. As we speak they are being taken by a family who is flying to Ethiopia today for their own court date. They will be giving our children their packages and taking pictures and videos of them!! Included in the care packages are clothes (see the cute girl clothes! Boys clothes are cute too but I've never bought girl clothes for our kids!), markers, paper, beanie babies (we selected ones of ours in very good shape :)), balls, playdough, pictures from Micah and letters from me. We also included a photo album for each child with all our pictures in it. This will be the first time they see us. I wonder what they will think! 

Where are we in the process??

I mailed off our application to USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Dept). Included was our homestudy, birth certificates and marriage license. We will receive back in the mail (hopefully in a few weeks!) appointments for all of us over 18 to be fingerprinted. After that we wait in the mail for the I-171 form which states we are allowed to bring orphans into the US. Once that is done our dossier will be complete! 

Once our dossier is turned into our agency we will wait for a court date in Ethiopia!

We will go to Ethiopia at that point to meet our children for the first time and go to court to become their parents legally. 

Then back to the US while the children stay in Ethiopia. We wait for an Embassy date when we go back to Ethiopia and get the children's Visa's and bring them home!! 

This could all happen in the summer or fall. Praying it happens sooner than later!!

As you see there is alot of WAITING!  

There was a very good post on the Ordinary Hero blog today that I wanted to share:

"I will leave you with a bit of encouragement from Jesus Calling Devotional today......


Stop trying to work things out before their times have come. Accept the limitations of living one day at a time. When something comes to your attention, ask Me whether or not it is part of today's agenda. If it isn't, release it into My care and go on about today's duties. When you follow this practice, there will be a beautiful simplicity about your life: a time for everything and everything in its time. 
A life lived close to Me is not complicated or cluttered. When your focus is on My Presence, many things that once troubled you lose their power over you. Though the world around you is messy and confusing, remember that I have overcome the world. I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace. 
(Eccl 3:1, John 16:33)"