Saturday, June 21, 2008

7 Weeks Waiting Down

We are officially at seven weeks of patiently waiting for our referral. It's amazing how fast the time has gone by. Most of you who know me know that I'm not a patient person so I would have thought it would have been really hard to wait. Part of it is how busy we have been. We have had something going on constantly and it looks like it's going to continue for the next couple of months so hopefully we'll have a referral before we know it. They are still saying only three months until a referral so we are over halfway done waiting. Chances are it will take longer anyway but we are ready for whatever. It does look more and more like it's a toss up on whether we'll get a girl or boy. As mentioned before it looked like it would be a boy but the waiting list is pretty balanced now so it could be either. We're ready to find out which so we can get ready.



Please pray for airline tickets to stabilize. It's amazing how quickly they are going up so we are praying they start to stabilize. Also pray for the government to continue to be good to us. They have processed everything very quickly and correctly so far but some Holt families are currently experiencing some issues with paperwork. Hopefully we can learn from them and be ready to go.



I'm headed off to Mackinaw Island tomorrow morning for three days of "work". I should be back Wednesday night. Hopefully my travels go well and I can get a lot of work in!



Later,

Adam

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Still Here

I made it my goal when I started this blog to never go longer than a week at most before adding a post. Well needless to say I am at two weeks without a post. I will make an excuse that I was out of town 3 days for work and then out a week for our church mission trip. Hopefully I can find forgiveness and you guys will still read my blog.

Electricity in the basement is fixed. It was a loose wire causing the breaker to go off. It was covered under our home warranty and we had to pay $50. A good chunk of money but if we wouldn't have had the warranty it would have cost a LOT more.

We received our Notice of Favorable Determination Concerning Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition. In simple terms that is the governments seal of approval on our ability to parent an orphan. We didn't have many doubts we would get it but it is comforting to get it and to get it fairly quickly. I fear I will jinx myself but the government has so far shown great speed and accuracy in getting us what we need in a timely manner.

We are rougly #12-13 on the wait list at Holt. They were giving a lot of referrals out about two weeks ago but have slown down a lot lately. Court times are also coming much quicker than they promise. Some within a month from referral. That means you could go pick up your child within two months of getting a referral. That will slow down in the next few months as the courts close for rainy season. I guess it rains so much in Ethiopia during the wet season that a lot of stuff shuts down. We're still hoping to be home by Christmas!

Our church mission trip was great again this year. We went to Waveland, MS to help with Hurricane Katrina. I was the leader of a group of 29 from our church. From the early planning stages until we got home Satan constantly attacked us from every direction but we made it back and feel like we accomplished what God wanted us to accomplish while we were down there. We spent 4 hours in a ROUGH part of Mississippi. We were a bunch of white hicks from the sticks and we were in the high drug trade area of Mississippi. God was good and we made it out of there. Our church shuttle bus broke down which led to the 4 hour stop which was after our 2 hour stop earlier in the day. All in all God taught me a lot about myself when I was down there and I'm glad I went.

Hopefully we'll start getting some big updates in the near future on the adoption and I'll keep everyone posted!

Adam