New Home Study Time

Okay, so barring any other unexpected delays, we should be having our home study this Saturday at 11:00am. We have (only by the grace of God) kept our apartment clean this week and should only have to vacuum and dust (and maybe mop the kitchen) before our visit. It should be a little less hectic at least.

John has been working back at MasterPieces, but only temporarily. They need some help during the holiday season (believe it or not, companies are already getting things ready for Christmas). It is as good a way to make a little extra money as any. We are still asking God for some direction as far as permanent employment goes, so you can still be praying for that for us. We are seriously looking at starting our own business (with a little help from the Lings) where John and Andrew would design freelance and also do things like wedding invitations, stationary, etc. Please keep us in your prayers- and don't forget our little girl as well. Thank you so much!

Pile of Cake®...­

So, those of you that follow this blog on a regular basis may be checking in to see how our home study went today. Maybe you've been praying for us and this was a highlight day. Well, we appreciate your prayers and that is why we're going to ask you to keep on praying. We did not have our visit today as planned. About a half hour before our social worker was supposed to arrive to opine about our prospective parenting capabilities, she had a family emergency and had to reschedule.

The good news is that our apartment is completely clean! So anyone who wants to hang out at our place tonight is welcome. This is an anomaly that may not last long...

A Minor Setback...

As is becoming custom in this process, something has changed yet again. I think I'm really getting sick of that word- Change. I don't know how we would be getting through this process if God hadn't given BOTH of us the strength of adaptability. We learned today that our first home study was not quite complete enough for our new agency (who knows how Ethiopia would view it?) and so we are no longer able to do just an update. We have to do the whole thing over, which will include three separate visits by the social worker. I'm not sure how everyone has such different requirements, but we are trusting that the people we are working with now are the correct ones so that when all of this is over, we have done things the way they need to be.

Our first visit is still this Saturday (at 11:00 am local time for those pray-ers out there). However, this is going to be quite a bit more expensive than an update would have been (like 4 times more) and obviously take more time. Please pray for our sanity! We have quite a bit of money saved up from before John lost his job and I know God will provide financially, but I was pretty excited to get things moving. Please pray that things will go well at the visits, that we will not be nervous, that our house will finish getting clean, and that things will go quickly.

One other note is that John was cleaning today and his back starting hurting very badly. He is a trooper and is continuing on with some mild pain pills, but it is slowing him down a bit and increasing my stress. Pray that his back would feel better and we could continue as normal. Most of all, pray that our dependence will be focused on God and not on ourselves. All of this is most likely a reminder to trust our Provider for a child and not an agency or ourselves to get us one. Thanks for all your support and encouragement- every little bit helps!

Home Study Update

As many of you know, John and I have been working on paperwork with the (short-term) goal of being able to schedule our Home Study Update. Well my friends, we have reached our goal. We will meet with our new social worker next Saturday so she can check us and our humble abode out and give her opinion on whether we are capable of raising a child. We are excited as we have been waiting for this step for a few months now.

Please pray for us as we will be scrambling to clean our apartment this week (a mighty feat for anyone who has not seen our spare bedroom), but we didn't want to delay this process any longer. Please pray that we will be calm during the Home Study (it is a little nerve-racking being interviewed by someone who sort of holds your future in their hands). Please pray for our future little girl- that she is safe and that she is being taken good care of and that God is preparing her heart to come home with us someday.

Thank you for all your support! We'll let you know how it goes.