Lily's Prayer: April 2011

Sunday, April 10, 2011

First 3 months...

Wow, it has been 3 months since we brought our little ball of energy home. Our lives have changed so much in these months and our awesome boy is growing so fast. I now have a shadow that follows me everywhere I go, he says daddy about a zillion times a day. I wouldn't change it for anything, Jadon brings so much joy to my life. I am one blessed man, God surely blessed me with 2 wonderful children and I am so grateful to Him. Jadon's sentences now are almost all English with the occasional Amharic word here or there. It is kinda sad that he is forgetting his original language but we knew it would happen.

Jadon do it.--- I'll do it

Sleepy stand up--- Tomorrow

You finished--- I'm finished

I love this little boy and proud to be his Daddy! David

Facts about Ethiopia

*The mortality rates in Ethiopia are among the highest in the world, which leads to having thousands of children orphaned and in need of loving families.
*Over 5 million children are orphaned due to poverty and the residual effects of war and drought.
*The number of orphaned children continues to increase as the diseases of poverty cause the premature deaths of parents.
*1 in 10 children die before their first birthday.
*1 in 6 die before age five. More than half of those deaths are attributed to malnutrition.
* 12% of children Lily's age in Ethiopia have jobs to support themselves and possibly are married.
These children are dying on our watch! Please prayerfully consider donating to help us rescue one of these children! Or better yet maybe God is calling you to also Adopt an orphan.

Timeline

- 2007 Began praying about adoption

-Sept. 2007 attended an adoption seminar

- October 2007 Still unsure if adoption was God's plan and postponed moving forward but continued to pray for discernment

- June 2008 - Out of no where we were asked to consider adopting a little boy locally whose g-parents couldn't care for him. This quickly went no where! Continued praying for God's wisdom on what to do next.

- August 2008 Excited and ready to start the adoption procedures. Requested the pre-application to proceed with a domestic adoption.

- September 2008 After much more prayer and the overwhelming doom of the now doubled agency fees from prior year we decided to once again not move forward.

- January 2009 Began praying for Haiti as our people group in our Small Group class and still praying for another child for our family whether through natural conception or adoption.

- June 2009 Went on mission trip to Costa Rica. Learned a lot about trusting God during this experience that we can now see was part of the prepartion for this current journey we are on.

- August 2, 2009 God began to stir in our hearts about adopting again and this time we knew it was the real deal! This time was different. We knew it was not just about adopting to have another child. It is also about rescuing an orphan and giving them hope of a better future with Christ as the center. We felt God leading us to Haiti. A few weeks later through several chain of events and talking with another family adopting from Haiti we had confirmation that Haiti is where our child is waiting for us.

- August 24, 2009 Initiated the preliminary paperwork to get started from our newly chosen Agency, A Love Beyond Borders.

- September 1, 2009 Scheduled 1st Home Study visit

- September 4, 2009 Mailed in Preliminary paper work with our pre-application fee.

- September 18, 2009 1st Home Study visit was a success and we have now officially started the paperwork.

- November 11th, 2009 Mailed in Home Study paperwork. - December 5th, 2009 Second visit for home study - traveled to Chattanooga.

- Jan. 10, 2010 home study almost completed

- Jan. 12, 2010 Destructive Earthquake hits Haiti

- The remaining month of January - praying for discernment about Ethiopia if Haiti adoptions should close.

- Feb. 2, 2010 - Received official word from LBB that Haiti adoptions are closed and advised to look into a new program.

- Feb. 5, 2010 - Talked with Children's Hope International

- Feb. 9, 2010- Mailed in Application for acceptance into the Ethiopia program with CHI and $100

- Feb. 11, 2010 - Received phone call from CHI - We've been accepted

- Feb. 23, 2010 - Mailed in CHI contract $900

- April 2, 2010 - Finally received our approved Home Study

- April 3, 2010 - Mailed off our I600A to USCIS $830

- May 17, 2010 - Fingerprints and all Dossier paperwork is complete. Waiting for the I-171H approval from USCIS to send it in

- June 4, 2010 - Received our I-171H approval!

- June 7, 2010 - Had Dossier docs certified and shipped to CHI

- June 10, 2010 - Dossier headed to Washington DC

- June 18, 2010 - Officially a waiting family, we are on the list

- June 30, 2010 - We have a 3yr old son!

- August 19, 2010 - We received our court date for November 19, 2010

- November 17th, 2010 - Meetcha Date. We met our adorable little boy!

-November 19th, 2010 - Court day, Jadon officially became our son.

-January 3rd, 2011 - Gotcha day, we are all together, family of 4.

-January 8th, 2011 - Jadon came home to America!

Lily's Prayer

Pages

Sunday, April 10, 2011

First 3 months...

Lily's Prayer to be a big sister has been answered. We serve a mighty God!

Facts about Ethiopia

About Us

Timeline

Blog Archive

Followers

counter

FeedJit

Lily's Prayer has been answered!!!