Happy Friday!

Today we are soaking in another chance to hang out at a coffee shop for the afternoon. We're really trying to take advantage of this time we have before kids! Hanging out in coffee shops for hours isn't exactly going to be an option for us soon. And in our childless ignorance, we're REALLY okay with that! Not exactly bad trade-off considering what we're being called to do. We just pray we never forget that when the kids are screaming all hours of the night!

A quick note about our financial status for those who have given and are curious! Our overall costs for the adoption should fall somewhere in the $27,000 range. To date, we have raised $15,000 of that. And another $2,000 for Erin's mission trip to Rwanda last fall. So we have raised a grand total of $17,000 in with only $12,000 to go!

Unbelievable! As you can imagine, the organizations that provide grants for adoptions are overwhelmed with requests for money, so that hasn't exactly been a successful method of income for us. And yet, God has still provided faithfully...just in other ways! Please be praying as we are about to put in our application for a $3,000 matching grant...and just for our remaining $12,000 in general.

Oh, and btw, we are designing shirts today that will be up for sale soon! We'll post them on our site when they're ready!

So, we have had a lot of time while on the road for the holidays to talk about everything that has happened this past year and get excited as we think about what the next year may hold for us.

As we think back over the last year we realize how much our lives have changed. A lot of exciting things have happened and we have also had our share of difficult times as well.

-In January Erin lost her job at the church because of some major budget cuts that needed to happen for 2009. As difficult as this was, we are thankful that this past summer Erin was able to start working again at the church office doing her old job as a Ministry Assistant!

-During those same budget cuts the youth minister at our church also had to be let go. Micheal Thiele and his wife Jen are our closest friends and having to say goodbye to them in February was one of the hardest things we had to do this year. We miss them a lot but have loved the times that we have gotten to see them over the past year. Their departure also meant us moving out of their house and back into ours.

-In September Erin was able to go on a mission trip to Rwanda and absolutely fell in love with the country and the people while she was there. Getting to visit the orphanage and the Ministry of Family and Gender while she was there has helped her a lot in this process. It is comforting to her to know that even though our children can't be here with us right now, she can picture where they are and she has met the women that care for our children daily. Once Erin got back from that trip we decided to adopt two children instead of one, something that God really showed to Erin during her time in Rwanda.

-Which leads us to the big thing that God has done in our lives in the past year. At the start of the year we committed to praying about whether or not God wanted us to adopt. In May (while in Colorado) we decided that God was calling us to adopt from Rwanda. The road to adoption has been quite a ride so far! There have been many ups and downs but we feel like God has stretched us and taught us to trust in Him completely through this whole process. We continue to trust Him as we head into this next year unsure of the timing of everything that is ahead of us. We are so excited to know that by this time next year (hopefully) our lives will look completely different because our children are finally home with us!

We are excited as the next year begins to think about what is in store for us. Knowing that there will be hard times but also amazingly exciting times, we enter into this year with great anticipation of what God is going to do in us and through us in the year to come.

Thank you all for all of the love and support that you have showed to us through this whole adoption process. We would not be where we are today without all of your prayers and encouragement, and we are blessed to have you all in our lives!

Our paperwork was delayed a bit due to Christmas, but it has safely arrived in Kigali, Rwanda!

We're on vacation for the holidays right now, but when we get back to SC, we'll be going full throttle on fund-raising again! We'll be making t-shirts, selling coffee, holding a fund-raising dinner in February, applying for grants and loans, and anything else we can think of.

We'll keep you posted! Thank you so much for being a part of this journey!

Just got the e-mail we've been waiting for!!! Our dossier is on it's way to Kigali, Rwanda!!!

Should take 5-7 days to get there (or maybe longer because of the holidays...we're not sure). Once it arrives at the Ministry of Family and Gender they will be spending the next few months looking over all of our paperwork and processing our request to adopt two children. It should be 3-6 months before we hear from their government about whether they've "accepted" our request to adopt from their country or not. I'm sure it will feel like a long wait but we will pass the time by focusing on a lot of fund raising and applying for some grants and loans. Though we want the approval to come quickly we are reminded that we need to trust God's timing in this whole process. He has it all under control and everything will happen in His perfect timing. All through this process we have been praying that He would guide us and provide for us, He has far exceeded anything we could imagine.

Once we get a "yes" (please pray they do say yes!) from their government, then we'll wait another couple of months or so for a referral. That will be the first time we get to see pictures of our new son and daughter. What a great day that will be! This Christmas season has really made us think ahead to next year with great anticipation...our first Christmas with our children! Oh, how life will change. And though it will take some adjustment time, we can't wait for this new chapter in our lives to begin!

It's a long journey of waiting ahead, and it will require a great deal of patience, prayer and faith. Thank you so much for following along with us on this journey! We appreciate your prayers!

So we officially fixed all of the paperwork (that we had done incorrectly) and re-sent it to our agency! Months and months of paperwork, finally done!

And we got word yesterday that our dossier had been taken to the US State Dept for authentication, and should now be at the Rwandan Embassy here in the states! It should take a couple of weeks and then the whole kit-n'-kaboodle will finally be sent to Rwanda!!!

God is good!

So we sent all of our paperwork in a week ago (complete with all the money we needed, thank you very much!). But...we got an e-mail from our family coordinator saying that some of our paperwork was done incorrectly. They are sending back a few documents which we will, in turn, mail out to various places to get things fixed. Those places will mail things back to us, and then we'll mail it all back to our family coordinator.

In other words, the process has now been extended. Not sure how long it will all take, but please pray for the mail system to be abnormally FAST. =O)

Woo-hoo!

For those of you not familiar with the term "dossier" (pronounced "daw-see-ey"), it's basically just a collection of documents on the same subject. We have been compiling our dossier for months...they call it the "paper pregnancy." Ha!

Anywho, it's in the mail! Our agency should get it tomorrow!

Technically, we're still $200 short. But we wrote the check anyway. Faith? Or stupidity? We say faith, obviously, or we wouldn't have done it! We have our reasons...and we truly believe God will provide.

We'll let you know when and how He did it!