Long Time Gone

I have heard from many of you that you've checked my blog several times and found no updates. Things have been much crazier with this move than we expected. We are still not in our new house. We should be by the second week of December. Until then, we cannot move forward with anything adoption wise. We are praying and waiting, confident that God is in control and has a plan greater than we can imagine.

In the last few months, Rwanda has closed its' doors to adoption. This is something that I saw coming several months ago. Right now, we are considering adoption from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. We are leaning strongly towards the DRC, but with the instability of the government, it is uncertain what the status of international adoption will be once we are able to move forward. We shall see...

In the meantime, it may be a while before I post. We don't have internet in our temporary house. Thanks for continuing to check on us. We are well, just moving very slowly!

A Little Lost

We are moving to KY next week, and I'm feeling a little lost. We have so many things going on in our lives right now that I've been putting the emotional side of our move on the back burner. Honestly, I've been in denial. Now, I'm having to say way too many goodbyes, and it's harder than I imagined. On the other hand, we are very excited to be closer to family and old friends. It's kind of emotionally exhausting!

As far as our adoption, we still don't know what to do, which country to choose. We are just praying that God makes it very clear to us in the next couple weeks, so that we can begin to move forward. I'm confident that He will guide us through this process.

What to do?

DeWayne and I feel pretty strongly about adopting from Rwanda. Recently we have learned that the process may turn into a few years as opposed to 18 months. We should learn more about this in the next week or so. In the meantime, we have been presented with the possibility to adopt from a different African country which I can't name. If we proceeded with this country, we would have our boys home by early Spring most likely, but this will cost us about double what Rwanda will cost. This specific country has an orphan crisis of epidemic proportions and the need is overwhelming. DeWayne and I are really struggling with what to do. How do we know which country to choose? We have prayed but still feel very torn between the two, with him leaning one way and me the other. Please pray with us that God will make this clear for us very soon. We would like to be confident in our decision before we move in a few weeks so that we can hit the ground running once in KY.

Good News

It appears that things in Rwanda may start moving a little more quickly. We should find out more in the next few weeks, but there is definitely hope! We are praying that they get the additional support needed to process documents more quickly.

On the moving front, we have a contract on our house and should close within a month! This is a huge God thing. When we bought our house, it had been on the market for 3 years, and that was before the housing market declined. God has truly provided and assured us that we are making the right decision. We have also decided that we will spend significantly less on our new house in order to fund our adoption. This is a huge sacrifice but one that we feel is necessary for the next few years. Please pray with us that we are able to find a house in an acceptable price range that will fit the needs of our growing family. Once we find our house, we can begin to move forward with our adoption!

A Little Discouraging

I have learned some somewhat discouraging news in the last week or so. It seems that the wait times to adopt in Rwanda have significantly increased due to an overwhelming abundance of people interested in adopting. Some people are saying it could take 3 or 4 years to complete an adoption! I emailed Tina at Mugisha Ministries, and she said that this is definitely a concern. She believes that they are going to be hiring more staff in Rwanda to make the process move more quickly and should have a little better idea in the next week or so.

Luckily, we are in a place where we can't move forward until we are settled in our new home, so we have little time to wait and see how things play out before we commit financially. We are definitely going to pursue an African adoption, but we may prayerfully consider a different country if it looks like we will have to wait until Kiera is 6 or 7 before we adopt. We'll see how it all plays out in the next couple months!

Weekend and T-shirts

This weekend is one of our last in Iowa, so we spent it with some very good friends. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows (our plan was to camp, but the weather had a different idea), Went to the Rhubarb Festival, had some pie in the middle of nowhere, and stayed the night in Rochester. Then we came home and made a mad dash to clean the house since some people were coming to view it tonight! It was a great weekend, and we are truly going to miss seeing them on a regular basis.

On the adoption front, we have decided that we will be taking Blaine and Zac with us to Rwanda when we eventually travel to adopt. We have talked with the boys and sought advice from several people who took their children, and it is something that both we and they are excited about. We told them that they will have to save/raise money for their plane tickets (~$2000 each). It's a lot of money, but they have about two years to do it. Blaine decided that he wants to design t-shirts to sell as his fundraiser, so we have been having some fun with that lately. Once he finalizes a design, I'll post it for all of you to see. I'm not sure what Zac's plans are as of yet. Knowing him, it will be to sell cheeseburgers : )

Introduction

So, many of you know that DeWayne and I have been working toward an adoption for the last year and that it is something we have always planned to do. After exploring MANY options, God has led us to pursue an independent adoption from Rwanda. The entire process will most likely take 18-24 months, so this will be a long journey. We are just starting the process and are moving back to Kentucky at the same time, so it's a little crazy right now.  There will be many details to come, but I just wanted to get my first post up!

If you have time, check out this video. It is a song that Sara Groves wrote after going on a mission trip to Rwanda.