Well, I have never been good at writing, but I wanted to start a blog about our adoption journey.  Chris and I were not having any luck conceiving since we got married. Our original plan was to have one biological child, and then adopt one child.  Five years had gone by, so we decided to look into adoption options.  We contacted several agencies, deciding on All God's Children International in December of 2009.  Looking through their programs, we decided on the Oregon Foster program for two reasons; it was the least expensive, and seemed to be the shortest wait.  So, we started our Home Study!  Things were moving along smoothly, and then Chris and I had a talk one night in June.  Turns out, the Oregon program just didn't feel right to either of us; we both really wanted to adopt from Ethiopia, but we didn't think we could afford it.  That night, we both agreed it was in God's plan for us to adopt from Ethiopia!  We called the agency, and no problem, we changed to the Ethiopia program.  We were SO excited!!!  Our home study was completed and approved in August of 2010...phew!  Then on to the Dossier, which was completed on October 22, 2010 (Chris' birthday!).  This was a happy, yet sad day.  It was a sad day because we were expecting a wait of 6 - 9 months when we started this program, but we also found out this day that the wait had increased to 18 months.  Obviously we were elated at the same time because we WERE on the WAITING LIST, and we were so thankful to be finished with all of that paperwork!  We started off on the waiting list for a child between 0 & 12 months old, and were officially #94 for a girl, and #70 for a boy.  In the following months, our numbers looked like this:

November   85, 58
December   79, 57
January       73, 54
February     71, 54
March         59, 46
April           53, 39
May           48, 37
June           48, 35
July            41, 29
August       38, 25
September 32, 22

We're moving right along!  But it hasn't been a smooth ride the whole time.  Our agency has had to give us some bad news during these months.  In February, we learned that the number of cases that the courts would approve per day would drastically change from 25 to 50 per day to about 5 per day.   That news was devastating, I was scared they were going to close adoption down all together!  But, since then, our numbers continue to move; thank you GOD.  More recent bad news, is that they have closed down several orphanages in the southern region.  Unfortunately, some families already received referrals that came from these orphanages.  I think their adoptions will be able to move forward once the courts open up (praying for them!).  For all of those people affected, my heart goes out to you!  But I know God will get those babies to you!!!  And, let's hope this is the last of the bad news!

I think that's it for now.  Thanks for reading my blog! :o)