Court Date!

This past Wednesday morning I was doing my regular babysitting in Macker's class at church during our women's Bible study. My phone rang but when I said hello they were already gone. I noticed that the call was from our adoption agency and my heart started to race. About 3 minutes later Scoot peaked his head in the door (yes, he's in the same building) with a huge smile on his face...
"We're going to Ethiopia!!!! APRIL 5th is our court date!!"
Our Bible story that morning was about Hannah and how she prayed and prayed for a child and God answered her prayers and gave her S*****!

This is my little Mac giving Baby S***** his bottle.

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We booked our tickets this morning. We leave on March 30th. It's spring break for the kids so they will be going to my parents house in Iowa. Please pray for all the details to come together. Thank you all for being excited with us.

FYI- We will not be bringing him home this trip. This is a trip to stand before an Ethiopian judge and tell them that we want to be his parents. After we pass court we are submitted to embassy which could take anywhere from 3 to 12 weeks. When we have embassy clearance then I will go back and get him. (Anyone want to join me?!)

Care Package

Our first care package is in the mail on it's way to Indiana. There is another adoptive family that will be leaving to pick up their little boy from Ethiopia in the next week and they offered to take a little something to S*****. They also said they would give him some love for us. (Thank you!) We can't wait for new pictures.

We are still waiting to hear when our court date is scheduled. Please pray that it's SOON!!

LOVE!

Last October we received a referral for the most beautiful little girl. For reasons that Scott and I are totally at peace with, our referral did not continue. For the past couple months we have just been waiting and praying for the exact child that God has for our family. This past week we received "the call" from our family coordinator for a most precious 4.5 month old little BOY!

Scott and I were both on the phone as she told us a little bit about him and his background. She then told us that his given name is S*****. Scott and I both started to laugh (and cry) because his name is the very one that we had decided on using if we were blessed with a boy. Do you get how awesome that is? His birth family and our family choose the same name.

We told the kids and gave them each a picture of their new brother. Amelia's first words were, "I guess I was always meant to be the only Murray girl." The boys were cheering...

Here's what needs to happen next...
*Our agency to obtain/prepare our documents for court
*The Ethiopian court to accept our paperwork
*Get a court date
*Fly to Ethiopia to meet our son and go to court (maybe 3 months from now)
*Fly home
*Our agency to submit paperwork to the US Embassy
*US Embassy to perform an investigation and release a VISA
*Fly back to Ethiopia to pick up our son.

(I got this little list from another adoptive family's blog)

Nothing is ever predictable with international adoption. We are praying that we will receive a court date soon and that the rest of this process process will got smoothly. Please pray for our little S*****, for his health and safety. We are thankful for all your prayers and love.

So Thankful!

The AZ garage sale was a huge success. All our friends got up super early and worked like crazy to sell their things just for us! Here's Mikele with our poster! (love her) Please check

her BLOG for the full recap.

Cathy and Heather were awesome pricers and sorters. (love them)
Some of the wonderful friends. (Gaynor, Holly, Heather, Mikele, Jen and Kelley) LOVE ALL OF THEM!

It really was early... still dark.

Sincerely, thank you for your friendship and for your love for our new baby.
Ruth 1:8
... May the Lord reward

you for your kindness ...

Garage Sale!

Many of our dearest friends in AZ are having a garage sale this morning (and tomorrow) for our adoption. We are humbled by their hard work and generosity. Please pray for the garage sale to be a success and for us to be one step closer to our next goal of $7200.00 for our referral. Love you guys!! (It's killing me now to be there with everyone!!)

Thankful

This past week we received our "On Deck" email from our agency. That basically means that our family is one of the next families that will be matched/recieve a referral for our child. It could still be 1-3 months but it feels awesome to be at this point in the process. I wanted to share a story of something that happened today. Scott was at work and a nice young man came to his office. He had known that we were adopting and he shared with Scott that he and his wife were really interested in adoption as well. They're young with a little baby but they still wanted to plan a time to get together to talk more about adoption. They agreed to talk to their wives and make a plan. As he was leaving Scott's office he handed him an envelope. To our surprise, it had a check for $500.00!! FOR US!! For our adoption!! To think that this sweet young family wanted to partner with us to help a child find a 'forever family' is simply awesome! Scott called and told me and I started to cry, so thankful for the ways God provides for our family.

2 Corinthians 9:11
'Yes, you will be enriched in every way so that you can always be generous. And when we take your gifts to those who need them, they will thank God.'

Still Waiting

Last night Scott was talking to the kids about our new brother or sister from Ethiopia. He was telling them that someone else is taking care of them until we can come and bring them home. All along we've told the kids that we are not deciding if their new sibling is a boy or a girl. The kids took turn praying and when it was Scotty's turn, it sounded something like this. "Dear God, please pray for the people that are taking care of our new baby brother from Ethiopia, and please make our new baby brother a girl."

When we asked him why he wanted a sister he said, "Sissy needs someone to play dolls with, doesn't she?"

We've been waiting almost 4 months to be matched with our new little Murray. Each week that passes we're getting more excited. Ethiopian courts close for 2 months during the rainy season. This year they will reopen at the end of Sept. So for now we continue to wait and pray that God would prepare our family for this new person. We pray that our new child would be safe and well taken care of until we are united. Thanks for continuing to join us on this journey!

Hebrews 12
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.