The paperwork is done!

Well, a lot of you have been praying for us and writing recommendations for us and so many other things - thank you. Our part is done! Wednesday afternoon we had the last corrections signed and notarized and yesterday I went to the Office of the Great Seal. Yes, the title is quite something, isn't it? I've been reading too much fantasy lately, I think. I felt like I should be going on a quest to "search for the Great Seal," which would magically make all of our papers completely correct. And it did! In truth, I drove up to Grand Rapids and sat at the Secretary of State in Centerpointe Mall for a few hours. Then a wonderful, beautiful woman came out, pronounced all of our notaries correct, and gave me back all of my papers with big gold stickers on them. Oh, the wonderful gold stickers!

Next up... Well, as soon as I got those I put everything in order and headed to FedEx. There I overnighted the huge stack of papers to The Assistant Stork, a courior service in DC. I took a few pictures of these papers - all our work. We won't see these again. Wow.

Look at all those stickers!

Filling out the forms. Can you see the stack of papers I'm sending?

The Assistant Stork will bring our papers through the Secretary of State and the Embassy of Ethiopia on Monday, and then overnight them back to Adoption Associates! Things may finally start moving a little quicker here! Then the Adoption Agency will overnight it to Ethiopia (I think overnighting across the world takes about a week), and we'll hear where we stand in line for children. Things shouldn't take TOO long for us, since we are just asking for two children anywhere from 0 - 7 years old. No specifics on boys or girls or anything like that.

How can you be involved?

1) Please Pray for our children. Pray that they will be protected physically, mentally, and spiritually. Pray that they will have enough healthy food to eat - there is much, much malnurishment right now. Prices are skyrocketing everywhere and poverty is getting even worse everywhere.

2) Please pray for us. Pray that we will be ready. We're through the monotony of doing and redoing (and redoing and redoing) paperwork. Now we're expecting! Yikes! Pray that we will have patience in our wait and will be ready for a greatly expanded family. Also that we would get our kitchen ready!

3) If you'd like to help a little more tactically, we could use help in our kitchen... I guess there's an actually deadline comeing now... :)

4) Infant formula cannot be bought in Ethiopia. It is so expensive, and with repurcussions from the China milk tainting still coming through... our agency's orphanages cannot get formula! So our agency is collecting formula and every time someone goes to pick up children (there are quite a few kids going through the court process and all right now) the family brings a case or two of formula also. If anyone would like to help donate formula we would be overjoyed to collect formula and bring it up. This may be our children who need the nurishment!

Praise the Lord! Things are moving!