Its (about) time for an update!

Hello!

It's been a while... well, like 2 1/2 years about... Isn's that crazy!? So where have we been? What is going on? Well, I think it is time for an update!

Many people ask us, "Are you still adopting?"

And the answer is YES!

I know we have been pretty quiet about it and we haven't talked about it too much. We dont mention it a whole lot and it doesn't come up in conversation every day... and you might wonder why? Well, to be honest, it is because..

Waiting is Hard..

We LOVE talking about adoption, we love giving people updates and we LOVE when people ask us about how things are going.. but really until now, the answer has always been the same... "We are still Waiting"... and... "We dont have any idea yet as to when we will be getting our referral."

Until now..

Because we are ALMOST THERE!

I can hardly beleive it myself. But we are finally in the final months of waiting. As it appears, we will most likely have a referral this summer (if the wait times stay the same).

And if we stay on the current trend, with most families receiving referrals after waiting 39-40 months, that would mean we would be receiving our referral at about May/June, 2015! Lord willing!

The feelings and emotions our family is feeling right now is overwhelming to say the least. We are feeling excitment, relief, joy.. but also a little anxious! It has been so long since we have felt like we needed to be in "preparation mode". We've felt on-hold for so long. But praise God, finally, we feel as though we are in the pregancy stage! There is an end in sight and it is coming up FAST!

We do feel a little un-prepared, though we have been waiting so long.. we still feel like there is much to do, to prepare our hearts, our home, our children, our lives to welcome our new child into our family!

So please pray for us! For our child, who has most likely been born now or is about to be born (we are reqesting a child age 0-2). Please pray for the Grace of God to cover us. For His kindness and peace in the life of our child, who has and is experiencing such a tragic start to life. For finances to be met. For our children, Olivia & Brayden to be properally prepared. And for freedom from anxiousness & fear for us.

Also, we would love it if you have questions to ask us! Please follow our blog, I will be posting much more often now (that we are in the last stages and will have more to say!).

We feel so blessed by all of you, our family, our friends, our church family.. Blessed by your prayers, by your kind words of enouragement and your love toward us as we have waited. So many have all stood by us during this long wait and have been so supportive and loving. We feel so overwhelmed and blessed by the Lord for the gift of friendship and support that we have received.

We thank God for you!

~ Bryan & Stephenie

Both Hands Project

We are SO excited about our upcoming fundraiser event! It is such an awesome opportunity and we REALLY NEED EVERYONE'S HELP!

The awesome thing about this fundraiser is that it is multipurpose. It is called the “Both Hands Project” and it is through the organization Lifesong for Orphans. This project stems from the verse in James 1:27 which says “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

The goal of this project is to reach out and do something to help BOTH the orphan and the widow.

This is how it works…

To help the widow:
We are going to assemble a team of friends and family members to help us work for 1 day on the home of a widow that attends our church. We will need as MANY people as possible to help out as her home needs a lot of work! During this day we will be doing a variety of projects on her home, cleaning, yard work, painting, pressure washing the house and fixing things around her home,and much more - we will give more details on that as time goes on.

To help the orphan:
Everyone who decides to join our team will send out a letter (provided by Bryan and I) to all of YOUR friends and family members asking them to support your day of work (this is similar to a walk-a-thon or a like Relay For Life race). Anyone who sponsors you for your day of work will send their 100% tax deductible donation straight to the organization (Lifesong for Orphans). All this money raised will go toward bringing our baby home to us!

Then on August 11th – we work!

So, all the money that was sent in by your friends and family to support your work will go toward funding bringing our child home from Ethiopia and the work that we all do together on the house will bless the widow in our church.

We love the idea of reaching out with BOTH our HANDS to help the Orphan and the Widow and we are asking you if you would consider joining our team! 

If you are interested in helping PLEASE LET US KNOW ASAP if you are able to help (EVEN IF IT IS NOT FOR THE WHOLE DAY BUT A FEW HOURS).
We will be holding a meeting for everyone on our team so we can get together and go over some details and we can explain more about the project to you. As soon as we get an idea of who is interested in helping we will let you know what date that will be.

Thanks for your help and support!

If you are interested in looking up more information about these organizations you can go to the following links:
http://bothhandsfoundation.org/
http://www.lifesongfororphans.org/

Unofficial Numbers

So our agency doesn't really give us a wait "number" like other agencies do. But through our agencies yahoo group where all the families adopting through them get to connect with each other there is someone who keeps a list of all the families who are waiting for children (that we know of, there are probably a few other families that are waiting that are not listed) but it gives us a pretty good idea as to where we are in the wait and how many families are ahead of us... so I would like to periodically share with you what our numbers are :)

Our Numbers for MAY are.... drum-roll please!

MAY NUMBERS:
#80 for BOY
#76 for GIRL

Just to clarify - that means, as far as we know, there are 79 families ahead of us waiting for boys and 75 families ahead of us waiting for girls...

This number can (and has) gone up and down for the past few months. It really all depend on different factors like how many children were referred (accepted into families) that month and if anyone changes their child request (example: changing their request from a boy to a girl or from a older child to a younger child, etc.) that may move us down on the list at times. 

Another update is that 8 children from Ethiopia were referred in the month of April through our agency! Yay!

There were 13 in March, 12 in February & 8 in January.

Praise God for the 41 children who now have forever families in 2012! God is at Work!

But I'm still praying for more... because there are so many more that need Christ-centered homes!

And we know that it is in God's perfect timing that we will one day finally be looking at the face of our child.

Oh how I can't wait for that day!

Steph

UPDATE! 1 Month DTE!

I'm terribly behind in my life right now.... My list of "to-do's" completely outweighs the amount of time I currently have (I do admit that I have been a little bad at time management lately)... but for good reasons.

But more on that another day...

We have INCREDIBLE News! We were officially DTE (Dossier in Ethiopia) on February 24th!!!! Meaning all of our paperwork was sent to Ethiopia on that day and we are officially on the waitlist.

Yay!!! Lets celebrate for a moment!

Because, really, it has been a long road to get to this point.. We submitted our application to the adoption agency on May 9th last year so our "paper-pregnancy" part of this journey has been exactly 9 months (how appropriate! haha). And not we are officially in the "waiting" stage of this journey....

Speaking of waiting....

When we first submitted the application for adoption the wait times were just raised to 14-18 months.... then, Ethiopia started making changes in how many cases they were reviewing and that started making the wait even longer. Because of these changes our adoption agency just informed us that the current wait times are increasing from 14-18 months to 18-24 months for a male or female infant or toddler.

So we are estimating about a 2 year wait at this point.

The good news is that the past few months the number of children that have been referred and matched with their forever families has increased. It has gone from 5 referrals in November, 4 in December, to 8 children in January and a wonderful 12 in February! My hope is that it continues to increase and if it does the wait times will start to go back down again.

But we know that the Lord is in complete control of this and that our child is in His hands. We trust that HE is the one guiding this whole process and that His Will will be done. We know that our future and the future of our children are in His hands.

So right now we Celebrate! One month down and 17-23 to go!!!


Stephenie

We are getting the last few things wrapped up this week for our dossier.... we hope and pray that we it will be on it's way to our adoption agency next week and maybe, just maybe, our paperwork will be on it's way to Ethiopia and we will be officially on the waitlist by next Friday (this is my ambitious hope!)... we are almost there!

Hopefully you will see a post soon called "DTE"

Stephenie

Fervent Prayer in Anxious Waiting

As you can imagine, December has been a whirlwind of many family gatherings, shopping trips, and lots of fun watching Olivia experience this time of year. It's been kind of hard for me to bring myself to post an update on here because, well, there just isn't much to say... we are in a waiting "limbo" of sorts... waiting for one last form, waiting to have enough money... but I can say is that the Lord has blessed us so much during this time, revealing to us that He is with us. We are still trying hard to save and raise a lot more money in order to be able to send in our dossier and we still need about $5,000. But this month we were greatly blessed by family and friends as they generously gave us money toward our adoption... so we keep getting closer and closer! It is both humbling and blessing to receive such gifts from those we love. I just can't even explain in words right now how grateful and blessed I feel.

I don't mean to focus on the money part of this journey... it's just kind of a big part right now... this all takes a LOT of money... but I'm really not worried about it. It can just been discouraging when money is what holds you up from moving forward... all I want is to get on that wait list so we can start counting down the days!!!

In the meantime I know that there are many children waiting and praying for mommy's and daddy's and my little one is one of them... I think about the possibility of what has taken place or will take place for them to become mine.... and so I pray for my little one, and I pray for those who are involved in his or her life ... I pray that the Lord will be with them and that His peace and love would be around them. I pray for Grace to be poured out upon their lives. I pray for the momma and daddy mourning and full of guilt. Lord pour out your Grace.

So as I wait anxiously... I pray fervently...

Phil 4:6-7 "do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Steph

Adoption and the Gospel

I just saw this video on another blog for the first time and cried like a baby... I couldn't delay to share this with you! Please watch, it's so incredible the love God has for us! (Eph. 1:5)

(P.S. you will want to pause the music at the end of the page to listen to the video)
The Stewarts from Together for Adoption on Vimeo.