The Faces of Rwanda slide show

Our hearts go out to the approx. 1 million orphans in Rwanda. (be sure to turn off music player at the bottom of our blog before viewing this video)

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!!! 2010 is HERE and we are thrilled to start this new chapter in our family life. We feel so fortunate as we count our many blessings from this past year and are excited to share these with a child who is less fortunate.

Adoption Update:

We’ve spent the last month announcing our adoption plans to friends and family and now we are ready to start the infamous paperwork of adoption. It’s been a rollercoaster ride already in getting everyone’s reactions to our decision. Some are thrilled and are cheering us on, others see this as part of God’s plan for our family, and others are very wary of the idea of intercountry adoption. Needless to say, we’ve been given lots of advice, shared stories of adoption, and many prayers for our family. With prayerful hearts and much support from many of you, we are ready for the journey before us!

Let the Paperwork Begin:

To get the ball rolling, we were sent about 10 documents from our adoption agency that we need to review and sign and return with our first installment payment of $1,500 (you’ll hear us talk about his more, since no adoption is inexpensive). While reviewing these documents, we are also completing a mandatory 10-hour Hague Intercountry Adoption training course that was prepared by the National Council for Adoption. The training course has answered many of our questions and educated us on the ups, downs, ins and outs of intercountry adoption.

We hope to complete our initial documents and the training course by the end of next week to send back to our agency. Once the agency has received this information from us, we will then be assigned a family coordinator to help us through the process and a social worker to complete our home study.

Lots to do before this adoption becomes a reality, but we are thrilled and hopeful for the coming months ahead!!!!

Next Update – why we chose Rwanda!

Merry Christmas one and all!

Dreaming, wishing, hoping & praying a Merry Christmas for our future little boy from Rwanda!

And so it begins . . .

As we enter this holiday season, we are thrilled to announce to our friends and family our decision to adopt a child from Rwanda!

Jim & I have talked about adoption for as long as I can remember. However, this year it really weighed on our hearts more heavily. Through lots of prayer, discussion, reading, and meetings about adoptions, we decided pretty much simultaneously in September that we were ready to add to our family through adoption. We are doing great as a family of three, but think we’ll be a bit more complete with four. Time will tell!

So with this decision we approached a few trusted adoption agencies and decided to work with America World Adoption Agency (AWAA). They work with numerous countries in international adoptions. In Africa, they have programs in Rwanda & Ethiopia. Based on Jim’s trips to Africa (including visiting orphanages & schools) and our volunteer work with Rwandan outreach programs through our church in the Seattle area for 4 years, we felt particularly drawn to this part of Africa.

We have lots to tell you all, but won’t try to post it all in this first “posting.” I’ve never written a blog before, so I’m going to try to make short posts rather than being too long winded. I know in our excitement about this adoption that I could go on and on and on!

Please keep us in you prayers as we enter the “paper pregnancy” over the next several months, and we really do hope you’ll be a part of our family’s new adventure!