DTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We got our email from Nicole, our family Coordinator at AWAA confirming our DTE date of 9/4/2009!

"Root Family, you've finally become DTE!

What are you going to do next?"

"We're going to DISNEY WORLD!"

What makes it so incredible is that many many moons ago I asked God to make a way for us to take the kids on one last "Family of Five" vacation, and He did. Then as things drug out, a few months back I prayed that He would please let all the pieces come together so that we could be finished with our paper pregnancy before we left on our trip, and HE DID IT! Our cruise and our DTE date are the same!!!!! YOU ROCK GOD!!!! Your timing is PERFECT, I'm sorry when I momentarily lose sight of that sometimes!!!!!

Psalm 68:31 ". . .Ethiopia will quickly stretch out her hands to God." We're praying for you little package, you're our love, desires, hopes, and obedience wrapped up in a little box. Be safe, travel quickly.

First Day of School

Today was the first day of school in our district. Per our usual tradition, I lined the kids up in front of the garage to take their picture before we piled into the car. I yelled out, "Kids! Get together and put your arms around your brothers and sister, like you like each other."

I started snapping away and I hear Jason giggling behind me. I realized I was zoomed in and not getting Nathan's arm. A bit frustrated I said, "Come on Nathan, put your arm down," thinking he was being difficult, until Jason said, "Gina, he's putting his arm around our other kids." Nathan just looked over at his arm as if there was another kid standing there and started giggling.

He's such an adorable character. Wherever and whoever our "unknown" children are in the world today, know this, your family - already - sight unseen - dearly loves, includes, and giggles over you.

From Our Agency. . .

Decorating the Ethiopia Transitional Home
A small volunteer group will be traveling this Friday to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with the mission of decorating our Ethiopia Transitional Home. Our desire is for our Transitional Home to feel more like a home and be as welcoming as it can be to the children and babies who will live there temporarily.
We are working on creating new baby beds and bunk beds and on adding more lighting. We are also having the floors redone and painting murals in the school room, boys room, girls room and baby room. We also hope to paint murals in the court yard.
We would like to raise funds to help with this project through our Orphan's Ticket Home campaign. We cannot purchase the supplies without your help. Any amount will benefit this endeavor. You can donate here. Just be sure to put in the Notes section: Ethiopia Transitional Home Decorating.
We will be sure to share the photos with you of the updates!
Thank you!
AWAA

Just as a note: You receive a tax donation form if you wish to make the place our children will live for almost a year of their life more comfortable!

We're in the System!

We can no longer commit any major crimes and hope to escape unnoticed. Our prints are officially in the FBI system! The lady taking mine commented, "Oh! Wonderful, your prints are so nice and plump! Most stay at home mom's we scan have no fingerprints at all. It's as if they've scrubbed them off with a brilo pad." To which I have to say thank you Rita for exposing two of my most negative secrets, 1. Everything about me is nice and plump sister, and 2. No, I do not do housework or scrub anything with a brilo pad thereby creating any opportunity for removing my fingerprints. They are and will forever be present and accounted for.
Let the countdown to our I-171H arriving begin. And please allow me to apologize to the mailman in advance, excuse me, mail lady, I will be stalking you. Whenever your loud little red truck with the magnetic US Post RURAL sign slapped crooked on the door is heard coming down the street, engine and brakes alternating in a hum and a screech as you stop at each mailbox, I will run out like a mad woman, and I may even forget to make sure I'm properly dressed. This is your two week notice.

We have APPOINTMENTS!

Today has been a really great day! My mom kept her job amid massive downsizing, prayers for those who didn't, I reached my first goal in my healthy lifestyle plan, my first adoption tshirt arrived in the mail, can't wait to sport it around town, our truck is ready at the shop, and God provided the funds to pay for all the repairs, and

OUR FINGERPRINT APPOINTMENTS ARRIVED FROM USCIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Once we complete these appointments, our I-171H should arrive in the mail a few weeks later and then we'll be DTE and move from PAPER CHASING to WAITING FOR REFERRAL!

God Provides, yes He does!

Why do we worry? Why do we even think about taking one step on that path? I'm learning not to. I'm learning not to entertain even the hint of concern over life, finances, my children, the future. Because I serve a God who loves to pour out blessing on me. He loves me to death, literally. He delights in providing for me. He gets a kick out of coming through for me when I need help. He giggles when I tear up with shear joy from seeing Him move on my behalf.

I almost stepped my foot on the path to worry about the rest of the money for this adoption. I was concerned about the flights, physically and financially, and God showed me today that He's got it all under control. So I'm done! I'm laughing with excitement to see how God provides next, cuz it just gets cooler and cooler, the ways He finds to surprise me. Goose pimples, gotta love em!

We're State Certified!

Our State Certification seals came in the mail today! Now we're just waiting on our fingerprint appts and then our I-171H to arrive and we're DTE! Everything else is in and waiting on the Immigration Dept!

We got the receipt for our I-600A!

Tonight when I went to the mailbox I got the receipt for our I-600A from the USCIS office, which means our 1171-H is officially on the way! (But still a good 2-3 months out!) I'm so excited! We're one half step closer to being DTE!!!
(Don't you non-adopting families just love all this lingo which is plain garbled rubbish to you!?!?) Just say a whoo hoo with us! It's great news!

Moving Along!

I haven't had a moment free to post, but I thought I would carve one out just to update the timeline and preserve some thoughts. . .

The last two weeks have been extremely hectic on the homefront and the adoption front simultaneously! (Of course) We recieved our home study from Katherine, which means we are able to move forward with the next steps in the process. We spent most of Friday in line at the Passport office, what a nightmare! It's of course a usually non-eventful activity but never when it involves our family! Today the kids and I spent a few hours in the car and too much time walking from building to building in downtown Fort Worth trying to obtain Criminal Background Checks on Jason and I. I also mailed off our USCIS application, so we are getting so close to finishing up the paper chase and submitting our dossier.

We're also in the middle of deciding whether or not to sell our home and move. It's a financial and emotional decision I'm just not being willing to commit to either way. On one hand, I want to stay in this house because it makes the MOST financial sense, but on the other hand, I don't know how it's physically possible to fit two more children, or even one more child, into this cozy home. Add to that the stress of home repair, getting a new roof, and a new fence, and replacing a ton of electronics that were damaged in the lightning strike, and I'm just money poor and exhausted.

And today while I'm on the verge of tears with the weight of all of these decisions on my shoulders, I'm thinking about those precious souls God has chosen for our family, and it seems nothing is too complicated or potentially financially stressful to undertake in order to bring them home where God has called them.

Spirit of Fear

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. By which we call, "Abba, Father!" Romans 8:12

So I've been doing amazingly well with the ups and downs of this adoption. I have not allowed myself to be consumed with anxiety or obsession. I have allowed peace and understanding to reign in every area of this adventure, that is until Sunday night.

We had our Home Study and our Social Worker's job is to question the ever living out of us concerning the possible negative issues our children will arrive with and to grill us about our ability to handle those needs. I never once wavered in my belief that God is in control but satan began whispering in my ear all sorts of retarded lies. I won't say I believed them, because I never lost focus on what God has told me, that my children, all 5 of them, will be emotionally and physically healthy and fully attached to me and Jason and to each other, but the weariness of the road it could take to achieve that began to overwhelm me. That coupled with my first sense of their rejection by others, and I opened the door for the spirit of fear.

I attended a powerful prayer meeting on Monday night in which God confirmed for me I hear Him, and I can trust what He's said to me, because He always fulfills His promises. Towards the end of the evening, the room is opened up and people begin to simply share what they hear the Holy Spirit telling them about anyone in the room, and I began to ask God to confirm for me through a stranger in the room that I was gifted with what I needed to bring these children home and be the parent they needed so that I could put away my fears. And wouldn't you know it, GOD delivered, answered, and provided! The only African in the room, a man so dark even the whites of his eyes were hard to define, raised his hand and pointed at me. He said, "Are you a Dr? I see Doctor all over you." His accent was so strong, it made his statement even more definitive. In that instant I knew God was confirming that I was the Dr my children would need, I will be able to minister to their needs, and heal their deficiencies. Not by my might, but because the Holy Spirit lives in me, and by His power, and by the blood of the Son we can all be perfectly healed, not just in heaven, but in this life.

I've begun to allow God to show me glimpses of them in my prayer time with Him, an image I've frequently shaken out of my vision before, out of just sheer overwhelmedness! :) But, in the last few days I've just allowed the Spirit to take me there, and it's nothing short of skydiving, the sensation of seeing things unseen. They are beautiful and my heart is filling with them already. I'm beginning to yearn for them in a new way. To have a sudden fear response, similar to the one I have when I jerk around to look in the back seat because I think I've left a child behind at a resteraunt. I've often had dreams that my children have been left alone at home, or somewhere frightening, and no matter how hard I run, it seems I'm unable to get to them, and that sense of angst to get to them is beginning to develop in relation to these two precious ones I've never even met.

It's the healthy side of being ready to go. I will not question God's timing, I know it's perfect, I will not fear when ups and downs arise as they always do in international adoptions, but I will continue to grow in my eagerness to get to them, to bring them, home, to hold them, and to begin the rest of their lives as Crazy Roots.