Countdown to Ethiopia

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
We have felt so much of your love, support and most importantly, prayers!
This has been a long road, no doubt, but we are forever grateful!
As we grow closer and closer and as our hearts race at the thought of a referral any day, we are praying harder and more diligently for many things.  We are praying for safety of our son.  For his mind, body, eyes and heart.  Protection.
We are praying for his biological family as they are making very difficult but admirable decisions to relinquish their own rights to their son.  We are praying for our current family of 4.  That we have realistic expectations of what we are heading into not only for us but for him as well.  That we continue to stay content and steady in the life we are in right now, each day.
We. are. ready.
I had mentioned at the beginning of this adoption journey that we were counting down by eating jelly beans each time we move a spot on the "list".  Well, we have also been counting down with the Africa cutouts in the picture above.  I still can't believe our number says 6!  Unbelievable!  We are truly rejoicing for movement.
As we are gaining a bit of momentum, I have been asked, by quite a few people, what the next steps are.  To be honest, on our last agency call, I needed to ask for myself just to be sure!
So, I thought that I would take a minute {or 2} to give an outline of what could be happening in the very near future {or as we hope, near future!}:

• Referral! We receive a call from our caseworker with the news that they have a little guy for our family and then head to our computer where we will see pictures and a file with his information.
• We have 48 hours to speak to an international pediatrician and verbally except the referral with our agency.
• We then have 10 days to complete the paperwork and send it into All God's Children Int.
• At that point of acceptance, we will sit and wait for our Ethiopian court date.
• Upon a scheduled court date, we will book our flights and make our first trip travel reservations.
• First trip to Addis Ababa, we will meet our son, appear before court, and have visitations at the orphanage with our son and the other kiddos living there!
• We say our goodbyes to little guy and head back to the States {as I type, I am tearing up thinking about this part of the process}.
• We wait for our Embassy date.
• When we receive our Embassy clearance we will make our travel plans and travel our 2nd trip.
• We will arrive in Addis and head to Hannah's Hope {orphanage} where we will be able to leave with our son in our arms!!!!  Gotcha Day!!!!!
• We need to stay a few more days for his visa clearance.
• One last long flight home with our son where he will meet the rest of his forever family and all of our friends!!!!!

{We were told it could be around 3 months from the referral call to returning home with him for good.}

We hope this helps you to pray specifically for our family.  There are still a lot of steps to complete but we are choosing to fix our eyes on the Author and Creator of ALL things.  He has written this story and we are so excited to see how He will choose to end this chapter.  He is a Good God.