Christmas Update…

The beauty of the Christmas story is that Christ came to dwell with His creation. What is ironic (or tragic) is that His creation did not recognize him and made no room for Him. Christ gave much for the benefit of those that would ultimately be a part of his family. He suffered brokenness so that we could be healed. He suffered poverty so that we could inherit His Kingdom. He suffered isolation and loneliness so that we could be brought into His family. His story and our incorporation into His family is a vertical picture of what many children experience when they are adopted into loving families. So to that end we feel compelled by Christ to go to whatever lengths we must to bring a child (or children) into a loving family. We fully recognize that we are not saviors, but we also understand that we can be the hands and the feet of the Savior through this process of adoption.

Process Update:

Things have picked up for us over the last couple of weeks. We put our fundraising on pause while we celebrated the holiday. That said, we still experienced the grace of God in abundance through the generosity of others during this time. The most surprising donation came from some of Keith’s former students at Georgia Tech. Over 20 of them came together to give close to $1000. It was humbling and further confirmation that God is with us and able to provide for us!

We also made some significant steps with our adoption and more specifically the Home Study process. We had our first two interviews! The first was an Orientation phone call that lasted about and hour. We also had a two hour long in-home visit with our Georgia Case Workers.

You might be curious as to what the in-home visit entailed. During the visit, Brittany and Melinda took a full tour of our home, they conducted a brief interview with our boys, and they spent a significant amount of time asking us questions about our marriage. It all seems very intense but they made it a very comfortable experience for all of us.

The next steps for us are going through background checks with all of the states we have lived in, beginning our paperwork for our dossier, and our next interview that will take place on January 22nd. During this interview Brittany and Melinda will talk to us individually to dig more into our past to understand our fitness to adopt based on our family histories. This will require that both of us complete 8 to 10 page long autobiographies.

How You Can Be Praying Us:

Please pray for our Georgia Case Workers to have the grace necessary to guide us through the Home Study process and to be able to represent us honestly in the Home Study report.
Pray for us to be diligent and organized with paperwork as it is beginning to become overwhelming.
Continue to pray for us as we parent our boys and teach them about the realities of bringing a new child (or children) into our home.
Continue for to pray for God to provide the financial means for us to complete the adoption process.
Finally pray that God’s will be done regarding us adopting one or two children. We are continuing to pray through this, but decided to have our home study written that we are open to a sibling group of two. This way, we will be able receive referrals for sibling groups and won’t need to pay to have our home study revised later if there was a sibling group that would be a good match for our family. We are not guaranteed to be approved for two children or matched with two children. It is in God’s hands and we ask that you pray that we will be faithful to serve as He sees fit.

Christmas Traditions:

This Christmas we were struck by the thought that in a couple of years we will be celebrating with a much fuller house. It was fun to go through all our traditions with our little girl(s) in mind. So to end we wanted to share those with you all: