The Journey Begins

As many of you know, we started the adoption process in January of this year. We have created this blog to keep everyone up to date on our journey to bringing home Baby Mitchell. While we aren't the best at keeping up to date on stuff like this, our goal is to post regularly. Here is what has happened in the process so far and what we are anticipating in the months to come:
We officially submitted our application to adopt a child from Russia to Christian World Adoption in January. We were assigned a social worker and immediately began the process of completing our home study, which is a process that is used to ensure that children are adopted to safe and loving “forever families.” At the same time, we submitted our official application to the United States Citizenship and Immigration department, which will give us approval to adopt a child internationally. After much prayer and consideration, we decided to switch our country from Russia to Ethiopia. We were assigned a case manager that will lead us through the process of adopting from Ethiopia. During this time period we continued to collect the documentation necessary to complete our home study, and we had several interviews with our social worker, including a (nerve-wracking) home visit. We have just completed our home study in the last week, and we are celebrating that milestone.
Our next steps are to finish collecting the documents necessary for our dossier, which will be translated and eventually sent to the government in Ethiopia. Once our dossier is reviewed and approved, we will wait for the referral of a child to be adopted. We have not specified whether or not we would like a boy or girl, and we anticipate that the child will be around 1 year old.

We would be so grateful if you would join us in praying for this process. There are a few things in particular for which we would especially appreciate your prayers:
1. For patience for us during this long process. Please pray that we would be open and obedient to God’s will for our family.
2. That our hearts and home would be prepared for a child and that this process would be one where we grow in faith and our marriage grows even stronger.
3. That God would provide the resources that are needed to complete the process…financial, documentation, and endurance!
4. For our unknown child and his or her biological family. Pray for their health and safety, both emotional and physical.
5. For the people of Ethiopia, and in particular, those who care for the children waiting for adoption…that they would have the stamina, patience, and love to continue to provide for the needs of many abandoned children.