Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes.
Isaiah 54:2
We knew God had big things in store for us in January.....the year started off crazy busy as always, and we had planned to begin another adoption at our one year mark with Levi. I love how our faithful God will always confirm when we are in the center of His will.....we accepted the referral for our new children on January 27th....the exact date we arrived home with Levi one year ago! We have 4 more children waiting for us in Ethiopia....3 boys and 1 girl. They are an amazingly beautiful sibling group who have suffered so much loss and are in a heartbreaking situation right now. In spite of everything they are suffering, they still have the most gorgeous smiles and you can see their sweet spirits shining through in their picture. Everyone always asks how we chose them.....how we knew they were going to be ours. All I can say is that it is a totally supernatural experience. We never set out to adopt 4 children at once, but we did trust God to show us who He had for us at the right time.
So what is ahead of us now? Well, so far a wide range of responses from people who are overjoyed and praising God at the thought of 4 orphans being rescued and redeemed, to those who are just perplexed at why we would even consider taking on such a huge task in this economy, when we already have children, etc...oh, and my favorite--"I'm glad God called you to do that and not me!" I was prepared for the whole world to not understand completely, so I'm eternally grateful for all of you who are undergirding our entire process in prayer!!! You are holding us up! :)
We also have an enormous amount of fundraising to do and of course, mounds of paperwork to get done quickly. We are all missing our kids terribly and praying for their health and safety constantly. Not having them with us is absolutely no different than if Elle, Nash or Levi were far away from us in unknown circumstances.....those of you who've been through adoption know exactly the feeling I'm talking about!
I do have more wonderful news to report!...the Kriebels passed court today on the first try and will travel to get their 4 kids at the end of February!!! In the meantime the Weimers are waiting for a court date to bring home their next sibling group of 3. We had the Weimers over for lunch yesterday and the kids had a blast! God is so good to create an instant Ethiopian community with amazing families for these beautiful children!!!
Bethlehem and Isabella chillin on Patriot
Brave Bethlehem's first ride!
Selam chose to ride face to face with Elle!
Bereket did great on Patriot!
Good job Patriot!....you're such a great kid horse!!! :)
We so need all of your prayers as we labor to become a family of 9....we are in no way thinking that it will be easy, but we know for sure that God has already done all the work and prepared the way for us to walk it out.
Right now I'm just wondering if anyone (except Kristi) will ever invite us all to dinner again???
