Leavin' On a Jet Plane

The past week and a half has been a whirlwind in our adoption journey.  We were in the waiting period for 22 months, then the phone rang.  Our agency (AGCI) called to let us know that we had been matched with a 6 month-old little boy.  It is pretty much impossible to describe what that conversation was like.  It was amazing.  At the end of the call she sent us an email with 8 photos of the most handsome little Ethiopian man in the world.

So, we celebrated by crying, smiling, gazing at the photos, eating a great meal, buying him a stuffed animal…being overwhelmed.

The next part of the process was to receive our court date in Ethiopia, which determines the timing of our first trip.  Well, that call came yesterday.  Court date is August 8 and we have to be in Ethiopia on Aug. 5.  So much has to happen in the next week and a half for us to actually be ready to leave the country for a week.  So we are praying hard and working hard to get on that plane and go meet our son.

We need you and anyone else you know to pray the following things for us:

1)   Our faith in God’s care for our immediate needs.  It is so easy to be shortsighted and have little faith even when God has already been so faithful along the way.

2)   Booking travel.  We need to book travel as a fast as possible in order to get the itinerary we need.

3)   Emily and James.  We will be leaving them for a week and Pete (our dog) can’t take care of them so we will be handing them off for a few days.

4)   Safety in travel.

5)   Our son, Anderson Daniel (Andy) who has no idea we even exist.  That God would graciously protect and prepare him to be in the Hunt family.

Thank you so much for praying.

Doug

a.k.a Andy’s dad.

New Numbers

I guess I forgot to post last month's numbers. But here are the current numbers as of April 30th.

Girl

10

Boy

4

   

An Update

It's been awhile since we've updated. Not much has been happening on our end. We have spent the last few months updating our home study, fingerprints, and FDL which has expired. But it is done and hopefully won't have to do it again. We also received some updates from our agency about the process and why it seems to have slowed down. It was a lot of information but basically they are required to do more investigation on the children (per Ethiopia government) before they can refer them to families. All of that takes time, time, and more time. Although we are still seeing children being referred and brought home. So that is good news. We also got new numbers. Here you go...

Girl

Boy

Thank you for your prayers and please continue to pray for us. We are getting close!

It takes a village...

You may have heard this phrase before..."It takes a village to raise a family". Well I truly believe that. I read a blog post that put into words what I've been thinking, feeling, and anticipating for months. If you have any desire to know how to love us during this time of "waiting" and how to love us after the "wait" please read this...Jen Hatmaker

I would love to hear your thoughts as well.

December numbers

There hasn't been much movement in the numbers lately. So we were excited to see this movement. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We are praying that 2012 is the year we bring home our baby!

GIRL #

BOY #

New Numbers...Finally

Not much movement this month...

Girl #

Boy #

Yard Sales and God

Sometimes (like right now) it is so hard to put human words to God actions. But, I am going to give it a shot.

Today we put on a yard sale to raise funds towards our adoption. The decision to do the yard sale came about a month ago after taking a long break from doing any fund raising. We experienced a couple of really amazing things in the process that can only be attributed to God.

1) We were loved well by people. Several families and individuals donated items for us to sell. We had all kinds of things from clothes to tools to baked goods. Some of our baked goods were shipped to us from Alabama and Boston! We had other people come to our house and help Shelley organize and price everything. The night before the yard sale someone brought us dinner. We had college students and a co-worker show up at our house at 6:30 am (while on their fall break) to help (Thank you Tyler, Brenna, Kaitlyn, and Jeremy!). One of our favorite families, the Hyatts, drove up from Charleston to spend the night and work the yard sale (Thank you Peter, Tanya, Hannah, Lauren and Stone). They are such great servants of Jesus.

Just being loved in all those ways is very humbling.

2) God provided through the yard sale in very unexpected ways. About 2 weeks ago a friend of ours walked up to our house and said, "We don't have anything to donate but wanted to give you this for the yard sale". It was an envelope with $400 in it! BLOWN AWAY! Three days ago a letter came in the mail with this sentence in it, "I don't have anything to donate but figure you would take money". In it was a check for $2500! Yep...$2500! BLOWN AWAY AGAIN! (This is also is being loved by people....)

So before the yard sale even got here the yard sale had made $2900. If you are wondering, that is not normal for yard sales.

Then today another $785 came in from selling stuff. So, not being very good at math, I am pretty sure that adds up to $3685.

We also still have a $400-$500 worth of stuff that is for sale on-line.

That is crazy and something only God could do. He keeps amazing us. He keeps reminding us that He is so good and completely for this adoption. We know we don't deserve any of this.

So to everyone who had anything to do with this yard sale, we can't even begin to thank you.

Amazing.