As promised I will answer some questions/issues that have been brought up.
"Will you have more children?" Clay and I have always desired to have a large family but we will let the Lord lead us in that. We are just taking one at a time for now. I would say yes we want more but we don't know what the future holds.
"How long will this process take?" The answer to this changes monthly. The paperwork says a year to two years. When I did my own research I found that right at 12 months people were about to travel and pick up their child. Many resent circumstances have slowed the process down. I am now expecting a referral(matching us with a child and sending us his info) any where from July to October. We would travel to Ethiopia a month to two months after that to pick the child up, we will be there for 1 week. The Ethiopian gov't closes down for 8 weeks late summer so we will probably be slowed down by that a little also.
"What does the Bible say about interracial marriage and interracial dating?"
There is nothing in the Bible that says it is wrong to date or marry a person of a different race.
There are a few incidental mentions of race in the Bible (e.g., that Ethiopians skin was different, Jeremiah 13:23), but there is nothing saying one race is superior to another. Moses was married to a Cushite (Ethiopian) woman (Numbers 12:1-16), and God was angry with Aaron and Miriam for criticizing that marriage.
The apostle Paul encouraged Christians not to marry unbelievers (2 Corinthians 6:14), but here again, the reason was religious, not racial.
Jesus and His apostles taught that we must respect and show compassion for all people of God's creation without regard to artificial distinctions like race and nationality. In His Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), Jesus told of a Samaritan man who was kind to a Jewish man even thought they were enemies of different religions, nationalities and ethnic backgrounds. At the end, Jesus tells us, "Go and do likewise."
The Apostle Paul banned all discrimination based on race, social status, etc. among
You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (NIV, Galatians 3:26-28)
A long history of racism, particularly in the U.S., has made some people believe there is something immoral about dating and marrying outside one's own race. In fact, interracial marriage was illegal in some states until 1967, when those laws were declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.
A number of attempts were made to use the Bible to justify those bans on interracial marriage. Vague assertions were made that God intended for the races to remain separate. Some verses (Exodus 34:10-16, 2 Corinthians 6:14, etc.) were quoted in part or otherwise out of context in an attempt to show that God opposed interracial marriage. (source: www.twopaths.com)
Thanks for your questions and keep them coming!
