Our Story for His Glory: We are HOME!!!!!!!!!!!

9.20.2009

We are HOME!!!!!!!!!!!

Home has never felt so wonderful!!! We had a great trip but missed home! WE have a beautiful, sweet baby boy!. Here are some of the 250 pictures/video from our trip. I will share more later. During travel we got 2 hrs of sleep in 36 hrs. We are wiped out!
First Bath with mom and dad!

OUR FIRST TIME TO SEE NILE. WHAT A MOMENT!

More pictures to come!

8 comments:

Laura Kelley www.pitterpatterart.com said...: LOVE IT!!! So glad you guys are home and Nile is just a doll! Love you!; September 20, 2009 at 2:55 PM
jackie said...: So glad you guys are home! I have been praying for you and checking your blog every day! Love the picture of you all meeting him for the first time and Love your shirt in that pic!; September 20, 2009 at 3:33 PM
Jennifer said...: Your faces say it all. Congratulations and Praise God!!!; September 20, 2009 at 4:00 PM
jwhit26 said...: Praise God you are all home safe and sound. He is so beautiful and he could not have been adopted into a more loving, amazing family. I love the picture of you guys first seeing Nile...it brought tears to my eyes! God is truly good!; September 21, 2009 at 7:53 AM
Anonymous said...: Yay! I just got tears in my eyes at that last picture of your reaction to seeing him. Wow.

Enjoy getting to know your new little boy!; September 21, 2009 at 10:50 AM
Christine Satterfield said...: Precious!!!; September 21, 2009 at 7:09 PM
Jen said...: Congratulations! There are tears in my eyes of joy for you! And a hope that someday that can be us!; September 22, 2009 at 11:42 AM
Kristi J said...: oh, he's so cute..I love the pic of yall seeing himfor the first time...priceless, kj; September 22, 2009 at 12:37 PM

What is this blog all about?

This blog was started to keep everyone informed about our adoption from Ethiopia. We prayed that it would help raise awareness of the need to care for orphans. We are now home with the most precious Ethiopian boy, Nile. We are so in love and have grown so much through this process. God has done so many miracles to get us to where we are today. If you are a first time reader you can read here to see how God lead us to adoption. We try to keep the focus of this blog on Nile's progress, information on Ethiopia, our adoption and orphan care opportunities. Click here to watch the video of our trip to Ethiopia.

Why Adopt from Ethiopia?

• One in six children die before their fifth birthday
• 44% of the population of Ethiopia is under 15 years old
• 60% of children in Ethiopia are stunted because of malnutrition
• The median age in Ethiopia is 17.8 years
• 1.5 million people are infected with AIDS (6th highest in the world)
• 720,000 children have been orphaned by AIDS alone, and there are 4.6 million orphans in Ethiopia.
• Per capita, Ethiopia receives less aid than any country in Africa
• In the 90s the population (3%) grew faster than food production (2.2%)• Drought struck the country from 2000-2002 (first year no crops, second year no seeds, third year no animals)
• Half the children in Ethiopia will never attend school. 88% will never attend secondary school.
• Coffee prices (Ethiopia’s only major export) fell 40-60% from 1998-2002.
• Ethiopia’s doctor to children ratio is 1 to 24,000.
• In 1993, after 30 long years of war, Eritrea broke from Ethiopia and became an independent nation leaving Ethiopia landlocked without any major seafaring ports.

OUR TIMELINE

Dec 07-Praying about baby #3
Jan 08- We feel God leading us towards adoption
Pray, pray, pray-research-waiting until our daughter is 18 months
June 20, 08- Mailing paper work to AWAA
July 1, 08- application approved by AWAA for Ethiopia program-Let the fun begin!
July 7th, 08- Mailing signed agreement and initial payment to AWAA
July 14th, 08-Got assigned a family coordinator and lots of paperwork.
July 23rd, 08- I have tons of paperwork done and notarized! Things I've gotten together: application letter, submitted I-600, background checks, birth certs, marriage cert, physicals, proof of employment, proof of insurance, applied for passports
Aug 1, 08- We are rocking through some paperwork! 90% of it is done! We just are waiting on our homestudy to get scheduled!
Aug 7, 08- made appt with social worker to start homestudy in 2 weeks. Got fingerprinting appointments. Working on dossier and homestudy requirements and paperwork.
Aug 15, 08- USCIS fingerprints
Aug 19, 08- first home study meeting(@ Panera)
Aug 20, 08- Second home study (@ our house)
Aug 27, 08- Clay's individual meeting with social worker
Sept 2, 08- Tracy's individual meeting with social worker(Home study done-Now we wait on the report)
Sept 25, 08- We got our finalized home study in the mail today and overnighted it to USCIS. Now we wait for the I-171!
Nov 19, 08- Finally got the I-171
Nov 20, 08- America World has our Dossier
Dec 12, 08- Dossier sent to Ethiopia (DTE!!)
Dec 18, 08- Dossier landed in Ethiopia
July 9, 09- Got a referral for a 4 week old boy!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Aug 19, 09- Court date, we passed 1st time!!!
Sept 15, 09- Gotcha Day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nov 19, 09- court date for readoption

9.20.2009

We are HOME!!!!!!!!!!!

8 comments:

Happy #adoptionday2017