Although the progress has been slow and the waiting long,
God has continued to do a work of preparation in our hearts. Patience is not easy. But, we are thankful for the real opportunity
to rely on the fact that God’s timing is perfect. It has also given us the opportunity to teach
Grant and Quincey the importance of being persistent in our prayers.
The rate of international adoption continues to decline. Not because of fewer families desiring to
adopt, but because of the ever changing regulations and additional paperwork
that slows down the process. As a
country, we’ve gone from almost 23,000 placements in 2004 to only 7,000
placements in 2013. That number will
certainly be fewer for 2014. Upon our
acceptance into our agency last October, the average number of placements per
month was 5. There have been only 5
placements in the last year. We’ve been
told that we should accept this slowdown as the new norm.
Since the beginning of our journey into international
adoption, we planned on adopting domestically as well. Our
plan was to pursue a domestic adoption a few years after we adopted
internationally.
BUT GOD...
His plans do
not always look like our plans but we know His plans are always far better than
ours. After months of praying and
waiting on His direction, and with the state of international adoption as it
is, we have decided to switch the order. We have begun the process of a
concurrent adoption, which means we are still waiting on our child in Ethiopia,
while beginning the process of bringing our baby home within the U.S. At first Quincey was not sure about this. She
was concerned for her brother or sister in Ethiopia, to which we explained that
we are not giving up on them! We believe
God will bring our precious child home in His perfect timing.
With this change of events, we find ourselves realizing that
we may have a BABY in only a few months.
We can’t even express how excited we are at this possibility. The process of a domestic adoption looks
quite a bit different than an international adoption. We are back to filling out papers, along with
making a profile for birth mothers to view. We will continue to update you here and on
our Facebook page (His Glory, Our Joy).
Keep a look out for more of our fundraisers! We are
excited about the Christmas Mini Session Fundraiser coming up this weekend at
McClellan’s Tree Farm.
Lib has also been
busy making more earrings, which would make great gifts for the holidays. We are so thankful for everyone’s continued
support!
-Eddy & Libby
