Unexpected Surprise

Hi everyone. Well, today we received a most unexpected, yet totally amazing surprise. We received a comment on our blog site from Guus and Jeanette who live in Holland. They had seen our blog and wanted to share something wonderful with us.

They too have adopted from Ethiopia, and as it turns out, from the same orphanage that Henok lives in. They have two very beautiful daughters, who i'm sure have brought such a wonderful happiness into their lives! They are adorable...

Now, on to our surprise. During their trips to visit Kechene Orphanage in 2000, 2004, and 2007, they had the opportunity to meet many children that were in the orphanage. Jeanette said that they remembered Henok, and had some pictures of him from their visits, and offered to send us the pictures!!!

Even though Renee and I have been so happy to have been given the opportunity to adopt Henok, who is 11 years old, we were sad that we never got to meet him and know him when he was younger. This surprise was such a wonderful gift from God and an answer to many prayers.

To Jeanette and Guus: Thank you so much for for this special gift you have given us. We look forward to hearing from you again and getting to know your family as our children grow. From the bottom of our hearts, Thank you!

Now, for a quick teaser pic, here is one of Henok from 2004. He was about 7 or 8 at this time! Hope you all enjoy this as much as we have.

Matthew

CIS....DONE

We went to Houston today and had our fingerprints done at the CIS office. There were a ton of people there and it took us several hours before we were called to get our prints. However, it is finally done, and now we wait......

This is a major hurdle, and now we are looking for that I-171 to come in the mail hopefully within the next 6 weeks! This is the US Governments official approval for us to adopt, as well as the document we need to get Henok's official Visa to enter the country.

We are in full swing with our Dossier. We sent the first round of documents to Kate at KBS Dossiers. As expected, there are some changes that were needed, but nothing out of the ordinary. Renee's birth certificate was too old, so we had to order a current one from California. No biggie... We should have that in the next week or so.

It looks like the last major hurdle will be getting the rest of the funds together to pay for the adoption. However, we entered this adoption process knowing that it would be God who makes this adoption happen, and we have full faith that He will provide the funds to make it so. We have applied for several grants, but it looks like we will need to do some sort of 0% interest covenant loan to finish out the cost of the plane tickets and whatever other costs come up on our end. No big deal, but we are still trusting God to bring us the funds!

That's all for now. Take care and God Bless!

Matthew