Court Date!

We got the call last Thursday from our social worker letting us know our court hearing will be on Wednesday October 27th! We were thrilled since we were expecting it to be in November. She told us we need to arrive on Monday and we can leave any day after Wednesday. We are planning on leaving Thursday, October 21st and returning the following Saturday, October 30th. We will actually be flying into Tanzania on Friday, Oct. 22nd to visit some friends of ours who are missionaries there, then we'll be flying up to Ethiopia on Monday. We are not able to visit the orphanage on the weekends, so the earliest we can see Amaya would be Monday. We have heard that we should be able to visit with her each day for about 2-3 hours. I know it is going to be awful returning home without her, but we pray the time will pass quickly before our next trip. Here are some prayer requests as we approach this first trip:

~ Pray the court date does not change! Our social worker said to try to get airline tickets that we will be able to change just in case something comes up and our court date needs changed. Pray that nothing comes up!

~Pray we pass court the first time! It is not uncommon to fail court 1 or 2 times because of missing paperwork or other minor legalities. We will not have to travel again if we fail to pass court the first time, but we do not want to have any delays in getting Amaya home!

~Logan- Okay, so this is more of a prayer request for me. I am so excited to travel to meet our little girl but as we are planning our trip, I get very sad thinking about leaving Logan for so long. Pray I will be at peace about leaving him and that he would do well with family and friends. We know he will be spoiled rotten!

~Meeting Amaya! Pray that she would come to us without fear and hesitation, especially Ryan. As we have listened to others' stories of meeting their children, it seems they have a difficult time bonding with the Father. We are praying that Amaya gets comfortable around us and that we do not lose the bond we make with her over the 4-5 weeks before our next trip.

Thank you all so much for your prayers! We appreciate it!

Baby Brother!

No, Logan is not going to have a baby brother....Logan is going to BE the baby brother! About 4 weeks ago we received a referral for a 16 month old girl from Ethiopia! We were told that when we activated our adoption things would mover fairly quickly and they certainly did. We have received several pictures of her and she is beautiful. We're not allowed to post pictures of her until we bring her home so you will just have to trust us. :-) We submitted the acceptance paperwork in mid-July, and we received an email just last week that the adoption agency has officially filed for a court date. We are looking at the last week of October or early November, and hope to hear in a couple of weeks. After the court date, we'll travel home and then wait 4-6 weeks to return to Ethiopia to pick her up and hopefully have her home by Christmas.