Online courses…CHECK!

Richard and I completed our required online adoption courses this weekend! WOO HOO! Another thing checked off our list! (12 credit hours) Between attending last weeks seminar in Franklin and the online courses I feel like I could do a power point on adoption, medical issues, transracial families, handling comments in front of my child, etc. with my eyes closed;). I’m very thankful for this time of preparation…but I also CAN’T WAIT TO HAVE OUR FAMILY LOGGED IN ON THE ETHIOPIAN WAIT LIST!

What’s left for us? With all my paper collecting…what’s left for us to do?
– Labwork on Tuesday at 1pm
– Final home study interview (the FAMILY!) and home walk through next Monday
– Power of Attorney letter (2 of them…one state certified)
– Need to update my passport
– Finish taking pictures of our home and mounting them on 8×11 cardstock for court
– USCIS (immigration) approval – 600A to be mailed in w/ completed home study, another big check and lots of forms I’ve collected and we’ll wait on the FINAL “golden ticket” the 171! (this will complete our dossier!)
– All these will be bundled together along with a gazillon other things I’ve collected to make our completed dossier…that will go in with another ginormous check…and then we’ll be able to fall back, pass-out and BREATH…oh yeah…and WAIT:)

OK…that may seem like a lot left to do…but if you saw the list of things we have already done…we are ALMOST there!!! This list is really so small now…and I feel like I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel! I think being done by Thanksgiving is actually an achieveable task! Now, if I can just convince immigrations/USCIS to send us our 171 returned by Thanksgiving? Now that will be a different story! I continue to remind myself that GOD IS IN THIS….and HE IS THE ONE carefully putting us in line at the perfect time to all-knowingly, purposefully and perfectly so we will be referred to the baby HE chose to be a part of our family even before He placed him in his mother’s womb.

Psalm 139
O LORD, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.
You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, [a] you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake, I am still with you….

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.