We Are Expecting!

We are happy to announce that we've officially started the international adoption process through Christian World Adoption. We say officially because this process started in our hearts years ago but as of this week we have submitted our first applications. Many of you have been praying that God would open and close doors for us as necessary to ensure we are matched with the right child at the right time. In answer to those prayers, we experienced God's visible hand in this process as we received confirmation and encouragement during our initial meeting with a CWA representative, Joyce, on Saturday. As she told her own adoption stories (she and her husband have 9 adopted children), she unknowingly addressed every question/concern we had identified as we prepared for the meeting.



God spoke to us both differently during the meeting but we both left feeling that CWA was the organization for us and we were in agreement that our next child was (or will be) born in Ethiopia. For the first time, Michelle felt a strong emotional pull to a country and when Joyce showed pictures of the Ethiopian children her eyes began to water. Riley, ever the rational one, felt that Ethiopia made the most sense given all of the information available (God can speak in boolean logic and mathematical equations, right?). Neither of us started this process with either CWA or Ethiopia on our hearts, which makes us even more firmly convinced that we are hearing God's voice in this.

We both have so much to learn about this process, but we are excited to have officially launched. We are still prayerfully asking God about timing, gender, special needs, etc... and we ask all of you to do the same. We feel like we could write about this for days, but there will plenty of time for that in the future (this will likely take 12 months or longer). In the mean time, if you are interested in reading about some of God's work in Ethiopia through CWA, check out the Acacia Village project.

Thank you for all of your support and prayers thus far. We can't wait to share God's blessings with you as we move forward.

Riley and Michelle