Stalkers...

OK, since Monday I have had 124 hits on my blog!!! That's pretty exciting! That means I have some stalkers out there! Ok, ok, I confess--half of those are probably from me checking my blog to see how many people are reading my blog! :) I confess that I, too, am a blog stalker, so if you are reading this even though we are complete strangers, you are not alone. I read yours too. BUT last night, I actually signed someone's guest book so they would know I was there! I was quite proud of myself. :)

Fingerprints Done!

Well today we headed to get our fingerprints done. It was really easy! We didn't have an appointment, they just told us to go during office hours. So we trekked up to Fort Worth with our two little ones. We realized when we got there that the office was inside a Hispanic Mall! No lie, every single thing in this store was in Spanish, all the store names, everything!! So we get there and there are Hispanic people everywhere in a really long line! But wow USCIS really knew what they were doing because it went very smoothly. I'm so excited to have another step down in the process! So what are we waiting for now?

#1 - we are waiting for our old agency to send in our originals!! I'm hounding the mail man every day!!

#2 - Patty at AoH has our homestudy and said she would "proofread" it and submit it back to us for corrections, so I'm checking my email about 876 times a day for that! :)

Pics to bring a smile...

I wanted to share some recent pics of my kids!



Cambree Rain - 8 1/2 months old





Caedmon Luke (2 years) and Cambree



Daddy and Cambree

A God Thing

So yesterday Blu mowed someone's lawn, and today on his desk at the church there was $50 in an envelope! This afternoon, we went to get birth certificates/marriage license and the total was $46. I was blown away. I mean, of course we could have afforded to pay $46 either way. But to me, it was a subtle reminder from God that He is going to provide for us every step of the way. :)

A Boy...

We made a couple of changes to our application....we circled that we want a BOY!! We realize that we could still end up with a girl, but we decided to put our preference as a boy!

Immigration Process

Well, so far we have submitted our I-600A to immigration. This is basically a form, along with birth certificates, marriage license, pay stubs, W-2s, and our homestudy, that immigration will look at to determine whether we qualify to adopt a child. It is basically a 3 part process--1) application, 2) fingerprints (we haven't done those yet), and 3) home study. So far we have step one in, along with the $685 fee!! Once we get all of the parts in, we will wait 3-4 months for approval. Then our adoption will really start moving forward!

And so we begin...again...

Hello! I am creating this blog after reading so many other adoption blogs that have uplifted my spirits and answered my questions! I am also hoping to use this as a spot where family and friends can keep up with where we are in the adoption process! Let me start with a bit about us!

We are Blu and Darbi, and we have 2 biological children, Caedmon (2 years) and Cambree (8 months). We previously served on the mission field in Zambia and lived in a mud hut out in the bush! In Zambia, we loved to visit the House of Moses orphanage. It was there that God first placed the thoughts of adoption on our hearts.

After Caedmon and Cambree were born, we knew that God wanted us to step forward in faith. Of course, this seems strange to many people for several reasons! First of all, our children are young. Secondly, Blu is in seminary full-time, which is pretty expensive. He also works 2 part-time jobs so that I can stay home with our kids. The timing for an international adoption seems a little off! BUT GOD SAYS..."For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," (Isaiah 55:8) This is my adoption verse!!

We knew that we would adopt an African baby, since our hearts have always been drawn to Africa! At this point, we are unsure as to whether or not we want a boy or a girl, but we think we are leaning towards a boy!! We would like to keep the age under 2 if at all possible!

We began the process by choosing a country (somewhere in Africa of course!), an agency, submitting our dossier (a great big pile of paperwork such as physicals, financial info, birth certificates, employment letters, etc.), and completing our homestudy. (This is where a complete stranger came into our house and interviewed us! It was terrifying/exciting!) However, our agency informed us last week that they do not place infants from Liberia, but only those children four years old and above. Well, by this point we felt pretty certain that God wanted us to adopt from war-torn Liberia, and we knew that we wanted an infant.

I was almost in tears as I felt that our adoption was already falling apart before it had begun! It didn't help that our agency made me feel like I had no idea what I was doing and that whoever had done our homestudy was clueless! I called our social worker, who calmed me down, and I quickly began researching a new agency. I stumbled across Acres of Hope a few months ago, and we were tempted to switch to them even then since they were a CHRISTIAN agency, but we decided to stick with what we had started with. This time, however, I knew that God was leading us back to this agency.

I called the agency this morning and actually got Patty, the "boss"! She talked to me for almost 30 minutes and this complete peace just swept over me. I knew that regardless of the fee increase that I can't even begin to imagine how we will ever pay, this was the agency for us! So today it was quickly back to the notary to re-notarize the same documents that we had already sent to our old agency!

We are waiting on a couple of documents but should have our entire dossier submitted to Acres of Hope by the end of this week!

I've heard that adoption is a huge learning process. Well, so far I have learned that God is in control of this adoption, not me!