Long Overdue Update

Is anyone still checking this blog? I'm so sorry I haven't posted in almost two months. Time flies in our household, let me tell you! Here's an update...

1. We are finished with our home study. We enjoyed our three visits with our social worker. She was super friendly and kind and knowledgeable about the whole process. She wrote us an amazingly favorable report that approved us for adoption of up to two children ages newborn to 18 months. Right now our home study has been sent to a committee at our agency, where they will review it, make any needed corrections and hopefully approve it! Once that is done our social worker will make some notarized copies and we should have our completed home study in hand next week!
2. We are also done with our online adoption courses. They were very informative- preparing us for some things we hadn't really thought about in terms of our child's adjustment to his new world and how his previous living experience will/could really impact him both long and short term. I am looking forward to going back to the courses as resources once we have him home and we are actually experiencing the challenges/difficulties.
3. Notice I keep saying "him"... we have decided on pursuing a boy from Ethiopia. We were led to decide on a boy for a number of reasons. Most importantly, we felt that is what God laid on our hearts. We feel like it will be valuable for Markus to have a younger brother, and knowing who Markus already is, we feel our adopted son will probably have a best friend and protector instantly- and throughout life- in Markus.
4. Up until a couple weeks ago, I had gone into autopilot mode a little bit when it came to moving forward with the adoption. It wasn't as if my excitement was gone, however, I was really enjoying Halle Joy and Markus and not feeling any sense of urgency to add another baby to the mix. Then I went to my Perspectives course (AMAZING course by the way... but that's another topic) and God rebroke my heart for the plight of the orphan. It was during that class that I realized our baby boy could already be born. He could already be in an orphanage. He could be cold. He could be hungry. He could be WAITING for me. And I broke. And I got to work. If he is out there already, I don't want him to have to wait ONE MORE DAY than he absolutely has to before he comes home to us, his forever family. So I have been frantically working again (I completed all of our adoption courses in less than a week) and I plan to do everything I can to keep the process moving along. There will be a lot that is out of our control in this process, and I am okay with that. But as much as I can do I am doing, so that our son can come home. And I am praying. Daily. Sometimes hourly. For him. For his biological mother. For his caretakers. For his heart, his mind and his body.