And they're off...

Whoooshh! A great peace has swept over our home. The research phase for agencies to adopt through has ended! We have officially met with our homestudy worker from The Babyfold http://www.thebabyfold.org/Aboutus.html and we have committed to begin our adoption of our daughter and son in Ethiopia! We meet with our homestudy workers Lara and Bethany at 3:30 PM on March 2 in our home to start the 1 and ½ hour process of beginning our paperwork! They said they will do a walk-thru of our house as well accessing if we have the space for our new kids as well as to ensure it is a safe place (all medicines up high, safety latches on cupboards… shouldn’t be too hard to pass this part…since we have already done all of that for Zayden!).

Lara (at The Babyfold) told us that we will have 3-4 visits with them over the next couple of months. We have an all day training scheduled Friday April 23rd. It is our goal to have all of our homestudy done (as much as we have control of) by then. Please pray for our time to be budgeted and managed well so we can accomplish this in a timely manner.

We hope to adopt 2 children. A girl 8-11 yrs and a boy 3-6 yrs (siblings) from Ethiopia. We chose Ethiopia for three reasons:
The people are very loving towards their orphans and deeply care about them.
There is a great need to care for them.
The Lord impressed to us upon our hearts this was the path to take.

We are so very excited about all of the education opportunities that we have through our agencies. Just yesterday we were given a website http://www.adoptionlearningpartners.org/ for us to be able to start taking online classes to help us to prepare to be the parents that all of our children will need us to be. Classes on this site/ as well as articles and books we are reading/going to read will help us deal with transracial issues, older children issues, adjustments in the home, help to prepare the kids in the home for their new siblings, being culturally aware etc.

I believe at the beginning of March we will sign with WACAP http://www.wacap.org/ to be our placement agency. They have a great reputation, meet all of necessary requirements, have a knowledgeable and helpful staff as well as a follow-up from adoption program in the Washington area where we hope to retire from the Army to after this duty assignment.

Please pray with us:
That we would be sensitive to the Lord’s guidance each step of this process and that we would rest in His peace for it all to come together.
For our children, all 5 of them, wherever they are (3 are with us in Illinois and the other 2 are in Ethiopia) to know and love Jesus.
For us to be the best parents we can be for these amazing blessings God is giving / given to us.

Thank you all.
Love, Donna Lisa

(For those of you who don’t know… My name is Donna Lisa Robbins… folks from my side of the family call me Lisa and folks who know me outside of my “growing up family” I am known as Donna… so often when I close I write both.)