A Crazy Bunch of Emotions

These past few weeks have been overwhelming. They have been filled with emotions that at times I don't even know what to do with. Kennedy died on my birthday and two days later I was a mom to Isabelle. The emotional roller coaster is not over. Mother's day is this weekend, Kennedy's court date was schedule for May 15, Izzy is released for adoption on May 30, seven other families are traveling in June when we were planning to travel for our gotcha day for Kennedy, and the courts close August 6.....will we get a court date before then. Will we travel September or November. Will Izzy stay healthy...I hate that she has to be in the orphanage for so long.....I understand the reasoning but is doesn't mean I like it. These are just a couple of the things going through my head these days.

At church we are in the middle of a series called Sacred Space. The series is on Psalm 23. I can't even express how much this series has guided me through this time. I know I will be in another valley down the road, but I do feel like we are coming out of this one. Here is the link if you are interested

http://northmetro.sitewrench.com/dlgMediaPlayer.aspx?id=573

At the same time G-d placed it on our hearts to fight for the lives of the orphans in Ethiopia...we are not 100% sure what that is going to look like, but we know it going to be amazing. We will have a lot to tell you about this later.

We have pictures!!!

We have pictures!!! We have pictures!!! We have pictures of Izzy!!! We cannot share them on-line, but suffice it to say that she is beautiful. She looks healthy, well nourished, and loved by her caregiver. She just turned 3 weeks old. We are so thankful for the traveling family that took these photo's for us. We cannot stop looking at them.

We have pictures of Izzy!!!

The Crazy Ones

We met with some friends last night and came up with a crazy dream...

To serve Christ by improving the lives of orphans in Ethiopia by meeting their physical and spiritual needs...



Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

[Jesus said]..."I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." Matthew 17:19-21

We are CRAZY! I cannot wait to see what God is going to do (and let us tag along for the ride).

We are soooo thankful

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! That is all we can say. We are so thankful to our friends and to our church for making incredibly generous donations to Ethio-American Family Services (see 'Cool Links' to the right) in Kennedy's name. These donation will directly impact the lives of Ethiopian orphans and directly impact Izzy.

We are blown away by you and blown away by 'His incomparably great power...and the working of His mighty strength' (Eph 1:19).

Journey to Iz

In case you missed it from our last two blogs ago...We have a referral!!! We have a referral!!! We have a referral!!! Isabelle (Daddy's gonna call her Izzy) is less than 2 weeks old.

On April 3rd she was referred to us and the Journey to Iz began.
We are praying continually for her health and nutrition and for her caregivers.

Stay tuned...

Kennedy's Memorial

Dear friends,
Well our last blog sums up our Ethiopian adoption journey to this point. We had a memorial for Kennedy last night and our home. We were overwhelmed at the response of our friends.

Our friend Craig planted the idea of having a memorial for Kennedy. We had thought it might be cool to have a couple of friends to our house and have a time to pray. More than a few friends showed up; I'm not sure if we've ever had that many people in our house before. We felt so loved and so supported; you guys lived Christs love. Craig led our time, Clark sang some songs, Katie and I shared our journey (we read the blog below), we took communion, we all cried together and prayed together. It was amazing.

After everyone left, Katie and I felt an incredible peace. I felt free to be excited about our daughter waiting for us in Ethiopia. We experienced God through you guys last night; thanks for being the body of Christ.

Rudy and Katie

Our hope is in Him

We’ve been on a journey. Since long before we were married, we always new we wanted to adopt. In October 2007, we decided the time was right to begin the adoption. After taking too long to finish our home study, a 4 ½ month wait for our USCIS approval, and scrambling to finalize our paperwork we were ready to submit our dossier. In January 2009, we felt strongly that we needed to switch adoption agencies. On January 17th we partnered with our new adoption agency; on January 28th, less than 2 weeks later, we had a referral for Kennedy. She was 4 months old; we later found out that she weighed ~5 lbs and was severely malnourished. She was moved to another orphanage location, where she was better nourished and gained almost 4 pounds in two weeks. Since January, we were able to get 20 cans of formula delivered to the orphanage by parents traveling to pick up their children. On March 13th we received our first pictures of her. It was a few hours after Katie left for the weekend women’s retreat. We wanted to see the pictures of her together. Holy smokes; we had pictures, but couldn’t look at them for 2 days; we looked at the pictures on March 15th. On March 31st, Kennedy got sick and was taken to the hospital. It started with diarrhea then later was diagnosed with pneumonia. She wasn’t strong enough to fight this illness. On April 1st Kennedy passed away.

Shortly after we got a referral, Katie started writing letters to Kennedy. She had planned on giving these letters to Kennedy someday to help her know as much as she can about our journey to her. This past week, these letters have meant so much to us; we’ve read them often. Yesterday, Katie and I wrote a letter together to Kennedy that we wanted to share with you guys.

Our Dear Sweet Kennedy,

What a week this has been. We anxiously checked our email a million times a day hoping to get pictures or an update on how you are doing. Tuesday of last week we got new pictures of you. This was the fifth set of pictures we had gotten of you in the past few weeks and we were so excited. We love to stare at your pictures; you are so beautiful. Then on Wednesday, the very next day, we found out that you went to heaven to be with God. Our hearts are breaking continually.

We cannot express how much we love you. You are our beloved daughter. Our hearts are breaking because we wanted so much to bring you home; to hold you; to hug you; to care for you. There were so many things that we were looking forward to sharing with you; we wanted to watch you grow into an incredible young woman.

Our friends have been amazing; they all shared in our joy when we would hear something new about you and are so sad that you will not be home with us. They have comforted us and lifted us up in prayer. Today they are joining us in honoring you, our sweet girl.

You are our first daughter and you will always be part of our family. We love you with all our hearts. We know that you are in peace. We don’t know what heaven looks like, but we know that one day we will hug each other.

We love you.
Mommy and Daddy
xxoo

Our hearts were shattered by the loss of Kennedy, but we have no regrets. We always knew that God wanted us to grow our family through adoption. We know that He is calling us to adopt from Ethiopia. But through this process, God has broken our hearts for the people of Ethiopia. God has broken our hearts for what breaks His heart. He has planted in us a desire to fight malnourishment and fight for the lives of orphans in Ethiopia. We know that this fight begins by trying to get another orphan out of Ethiopia. On March 30th, our second daughter was born. We are going to do everything we can to bring her home.

Our journey continues. We have been deeply wounded, but have an incredible amount of hope. God has been with us throughout our journey; through the tremendous joys and tremendous sorrows. Our hope is in Him.

WOW!!!!

Big news, for a few reasons I am not going discuss online we have decided to switch agencies. We are now with a local agency here in Georgia. We are very excited. We met with our new agency January 17, 2009 and made our decision to switch.

We should have everything together for our dossier by the end on next week. We are just waiting for a few documents from the doctor and the bank to arrive. When they do all our documents will be delivered to our Agency. Rudy's office is literally five minutes from the agencies office. How cool is that. The documents will then be authenticate at county level, sent to new Secretary of State, and finally to the US Ethiopian Embassy. The documents are then sent to Ethiopia.

Our agency believe we will have a referral approximately a month after we have our documents in. In fact they said they are already looking. How amazing!!!!

We are really excited and will keep you posted on the progress.