I have talked with our social worker on the phone and we have scheduled our first home study interview for Monday, January 7th at 12:30.

We sold Eric's computer to my cousin and were able to use the money for the adoption. Thank you Ryan for buying it from us. Thanks to my husband for being willing to sell his favorite toy. Between the computer money, the change we've collected, and contributions from family and friends we have been able to pay all of our fees to both Lighthouse and Gentle Care on time. So far this has come to a grand total of $2300.

Jen spent a ton of time this weekend organizing our paperwork and getting us ready to assemble our home study documents and our dossier. We're moving in the right direction.

Our home study packet came in the mail today. wow. It's really overwhelming, but it's time to push forward with this as quickly as possible. We have been assigned a social worker, her name is Denise. According to the letter that accompanied the packet, she should be contacting us shortly to set up our home visits. Hopefully "shortly" means Monday. So, we are also going to pay our dossier fee to Lighthouse and then we can begin aggressively working on our dossier while we are working on our home study. Many of the documents we will need to gather for our home study are needed for our dossier as well.

I had a dream about our children in Liberia last night. We went to pick them up, but we were told they weren't ready and we had to come home. It was devastating.

As I have been preparing for Christmas this year, I have thought often about what Christmas might look like next year. Maybe there will be two extra stockings. Maybe Santa will bring something pink. Maybe there will be two extra little people in my bed, all cozy under blankets, reading The Night Before Christmas with me. I sure hope so.

Have you read anything about Liberia yet? Have you seen the pictures? Have you read their stories? You should.

Just a quick update on where we are in this process. Our application and check for our homestudy were sent in on Monday. Lighthouse and Adoption by Gentle Care were able to work out an agreement and so Gentle Care will begin our home study process shortly. This is really happening. Now this dream of ours, that we believe was given to us by God, is on its way to becoming a reality. The home study makes me nervous and I'm ready to be on the other side of it. I always get nervous trying to explain who we are as a family and why we do what we do. This is probably because I honestly feel like we are criticized often by people who don't understand our choices. Now I have to explain our family to a complete stranger. But, this step is necessary and so we'll begin praying now for the grace we need to complete it. Another reason we need it done is that we can not begin applying for grants until it is completed.

How you can pray for our family...
Pray that the social worker assigned to do our home study is a good match for our family.

Pray for the financing of this adoption. Riley and I have been talking a lot about Jesus feeding the 5,000. He believes with his whole little heart that God will multiply our money in the same way. I want that kind of child like faith.

Pray that we will have wisdom as we continue to work on paper work and begin to gather the documents we need for our dossier.

Most importantly, pray for the children of Liberia. Pray for the care givers at the orphanage. Pray for those who are in leadership at Acres of Hope and Lighthouse Adoptions. We have heard that a large number of children are almost ready to be referred to families. We are not far enough along in this process to be one of those families, but pray for these children and the families they will be matched with.

Thank you for your prayers and support.

So, what made you decide to adopt from Liberia?

I get asked this question often. I think these pictures explain it better than I ever could with my words. These are of a precious little girl named Ruby that was adopt by a wonderful family. You can check out their journal at www.petersonadoption.blogspot.com

Good news today...we have been officially accepted by Lighthouse. Now it's time to start the massive amount of paperwork that we will be required to fill out over the next few months. I've already received some of it in my email today.

Hopefully we will be ready to move forward with Adoption by Gentle Care next week. They are the agency here in Columbus that will be completing our home study. I have almost finished the first batch of paperwork they require, but we are still waiting to make sure that they can work out everything that needs worked out legally with Lighthouse before we send in the first of many large, non-refundable checks.

More good news...we have been given a nice head start on all of this financially. My family surprised us on Thanksgiving Day with a very generous commitment. We are extremely grateful. Several friends have stopped by with change they have collected, which we are ready to start counting. Any suggestions on counting large amounts of change? I really don't want to waste money on the machine at Kroger which charges you 8 cents for every dollar. We would like to use this change towards our home study which is going to be more expensive than we initially anticipated.

So, that's where we are right now. Thank you for your continued support and prayers.

We our beginning our first fundraiser. As a family we have been collecting our change. We are asking you to do the same. We have baby bottles for you to use for collecting your change. After it's full, you can drop it off at our house. We will dump it into the giant pot in our living room and you can fill it again. Inside your bottle you will find the following information:

Every 15 SECONDS another child becomes an AIDS orphan in Africa.
Every DAY 5,760 more children become orphans.
Every YEAR 2,102,400 more children become orphans in Africa alone.
Every 2.2 SECONDS another orphan ages out with no family to belong to and no place to call home.
Many of these children accept job offers that ultimately result in being sold as slaves. Millions of girls are sex slaves today, simply because they were unfortunate enough to grow up as orphans.
Not all are called to adopt, but anyone can love an orphan be helping other families adopt.

So many of you have called, emailed, or stopped by our house to encourage us as we begin this process. Thank you so much! Your prayers and encouragement mean so much to us right now.

I think we have settled on a local agency to do our home study. Our application should have arrived in Colorado at Lighthouse yesterday or today. Things will really start moving now.

Here we go...

Tomorrow morning we will be sending our application to Lighthouse Adoptions. This is the agency we will be working with to complete our adoption with Acres of Hope. We have already had a short phone interview with them, but this application will officially get things moving. The first step will be to find a local agency or social worker to complete our home study. Lighthouse is in the process of looking for referrals for us. Hopefully we will have more information soon.

This is the beginning.