While awaiting "Your Cleared" information...

While we are waiting to hear we have been cleared, which could literally happen any day, to travel back & bring Nora home, I thought I would post something on what our lives will look a little bit like once returning home! Warning this is a long post that covers her arrival celebartion & her coming home.  It is important that we communicate clearly about both, so here is our attempt at doing that!

Celebrate With Us

Upon returning to the states with her, we will be landing in Little Rock, and we want to invite every family friend who can make it to come rejoice with us in our homecoming!  This is THE time for you to see her as we will be hibernating as we travel on towards home & for several weeks after arriving home.  We would love to rejoice alongside you!!!  Those of you with children that are friends with my children, they have high hopes of your kiddos being able to rejoice alongside of them & have asked me often about each of you.  No pressure though :)

• We would absolutely love to have photos, video, posters, cheers, etc for her arrival to show her for years to come, of the family/friends who have prayed for her since BEFORE SHE WAS EVEN BORN and desired to meet her for so long!  So if you can come and be a part of that part of her story --- you are welcome!  
• We will plan on meeting you at the bottom of the escelators around the food court/luggage claim area (wherever there is room in those areas).  If security makes you wait outside (which we have never heard of), my sister will let us know where to meet you to introduce you to our baby girl!
• My our immediate family will make their way up the escelators to let us introduce the kids to their baby sister!  They are SOOOO ready & excited!  We will then introduce Aunt Z & her Grandparents!  Please be patient with us as we process this time as many emotions will be there & photos will be taken :)  We are aware you are waiting, & we are already excited about celebrating with you too! :)
• We will make our way down to the escelators to introduce to you Nora Carolyne Tsehay Anderson!  This may be an overwhelming time for her, so we just ask that you be respectfful of that as you walk up to meet her.  To much touching/loudness/etc all directed right at her could quickly lead to overstimulation, so just be mindful please!
• PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE come celebrate with us!!!!!!!  
• We do not have a definite landing date at this time, but we are hoping to hear this week when that will be.  Right now, we are planning on landing June 3rd at 3:30 ish.  Now, that is when our plane is supposed to be on the ground.  So, it will take us a bit to unload & introduce her to her immediate family.  I would dare say don't even plan on being there until around 3:45 ish.  If we have a delayed flight, we will have Lindsey communicate that through Facebook.

Walk Alongside in Prayer & Encourage Us

Now, more on the hibernation:  I have posted a link on this blog previously to a post written by Jen Hatmaker which addresses the attachemnt period needed between family & child.  I am going to cover a few of the statements addressed in her post that our family has chosen to take on as our new normal for awhile.  I will copy those here, clearly, in this post, to help you know how to help us & Nora to adjust.

It is crucial that we use this period of time with Nora wisely to build a foundation that will help her move forward in a healthy fashion & most likely will also help her move forward more quickly as she becomes certain that WE are hers and SHE is ours - FOREVER.  Our home will be the 4th "group of people" she has lived with in 13 months.  Try to understand her fear, brokenness, & her confusion.  Can you imagine?  Do you see how many people meeting her needs here as well could just cause more confusion in making her think she is just in another "care facility".  She MUST learn what family is, who her parents are, what her parents roles are in her life, who her siblings are, & their roles as well.  That's a lot to learn for a 20 month old who has been through a lot!!!  After we leave the airport, we must work at setting these boundaries in place.  As Nora moves into more of a "family" environment, we need to teach her that is exactly what it is.

• "Know this: Those first few weeks and months will more than likely be difficult. They might be downright disastrous. You will struggle through feelings and emotions you didn’t know you were capable of. You will cry. They will cry. They may absolutely spaz out actually. You will wonder if your life is ruined or if happiness will ever return to your home. Beloved, IT WILL. It so will. They are grieving and processing and transitioning. It’s just hard – on them, on you, on the bio kids if you have them. There is no magic formula that will skirt your family around this chaos."
• "Prepare your family and friends in advance for this very important attachment plan: No one touches, kisses, holds, or meets the needs of your new one except you and your spouse. No one. Tell them in advance and explain why. Your child needs to learn right away that you are his mother and father. YOU ARE. You will meet his needs. You will hold him when he cries. He belongs to you, and you are forever. He is coming from a multiple-caregiver situation, so if twenty strangers hold and kiss and feed him and rock him in his new environment, nothing has changed at all. He will struggle to attach to you because you are not his sole caregiver. This principle is not permanent, but it is so necessary at first. Tell your family and friends to give him a “high five” and that’s about the end of it for a bit."
• "Keep visitors at bay for awhile. Your child doesn’t know you yet. A lot of revolving faces simply reinforces the notion that people come and go, and he is alone. Yes, these people love you and love your child. They are thrilled he is home and care so deeply. You know that. He doesn’t. Tons of smiling, oversized, touchy strangers constantly in and out make for a nervous, insecure child. Our friends left dinner on our porch and texted us. Our parents chomped at the bit waiting, while we worked our way through the early storm of transition. God bless them."
• "Stay home. I mean it. Stay the heck home. Cancel your calendars. Pull out of everything you’re involved in. Temporarily quit your small group and your Bible study and your volunteer position at church on Wednesdays and your gym classes. Katy, bar the door. Circle the wagons with your little family and hunker down. Do not take your newbie to Target. Do not drag them to public places. Do not spend two hours in the car running errands with them. Keep the moving parts to an absolute minimum."

Please continue to faithfully lift us up in prayer!!!  It has meant more than our words can ever tell you to know that you have called out to God on behalf of our family!  Our wait is almost over, but our journey is just really beginning!

Nora Carolyne Tsehay Anderson is OURS!

I know, I know I am way behind!  Believe it or not, my mind has been spinning and life has continued to happen even though I've wanted a pause button more days than not :).  I do have wonderful news to share and want to make a short post to do that here!!!

Nora Carolyne Tsehay Anderson

IS OUR DAUGHTER

Thank you all so much for the prayer support!  It means more to us than you will ever know.  It has been a LONG 2 years and we are thrilled to finally call her "ours".  Our official court date was March 29th, 2012.  WE PASSED COURT on that day!  We left the country, leaving our 4th child behind!  HARD TIMES!  We did leave knowing that she is forever ours though, and we rejoice at that news.  We had a very good time with her in country.  She came to both of us without a problem, and of course we just "ate up" our time with her!

Our next step is the "Embassy" process.  Estimated wait between court and being submitted to Embassy is 3-5 weeks.  Our agency can only submit on Wednesdays.  It was 3 weeks this past Thursday since we had passed court, so we knew there was a possibility that our case may be submitted last night (our time), but we really hadn't expected it to happen.  However, when we woke up this morning, we woke up with MORE GREAT NEWS.  We had a message in our inbox from Embassy saying:

Dear Anderson:

Congratulations!  Your adoption case has been submitted to the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  Your authorized agent, America World, submitted the case to us on April 25, 2012.

We could not be any more thrilled and surprised than we were this morning!  Now, what does this process look like.  The Embassy has 10 days to move our case on to the next step: birth parents interview or Nairobi or "you pass".  Most likely, since we are dealing with an abandonment case, we will be sent to Nairobi where another level of government will be the ones to sign off that she is truly an orphan.  This whole process from beginning to end could take around 2 1/2 weeks after the first 10 days.  Once we have cleared Nairobi, we will be contacted letting us know we are good to travel back to pick her up!!!

We are coming back baby girl!!!

Thanks again for journeying with us in prayer, tears, words of encouragement, laughter, conversation, etc.  It means more to us than you will ever know!

Excellent Post on Truths of Adoption

I read this post today by, Jen Hatmaker, a fellow adopting mother! 

She is hilarious and honest, which makes this post such a great read.  

She writes it all so well. 

 Information that is swirling around in my head, 

she has already put into such an enjoyable read and necessary read.

I'll just post a link to her article for now, and continue to work on coming up with our specific post about attachment/bonding.

GUEST POST:  by Jen Hatmaker

Family & friends, please take time to read her post to help you prepare for life with "adopting friends".

Many have circled around us in prayer & have been supportive.  

THANK YOU!!!

We ask that you continue in that support by gaining insight on 

what life will look like for us and for her after returning home,

 and by taking into consideration the boundaries we must set up in order to grow close as a family.

In order to teach Nora Carolyne what family is and who her dad, mom, and siblings are,

 we will have to be her main world for awhile.

This will be very different than us bringing home a biological child in many ways. 

We want her to know each of the dear people that have loved her and prayed for her.  

The time will come when we will be able to make each of you part of her world.  

Thank you for your continued prayers. 

I hope you enjoy the humor in this read!

It's great!!!

Court Date --- WE HAVE ONE!!!

Quick post to update you on the latest

(& to take a break from the packing lists)

We received our Court Date last Monday, February 27th

OUR COURT DATE IS

MARCH 29TH!!!

What all does this travel/step look like practically?

We will leave Omaha on the evening of March 20th to head to the big AR.  

The kids will be staying with family there - so grateful!

Travel looks like this:

March 22nd: We fly out of Little Rock & land in DC for the night.

March 23rd: We fly out of the DC airport on a nonstop flight headed to Ethiopia.

March 24th (on Ethiopian time now): Land in Addis & take a 6 hr van ride south to Nora's home region.

March 25th : Spend day in her home region & take 6 hr ride back to Addis

March 26th:  MEET OUR DAUGHTER

March 27th & March 28th: Timed allowed for visiting with Nora - the rest of our time will be divided amoung many things but we haven't made specific decisions yet as we are waiting on the final travel packet.

March 29th:  COURT & fly home

March 30th: Land in Little Rock

Purposes of this step in the process:

• We get to meet our daughter -- AND WE ARE SO READY TOO!
• We will go to COURT for her to become legally ours on this trip --- we hope:
• We will have paperwork submitted to MOWCYA on March 6th (their time - evening of March 5th our time). 
•  If they write us a favorable letter of recommendation, our possibility of passing court while we are there is great.
• If MOWCYA doesn't write a favorable letter immediately, we may or may not pass court while we are there.  The reasons they may not write a favorable letter does not pertain to us so much as it would to them wanting more information on the orphan status.
• We could get to court and the judge decide they want more information of some sort, etc & that could keep us from passing as well.  
• We get to learn more about her home country & more about her specific region as well!

That just about sums that whole court trip up for now!  I have had several people ask what that part of the journey looks like, so I thought I would just type it up. As you can tell with just this in general summary, there are still so many things "up in the air" at this point.  There are many things we can take before God and ask Him to have favor on.  We ask that you join us in  doing that please.  The prayers of a righteous man are powerful and effective.  

Prayer Requests:

• We ask for you to remember our case in prayer specifically on the evening of March 5th our time as it will go before MOWYCA and that they will write a favorable letter for us.
• We also ask that you pray specifically for our time of meeting Nora.  She is a shy, easily scared kiddo.  We believe that God can soften her heart to trust & not be fearful of us.  We are prepared for the fact that she may be, however, I want to pray for her little heart and mind to not have to suffer that time of fear.  We want her to know how loved & desired she is.
• We also ask that you lift up our court date specifically as well & that everything will be presented orderly and that all of our documents will be correct and present at the time of court.  We pray that the judge passes our case and deteremines us as Nora's Daddy & Momma for the rest of her life on that day!!!!!!
• We also ask that you begin to pray for the time between court and embassy.  At the end of this trip, we fly back to the states without her, which will be hard on us and on her.  There will be several weeks (average right now is closer to 6 weeks) before we will travel back to pick her up and bring her home with us.  If you can only imagine all the heartache and mental confusion that could be there for her.  We pray she somehow knows & is comforted in knowing that she has a Father who loves her more than we ever can that is near her at every moment.  We also pray that our time between court & embassy will not be the full 6 weeks as it can be as short as 2 or 4 weeks.  This would be wonderful to not be away from her so long after meeting her the first time!!!!!

Again, I hope to present a post sooner than later on what our attachement/bonding season will look like, but for now, we are trying to gather all of this steps information and prepare to travel!

Making Disciples

We are instructed to meet corporately.

It is not my intent to diminish the importance of that with this post. 

Court Date Prayers

Now that we have received our referral, what's next?

We wait to hear what date our court date will be scheduled. 

 After we receive this information, we will make plans for travel. 

We are prayerful that we will receive this information by the end of next week.

We are also prayerful that our court process will go smoothly.

Would you petition the Lord for these requests as well --- on our behalf?

Would you also pray for our sweet daughters heart to be prepared (softened & trusting) to meet complete strangers that will bring her home, but away from everything she knows right now.

We understand she is shy and that this could be a difficult transition for her!!!

Thank you prayer warriors!

We hope to post soon on what life will look like when we return stateside with her.

We would love to have visitors at the airport (Arkansas) when we arrive home with her.  That will be great opportunity for you to meet our sweet girl & for us to rejoice with you over God placing another orphan in a family. After that, we will be returning home & will have to limit visitors heavily as she learns who her parents & siblings are.  More on that, in another post :)

We HAVE A REFERRAL!!!

We are thrilled to announce that

WE RECEIVED OUR REFERRAL CALL

January 31st, 2012

She is a BEAUTIFUL little girl! We just keep looking at her and smiling!!! Since she is not legally our own yet, we are limited on what we can share publicly. As soon as we can, we will share more!

Thanks so much to the many who have lifted us in prayer on this journey!  We ask that you continue to pray for us and that the court process goes smoothly and that we pass without issue.  We hope to be traveling for court within a 6-8 week time frame from now.  After passing court, we will happily share more details with you all. 

We are thrilled to finally have a face to look into!  

Nora Carolyne _______ Anderson

will legally be ours in a few short months!

The Non-Official List Ranking Update

I know, I know.........it's been soooo long since an update

I have had many ask me about updating, but quite honestly there hasn't been much to update about

until recently!!!

There is no "official" waiting list with our agency,

but there is an unofficial one that we have followed for quite sometime

along with most of the other waiting families.

We have finally moved up on that list and 

we are tied for the 

#1

spot........

FINALLY!!!

Now, the way this list is sorted is by DTE dates and specific requests

What is a DTE date? - it is the date our dossier was sent - "Dossier To Ethiopia"

Our family and 2 others - the Wages & the Wades -  had our paperwork sent out on the same day.  

We all three are requesting infant girls so we are all tied for 1st place right now.

We have no way of knowing who of us will get the first referral, but we will rejoice with whichever one that may be!!!

The referral process has slowed down CONSIDERABLY,

 but we have finally seen 2 infant girls referrals  over the past month.

I believe, before these last 2 referrals, there had only been 2 infant girl referrals in a 7 month time span. 

That is extremely slow considering the rate of referrals that were going through at the beginning of the year.  However, God doesn't call us to the quick and easy most of the time does He.

We do not feel like "a wait" is a door closing but a journey for faith developing.

Please continue with us in prayer for our sweet daughter and our family as we continue to wait!

Here is a random photo of the kiddos!  Several have asked to see them.  This is the most recent picture I have of them all together that wasn't taken with my phone!  Pitiful I know.  Cerra's hair is much shorter now as she finally reached her donation length and was able to cut and donate finally!

Culture, Christianity, & The Gospel - REPOST

I took time to watch this video today over at Resurgence and found it to be an excellent interview/conversation. 

I would encourage you to take time to watch and process it as well.

(or at least listen to it play in the background while you work on something else)

Church isn't some place we attend weekly or something we show up to do,

 it's who we are as Christians.

I pray for more growth and maturity in myself and among my brothers & sisters in Christ.

Our daily life is the example of "church" in our culture.

I pray that we become more burdened about it modeling Christ daily.

My heart has been and remains burdened so heavily 

for the "typical" American gathering of the church that we see today.

May the Gospel be the center.

Homeschooling/Christian Education --- Why?

We have been back in school for a bit now and loving our year!!!

The kids are doing great, we are loving our curriculum choices, the schedules are working well, and

the community around us has already started back in with the random questions and random looks as well. :)  It all serves as a reminder that while homeschooling is growing at a great rate in our country, we are still the odd man out. 

Every year we face the random questions from people:

"What school do you go to that you haven't started yet?"

"Where do you go to school that you are out this time of day?"

"What are you guys doing out of school?"

"Is someone sick for you guys to be out of school?"

"Why aren't your kids in school?"

............ and the list continues.

While this is our norm and we think nothing of it on a daily basis, I am challenged regularly to think about why we do this (in a positive way) when asked often any of the questions listed above. 

That is a good thing to be challenged to remember.  

When did we decide to do this?  Why did we start?  Why do we continue?  

Why do we answer "through graduation" when people ask how long we plan on doing this?

This is a touchy subject.  This is a violent subject when discussed among the wrong crowds (and I've been part of that also --- not fun). This is a subject debated in our churches.

I'm just always challenged to think of it more at the beginning of our year than any other time throughout the year.  With that being the case,  it is fresh on my mind and heart, so this post really came at a great time for me today.

I found this to be very encouraging and confirming and I wanted to share for anyone interested in reading!!!

"Education:  The Forgotten Key To Discipleship"

Enjoy