A couple of weeks ago we got to work with a very talented photographer and have some portraits done! It was so much fun and Fiona (the photographer) captured our family perfectly. We did some photos for our fundraiser site outside our house while wearing "show hope" t-shirts. During the photo shoot my mother noticed a praying mantis on one of the park benches. It was very cool to see this little creature that looked like it was praying right at the same time we were taking photos for our adoption. It reminded us that we should continue to pray for the little girl that we hope to bring home soon!

Thanks to our wonderful Family and Friends we were able to make our first payment for the adoption. I can not express how thankful we are to those who helped us achieve our fundraising goal for the first installment. We still have a lot of money to raise for our next payment but we believe God will provide as he always has in the past. The next payment will probably be for when we are referred a child. This is the biggest cost of the adoption. It basically pays for a set country fee to Ethiopia after we accept a referral for a child and for our travel expenses. Again, we have every hope that our God will provide! Here's another great shot of us in our fundraiser t-shirts

As of right now we are waiting on one document to complete our dossier. The dossier is a bunch of notarized documents we need to have authenticated in Washington d.c., which will then be sent to Ethiopia to show the government who we are. We have been having some trouble getting this one document notarized correctly and we are on the third try now. It's a medical evaluation that is signed by our doctor stating that we are healthy and stable to adopt. Hopefully we will have it all straightened out soon! After our dossier is complete we will be put on a waiting list to be referred a child. When I spoke to our agency last there were only 5 people on the list! Which is pretty amazing since sometimes there can be hundreds of people ahead of you. But that is where we are in the adoption right now! Here's another photo of our beach photos!