Our I171 IS HERE!!!

PRAISE GOD! We were told it would take up to 3 months after our fingerprints to get our I171 in the mail...the golden ticket from immigration that gives us permission to bring our children home! We had our fingerprints done two weeks ago and our I171 came today! Talk about angelic movement of paperwork!! We are SOOOO excited!! This will enable CWA to move our son to the Care Center and get his medicals done and when all our friends go to pick up their children before us, they can give him a squeeze from us and sometimes they can take gifts and pictures to him from us. Now, it's gonna get FUN!

Please now focus your prayers on our referral for our daughter. Pray that we are matched with her soon so that we can travel to get our kids at the same time. Also, we need a quick miracle of about $10,000 for our second child...not to mention travel! God is working. He will make the way.

THANK YOU for praying...we are finally seeing some movement in this process!!

Love you all,
Kurt and JoLynn

Abba Fund

• We were contacted by the Abba Fund last night. They informed us that all of their funds are spoken for, but that they would keep us on file. They are making a profile of our family for The Legacy Fund, a fund that profiles families in the adoption process and families who have lost children to death donate towards the adoption as a memorial to their lost children. We are continuing to need prayer for these grants to come through.
• We will be getting our shots next week and need prayer for our children and for us. The yellow fever can sometimes make you sick. Thank you for praying for these slightly uncomfortable parts of this process! :)

Thank you, our precious prayer partners! What would we do without you!

Love,

Pastor Kurt and JoLynn

Prayer Needs!

Our prayer list is large and it encompasses so many things. Thank you for bringing these needs to the Lord. As more needs arise, usually on a daily basis, we will post those on this blog. Thank you for checking in with us and lifting us up in prayer.

• Finances: We have the money for our first child's paperwork. The paperwork is done on our second child, but we have yet to send those fees. The amount we need for her is $10,100. Our travel expenses will equal about $10,000.
• Grants: We have five grant applications out right now. One is through the Abba Fund and is a request for a covenant loan of $10,000. We have a phone interview tonight with them. We need favor with these grants to help us meet the financial requirements to bring our children home.
• Health of Children: Our children need prayer regarding their health. The health issues these children struggle with are overwhelming and range from worms to scabies to urinary problems to anemia. Malnutrition does a number on these children. We will be treating them for as much as possible when we arrive. Pray for healing for their bodies and protection against malaria, HIV, yellow fever, and meningitis, to mention a few. There is an outbreak of meningitis predicted to break out in Ethiopia in March. Pray for covering over their bodies.
• Health of our Family: We are about to get the multiple shots you have to receive before traveling...yellow fever, hep A and B, malaria, typhoid, tetanus, etc, etc. Please pray for good immunity. Also, we will be taking probiotics before we go and carrying with us antibiotics in case we get giardia, a common intenstinal infection in Ethiopia. Other common issues are lice, parasites, ring worm, etc. We will take as many medications with us as we can. Many, many families suffer physically just before going or returning. This seems to be a common attack of the enemy. We need prayer for our physical bodies.
• Quick Referral of our Daughter: God led us to add another child to this adoption just a month or so ago. We knew we wanted to adopt two children and bringing them both home together would save us over $15,000 and another grueling process in a year or so. We prayed and felt God was telling us to take this extra step of faith. It could be that we have to travel to get our first child and return for our daughter if the referral and court dates don't hit close together. We would really like to do this all in one trip. Please pray that God brings our daughter to the attention of our agency quickly and that her court dates and paperwork coincide with our son's. Pray that when we receive our first referral, a picture and sketchy information about her...pray that we hear from God clearly about her.
• Safe travel: It is a dangerous and complicated world to travel in. Our trip, if absent of delays, should be about 32 hours long. We need favor in travel, favor over our luggage, and safety. In Ethiopia, we will use only CWA drivers to get where we need to be and we need prayer for safety there. As with most countries, there are terrorist issues. We will be staying at the Hilton Hotel, which is very safe and fairly modern. Our trip home will need to be bathed in prayer as we will be traveling with two children who can't understand our language and may be afraid, airsick, etc. We will covet your prayers for grace and strength over the long trip home.
• Protection of finances: We will be traveling with alot of cash. We have to pay for our children's medicals, purchase visas for all four of us, pay for hotel, and food, pay our driver, etc. There are alot of expenses and we will have alot of cash on hand. We will be splitting our cash up between our luggage for safety. Please pray for angelic protection over our luggage and money.
• Vehicle: We are going from a family of five to a family of seven. The only running vehicle we have currently is our five seat car. We need God to move on our behalf to purchase a van or SUV.
• Practical/Material Needs: Bringing home two new children adds to our list of needs. We have a bed for our son, but have alot of other needs in furniture. We need several dressers, a crib, a swing, a highchair, two car seats, clothes, toys, bottles, diaper bag, etc. We are starting over with small children. We had given away everything from when Caleb was small. We also would like to have a wooden swing set for our kids this summer and are praying for God's provision there.
• Bonding: Obviously, the younger the child, the easier the bonding usually, however, many things can cause issues with bonding. Our son has lost both his parents and will be grieving that loss. Actually, so many talk about how 'lucky' these children are to be adopted. They are blessed, but we are more blessed to have them. The truth is, they are losing everything and the shock of that loss can truly cause emotional turmoil for them. Our baby will not have memory of Ethiopia and will adjust quicker, we assume. Our older child is losing so much more. He has already lost his parents, will lose friends and care takers in Ethiopia he has grown to love. He is losing his culture and language, foods and smells will change, and the home and family he knows as Ethiopia will be gone. This is a huge loss for these children and although we are giving them a great future and a great new life, their loss cannot be ignored. Please pray for them emotionally. Pray for quick bonding with us and their siblings and eventually with extended family and friends. Please also pray for our three biological children and their adjustment to two new 'instant' siblings.
• New Life Needs: Our older child will speak Amharic and will need favor to learn English quickly. Pray for quick adjustment and quick learning. Please pray for Kurt and I to parent them as they need. Adoption is tricky...the balance between celebrating their culture and the fact that God chose them for us and then not making them feel like 'the adopted ones' is a fine balance. In another post, I will list many of the 'don'ts' in adoption. Ignorance can cause people to say hurtful things in front of adopted children. Pray for sensitivity in those in the community.
• I171: This document can hold up alot of adoptions. This is the document from immigration we need to proceed with a court date in Ethiopia. Please pray for favor and swift approval.
• Court date: More often than not, parents have to wait through two, three, even four court dates before their children become legally theirs. This is an emotionally exhausting time for families. We have prayed many families through this process. Please pray that our court dates go through quickly.

That is all I can think of right now. There is much more, I am sure, however, I am weary today from sick kids! Thank you so much for praying. You have no idea how precious that is to us. We need it desperately. Someday soon, you will look into the faces of Joshua and Julianna and see the results of all your prayers and support. You will have made a difference in the lives of two people for eternity!

We love you,

Kurt and JoLynn

Our Progress

We would like to give you an update on our progress. The paper chase is over for the most part...thank God for that! What a process that is. Our dossier, the packet of paperwork needed to send to Ethiopia, is complete. It will all be notarized tonight. A copy will be sent to our agency and upon approval, they will send us the final two documents we need. We will then send the original dossier by Fed Ex to our courier service in Washington DC. This protects this precious paperwork as our courier hand carries it first to the Secretary of States office to be authenticated, then to the Ethiopian Embassy to be translated. When all that is done, she overnights the dossier back to our agency who then sends it off to Ethiopia. We will then be in the waiting process. What will we be waiting for?

After the dossier is sent to Ethiopia, our agency will make plans to move our children to the Care Center in the capital city of Addis Ababa. We are anxious for this step as they will get their medicals done here. We will be waiting on a coveted paper from the US Citizen and Immigration Services called an I171. This document gives us permission to bring our children to the US. We cannot proceed without it. As soon as this document is received, we will be waiting on a court date in Ethiopia. We do not attend this court date, but our agency representatives do. The judge will look over our paperwork and any biological parents that are still living must be present to relinquish our children. If all goes well and the court date goes through, our children become officially Colemans! This is when we are now legally their parents and we can show their pictures to you! After the court date, it is usually 4 weeks to an embassy date. We will get two week's notice and will have to arrive in Ethiopia on a Saturday and stay until the next Friday. So, that is where we are at this point. Sending in our dossier is a pivotal moment. As most of you know, we already have our first child chosen. We are not allowed to give his name or picture until he is officially ours. We are into a month now of waiting on a referral for our baby girl. Average wait for baby girls in Ethiopia is 2-3 months. In a month or so, we should have a face and a name of our daughter.