August 2007

Thank you so much for your continued prayers and words of encouragement as we enter into this stage of more waiting!

When we last updated you in July we told you that our Dossier had been sent to our Adoption agency for review and that it would be on its way to D.C for approval and translation. Well, we received word from our adoption agency shortly after, that the Dossier was ready to go and did not need any corrections (a huge praise).....but they had not received all of our payments for the fees!!! You can imagine how frantic we were, since all the money orders and checks were in the same envelope as the Dossier! After some investigation, the agency found almost all of the cashier checks but had misplaced our money orders for the Embassy fees!! At first, we were very upset about the delay. I called the Money Order company to get them to cancel the money orders and reissue new ones only to find out that the original Money orders had somehow been voided by the gas station where we had purchased them! After many hours of phone calls, everything was sorted out and we were given a refund. Finally the new money orders were on their way! It turned out to be a huge blessing in disguise. If the adoption agency had not misplaced the money orders they would have been sent on to the Embassy in Ethiopia as voided, no good, money orders....which would have set us up for an even longer delay; not to mention it would not look good for our records! We stand amazed how God can intervene and work in such mysterious ways. We were upset that the agency had lost the money orders (which according to them has never happened in the history of the agency), yet God was using this incident to bring our attention to an even bigger issue!!

We just received word on Friday (August 3) that our Dossier was approved and authenticated in D.C and translation was complete. Our Dossier was in the mail to Ethiopia as of Friday night!!! This means we are one step closer!!!

Please continue to pray with us that we would be patient and wait on God's timing, and that He would keep our children safe and healthy in the meantime.

Thank you again for your continued prayers for our family. We love you and are excited to share this journey with you.

Because of His love,
Jeff and Meredith

James 1:27