A lot of you have asked what the time frame is for the adoption, so I wanted to try and break it down for you.
From what I understand, our homestudy will take from 4-6 months.
After that is completed, it will go to DHR in Montgomery and will be reviewed which takes about 3-6 weeks.
They will then send it to Atlanta CIS (this is the international part of it) and that will take about 30 days.
Finally, it will be sent to Liberia and I don't know how long that will take. Hopefully, somwhere between 5-7 months until we get our date to travel and pick up our children.
So, hopefully, 15-16 months in total.

We are hoping for 2 siblings, relatives, best friends, etc and are open to 3. We know that God has already chosen children for us, regardless if they have been born yet or not so we haven't specified about the sex of the children. We already love them so much.

I was picking up Campbell from school the week I got back from my mission trip when she asked me the craziest question. There is a huge map of the world on the wall outside her classroom and she stopped me at it and asked, "show me where Noah is". You could have knocked me over with a feather. We have only talked a little bit in front of her about adoption and that we are adopting from Africa. She has named a brother 'Noah' already and she really wanted to know where he was and when we could go get him. It amazes me what little ones pick up on and how they know things we parents do not. It will not surprise me at all if we are referred to a child named Noah. God works in crazy ways like that.
We love you all. Keep us in your prayers.
S

Wow!! We had our first interview with our social worker through Lifeline Children's Services. I was starting to stress about it because our 1 year old came down with a fever on Sunday and our 3 year old had it on Tuesday and we still had paper work to fill out and fingerprinting to get completed...all on no sleep. Our wonderful neighbors were kind enough to watch our little ones while we had physicals at our internist and then made it to our interview. All in all it went great. God was so in control and I felt a peace and happiness at being there and not the anxiety that I thought I would have.

Now we have about 10 days to write our autobiography of our entire life. What a joy that will be to bring up all those past experiences I buried long ago...hehehe.

Thanks for your prayers. They were truly felt this morning.

This is a link to this past Easter message from our pastor, Dr David Platt on adoption. If you are considering adoption, please take time to watch this. It will change your view on adoption and how our heavenly Father has adopted us.

First let me introduce myself. My name is Staci and I am a 35 year old SAHM. I have an awesome husband of 5 years, Thomas, who works so hard to allow me to stay home with our girls. We have 2 little ones, age 3 years and 1 year. They are the best gifts that God has given us after our salvation.

Let me tell you about our journey so far.

Several years ago I saw on a tv show a town in NC that had adopted 16 boys from an orphange in Africa. They were here in the US on tour for their boys choir. Unable to go home because of war conflict, they stayed in NC a little longer. The town indeede up adopting the boys. This obviously was the seed that was planted in my heart all those years ago., I was just unaware of it.

Fast forward to last year. After our 2nd daughter was born, I knew, that I knew, that I knew we were we to have another child and I was ready. After talking to Thomas over serveral months he kept telling me that he wasn't real game for us having another pregnancy. My past two had caused some complications resulting in several surgeries. But I wouldn't hear of it. I knew in my heart that I was to get pregnant again. So I started praying that God would change Thomas' heart and he would be open to us having number 3.

Back up 15 years. When I first started dating Thomas, he had told me of his desire to adopt children at some point in his life. He has volunteered at schools, coached a girls soccer team and volunteered when orphans came from the Ukraine with our church. It really shouldn't have been a surprise to me.

Well all that praying really worked........on ME. Christ totally took away my desires for a bio child and put in it's place a stronger desire for adopting. The seed that was planted 2 years ago started to grow in my heart. I asked Thomas if he was up for adopting and boy was he excited. After a couple of weeks I told him that the Lord had put Africa on my heart and I thought this was where our child/children were. It took him some time of prayer before he too was on board.

So the journey begins!

"Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments." 1John 5:1-2

We have heard God's call on us to be obedient and care for His children and we are following. We know that if He calls us to something that He will provide for us and the resources. And we are trusting in that.

"to look after orphans and widows in their distress" James 1:27