Sunday Prayers

What a week the last one was!  We (finally!) have our travel dates to pick our son up.  He is officially and forever ours, but I'm pretty sure he has no clue.  While we were there in January meeting him we were told it would be 4-5 months before we got back for him, and we will be at the very end of the 5th month while we are there.  In other news we will get to meet another family who we have "known" for the entire adoption process.  Can't wait to meet Mandy Rhodes and her new sons!  Here are this week's requests:

1. That our son is ready and willing to come with us on May 28th.
2. That we have safe and easy travel for our trips there and home.
3. That our friends (the Rhodes') have as much success as we hope for!

Thank you so very much for keeping up with us for the past 12 months.  We are having a hard time believing we are finally "almost there!"

going back to Europe!

That's right!  After yesterday's whining we received our travel dates this morning.  I will tell you they are not as soon as we would have liked, but we have been on God's path this entire time anyway, so we know it's exactly when He needs us to travel.

We will be leaving on May 25th, and will pick him up on May 28th.  Return home to the US is scheduled for June 2.

That's all we know for now, and we are so excited to be near the end of this part of the journey.  Thanks so much for following along with us....it's about to get good!

trying to learn a lesson over here

So it's pretty clear that I am super bad at estimating things.  At least in adoption.  I truly believe God is trying to teach us that we are on His time-frame not our own.  (no, He is not teaching me patience!) When we started this whole process we were told it would be around 8 months before we had our boy home....and then the next person we spoke to said 12 months.  But, oh me! I am so very good at paperwork, and excellent at expecting governments to meet minimum deadlines that I thought for sure we would have him home by December.  Yeah.  We didn't even meet him until the first week of January.  So here we are....12 (pushing 13) months later and we are waiting.

Basically I came here to whine.  Whining is a part of adoption, right friends?  :)  So what we really need are more prayers.  We want our boy home ASAP!  Like, in the next few weeks.  For that to happen we need another country's government to hurry up and get our final court decree done!  Then we are only waiting for our attorney to put us in her rotation.  Please, we beg! pray that our court decree is complete and just waiting to be picked up tomorrow.  Also, pray that we can find affordable airfare, and that Danny is ready for us!

Thanks for listening to me whine.  And praying.

Sunday Prayers

I slacked off last week and didn't get a prayer request post written....my bad!  These past few weeks have been very busy with final preparations for our boy to come home, as well as preparing to be off from work for 6 weeks.  We do not have travel dates yet, but are hoping against hope to have them this week so we can book our plane tickets and finalize our plans to bring him home for good.  We can't wait!  Here are this week's requests:

1. Our SON.  He's ours forever!  Please pray he's prepared to take this journey as our first child.
2. Travel Dates.....please pray we get them as soon as possible.
3. Our Sanity!  Really, I'm sort-of kidding, but we are about to undergo some serious changes.

That's it!  I will be back (hopefully soon) to let you know when he will be home!

"how we got here"

Back in June of last year I wrote three posts titled "how we got here" and included some back ground on how Wes and I came to adoption.  Now that our adoption is almost completed I have a new installment to add to our story!  Ultimately this blog is to help chronicle our lives, as well as adoption, so I thought I would go ahead and add another chapter.

Before you read this post please click here to read the first three installments....we will wait....part 1, part 2, part 3.

OK, here goes.  When we started the adoption we were still trying to get pregnant, but with all the stress of adoption and life we quit trying.  As in went back on birth control.  (Hey, I'm baring it all here!) In December, once we had our travel dates to meet Danny (Colton Daniel now) we decided that we were ready to start "trying" again, truly believing it would be a few months before anything happened. Boy were we wrong!  The entire week we were in Bulgaria we knew something was up, but neither of us really wanted to say much about it.  When we left to come back home (so stinking hard, by the way) we decided that I would take a home pregnancy test the following morning.  I bet you can guess what it said....PREGNANT! We were thrilled!  And we are not good secret keepers, so later that day at lunch we told our friends and family, but then asked all them to keep our secret because of our history of miscarriages.  Wes and I also requested their prayers for a healthy baby this time around.

Today, 19 weeks pregnant, I am happy to tell you that Colton will be a big brother!  Baby BOY Whiteaker will join our family in early September.  We truly could not be more thrilled with God's timing in all this.  His plans are always better than ours, and neither of us could imagine our lives without Colton in them and know with out question that we have been walking His path this whole time.  Especially when our hearts hurt, and we didn't understand what was going on.

Court Update!

There is one less orphan in the world today!  

Colton Daniel Whiteaker will officially be a member of our family in 7 business days!  We will have travel dates sometime earlyish next week and will let you know then when we will be arriving home with our son.  Please continue to keep us in your prayers, as we have a sneaking suspicion that this journey is really just getting started!

Sunday Prayers "court" edition

Tomorrow is court!  I can't believe it's finally here.  It seems so real and yet so unreal all at once.  We only have two prayer requests for this week:

1. That Danny is prepared to come home with us very soon!

2. That court goes smoothly and that we have travel dates by the end of this week.

I promise to post as soon as we have some news!

Thank you for praying for us for the past year, and loving us while on this amazing journey.

overdue update on fundraising

Hello All!

Just wanted to give you a quick update on where we are with fundraising for the orphanage roof.  The chipin account shows $500 + I have about $250 in cash!  We are so excited to have had all the help!

In other news we are still waiting for our court date next Monday.  We will have travel dates a week or so after court, hoping to pick him up late April or early May!

Thanks for sharing about our fundraising and donating if possible.

Sunday Prayers

Who can even keep track any more?  Not me!  Here is what I can keep track of: court is one week from tomorrow!!!!  (and just to be clear, it's already tomorrow in his country!)  We could not be more thrilled to see the next part of this ride start.  I can't say "end" because it's really just getting started.  Today though I told Wes that it was getting a bit surreal.  Danny will be our first child, so to think that a four year old is going to be living with us in a month or so is so strange.  I wonder if families who have other children feel this way.  Anyway, what you came here for: here are this week's requests for prayer:

1. Danny: please pray his heart and mind have been prepared for us to come bring him home
2. Danny's orphanage: the judge requested some additional paperwork about Danny, please pray it reached the court in time so we aren't delayed
3. Us! We still have some last minute things to do to finish being ready for him to come home
4. Airfare: costs have gone up pretty significantly in the past few weeks, please pray we can find reasonable fares to fly on.

Again a short list this week.  Next week I will be back with just one request: that court goes well!