Update!

It's been a while since my last update! A lot has happened and God continues to guide us through this journey we are on. We finally received our final notarized homestudy approval on December 18th! Just in time for Christmas! We've had so many blessings and doors open and we are so excited to see what and WHO God has for us this year! We are so blessed to have the support of our family and friends. You have been so encouraging to us and we are thankful to have you in our lives!

A lot of you may wonder about how we chose to adopt from the Congo. So I thought this might be a good time to explain how Josh and I came to the decision to adopt there. Late 2009, we decided that we would truly start pursuing adoption in 2010. In late Jan./early Feb. last year we attended an orientation meeting with an adoption agency. It was right after the earthquake in Haiti. This agency had been contacted by the government to start preparing temporary housing for Haitian orphans should they come to the US. In the meeting, we were given the chance to go through a process to become one of those families. Josh and I decided we would love to do this and we signed up. It took a couple months of basically going through a "mini homestudy" to become one of these families. Ultimately, they did not bring Haitian orphans here, so nothing really came of that except an even stronger desire to really pursue adoption.

It was during this time however, that I was constantly researching different countries for international adoption, and domestic adoption. I had seen the Congo on a few different websites, but hadn't paid much attention to it. After a few different situations of friends and family telling me about someone they knew who had or was adopting from there, I decided to start looking into it. The more research I did, the more my heart was feeling a tugging towards Africa and specifically Congo. When Josh and I started talking seriously about it, we knew this was the direction God was leading us. It's hard to understand the love I feel for a place and people that I have never been or met. But I know God is preparing my heart for our baby to come and to be a voice for those who don't have one.

Well that is it for now!

Love,
Hannah