Praise God! Awesome Announcement, Plus Something Special!

Our Dossier was approved at the adoption committee meeting yesterday in Priscilla's country!  This is called the "verbal referral".  This is a HUGE step in my book.  There are a couple of other HUGE steps in the process, but this is the really the first HUGE step!  I am so excited I am shaking!  I really didn't not think our dossier would even see the light of day at that meeting!

PRAISE GOD!  The sooner each step happens, the soon this precious little girl will be released from an orphanage and begin a real life of learning and growing!

I was even looking at luggage yesterday when I was shopping for something to wear to Jeremy's wedding.  Marshall's had some very nice, discounted luggage.  I will have to go take another look again soon!

So, what's next?  Our dossier will need to get a signature from the Minister of Justice.  I was told that this will take 2 - 3 weeks.  That is called the "Written Referral."  When we get our Written Referral we will also get the dates when we can travel to meet her!  It looks from her like our trip will be either late October or early November.

We have had a little secret that we were waiting for a special time to share with all of you, and now is that moment - we intend to change her name!  Priscilla is not her real name.  Her real name I can not share online, but is sounds a lot like Priscilla.  But in her videos, the ladies working with her call her "Prissy."  While that sounds like a cute name, in our culture, being "prissy" in our culture is not exactly a good connotation, is it?  So last spring and early summer Daryl and I were working on coming up with a name that we liked that would have a nick name that would sound like her nick name.  We have chosen to keep her real name (yet to be announced after she is officially ours), as her middle name. So this is to announce to the world, that we have chosen a name for our new daughter.....

We will be calling her "Christy" for a nickname as it sounds so similar to "Prissy."  We have already begun to refer to her as Christy in our home and will even begin to do this with other as we share new of her, so that when she comes home (oh that sounds good), we will be used to calling her that and not "Priscilla."

"Christiana" means follower of Christ.  Her real (future) middle name (the one that is her first name now) means "Glory" or "the glory of."  So her two names can mean the glory of a follower of Christ, or the glory of following Christ.  I LOVE this!  Have you ever thought about the fact that if you are a follower of Christ, that your have been ADOPTED into the family of God?  Have you ever thought about how adoption is a wonderful physical example of our adoption into God's family?  I have thought on this a little in the past, but not really and truly dwelt on it until more recent months.

Now, as an adoptive parent, I see so much more.  I see more of God in adoption.  "Christy" is like a future believer who has not felt the call of God in her life.  She has done NOTHING to earn our love.  We love her because she is ours.  God has given us this love, as He is the author of Love.  We have loved her before she could even imagine loving us.  Do you see it?

A future believer often has no idea that God even exists, let alone loves him/her.  Christy has no idea that we even exist.  She has no idea that we love her...she may even have no idea what love it.  She has no idea that we have been working for months to bring her home.  We have been loving her and praying for her.  We have been working with so many people and entities in order to set everything up for the blessed day when she will finally know that we exist. So many people are praying for her too.  That day is rapidly coming, but she has no idea!  It's like that first time that a future believer stumbles across the message of salvation.  He/she has no idea that so much work was done to make that happen in their life.  But God had it planed for years/decades/centuries...really from the foundation of the earth.  We have been planning and working on bringing Christy to the point of "finding" us, yet she still has no idea.  Do you see it?

I now realize that God has truly loved me with an everlasting love - one that stretches back forever, and stretches on into eternity.  (I know, that is where earthly adoption shows that is is only a glimpse into our adoption by God, but that makes it so much better, as adoption is such a wonderful thing, and yet we can know that our adoption by God into His family is so much more glorious!).

So, very soon, we will plan that moment when Christy will first find out that we even exist.  That moment when her eyes will see us standing before her.  She will really have no idea what it all means, and that we are going to be her parents.  But she will know that we exist.  We will spend a couple of hours with her each day, in the morning and then again in the afternoon.  For five short days.  Then we will be seemingly gone from her life.  But not completely.  We plan to purchase a little book that we can use to record our voices reading this book to her in English.  Her caretaker will be able to help her to listen/read this book everyday while we are working to bring her home.  We will also be leaving a little photo album of our family and our home for her to look at each day too.  So she will continue to become familiar with our faces and get used to the images of her future home.  We can hope that she will grow in her familiarity of us and our home and maybe, just maybe, begin to love us in return. Do you see it? 

 Do you see that God gave us that?  He has given us His Holy Spirit so we can hear the voice of God.  He has given us His Holy Word so that we can get a glimpse of our eternal home.  Both before the moment of our salvation and after, He gave us His book that is a recording of His love for us and who our family is.  Do you see it?

There will come a day that Christy will be ours, 100% ours.  She will become a part of our family.  She will learn so many things.  She will be fed and she will grow.  It might take years for her to truly understand all that is being done and all that will be done to make her a part of our family, but she will know.  She will know that she is loved.  Do you see it?

If you don't see what I am sharing with you, and you are not a part of God's family, then maybe this is the moment that God has been preparing for you.  He has been loving your since the foundation of the earth.  He has been loving you and preparing for the moment when you become aware that He has been working to bring you into His family.  He even sent His son, Jesus Christ, to earth over 2000 years ago to take your sins upon Himself and to pay the penalty for every one of them, so that you can become His child.  But you need to do something.  You need to believe that Christ is the Son of God, that he lived a perfect, sinless life.  You need to believe that He took your sins upon Himself as He hung on the cross.  That He died in your place.  He paid the penalty for your sin.  You need to believe that He conquered death by rising from the dead on the third day so that you might have eternal life with Him.  All you need to do is believe, confess your sinfulness and ask God to save you.  He's been working and waiting.  He knew you would be in His family.  He chose you.  So ask Him today - ask Him to come into your life, to save you from your sins and to become Lord of your life.  No longer to live in your old ways, but to become a part of the family of God.  To live a new life.  To grow in your love for Him and to learn to live a life that pleases him.  A life that reflects the love of God to the world.  A life that brings glory to God.  

Do you see it now?

If you need to know more about how to become a child of God. please visit This Website or contact a pastor or believer that you know to find help to be adopted into God's family.