Dossier in the Mail!!!

I hope everyone has had a gorgeous fall Saturday afternoon. I’m not sure what it is about this year but we’ve been blessed with great weather in Cleveland, TN. Actually, we’ve been blessed by that and so much more. This week we officially finished our paperwork journey (or at least a significant chunk of it J). On Monday we received approval from USCIS, which is a fancy way of saying that the US government has approved us to adopt a baby boy from Ethiopia. After that we had to get our paperwork certified by the county and then the state. We took care of this as quickly as we could and by Thursday afternoon our dossier was in the mail. Our agency will take a few weeks to review it before bringing it to the US Embassy. If all goes well our dossier will be in Ethiopia within 2-3 weeks and our official wait will begin (DTE: Dossier To Ethiopia with a wait of 5-7 months for our referral).

When I was shipping out the paperwork I was elated! And as I was leaving UPS the reality that we’re going to have a baby started to hit me. I imagine it felt very similar to a woman being told she was pregnant. To be honest, I’m still in a bit of shock and I’m thankful for these next few months so we can begin to prepare emotionally for this shift in life (but don’t get me wrong-extreme happiness is being felt by the Steffenhagens). Jason and I are so grateful for your prayers-we could not do this without the loving support of our family and friends.

I did want to share a few other things-one being that Sunday, November 8^th (tomorrow) is Orphan Sunday. More or less it’s a day to raise awareness about the 143 million orphans in the world and what can be done to show them Christ’s love. For more information, videos, prayer guides I would recommend this webpage: http://www.orphansunday.org/resources.

Also-we’ve had a few people ask about our storefront at Just Love Coffee-and as of a week ago it is up and running. Basically, this is a fundraiser and with every pound of coffee that is bought from our storefront, the organization will send us $5 to put towards our adoption. The family that started this nonprofit adopted two children from Ethipoia and now they want to help other families do the same. I’ve also started an etsy store and I’m hoping to complete customized orders of letter magnets: http://www.etsy.com/shop/LoveLetters2Ethiopia. (If you’re interested and you live in Cleveland or Minnesota-I’m sure we can work it out to avoid shipping charges because we’ll be home for the holidays). If you have any friends who you think would be interested in the fair trade coffee or the magnets please send them our way. As you can imagine this adoption process does come with a financial piece of the puzzle but we’ve been blown away by God's provision. Thank you so much for your support-whether it’s your prayers or your financial assistance-we really are touched about what God is teaching us through community. (I’m thinking Jason will have to write up this in an upcoming post because he has a gift of being able to articulate these lessons!)

You’ll be hearing from us soon (sorry for the delay in updates-fall was a bit busy but we’re going to make this a priority in the upcoming months). It’s finally time to think about the reality of our baby boy (even typing that makes the hair on my arms stand up straight), we started this process 5 months ago but it didn’t seem real until Thursday! Here it goes…!