MILLIONS minus 2 (hopefully)

By now I think most of you have heard (which is why you are here) that we are expanding our family in the near-ish future!!! Desiring to have children and knowing that there are MILLIONS of orphans in the world, we have decided to adopt two children from Rwanda. One of the most heartbreaking realities of this broken world is that there are parents who long for children and children who long for parents and they never meet!!! Adoption is truly one of those small glimpses of redemption we get to see on this side of heaven.

Here's the list of what has happened so far...

• We received our completed homestudy! It only took 4 weeks, which is REALLY fast!
• We sent in our I600A which is an advance petition to classify an orphan as an immediate relative. We had to wait for our homestudy to do this. They will send us for fingerprinting with the department of homeland security.
• We had all our documents "Authenticated" with the great seal of Michigan- it only cost $1/document (which is great because there were 34 documents).
• We compiled everything into a 3 ring binder and sent it to the Rwandan Embassy in Washington DC for yet another "Authentication," this time it costs $30/document but we only needed 7 documents to go through this process (we think). At this time, some of the leadership that governs adoption is changing and so there may be some adjustments. We are sending the money and documents in faith that they are correct, and hopefully they will notify us if they aren't.

Next Steps...a very simplified version:)

We wait for our paperwork to return from DC and once we receive it, we will send it to The Minsiter of Family and Gender in Rwanda. At this point we will probably go several months with no news. If we are approved, we will move on to the portion where we are matched with children from Mother Teresa's Home of Hope in Kigali, Rwanda. After that, we will travel to pick up the newest members of the Dorband family!!!

Prayer/Praise!!!

Praise!!!! God has lead us and given us open doors in every aspect of this adoption and we just want to give him praise for allowing us to expand our family this way.

Pray that the First Counselor, Michael Rukata, in DC will approve our dossier and give us a letter of no objection.

Pray that everything will happen in HIS great and perfect time so we get the kids God already has picked out for us!

Pray for our child/ren (they may already be born), that God would take care of them.

Pray that God's perfect will would be done in every aspect of this process and in our lives now and in the future:)