We have travel dates!!!

In a little over two weeks we will be meeting our little boy. I can't believe the time is here. It does not feel real at all. We will celebrate his 2nd birthday with him in his home country. I could not be more grateful.

In the past few weeks we've know about this little boy God has showed how He had a plan this entire time even when we doubted Him.

Jeremiah 1:5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you. I appointed you a prophet to the nations."

Multiple verses in the Bible talk about God having a plan for our lives. This is just one example. It's easy to read these verses and either cling to them or ignore them. It truly depends on our mood half of the time. So many times in our lives God has revealed connections, or ways He has showed us He was at work long before we ever recognized it. He had a clear plan and path for us, we just couldn't see it until later. This is one example of many from our adoption and our life.

Nadezhda. This word means "hope" in Bulgarian. If you have followed this blog for long you know the word "hope" has characterized our entire adoption. Roma children have little hope for adoption within the EU due to racism. We saw a need and wanted to bring hope to a hopeless situation. We had hope that God would multiply our family through this process. We wanted to share the hope we find in Jesus Christ. We made and sold hope bracelets as reminders. We sold hope t-shirts in 2015 that had the word "Nadezhda" printed across the country of Bulgaria. The beautiful characters of Cyrillic spelled out hope in our future child's native language.

When we received our referral and I saw the city our child was from I realized I knew very little about the city, so I googled it. I found an interesting and started reading. In this town is what has been identified as possibly one of the worst Roma ghettos in the EU. It's likely our child's family is from this ghetto for multiple reasons. As I was reading I stopped in my tracks when I saw the name of the neighborhood. It's called Nadezhda. Y'all, we've been wearing the name of the neighborhood our child would come from for years and never knew it.

As I looked even further into this word and Bulgaria this past week, I came to realize there are
several neighborhoods across Bulgaria with this name. Some may look at this fact and think it's just coincidence or even diminishes what I believe is proof of God's plan for us. I totally disagree. In my mind it completely reinforces that fact and offers evidence that God knew this child before he was born in 2016 and had a plan to connect him to us. God brings hope to the hopeless.

God doesn't have to coordinate things like that, but it's so special when He does. It shows me He is in the details and not just the big things. I was so worried we wouldn't know when we found OUR child. How would we know? What if we made a mistake? Is there really a specific child out there just for us? This showed us that He planned for us to have THIS child--two years before he was ever born. We have "hope" in someone and He is real and He has a plan. He is our Heavenly Father.

Speaking of details, I sent off our I-800 last week. This is the document that finalizes the immigration process for our little boy. It takes about 2-3 weeks usually to get approval. In a week or so, we should hear from the NBC and then we file for his visa. The paperwork keeps coming.

This past week Vesta traveled to the orphanage and sent us updated measurements, medical info, pictures and videos. Our International Adoption Pediatrician had some questions and concerns as well. We couldn't have had a better report. Many of his issues are more minor that originally reported or have started to correct themselves as he has gotten older. He is starting to walk and talk, all things we were told he could not do. What a huge blessing. We couldn't be happier with the additional pictures of him smiling and videos of him playing with one of the workers and a toy. He is on the small side, but that's to be expected. He's so precious and I can't wait to hold him.

We had a phone call with our agency about traveling and what we can expect our schedule to be like. Our goal is to bond with our child on this trip, give power of attorney to our NGO so they can go to court for us and hopefully, set up a way to communicate with our child over the next 4-6 months as we wait to go back to get him and bring him home.

Our t-shirt fundraiser is coming soon! Here's a preview of a few of the colors and styles! When we started this process we had hope God would send us the perfect child. Now we see He has "chosen" this child for us!