two calls away...

We're two calls away from a travel date now gang.
The courts are closed till Oct 1.

The next call we'll get will be for a Court Date that will put through Ashebir's paperwork.
Often, because it's the government... those dates change sometimes.

My guess is that the Ethiopian Courts will be backlogged when they reopen the first of October so I think we should get some kind of info by the second week of October. No one from our agency has made any commitments either way - they don't make guesses which is good I guess - so we might get a call earlier, or later depending on "the system."

The second call we'll get will be "Ok, he's through court, come get him." or something like that.

We THINK we'll be traveling Dec or Jan, but it could be before or after that.

So... we wait...

I must admit, I'm more anxious to go get Ashebir to get him home than I was with TK. The last trip, we were all going together, and I guess I didn't know exactly what to expect so I wasn't as anxious... This time, man... I'm ready to go get our little boy today!

Not because he's NOT being loved and extremely well cared for. He is. The nannies and nurses at the care center are TREMENDOUS! We couldn't be more thankful for their care, but I know now what an incredible joy it will be to bring our little boy home.

I'm also psyched because of what this trip could mean long term...
Not just for our family - that's a given - but for other families too.
This time, Amy and the girls aren't going with me.

I've specifically asked a few other close friends to join me on this trip.
The goal is to go for about two weeks total. The second week will be dedicated to the final paperwork, embassy visit to bring home Ashebir. However, the first week will be dedicated to traveling around Addis, and other parts of Ethiopia investigating opportunities where we could invest long term. I don't know exactly what that will look like yet, but I'm in the process now of looking into different non-profits and NGO's to visit and to meet with to see how we as Hope Church, or just individual families could begin to invest in for years to come.

If there is any reader here that has a connection to an organization in Ethiopia that we could talk about. Post your info here, or email me.

Anticipating "The Call" ;)

pete

Summer ends big.

If you didn't know already we moved. ... yes Again.
The first week of September we returned from Vacation, the girls started school and we finished moving our stuff from our 2nd Fl apt to our new place, we've settled in since then and we love it.

A few months ago, Amy learned about a home near us in Middletown that would become available to rent either Aug or Sept. When Amy told me about it initially, I was very skeptical...why? Because it was across the street. How rediculous would it be to move ACROSS THE STREET?!

But then she gave me the details..
Roughly the same amount of space, but FIRST floor (we're now on the second fl), Closet space and storage space (our previous apt had almost none). Also has a yard for the kids and a deck (neither of which we have now) to top it off it's less rent per month as well. So it was a no-brainer.

So, we confirmed the apartment with the new landlords, and gave notice to our current landlords and finalized the Sept 1st transition.
Only one problem...

We had booked our family vacation to Camp Spofford, NH 6 months ago - for the 3rd Week in August. Just in case that flew by you, it takes a while to pack up all your stuff and move. Trust me... this is the 7th move since we've been married (and I think it was 11 moves our family had in the first 18 years of my life and honestly that's why I wasn't really excited about moving again - that is before I knew of the new amenities.)

It worked out pretty well though because the new landlords allowed us to begin moving in our stuff the second week in August.

We arrived home from Family Vacation on Saturday 8/28 and attended a back to school bash for the girls elementary school. (which, by the way was an awesome event put on by a couple churches in our area. CatalystChurch.tv partnered with another local church and they did a fantastic job!)

That said, we had a busy afternoon and evening.

Oh... did I mention that Amy just started Nursing School? Yeah... she did.
Since we scheduled our vacation 8mos ago, we didn't know then that as a result of her registering for classes we learned that she would have her first week of classes... DURING our vacation.
Good thing we spent our vacation only a couple hours from home, so Amy was gone only about a day and a half of our vacation week as she began her pre-req courses the last week of August : Statistics, Chemistry and Lab, and Anatomy and Physiology and Lab.

She's doing ok.. she's taken a few quizzes so far and is pretty happy with them.
The program is actually an accellerated one that will give her a BSN degree from CT Southern Univ. If all goes as planned, she'll be accepted into that program and be able to finish the complete program in two years.

Therefore, I've taken a hiatus from my Master's program at Bethel Seminary so she can complete her nursing degree. We'll see what happens after that.

more on the adventure soon...

whatever it takes to get fingerprinted!

So, the only hurdle left to jump for our i600 paperwork (US Immigration) was our fingerprints. Yep. We had to get our fingerprints done again. Correct me if I'm wrong folks but I believe the reason why we get our kids finger printed when they're young, is if in case God forbid something ever happens to them and the police need to ID them... they use their fingerprints. No matter what age they are. So, help me understand why they can't just load up our fingerprints that are already on every thinkable database in the US Gov't right now from all the background security checks we had to do when we were in the middle of bringing TK home. Not to mention all the paperwork I had to do for military clearances when I was in the Army National Guard. Good grief. Anyhow, we're at their mercy... so we do as they ask.

The appointments that we were sent were scheduled originally during our family vacation. So when Amy attempted to reschedule there's only one little checkbox at the bottom of the schedule form to confirm your appointment, or to request another date and time. So we did that. When we got the second letter back for a fingerprint appointment ... the US Gov't efficiency shows up again! They scheduled it for the following day! ARGHH!!! So, I decided to just drive up to Hartford to see if they'd let me in to plead my case.

So last Tuesday I arrived as soon as they opened the door, talked to the officer in charge and they gave us an appointment at 11am that day.

I went back to get Amy - our wonderful neighbors watched Cutie and TK for us - and we got our fingerprints done. woot! Seems like all we're waiting for now is a court date.

you'll know when we do...
Later.

another adventure!

Recent timeline...
Monday July 27 0630 - Amy and I learned that there were some children that had just recently arrived at the CHSFS care center in Ethiopia, so Amy contacted our agency to learn more information about the children - specifically about the little boys that had recently arrived there.
Same Day... 0930 - Our agency responded and let us know that there may be a family that the little boys were connected with already...but would confirm later.
Through that week: Amy and I chatted about the possibility of the adoption happening sooner than expected, but I was quite skeptical because I thought the boys that were there were probably matched already, and that we shouldn't expect a referral until at least winter this year...besides I was pretty consumed with getting things taken care of for our trip to SoulFest 09 (thesoulfest.com) since we were leaving that next morning.
..............
We returned from SoulFest on Sunday evening 8/2 about 1800
That night (Sun 8/2 @ 2100)- Amy inquired (via email)about the little boys we'd asked about earlier that week. We knew that these little boys had some medical issues, but as we talked a lot about it, and prayed through it, we felt like God would lead us where He wanted us to go. So we waited to hear back...

Monday 8/3 1830 - We received word from our agency that some families are still considering the little boys in question...(honestly I was kinda breathing a little bit of a sigh of relief, because I had NO idea how we would come up with the 9000.00 to accept the referral if we got one this early)... but what do I know. ;) Our agency said they would contact us when there was more info....

Details are a little fuzzy the next couple days... (you'll understand why in a minute)... I think it was Wed (8/5) in the afternoon sometime that Amy called and said that we have the opportunity to review two little boys that would fit our family. Both have some medical issues, but nothing we thought was worth denying based on what we knew...so we were given verbal information about two little boys and asked if we would like to review their information and if so... which one would we like to learn about first.

... what a gut wrenching dilemma... so many things running through my heart and mind. Could we take proper care of them with what we have to offer? information is hard to process like that without all the details first... Hard to make a decision like that without knowing and seeing more... I was trying to process what was written on paper, and if it was as potentially difficult as it sounded or not? Could we say "no" to the referral after we saw the story of the little boy we would choose - and then review the next one? Sure, but what were we willing to say "yes" to? What were we going to say "no" to? ... We did a lot of talking and praying then... There were a ton of unknowns to process - but "the river doesn't part until you put you foot in the water first"...

We talked and prayed about that off and on the better part of that day and the following day (Thurs Aug 6) When I arrived home Thursday night we talked more and by 2300 or so decided to- as best as we were able - to “remove from the decision” the stuff we couldn’t control, and make our decision based on both boys being completely healthy. So, we contacted agency to request to review the file of the three year old little boy.
Friday morning 8/7 0900 – We received the pdf file and Amy said she wouldn’t be able to go the whole day without reading it, and I didn’t know if I would be able to review it in detail because of a conference I’d was attending that day…so she wanted me to open the file first. I read his story, saw his picture and began to weep
That morning we were able to schedule an appointment with our Doctor to review his blood work that was included in his referral information. Off and on that day Amy and I discussed the concerns we had about some of the medical issues, but we felt confident based on the Doctor’s review that we could make a wise decision.
Saturday 1000 – We met with our Doctor and gave us some difficult news…. There was nothing in the medical details that would give him any reason to deny confirming his referral, but there was always the unknown stuff that could possibly have long term ramifications.. but no one would be able to tell that for sure. At that point, we were still in a bit of a quandary but felt even stronger that this was our little boy… but we … at least I … didn’t feel quite prepared to handle this now.
Funny thing about how God works… often times I am impatient that God didn’t move quick enough, or when I wanted Him to… this time, I’m wrestling because apparently he’s answering faster than expected. I guess I still have to remember who’s really in control.
So, we talked about him all day Saturday and honestly by Saturday night all we could do was kinda veg out on the “food channel” …
We had a little more peace about it on Sunday morning and were getting more excited about the possibilities and we shared our story/dilemma with a few friends.
I was having a hard time trying to figure out how we’d swing this financially, especially now that our home is empty again and the mortgage company still needs a monthly check… hmmm…
We decided to accept his referral verbally and start working hard to arrange some way to creatively come up with the funds to start the next formal stage of the process… so we looked around the house for stuff to sell… there wasn’t much of anything we aren’t willing to sell these days….
- Sidebar: if your child was sick, or needed something and all you had was your stuff… what would you be willing to sell to get your kid healthy? Yep… we thought of everything.
We’ve got some stuff up on ebay right now too ;)
So… in the last week, some substantial miracles have taken place and God has provided what we need so far.
We received the formal acceptance information and mailed it with our check and a few other checks from friends, family and some children of kids who wanted to help and heard about the need… to rescue our little boy.
From the deepest part of us… we do not have adequate words to describe our appreciation for all of you that stepped up in HUGE ways to help us in this process… we’ve still got some details to work out.. (US Immigration paperwork, and the courts are not in session in Sept in Ethiopia so the soonest that the paperwork could go through the Ethiopian courts would be Mid to late October… then when to travel.. and expenses surrounding that etc…
So we’d appreciate your prayer for the remaining details…
PS… When I read his record for the first time I learned his name means… “to stir up”. When I read that I thought - this is no accident.

….I’ll try to keep this current
To be continued!

Zipf Kids bringin in the Summer09

what a ride!

A few weeks ago, I got one of the greatest compliments I've ever heard, one of the teens we work with told Amy, "I think Tariku's starting to look like Pete!"

I'm not sure how that works, but Tariku’s definitely one of us...we cannot think of life with out him. Our family has become so much more with him – He’s added another dimension to our lives. I can’t fully explain it, but it seems we understand God’s compassion, grace and desire for our lives a little more clearly now because of Tariku and his story. His life has affected ours in more ways that we ever knew possible.

It’s kind of ironic too… his name actually means “his story” … Because of that we felt like it was too important not to keep his given name. His story has affected us forever. We’ve tried to come up with an appropriate nickname, but nothing’s confirmed yet. I've started calling him TK once in a while, but we'll see if that sticks or not. Amy's not convinced yet. ;)

It’s been about 15 months since we returned from Ethiopia and about eight or nine months ago Amy and I began to talk about adopting another little boy. It’s never made a ton of sense “on paper”, but after a lot of thinking, praying and investigating, we began the process to bring home a little boy between 3-5 years old. To make a long story short… it's been a crazy process for us this time –last time was crazy too, just different. Seems par for the course though… So, as of about a month ago, we finished our paperwork and we're now officially waiting for a referral for our new little boy. We don't know his name yet, but God does. We would appreciate praying with us for him. We'll keep you posted on this new adventure.

Amongst the new adoption process…
It's been a wild year in general. Last September we moved to Middletown about 20 minutes from where we were living and we love it here. We’ve got great people living near us in our diverse and loving neighborhood. Our girls both love their new schools and their teachers and they have fit perfectly in their classes.

Shortly after we moved, I began taking two seminary classes and in June I finished my third term at Bethel Seminary of the East. It has been such an enriching time for me, but over the last year Amy and I have talked about her going to school to pursue her nursing degree. This has been something we've been kicking around for probably more than 3 years. So, we’ve concluded over the last couple weeks that it would be a better use of time and resources at this point in our lives, that she pursues this degree now. Afterall, she’ll be able to complete it in two years. We're both excited about the kind of opportunities this could open up for us in the months and years to come.

It's been a cool thing too- living in a more urban area now- we’ve been able to connect with our community in some different ways as well. This summer, we're able to serve at one of the homeless shelters with some others from church, and help out the summer program for the kids in our community held at Kenni's school. .

Church life...
It's been about 6 months since we began our worship services for Hope Church in one of the local High Schools, and God has done some tremendous work in the lives of many among us. The stories that God is shaping in the lives of students is even more thrilling for our Alien Youth Ministry Team. We just returned from our summer mission trip, The Hartford Project. You can learn a little more about it here- http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/TheHartfordProject?v=info&viewas=526845182

The local TV news came out to cover an event that was part of the week's serving time: www.wfsb.com/video/19920314/index.html

The Love Wins event described on that news segment was only one piece of our week together. Over 190 teens and youth workers worshiped, prayed, and worked hard with over 20 different non profit organizations all over Hartford that week. Powerful stuff…can't wait till next year!

As for this summer, we're looking forward to see how God will use our time in connecting with students, serving together and making deeper footprints. We've got some aggressive goals, but we are even more convinced of intentional living… act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God. We know that there are a ton of things attached to that 'call'- but we've got some amped people around us who are preparing for greatness.

Looking forward to how God will continue to refine and focus us, as we hang on for the ride!

Tariku's First Birthday is tomorrow...WOW!

We can't believe it!.... Tariku's 1st Bday is TOMORROW!

Thought I'd post this article link. (below) Several days ago we got a call from a local reporter who wanted to publish our story about Tariku's adoption an­d the Birthday Party/Fundraiser we're doing on 11/22 for AHOPE AIDS Orphanage . AHOPE has a home office here in the US, but their Ethiopian Care Center works closely with the CHSFS Care center where Tariku was.

Our fundraiser event is on Nov. 22 from 10-12 EST. We're expecting many friends, and many others from our community that wish to learn more about adoption and investing in AHOPE to help HIV+ Kids. We will have community leaders, adoptive families, those interested in adoption, and financial supporters to help others adopt too. We'd appreciate prayer for that event, and we'll let you know how it goes.

If you aren't aware already, we've just submitted our application (about another 12mo process) to bring home a second son from Ethiopia. He will be 3-5yrs old... so between Sasha and "TK" ;)... We don't know who he is yet, but the Lord is caring and preparing him now.

Love to all, Pete... for the rest.

http://easthampton.htnp.com/around_east_hampton/1661.html