Quick Turnaround

Here's a tiny update.  We got our passports today, much more quickly than expected.  In just 11 days from when we applied for them, actually.  Well done, Feds!  Maybe it's due to the recently increased fees for passports.  Whatever it is, it was unexpected.  We were giving ourselves 6 weeks to get our passports back and complete our paperwork in that time.  There are still some other items we're working on now.  I submitted a list of questions to our gracious application assistant at our adoption agency today, too.  Her answers will help us with our paperwork.

As far as travelling goes, at the start of this process, I thought a lot about our little girl waiting for us.  After the initial excitement, I really didn't allow myself to think about the actual travelling to Ethiopia and meeting her (and leaving her) and going back to bring her home.  But lately, I'm going there in my mind.  Purchasing plane tickets.  Packing bags.  The smells and sights of the city.  Marathon flights, one with our little one.  Arriving home, our baby girl's HOME.  HER house.  HER brothers.  HER room.  It's a thrill to think of our family all together at the dinner table.

And then I get all teary and remember why this is a hard place to let myself go.  A little bit encourages me and reminds me why we're going through the work and expense of the adoption process.  Dwelling on it is hard, a reminder that our family is not complete.

But our Father endures with much patience and work and at great cost to Him a world where His family is not yet complete.  A worthy and not remotely coincidental example for me.

And in other news...my life outside of this adoption.  I'm blessed to be working with a nonprofit in our city called JusticeMatters.  Tomorrow is our fall kickoff and training.  As the resident (read: only) poverty law attorney on the board, I have the privilege of addressing volunteer Christian attorneys and law students about the substantive law questions they can expect when they volunteer in our free legal clinics.  We have timed the training just right so that Duke law students wanting to escape their camp-out for basketball tickets can attend our approved training.  So we're expecting a crowd.  I'd appreciate your prayers as I address the group (along with other volunteers and some local dignitaries) and that they would see the need and respond to the call to serve and advocate for people of modest means in our city.

That's all for now.  Thanks for coming back.

~Katie