Arkansas to Africa {part 10 We are Theirs}

I have had several people ask me, "how in the world did y'all wind up in Africa"?

Most of the time that ends with me stuttering around and giving some kind of a lame answer.

Not because there isn't a really good (non-lame) answer,
but because it is hard to know where to get started.

Sooo, I thought I would begin to share the story that God wrote for us.
It is a looonng story that spans many years.
But don't worry, no chapter book today!
 I will give it to you a bit at a time!

If you want to catch up to speed, you can find:
Part 1 {here}
Part 2 {here}
Part 3 {here}
Part 4 {here}
Part 5 {here}
Part 6 {here}
Part 7 {here}
Part 8 {here}

Part 9 {here}

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Can't believe I am on part 10 today of our story today! Am I long winded or what? 

I think I will be wrapping this up here soon...but then again, I am not sure! 

Each week I sit down to write and see where the God leads.

A few weeks after last weeks dinner, we found ourselves in a living room surrounded by other families and single adults who had a passion for Esther's House and were praying about moving to Malawi. It really struck me that God had been preparing so many other hearts, not just ours. 

We ate and got to know one another. We shared our stories and shed some tears {public speaking is always awkward for me, especially if it involves something personal}.

I remember clearly that we met on a Friday night and our file and our girls' file was going to court 3 days later on Monday in Africa. That night, our timeline was asked about several times, and we still didn't have a clear answer.

This was October, and we were given some time to all really do some soul searching and make sure we could look our board in the eyes with 100% confidence and say that we felt God was telling us to move to Malawi.

In November, right before Thanksgiving, we found out that we passed court for our girls!!! The girls were officially ours and we were theirs. Just typing those words out brings back so many emotions! We also told our board we were 100% in to serving at Esther's House. We didn't know how it would all work out, but we all trusted that God would work out the details.

We began the paper work to turn into Homeland Security and the US Embassy for our girls AND we also tackled our lengthy application to work with Pure Mission. You could say that we were drowning in paperwork, but all those years in the adoption process had trained me to fill out paper work like a boss, so we tackled it with excitement and anticipation!

At that time, we estimated that we would be able to travel to bring our girls home in February and then hopefully move in May. We sent out this Christmas card to all of our friends and family letting them know our BIG news. Christmas was filled with gifts of pink jammies,  purple snow suits and baby dolls for little sisters.

But, what we should have learned by this point was that adoption timelines are as fluid as jello, we would soon learn some news that would change up all our plans......

Stay tuned for Part 11 next Friday!

Today I am linking up with Casey Wiegand and Oak + Oats.