Dear friends and family,

We are excited to share some news with you! Some of you may already know but for those of you who don't hang on!

Roger and I are going to adopt a child or sibling group from Ethiopia.

Most of you know that I have always wanted more children after we had Sam and Jacob. Roger was convinced that he (we) were done. I think that I have been praying about this for about 10 years. Funny thing happened....when I stopped talking about it and let the Lord do the talking my husband responded in a huge way! Amazing!

Our hearts were both led to children in Ethiopia! Really through different avenues. Once Roger gave me the ok to do some investigating I came to Ethiopia and fell in love with the children there. For Roger it was a bit different. He felt led to adopt from a country where the children might not be able to know Jesus. Ethiopia has several major religions but people/missionaries have been persecuted for sharing their faith in Jesus. So while I continued to give him information on the different countries and the domestic adoption options, he already kind of knew in his heart that Ethiopia was the place.

The process for international adoption can be a long one. There is initially a TON of paperwork and just about everything has to be certified, notarized and perfect! We have to be "approved" for adoption through a process called a Home Study. Our adoption agency is in North Carolina, Christian World Adoption and our home study agency is in Appleton. We pretty much have all of the paper work done and should have our home study completed by the end of next week. Then everything gets sent to the US for approval and then to the Ethiopian Embassy for approval.....after that it goes to Ethiopia to the agency office over there.

Then we wait......and wait......for a referral. That is where they find a child/ren that they think our family will be a good match for. We should get pictures and a description of the children.

We are open to a single child, siblings, and either boys or girls and are looking in the 2-4 yr. age range.

We will keep you all posted as things move along. We ask that you would pray for us in several ways.....

~please pray for our paperwork to be processed without any "glitches"

~please pray for the children that the Lord has planned for our family, their health and protection

~please pray for our family that God would prepare our hearts for these children

~please pray that we would trust God to be the one in control of all of this.....He is in control so we don't have to be!

~please pray for us to have patience in the wait!

We will keep updating as much as possible! If you have questions please feel free to email and ask!

James 1:27
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world

peace,

Every Day is a Gift!
Roger & Laurie Hebbe