From Atlanta to Zambia (Part 1 of 2)

I found it! This is a video about a church group's trip to Zambia, but they stayed at The House of Moses which is the orphanage we will get our daughter from. I was so excited to see a video that shows where we will stay and where our daughter will live for awhile. Please take a look!

The Miniature Earth

Check out this video- it is very interesting and reminds me of our responsibility as Christians to take care of those that are less fortunate. Let me know what you think.

All in God's Time

On Tuesday night we met with the other families who are also going to Zambia to adopt children through Bethany. One of the families has spent significant time in Zambia doing mission work, so they were able to share pictures with us and answer some questions about the country and the culture of the people. It was great to spend a night with other people who are going through some of the same emotions as we are.

Our homestudy was also completed Tuesday night and I sent all the paperwork off to U.S. Immigration today. We will get information about a fingerprinting appointment in a few weeks. I think our papers will take a few months to go through the immigration process. Once that is all done, we could send our stuff to Zambia, but then we may have our baby before Christmas, or soon after. Because I would like to teach most or all of next year we think we are going to wait to send our papers to Zambia. It will be very hard for me to wait, knowing that we may have been able to have a baby earlier. But, God's timing is good; I know that during this 8-10 months of waiting He will continue to teach us a lot and prepare us to be parents. Once school starts I will be much busier also and then I won't have as much time to think about it. God is good; it has been amazing to see Him work through this whole process. We will keep trusting His timing.

Adoption Update

Mark and I completed the homestudy for our adoption yesterday. This means that the social worker has said we are fit to be parents (crazy huh! :) and now stuff has to get sent to U.S. immigration and then we have to go to Grand Rapids to be fingerprinted. The immigration piece will probably take a few months so in the mean time we will keep learning as much as we can and keep praying for our baby girl. We are very excited about how things have gone so far. We will keep you posted when we know more.

Our New House!

We moved in the middle of June and we

are loving our new place. We were able to paint most of the upstairs, but the house was ready

to move into right away. It is exciting to have a deck, a garage and our own yard. Although now we have to get used to mowing :)

We are feeling pretty settled. Stop by if you are in the area. It is always fun to have visitors.

4th of July in Minnesota

We spent the 4th of July in Minnesota with Mark's family. We had a great time hanging out by the water, boating, reading, laying out, playing golf and just being around family. Our good friends, Bryan and Julie, came with us. It was fun to share the experience with them.


We are blessed to have such a good family. It was great to see our nieces and nephew and catch up on their lives a little.

Tuesday afternoon

I am working at school this afternoon; we are trying to work out some technology stuff on the new Macs. It is fun and exciting, but overwhelming too because there is so much to learn. The technology I could use is never ending so I will have to pick and choose what to focus on. There is a lot of cool stuff out there that can enhance education though.

It is rainy here today but that is good because we really needed it. I like the cooler temperatures for awhile anyways.

Mark is busy at work. He had his offsite company meetings the last few days so he put in quite a few hours preparing and setting up for that. That is done now, so things might calm down for him a litte.

We have our final homestudy for our adoption on Thursday. I anticipate it going well; we will keep you posted! Have a great day.