Our story, so far :)

Jeremy and I knew before we got married that we would one day adopt. We didn't know what country we could choose. We didn't know what agency to use. We really didn't know anything about the process. All we knew was one day it would happen. After having Hunter we decided to put our adoption plans on hold. We still continued to talk about it and to research it. In July of 2012 it hit us hard! God was weighing on our hearts. Telling us Now. Now is the time to make this happen. We started really researching, talking to other families going through adoption, reading blogs, contacting agencies, filling out application, etc., etc.After contacting many different agencies we really started to get discouraged. Nothing seemed to be in our favor.We decided to do a domestic adoption. We would be going through an agency in Texas. We submitted our application to them. Qualified. Started working on the next step. We kept talking every night. Something just didn't feel right about this. Then we realized God is leading us to a different country. He was leading us outside of the states. We prayed every day! Then as we were researching we came across another adoption family who was also adopting from Ethiopia. They were doing a fund raiser to send shoes to kids in Ethiopia. That hit our hearts. These kids chase people down begging for shoes. All I could think of was wow! Hunter has about 50 pairs of shoes in his closet. Some of which he has never even worn. We contacted them to see what we needed to do to help with this ministry. Then we began talking more and more. They told us what agency they were using. We decided that we would also apply to their agency. This being American World Adoption. We decided that we would do the pre-application to see if we even qualified for anything. They e-mailed us back and said we qualified for Honduras. Okay. If that's where God wants us then that's where we are going. We started researching Honduras. Then the next day we got a phone call. It was the agency calling to tell us that we also qualified for Ethiopia. That was it. We were going to Africa. To Ethiopia. We sent in the next application which is the formal app. We marked that we only wanted to apply for Ethiopia. They told us that we would hear back within 10 business days. I (Abby) am just a little impatient. After 4 days, I couldn't wait any longer. I was getting ready for work and I just started praying. Lord please, if this is meant to be please send me some kind of sign. Anything Lord.! I got to work that day went through the whole day with nothing. Then around 4:15 my email rang. I checked it! There it was the sign that I asked for. It was the agency telling us that we had left a signature off of our paperwork. We emailed her back immediately. Thank you Lord! That's all I could think the rest of the night.