Keeping Busy

Since it looks like we might still be waiting for awhile before we receive our referral, we thought this might help to keep us busy while we wait.

After more than a month of searching the internet and compiling recipes and pictures, we have the final product, with more than 150 recipes for us to attempt. Some of them, like milas tibs (tongue stew) and hodiqa wat (kidney and liver stew) we probably won't even try. But others, like shimbra asa (fish-shaped chickpea dumplings) and sambusa (stuffed fried pastries) sound a lot more appetizing. Not to mention all the recipes for injera (the spongy bread eaten with almost everything). Hopefully our practice will pay off in the form of some delicious meals. We'll let you know how it goes.

PS. If you want try some of the recipes for yourself, just click on the picture above to download a copy of our cookbook.

A Little More News...

Hello all!

Time for another mini-update. AAI will hopefully be working with another orphanage east of Addis soon. Apparently they are a couple weeks away from being up and running! More news on that to come soon…

While we continue to sit at #10 on the referral list, AAI anticipates that some families will receive their referrals soon, meaning we will move up! The referrals they are waiting on are either in the process of being approved by the Ethiopian Government or getting medical evals completed. We are learning that approval from the government for a child’s referral has become a much lengthier process than it previously was.

Other random news:

* We decided to put the baby/kid room on hold and get some other areas of our house finished up first. Hence, no new pictures of the baby room and darling baby beds.

* Jon's last day of Papa John's is on Friday. It seems that our adoptions will not be on the short side of our anticipated timeline, giving us time to save with our "normal" jobs. We did, however, get over half of our thermometer colored in, so we definitely saw some financial progress.

* We are so thankful that God is in charge of faithfully orchestrating this major life change. I’m glad we are not in charge of this whole process. It’s beyond us.

* Please continue to pray for our kiddos, our agency staff, the Ethiopian Government, and families like us who are waiting.

* Praise God we get this opportunity!