Holidays!

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas! We sure did. There is nothing better than celebrating Christ! We had lots of family in and lots of good food. It was great!

In adoption news we are finally at the tail end of our home study. We are waiting on our references to come in and then interviews and hopefully we'll have an approved home study! We are so thankful we've been able to get together all the funds we need for our first set of agency fees. God has blessed us so much in this area! We're living on much less than we were before and being quite frugal!

I would also love to share this link with you that talks about positive adoption language. We've been asked a LOT over the holidays whether we'll ever have children of "our own" again or if we'll "just adopt". It isn't "just adopting" at all! It's such a huge responsibility to be entrusted with someone else's biological child and to take on that responsibility is such a blessing. And rest assured, once we bring our child home they will most definitely be our "own" child. Our REAL child, just as much as Zeke is.

Biology plays no role in the love of a child. It's all heart and soul. And my heart already loves my child, wherever they are now.

Gettin' Thrifty

I've been neglecting our blog lately. So how's about some updates?

We're getting close to the end of our home study. Of course, Abe still has to finish his autobiographical questions. We have to do our online training, have the fire department come to our house, get our fingerprints and birth certificates, and then its on to the home visits! Once that's done we'll owe our big giant payments to both agencies and then more paperwork! Once our dossier is finally done, it'll be off to Ethiopia and we'll finally be waiting! I hope that God will provide all we need (especially time!) to get all this done by the new year.

We are working hard recently on budget control! We're getting really thrifty and trying to find creative ways to save money and live more simply. Here's the commitments were making:

1. Cutting back to not really eating out, meal planning and good ol' home cookin'! It's been delicious!

2. We've made a commitment to not buy anything new so long as we can help it. This excludes things like shoes, cause I just have a deep seated fear of foot fungi.

3. We're going to make our own cleaning products: laundry detergent, dish soap, and surface cleaners.

4. We're going to quit using most paper products, except toilet paper of course. We're going to cut up old sheets and make cloth napkins and use old t-shirts to increase our supply of re-usable bags. No more paper towels or plastic bags. We already cloth diaper.

That's our start. We're also going to use the "snowball" technique to pay off our debts. We don't have any consumer debt, only student loans, a car loan and our mortgage. But still, way too much - our student loans make me cringe. So, if all goes as planned (which you know, is rare, but still) we'll be completely debt free, no mortgage or anything in 13 years. I'd say that's pretty good when you consider that our mortgage is a 30 year loan and our main consolidated student loan is 30 years as well. So, by the time I'm 40 - I'll be debt free. Now, if you're already debt free that may mean nothing to you. But to me, it sounds like sweet victory. :-)

I needed this today. Maybe you do to?

Ephesians 2

¹ Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins.² You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil—the commander of the powers in the unseen world.He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. ³ All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else.

⁴ But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, ⁵ that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) ⁶ For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus.⁷ So God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of his grace and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus.

⁸ God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. ⁹ Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. ¹⁰ For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

¹¹ Don’t forget that you Gentiles used to be outsiders. You were called “uncircumcised heathens” by the Jews, who were proud of their circumcision, even though it affected only their bodies and not their hearts. ¹² In those days you were living apart from Christ. You were excluded from citizenship among the people of Israel, and you did not know the covenant promises God had made to them. You lived in this world without God and without hope. ¹³ But now you have been united with Christ Jesus. Once you were far away from God, but now you have been brought near to him through the blood of Christ.

¹⁴ For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. ¹⁵ He did this by ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations. He made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating in himself one new people from the two groups. ¹⁶ Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death.

¹⁷ He brought this Good News of peace to you Gentiles who were far away from him, and peace to the Jews who were near. ¹⁸ Now all of us can come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done for us.

¹⁹ So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God’s holy people. You are members of God’s family. ²⁰ Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself. ²¹ We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord.

Now that's an adoption story. :-)

Life is exciting!

I have completely neglected this blog over the last month, but only because life is so abundantly full! So much has happened that I just haven't had the chance to tell you all about it. I'll give you a quick run down:

1. Zeke turned 1! My baby boy is a whole year old! He's learning to walk, talking all the time, and turning into quite the rough and tumble toddler. It's so hard to believe that it's been a year since he was born. Seems like yesterday. When I think about all the things that have happened over the course of the last year I can barely recall anything that isn't Zeke related! His birth has changed my life completely and I'm so happy to have him.

2. We went to CCDA! I love CCDA (Christian Community Development Association) and it is always such an encouraging week. We learned a lot and were very affirmed in our philosophy of ministry at the church and what we're trying to accomplish in our organization. We learned a lot of things about the importance of boldness and discipleship and we've returned home with a whole new level of commitment to discipleship. We've also gotten renewed vision for our ministry and for Northside and we're excited to start spreading that vision around and as John Perkins said, "turn the vision into passion"! I personally also have renewed passion for trying to encourage diversity on our district in the church of the Nazarene. I hope I'll be able to get some non-white speakers and leadership into the district events somehow. Don't know how that's going to happen quite yet, but I'm excited to try!

We're so excited to get to work on all these ideas. We've been trying to purchase the building across the street from the church to house interns in and we've got lots of ideas floating around to create jobs and encourage community development (food coops, men's discipleship, church run micro-enterprise, etc.). We just need to get it all organized in thought and start seeing who we can collaborate with to make it happen! I hope, and envision, God really bringing together the Church in Northside to help develop the people here who are under-resourced and often ignored in leadership and community building. I think it'll be fantastic!

Coming up next is more and more busy life. Our goal is to get our self-studies for the adoption finished by the end of this month and move on to the other paper work. We're also starting tutoring this week and hopefully starting Good News Club at Chase Elementary by the second-ish week of October. Exciting stuff!

If you think to pray for us pray that God will use us to facilitate the growth of Godly leaders in Northside. Pray that the adoption process would go smoothly and that God would provide the funds necessary to pay our upcoming agency fees. And most of all pray for our babies, both the one in our home and the one yet to come!

Oh Summer...

I have such mixed emotions about summer. It's wonderful because people are outside and it's easier to interact, make new friends, see old ones, etc. It's also terrible because it's HOT, people in the city get irritable and we all know where that leads... and it's BUSY. The past two weeks we have had mission groups staying and working at the church. Also both a blessing and a curse. We get lots of work done but it's so hot and so busy that it's hard to find time to take a rest. Even harder now that we're parents. Abe is working in the mornings at the chicken plant still so that leaves me to both run the group and be a mama. I'm lucky last week my mama came to help me. Today it's just me, Zeke, and the group. Zeke needed to nap so I left them to their own devices to get the work done. It makes us not such good hosts for groups, but it makes me a good mama to see my kid laying here next to me zonked out asleep. So I'll take it. I'm sure a bunch of junior high students and their leaders don't miss me anyway!

For those of you interested in the details of our adoption you'll be interested in this part of today's blog: Wednesday was our first meeting with our social worker from Catholic Charities the organization that is doing our home study. It was just an initial meeting for her to go over the paperwork with us and give us all the forms we needed. I felt kind of silly as I tried to answer her initial questions, "Why Ethiopia over other international places?" "Why international over domestic?" "Why adoption at all?" Sometimes I feel like I don't even have any answer because to say "I feel like that's where God led us." Sometimes seems not like an answer that people accept. But luckily, she's the kind of lady that seemed to accept it, even past all my ummms and uhhhs. I'm sure in a world where we see on the news that people have just sent their children back to their birth countries workers need to be very careful to be upfront about the risks of international adoption.

After she questioned us a bit on the why's and why not's she gave us yet a THIRD stack of papers to fill out and a check list of all the documents we need to get ordered and copied. She asked us what our timeline looked like and whether we were interested in getting it done really quickly or taking our time. We told her that with all the other jobs (pastoring, chickening, parenting, etc.) that we would probably be kind of slow going on the paperwork so it may take us until December. So that's our goal: To have all our paperwork done and have our interviews with her by December. Then we can quickly accomplish getting our dossier done and get waiting! Then maybe we'll have another baby by Zeke's second birthday!

So we've started writing out our very long "self study" and answering a million questions about ourselves, our families, our relationship and our goals. Very thought provoking to have to really think about yourself. We also have to do things that should have been done when we were pregnant with Zeke: pick someone to care for our kids in case of our untimely demise, get some life insurance, make sure our house has a fire escape route from every floor, etc. So it's good for our whole family going through this adoption process, it's making us better parents to Zeke and to our future baby.

First Appointment

Haven't updated in a while, we're about to have our first meeting with our social worker from Catholic Charities to begin our home study. It is Wednesday afternoon, nothing major - just to talk about what the process is like and for her to give us direction on getting the paperwork together. I'm excited though. Since we are dealing with Bethany in an out of state office we have never met any of our workers there - it seems it will feel much more real to actually be seeing and speaking with someone in person!

We had VBS at church this last week and it was awesome! about 30 kids each day and about half of them it was their first time attending our church. Valerie rounded them up from the housing project she lives in - she's an awesome evangelist!

Zeke has so many new skills emerging everyday it's crazy! He is finally crawling (belly OFF the ground), he's SOOO close to taking his first independent steps, and today - I said, "turn off the light" and he reached over and flipped the switch! His first step towards becoming mommy's little helper. He must be getting teeth again though because sleep has been hard to come by.

I'm trying to be patient in the adoption process, so I'm focusing on these things. Watching Zeke grow, ministering to kids in 'hood, and trying to be a good mama and wife.

News

A couple of days ago two really big things happened!

1. Zeke finally crawled, belly off the floor, for the first time! There's no stopping him now. For a long time he's wanted to stand and cruise along the furniture but only army crawl and DRAG himself around the floor. I was starting to get worried... well, no worries - he can move! He can crawl (slowly) to where he wants to pull up, once he's up he's all around the living room transferring from one piece of furniture to another until he's gotten into everything! In no time he'll be letting go and walking on his own. Guess I'd better get busy with getting all these precious items put away since his most favorite activity is throwing things on the floor!

2. We had our first actual phone call with our social workers from Bethany! They told us all about the next steps and most of it we already knew but it was good to actually get to hear voices that go with names. Someday maybe we'll see a face? Seems crazy to get to adopt a baby without ever meeting your social worker! It was a good talk and Abe and I are excited to move forward. A little nervous as we sent in our home study application over a week ago and haven't heard anything of them receiving it! Pray they did.

God bless!

We've been accepted!

Even though we were still waiting on one reference to come in, Bethany decided to go ahead and accept us into the Ethiopia Program! This means we can officially begin our home study and start working on our dossier. They sent us the dossier packet and the travel packet and after printing the approximately 80 pages of just INSTRUCTIONS, we started to get a little overwhelmed by the paper chase ahead of us. We're going to take our time and work on one aspect at a time. We'll do the home study and training first and then we'll begin the mad rush to get all the paperwork together before any of it expires.

Pray for us to be organized! I'm getting a binder to keep it all in and I'm going to try and put my best organizational energies into it!

Also, if anyone knows a notary who may be willing to help us out with the papers let me know!

Changes to Ethiopian Program

While we wait on our references to make their way to the Bethany office I'll update you on some changes to the Ethiopian Adoption Program.

Used to be that to adopt from Ethiopia only required one trip to the country. Now it requires two trips: one for court, and one for the embassy appointment when you pick up your child and bring them home. This means that the entire court process changed since when the adoptive parents were not there there was only one court date where the birth parents came, the court reviewed the adoptive parents paperwork and a decision was made. Now that the adoptive parents will be present the court thought it in everyone's best interest to create two court dates per adoption: one for the birth parents, and one for the adoptive parents. Also, an original birth certificate and photos of birth parents and the child are now required.

This means one main thing: more delays in an already long process. Now, at first I was feeling kind of upset about this. I'm thinking, man, this process is already so long and now it'll just mean a longer wait for a referral as they get used to a new court system, then a longer wait for a court date, then more money to travel TWICE, etc. etc. Problems, problems.

But as I keep thinking about it. I'm trying to remember that God holds all things in his hands. Yeah sure, humans can screw it up - but I firmly believe in his power and control to work all things for good.

So I started thinking of the positive. More delay also means: Zeke will be older when the new child comes (and hopefully potty trained!), more time means more time to come up with the money to travel, and here's the big one - if it were sooner, the child God has in mind for us may not even be born yet.

So yeah, there are many downsides to the new process. But a lot of upsides too!

Praying Hard

Hey Everybody, thought I'd give a quick update.

We still haven't heard back on our adoption application. All that needs to happen is to get in all of our reference forms and they should hopefully come back and tell us we've been accepted into the program. Our yard sale is just 3 short weeks from today and we've had lots of people donating items so we'll be busy busy picking up yard sale stuff, pricing, and organizing! Please remember to make use of the link to your right to buy coffee!

As soon as we hear that our application has been accepted our home study application is ready to be sent in. Then it'll begin the process of fingerprints, home visits, employer letters, etc.

In non-adoption news, our block party looks like it'll really happen today after being postponed last weekend due to rain! I'm excited. I love parties!

Have a great weekend everybody!

Trying to stop the bleeding...

The things that we have done to Christianity disgust me most of the time. (And by me, this is Joni. If most of you haven't figured out Abe is not ever internet inclined, so most all updates will come from me.) So yeah, I've been reading Radical by David Platt and it has been very convicting and yet encouraging. You see, almost 5 years ago Abe and I decided to intentionally live our lives to make disciples of people who are extremely lost. People in desperate need of the saving blood of Jesus. Now there are some days, like the last couple, when people are just on my last nerve and I forget what I'm doing here.

Last night was the 2nd night in a row that I have been kept awake by my neighbors. You see, before I moved to the city the power going out was only annoying on one or two levels: you were hot from no A/C, you couldn't see to go to the bathroom at night, you thought the food in the fridge would ruin. Now that I reside in the city there is but one reason that the power should never ever go out at night: EVERYONE COMES OUTSIDE! Every time the power goes out on our street everyone comes out side and very loudly announces to everyone else that the power is out, as if the darkness weren't our first hint. So then, because there is no A/C, no TV, no music, no nothing - everyone stays outside.

The power went out last night at 10:30pm and didn't come back on until 7:30am. Needless to say, we got little to no sleep. By 5:000am it was hot, the guys outside had woken Zeke up and he couldn't go back to sleep for hearing them and sweating - so we got up and went to my mom's. In the hour of sleep I got at her house before we had to trek back down to church I had a very strange dream that I think God is using to teach me a serious lesson about loving my neighbors:

So Abe and I and Zeke were in this church, well, it looked more like a castle than a church. Sort of medieval, dark, a little spooky. But the people were your typical middle class church crowd: nice, friendly, well dressed. In the foyer of this castle church sat a large plastic barrel, you know, the kind that cheese puffs come in at places like Costco or Sam's. In the barrel was what appeared to be butterscotch pudding, nothing special. But they had a spotlight shining on it and giving it all the glory. On the front of the barrel it read, "Blood of Jesus". I was like, "What is wrong with these people? What in the world do they think this is supposed to represent??" I was becoming a bit hysterical, annoyed at the stupidity of anyone who would put up such a nonsensical display. So I had an ink pen and in typical Joni fashion was being disrespectful, poking it, writing on it, making fun, arguing over their obvious misunderstanding of Jesus. Abe told me to stop, told me I was being disrespectful and childish. But I wouldn't stop. I poked this barrel until I had poked a hole clean through it! And so of course, out came pouring all the pudding substance.

Suddenly the place was huge. The pudding ran all over the church, into the huge gymnasium and across the entire floor. The people at the church were very irrate that I had ruined their display representing the blood of Jesus in their church. But as the pudding kept running it ran onto some canvas they had laying out as they were preparing for a banquet. As the pudding ran onto the canvas it became like a rainbow of paint colors, weaving in and out of each other creating the most beautiful designs I had ever seen. I told the people to look how beautiful it had become. But they couldn't see it. They said, "No! It's not beautiful. The display was beautiful and you have ruined it!" I told them they should put up the canvas as banners in the gym and that the beauty of the colors could represent the blood of Jesus just the same. But they continued to hold fast to their display, they were angry and could not see the beauty the pudding had created on the canvas.

Then Abe woke me up.

So I know you are wondering, what does all this talk of pudding and canvas have to do with neighbors or books or anything for that matter?

Well, I think that what I've learned from my dream is that in my frustration and selfishness over wanting to sleep in silence, wanting people to be just how I want them to be, wanting my life to be just how I want it to be - I have forgotten the blood. I have put the blood of Jesus away just inside my heart and forgotten that it isn't beautiful, it isn't useful, it isn't anything more powerful than pudding until it is poured out.

I think Jesus wants me to remember that I am here to help continue the pouring out of His blood for the remission of not just my sin. But the sin of my neighbors and the sin of my friends and the sin of total strangers. I am hear to be a disciple and to make disciples.

Pray that I will be obedient.

Home Sweet Home

Back from North Carolina! My mom, Zeke, and I went on a little mini vacation to Atlantic Beach and it was wonderful to get out of town for a while!

I hate flying with a passion and was having LOSTish dreams of crashing and burning for weeks before we left. But I'm happy to announce that we survived! It gave me good practice on flying with a "lap child" for when we bring our new babe home!

Now that we're home I thought we would try and get in the swing of things with a

new routine: Ezekiel would sleep in his own bed, in his own room. Now, I knew after 9 months of co-sleeping this would not necessarily be an easy task, but I give up so easily! After an hour and a half of deep, silent sleep he woke up screaming and hysterical. So, I brought him back to bed with me! I'm so weak. I don't know how we'll ever make this transition if I keep giving in, but part of me just likes having him right there. No getting up and down to nurse, no worry about burglars, SIDS, bugs, heat, cold, cats, etc.

So then all night I kept dreaming about what we would do when we have two

kids. We'll need a bigger bed! (Just kidding, I hope.)

Oh, and please buy coffee.

Bonding

Friday we BBQ'ed at my mom's and I was sitting on her couch and kept finding little bits of ketchup. First on my hand. Then my knee. Then on my pants all the way down by my ankle. I was getting a little freaked out, "Where is all this ketchup coming from!?" Finally I stood up to take my plate in the kitchen and get Zeke when I turned around to notice I had dropped the biggest blob of ketchup all down the front of the couch! Luckily my mother didn't kill me.

Since I became a mother I am continuously covered in nast. Abe would say it started long before then, but I like to blame it all of Zeke. The good thing about this is that I've been able to bond with other mothers over it. All mothers feel goopy, sticky, or slimy at least a few times a day. It's been the start of quite a few new friendships in the 9 short months since I became a mama.

So since we've been working so hard on starting our adoption process we've been thinking a lot about bonding. How will the new baby bond to us? How will Zeke and the new baby bond with each other? How will they overcome their ethnic and cultural differences? Will they be jealous of each other? Will they resent each other? And as I was laying in bed the other night I began to pray, "Dear Lord, let the two kids bonding with each other be as mundane as me bonding with another mother over spit up all over my shirt." Most of the time it's the mundane things in life that remind us how similar we all really are. And I hope that for Zeke and our future baby. That they can bond and love each other simply because they both like to put things in their mouths and let the love grow from there!

In other news, we've decided on dates for the yard sale! The yard sale will be held on Friday, July 9th and Saturday, July 10th at Covenant Church in Northside. If you have items you would like to donate you can call us at 513-255-5581. And don't forget to keep buying that coffee! We get $5 from every sale. There is a link on the side of the blog to our store.

We are filling out the home study application and getting it in here in the next couple weeks. The home study costs $1750 and then our BCS fee of $4450 is due. Keep us in your prayers that God would provide the funds necessary to complete our adoption! We will be putting up a pay pal link on the blog shortly but if you would like to make a tax-deductible donation you can mail them to:

Covenant Church of the Nazarene

4139 Kirby Ave

Cincinnati, OH 45223

put "Brandyberry Adoption" in the memo

Thanks!

Joni

Moving Ahead

Opened up the coffee store yesterday so we can begin a little fundraising. We are now open and have sold our first bag of coffee! (Thanks Al!) Please spread the word to your friends and use us for all your fair trade coffee needs!

We are in the process of deciding between two different home study agencies. Since Bethany does not have an office in Ohio we have to find a second agency to perform our home study. If anyone knows of any good agencies who provide international home studies please comment and give us the contact info!

Our Journey to Ethiopia

Hello Everybody! Welcome to our adoption blog! We aren't really sure how to start this thing or what to say but we wanted to start this blog to keep everyone informed on what is going on with our adoption.

Some of you may not even have known we were starting this process at all and so first we'll explain what we're doing and why.

WHAT: We are applying to the Ethiopia adoption program through Bethany Christian Services. We are looking to adopt a child between 0-24 months. Through Bethany's program you cannot specify a gender, so it's kind of like being pregnant - we won't know until we know!

WHY: Abe and I have always felt strongly about adoption and orphan care and as we thought about our growing family, the number of children we would someday love to have, etc. We felt strongly that God was calling us to grow our family through adoption. So many people have asked us why adoption when we are seemingly fertile people and that question is both easy and difficult. First of all, we feel strongly that the care of orphans is left to the church - not just to the infertile (although that definitely has it's place and is a definite blessing from the Father). Secondly, we have seen the horrible outcomes of fatherless and motherless children time and time again in our ministry and in Joni's job at the orphanage. We'd like to say its all about reading the scriptures and seeing God's heart for orphans and that's definitely part of it. But it's more just that we see the practical need for kids to have parents, a future, a loving family support structure - and we want to be that. God has already grown a love for this unknown child in our hearts and we so excited to know them and love them. We are already praying for this child and it's mother and father.

Another question we get frequently is, "Why not the US? There are thousands of children waiting in foster care." And the answer to that is many faceted. First, we don't feel prepared or called at this time in our lives to parent an older child. We are still quite young and we feel ill prepared to face many of the challenges that come with parenting an older foster child. Secondly, we want to remain in some type of birth order. So Zeke will always be the oldest and we will always adopt younger than our youngest. This will give some sense of "birth" order for the children (yes, eventually we may adopt again!). Thirdly, we feel very called to adopt from a country that has a great need for orphan care. While it is true that there are about 300,000 orphans in foster care in the US there are approximately 6 million orphans in Ethiopia alone. Ethiopia is not blessed with the kind of orphan care system that we have in the US and most children are in overcrowded, underfunded (that is a huge understatement) orphanages with poor nutrition and terrible living conditions. As we considered all of this we felt that we will continue to do what we do here in the US to support the fatherless, and focus our adoptions efforts on Ethiopia. Later in life, when we are older and (hopefully) wiser, we will work within the foster care system here in the US.

WHEN: Now! Yesterday our formal application to Bethany's Ethiopia program was mailed out. After it is received and finalized we will begin our home study!

HOW CAN YOU HELP? There are so many ways you can come along side what God is doing in our family through adoption. First, please pray for us. Pray that we would not push our timing or our will on the situation and would just step back and allow God to do what he does best. Secondly, you can support our adoption financially. International adoption is very expensive and by the time it is all said and done it will cost approximately $25,000. We will be applying for grants and doing some fundraising to help to cover this cost, as this is clearly not the kind of money we just have lying around. We will be selling coffee through Just Love Coffee and will have that link up soon. We will also be selling a support T-shirt later in the process. We will also be putting up a link to donate through Pay Pal or you will be able to send tax deductible donations through Covenant Church. If you aren't able to donate we completely understand and have some other creative ideas for how you could help: donate yard sale items to our huge yard sale we'll be holding in July, host your own yard sale and donate the proceeds, or have a bake sale! The third thing you can do to support us is to spread the word - through the blogging world, through the church, through facebook, however you can! Let people know about our adoption and how they can pray too!

We'll be updating you all through this blog and our facebook page, so watch for updates as we go through this long waiting game!