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!