Happy Friday!!! As write this, I am enjoying the evening in our backyard. I thought I would write an adoption update. To date, I have done TONS and TONS of research on somehow adopting a Burmese or Karen child. I have emailed and talked to absolutely anyone I could get contact information for. At this point, even though I have done exhaustive research, I have not made any headway. After talking about it, Jeff and I feel that we are continuing to have doors shut. Sometimes the Lord changes your heart to guide you to His will, but sometimes He makes it clear through shut doors. We feel a Burmese child in Thailand just may not be who the Lord has for us – at least right now. The Lord may provide a way to adopt a Burmese child in the future, or the Lord may have taken us through this whole journey just to get us involved with ministry to the Burmese refugees here in Dallas. We don’t know for sure what He’s doing up there, but we trust that His plan is perfect. 🙂

Given this situation, Jeff and I have decided to begin pursuing an adoption in Africa. We are in the country research phase with this right now. The countries we are investigating are Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Ethiopia. I have always had a heart for Africa, and Watermark does alot of work in Uganda with ALARM, so Jeff and I both have a strong pull in that direction. I have provided Jeff with a nice spreadsheet of information, so now he is “sitting on it”. We are so excited to find out where our little man is and begin the process of bringing him home!!! We would like to keep birth order, so we expect to get a boy who is 2 or under at the time of bringing him home. We’ll see. The Lord may have something all together different in mind, in which case we are perfectly fine with. 🙂

Side note – About every other day Maya has a new name suggestion for “our new baby brother”. Her names tend to be random variations of something she’s heard. Yesterday it was “Ketcher” because she was eating ketchup. Her comment was “How about naming our new little brother Ketcher? Add that one to the list, okay Mom?” Must figure out how to steer her to something more normal. I do love that she already thinks about him so often.