Sunday Supplication: first meeting with CW and we saw another picture!

Wow. Since my last post John and I have continued to feel the power of your prayers. This is truly amazing!

First, we met with our caseworker and our first meeting went great! One very direct answer to prayer was this: I have been worried about timing our homestudy meetings because I really prefer not to take time off of work. I'm a daycare provider so if I take time off, so must all my parents. Not the most convenient. So I have been praying to God that our caseworker would be open to meeting in the evenings when all the kids have gone home. She is based about an hour away from our house so I was feeling like this might not be possible....

.... well I guess with God all things are possible because as it turns out our CW prefers to meet on the weekends! This might seem like a small thing, but I can't tell you how relieved I was to hear this. Thank you Lord!

So we had our first meeting on Saturday (yesterday) morning and, again, it went great. We were both very impressed with our CW and she seemed impressed with us. She also was able to share with us that she is a Christian too! Bonus. We were able to brag on you guys a lot and share how much you have supported us financially. Initially our CW was worried about the finances of this adoption since on paper we can't afford it. After hearing about the success of our fundraising and our plans for earning and raising the rest of the money, she said she felt very confidant. That's because of you guys, so THANK YOU!

Second, our placing agency emailed us an updated picture of the little guy we're pursuing.

You could say my heart moved to Russia this weekend.

It was a "world-stands-still" kind of a moment with all kinds of emotion. He's beautiful. He has more hair! He's loosing the baby look and becoming a true toddler. He's bigger. He's growing without us. But he's GROWING! And that's a good thing. And he's beautiful. Just beautiful.

We have our next (of four) homestudy meeting this weekend, so please pray for that and ask the Lord to bless this process so that everything will go smoothly. We are expecting bumps, but also praying against them because we want to get to Russia SOON.

You can also pray for the little guy we're pursuing; pray for his nannies, for his growth and health, for his peace as he waits for a family.

And pray for us. These next few weeks are going to hold a lot of late nights as we complete our parental training and gather a long list of documents for our dossier, some of which are not the easiest to get our hands on. Pray that we would not feel overwhelmed and that the Lord will give us wisdom about how to obtain all the information we need.

Your prayers hold us up and hold us together. Be blessed as you have blessed us.

xo