Still Waiting, but God is at Work!

Well, even though much is not happening right now, I still wanted to give an update about where we are and the things God has been doing and how he is working all around us.
We still are waiting on the clearance letters from ABI. Our social worker is checking into the status of our letter, but I have not heard a response yet, but expect to soon. We have almost collected all our dossier documents and I hope to turn those in next week sometime. Once those are turned in and accepted we will be placed on the official waiting list for our child- God is Good, All the time!

I need to say a special thanks to my cousin Ben for helping us in an enormous way in getting a very important piece of paper from our "bank". Our first visit to our local branch in hope of getting this document went very bad. The people where not very helpful and thought we were crazy for thinking we could just walk in and get a simple document with a couple of sentences regarding our accounts on their letterhead. We left there very frustrated and not sure what to do. So, I called my cousin Ben, who works for the "bank" to see if he had any suggestions on what we should do or who we should talk to. I told him what we needed the document to say. I also told him what the local branch said- which was we would be charged for the information we needed to get regarding our accounts. He said no problem and that he would take care of it the next day. Praise God for family connections- Ben- Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all you did- you will never know how much stress you took off of us and we are so thankful for you and what you did for us and our child.

We have been so blessed with wonderful family and friends who are so willing to help us and pray for us. We are so excited about what God is doing and what he is going to do. Everyday I see God at work in our lives and in those around me.

A neat story to share- Some friends of ours, Chris and Shelley, recently moved to Wichita, Kansas from Birmingham. Shelley was at a church function and started talking with a lady. Come to find out, she is the daughter of the missionary couple that run the orphanage in Guatemala that our child will stay in after he/she is born. She lived there her whole life. She actually knew our names when Shelley told her about us. She has actually adopted from Guatemala and has also started an international adoption agency in Wichita. Small, small world! Just another assurance from the Lord that we are where He wants us to be and his plan is far better than ours.

We are so excited and anxiously awaiting what God is going to do this year. We pray everyday that we continue to put our faith and trust in Jesus. We know God is in control of our lives and our child's life and he will unite us as a family very soon! Thank you once again for your prayers! We feel them continuously.

Love,
Stephanie and Casey

Brock Benson

This is for the person who requested to see pictures of our rotten dog who will soon be

"Big Brother"

Homestudy almost complete!!

Well, we went for our final interview with our social worker, Anna, on Friday. It went very well and we got a lot of information that was helpful. We turned in all of our paper work for the home study!!! That was a huge relief. We are just waiting on one more document to be complete and also for our background checks to come back, which should be very soon, if nothing goes wrong. Now we have to get all the needed documents for the dossier, which should only take a couple of weeks to get all of it together.
Once we turn all of the dossier papers in, we will be pretty much done with paper work. Then will come the hard part, WAITING!! We got a better time line from Anna on Friday and it looks like it will be about 3-4 months before we accept a referral of a child; and then it will take 5-6 months to process the adoption in Guatemala then we can travel to get our child.
As Anna said Friday, we need to start praying for the person that will be processing our documents in Guatemala. Pray that he/she will be in a great mood and that God will give him/her a positive attitude when he/she is reviewing our papers. Anna said that they could throw out our paper work for reasons that are not "real reason" just because they can.
We are getting very excited, but anxious. This will probably be the longest year of my life, but we trust that the Lord is in control and it will all fall in place just how He has planned.
Please continue to pray for Our child and his birth mother. Pray that she is taking care of herself and that her nutritional needs are being met. Also pray for her emotionally and spiritually, as she makes this life changing decision about the child she is carrying.
We thank you so much for the emotional support and for your prayers. We are so blessed to have family and friends that love us. We will keep you posted as things change.
God bless you all!!!