New Coffee Fundraiser

Well, we are continuing to think of things that might help us raise money to bring our baby/babies home. One that many people in our adoption group use and highly recommend because of the great coffee is the Just Love Coffee fundraiser. For every bag of coffee you purchase, they send us a check for $5!! Since so many of our friends drink coffee, we thought this might be an easy way to fundraise:) The link to order the coffee is: http://www.justlovecoffee.com/Reaserfamily Let me know if you have any questions! To just go directly to our ordering sight, just click on the picture of Just Love Coffee on the right!!

As most of you know, we are waiting for a "Referral" call, the call that tells us we will get an email that tells us which baby, photos, and medical records about the child we will receive. Usually, when you are getting close to a referral, the adoption agency will call and put you "On Deck" which means, get ready to get a referral. Usually the next two families waiting for a boy, and the next two families waiting for a girl, and next two families waiting for siblings, etc will be "on deck". So, there were already three families on deck today, and 8 more families received "on deck" call today. Not sure why so many, but some are predicting that more children are at the orphanages during rainy season, so maybe they are expecting to give out more referrals? Anyway, we are totally unofficially 14 in line for a boy and 17 in line for a girl, according to the yahoo group list. So, numbers 1-10 got on deck calls today!! So exciting to see some movement this week! Of course, they all need to get referrals before we go on deck, but it seems like it's getting closer!!

I just think it is so remarkable that I can send a prayer request out to all of you, and you will pray for a complete stranger in another state, that neither one of us has ever met. It is such a touching, miraculous thing to me, God is so awesome:) So, even though I was going to use this blog for just updating purposes, I feel led to have all my friends out there praying for my Ethiopian adoption yahoo group friends and the precious babies we are waiting for. Also, here is a blog address of someone who has adopted two children from Ethiopia, the adoption agency sent us her blog entry, it was so inspiring. It gives a slight glimpse of what some of these children go through before they are adopted, and the mothers who love them enough to give them up. I still struggle with this, but know God is in control. Her blog is http://family-from-afar.blogspot.com/. I'm going to copy a prayer request from another yahoo group friend for the prayer of her baby girl for surgery on Tues. Thank you guys so much for praying! If I can do nothing else in our wait for our baby, it's to pray for other families and babies that are struggling right now and for any of you guys who need me to also! Her request is:

We brought our daughter home in July at age 7 months. As some of you know, we were able to get expedited approval of her visa by the Embassy because of several health concerns. We are SO THANKFUL this happened. Tomorrow marks four weeks since we came home. In that time, we found that more than half her stomach is in her chest cavity due to a hiatal hernia. She has severe acid reflux that is causing some significant problems. None of these were known while we were in Ethiopia. We knew she had a floppy larynx, which we suspected was the cause of her recurrent pneumonia and strider (noisy breathing). Our baby girl, Quilla Rose Tigist Belote will have surgery next Tuesday morning to put her stomach back in the right place, a procedure to reduce the acid reflux, insert a tube in her stomach, and have a procedure on her larynx. She'll be in the operating room 2-3 hours. We covet your prayers during the surgery and in the weeks of recovery that will follow. We trust that God will protect our precious little one and get her on the road to excellent health. The silver lining in terms of her health is that she has gained nearly 2 pounds in four weeks, even with all these significant issues. Praise the Lord! We are beyond blessed by our beloved Quilla. She has brought so much love and sunshine into our lives. We have such an amazing feeling that our family is now complete.

Prayer

Well, it's been 2 months since our dossier has been sent to Ethiopia, and it really has gone pretty fast. They said it would be 4-6 months to get a referral (what baby God has for our family) and so, we wait. All the kids will be in school full time for the first time ever and I am looking forward to nesting for a few months:) Deep cleaning, getting ready for a garage sale, painting a few rooms, putting together a crib, etc. Fun stuff for me:) I am posting to update everyone, but also to request prayers for all the children in the orphanages and transition homes (where our baby will live after we get a referral- the adoption agency owns/runs these, not the government). They have so many children, and they are in such close proximity to each other all the time, that germs will spread, no matter how clean they try to keep the homes. There are chicken pox and Upper Respiratory Tract Infections sweeping through these homes and I'm requesting prayer for their poor little bodies to fight off these infections and viruses. Please pray for protection for them, especially until the go to their adoptive families, where they will receive better medical care. Thank you!