MEET THE GOURLEYS!

Take a minute and read about the Gourleys! I met Niki through Children's Hope International. She adopted Yoseph around the same time we adopted Arthur. Our little boys were in the same transition home and we spent many nights on Facebook Chat keeping each other sane while enduring an excruciating wait to bring our sons home! Now the Gourleys are waiting again to bring a daughter home! 

"Hello, We are the Gourley family. Adoption has long been in our hearts. We talked about adoption even before our first child, but decided to have our first the “old fashioned way”. Elijah Robert was born to us in 2OO8. A little bundle of energy that hasn’t stopped running since his feet hit the floor. We of course knew one child was not where we wanted to stop. The thought of adoption came into our hearts again, with full force when Elijah was about a year old. We researched all kinds of adoption, attended information sessions, and spent a great deal of time in prayer about it. We finally clearly felt God's calling to adopt from Ethiopia. We learned a lot during that adoption process- about faith, endurance, and blessings. We are proud parents of Yoseph James, who came home to us on December 1st 2O11. We love Yoseph very much. He has a very sweet personality, and loves to have fun. His adjustment and attachment in our family has not been without challenges. We have found help in our challenging times and he is now thriving. Six months after Yoseph was home we discovered that Niki was again pregnant. It was a bit of a surprise, but no surprise to God, who is the perfect creator of families. Lydia Grace is a beautiful, healthy baby girl. A perfect addition to our family. We know our family is not yet complete. We are again adopting from Ethiopia. We believe that this will be the last child added to our family. While traveling to adopt Yoseph we visited several orphanages. We were shocked to discover that many children with special needs are overlooked because no one thinks people will adopt them. We are going into our next adoption wide open to many medical needs. We want to give a family to one of those who may have been overlooked. We are currently on the waiting list and excited to meet our baby girl, hopefully in the new year."

THE WALLACE FAMILY

How cute is this family!!?! I'm so excited to feature them this week. They are adopting from Ethiopia, stuck in the middle of this crazy slow down. They have already been waiting for 2 years are so ready to meet their son, but they also have some more dollars to raise while they wait. Shop Love is Waiting to help them reach their goal! You can also make a donation through their pure charity page. 

Hi there! We are the Wallace family and we have a lot 'o love to give! We are in the process of adopting a young boy from Ethiopia, Africa. We absolutely can not wait for him to come home and join our family. 

We met at 15 & 18, got married at 20 & 23, young and in love, ya know? We have now been married for over 8 years. We have an almost 5 year old daughter who is pretty awesome and very ready to have a kid brother. We had talked about adoption a few times, just thought it was something really nice you could do for the world, but we never took it seriously. 

And then...the sermon. It was the sermon of all sermons for us. My husband went to church while I was at home with our sick kid, when he came home, he told me we needed to adopt, we needed to do it now, and he was pretty sure we needed to go to Africa. Whoa, what? I wasn't even there and this is some pretty crazy stuff he was throwing at me. I was excited at the possibility though so we jumped right in and got rolling on our paperwork. By the way, the sermon was about orphan care- not adoption specifically, and certainly not about Africa- but it was also explaining how God adopted us, we were orphans but brought into the most amazing family. Even though we have both been in church our whole lives, this was a new idea to us.

Our paperwork ended up taking about 6 months. Boo, hiss! We were so ready to get on that wait list! My first set of finger prints got rejected, my second set got lost in the mail- seriously- from the U.S. Post Office to the FBI- how does that happen? All that to say we got on the wait list in September, TWO YEARS AGO!

Ethiopia has had some major slowdowns. When we started the process the expected wait was 9-18 months, that is a serious laugh now. With our agency, they say to expect 36 months or more, thankfully we have already been waiting 26 months. It is sad and it is hard but it is all in good will. Ethiopia has a major child trafficking problem and they are making some changes to prevent that. In turn though, it slows down legitimate adoptions too. If waiting longer for our child means that a kid does not end up in a corrupt situation, then so be it. And, really, we are so thankful that Ethiopia hasn't close as we have seen with other countries. We have friends who have lost a lot of time and money after starting an adoption in a country that closes. We also just really love Ethiopia. Our heart is there, we don't want to change countries even if it does take a long time. 

So that has been our process but now for the good stuff! We are adopting a boy up to age 3. We are naming him Abe. We were listening to a pastor talk about Abraham and even though we had heard that story a million times, he said it so simply, he said that God promised Abraham if he would leave his home and country, that He would make him a better home and build his new country. That did it. We are asking our son to leave his country and join our family but we promise to love him and always work toward a better future. We already love Abe and we can't wait to go get him! 

We have a long way to go with our fundraising, we still need to raise (and save on our own) around $15,000! We can do it, but we need your help! Thank you for taking the time to read our story and please visit our blog if you would like to check in on us from time to time. www.inmystationwagon.blogspot.com