Short and to the point

This will be short and to the point.  The Lord is tossing around so many things in my head today and I find myself literally crying out to him.  I will expand more possibly later, but for now, I thought I'd just give a short update.  This journey isn't just ours ... I've said this before ... so if your reading this, you've been summoned to join in it in some way.

So first, a praise, we are completely finished with Hague training and our home study has been reviewed by our family coordinator.  We just wait now for our copy from our Social Worker to arrive.  Hopefully, any day.  Once received we'll file our I-600 and await our last step, fingerprinting with USCIS and the long awaited I-171.  I see the end in sight ... I smell a DTE (Dossier to Ethiopia) in the nearer future!

Next, and the most important is this:

I asked you to pray over Levi.  The Lord actually prompted me to ask you.  I don't believe in coincidences and believe with all my heart that he knows every detail of Levi's circumstance and yesterday and today, he has summoned me to sit at his throne for Levi.  Through my tears I called Doug and told him to stop everything he was doing ... Levi needed us right then!

Today, I received an e-mail that confirmed those feelings.  An e-mail that made me stop and ask you again, when I say pray, I mean it, pray!

Our Levi sits in one of the hardest places on earth.  He sits in a place where the enemy ravages bodies with disease and famine.  He also is sitting in a place where neglect and abuse runs rampant.
I'm asking you to pray that the Lord would be his insulator from those things.  I'm asking you to pray in authority that the enemy has no ground where Levi is concerned.  Like that old kids saying "I'm rubber and your glue".  May the Lord be like rubber to any of his ploys.  Whatever it is the enemy would like to do to arrest the heart, body and soul of our child would not stand against the Lord who with his very hands has built a rubber insulator around him.  I am asking in the name of Jesus that his hands would completely encompass Levi and be a barrier between his body, his heart and his soul to the rest of the world around him!

Pray these things!  Pray how the Lord prompts you to pray.  Listen to his groanings and his whispers.
The reality is, adoption is ugly ... adoption is birthed because of the ugliness and brokenness of the world.  Oh, the end story is HIS and we know he makes beauty out of those ashes ... but the process, it's as ugly as the world sometimes.

Thank you for praying!  Thank you for grabbing my hand and walking with me on this journey.