Family Vacation

A couple of weeks ago, we headed to northern Michigan with Don's family for our annual family vacation. It was a great week of quality time with each other, relaxing at the beach, and eating tons of food! Here are some of the many pictures that we took.


At the ice cream shop- an every night occurrence...

Playing with my sweet niece at the park..

At one of the many scenic outlooks on M22...

Beautiful sunsets...

Storytime... precious.

Sleeping Bear Dunes... we climbed and climbed but didn't end up making it all the way to the lake. 

But, we did make it to The Cherry Republic in Glen Arbor!

Impromptu picture that actually turned out pretty good!

And, more ice cream- seriously, every night.

Dress up dinner... obviously not a fancy restaurant, but they do dim the lights. 

Everyone in their Ethiopia shirts- can't wait to show this to our little one! Or, little ones!

After a heated ping-pong battle... we look pretty happy here, but I think just before this we were wrestling and throwing punches! Or, maybe running around trying to give each other wedgies... one of those. 

Classic "sisters" shot- love these girls!

T-Shirts

Our t-shirts have been printed! What do you think? Cute, huh?


This first one is a ladies' shirt. It is pretty form fitting, and I'd recommend ordering a size up. It is a burnout style, tealish color, super soft, and long. I'll post a picture soon of me wearing it so you can see what it looks like. Sizes s-xl. 

This is the a shirt for men or women. It's super soft and fits true to size. Sizes s-xl.

This is the children's shirt. It's super cute, light blue, and fits true to size. Sizes xs-xl. 

We're working on setting up an easy online ordering system with PayPal, but for now, if you want to order a shirt, just send me an email (jones.saraj@gmail.com) and we can work out the details. We are asking for a minimum donation of $17 for the more traditional t-shirts and $22 for the ladies' burnout style. 

As for fundraising, we're also in the midst of waiting to hear back from some organizations regarding adoption grants. One of the things we are hoping to do is set up a tax-deductible account where people can donate towards our adoption. Some of our friends and family have already graciously offered to help support us, and this fund will be a great way to give. Once this is set up (Lord willing), we'll give more details about how to give in this way. 

Immigration Update

Well, we never heard back from the email that we sent a couple of weeks ago regarding the need to change our fingerprinting date, so last week Monday we just drove to the office and pleaded with them to give us a new date. 


They kind of looked at us like we were crazy, but they did tell us we could try to come back this Friday (the 13th)- they didn't give us a guarantee, but they told us we could try, so we will. 


Basically, this is the last form that we are waiting on so that we can send all of our papers to Ethiopia. If we don't get the fingerprints this Friday, we'll leave our vacation two days early next week and drive all the way home to spend 5 minutes in their office being printed. Crazy. 


Please join us in prayer that they will allow us to be printed and that we will get our papers sent off soon! 

Ethiopian Cuisine

Last night we drove in to the city with friends to try some Ethiopian food. I was a little nervous about the food because when I looked at the pictures from the restaurant online, it all kind of looked like "slop" to me. Plus, I have a hard time eating food when I can't tell exactly what it is... but, I was pleasantly surprised. The food was delicious, and it was so fun to spend an evening out with friends! The two couples that we went with are also in the process of adopting... we are so thankful to have such precious friends to share in this experience!

My friend, Christina, and I outside of the restaurant. Christina and her husband are also adopting from Ethiopia.

At the table, getting ready to literally "dig" in to the food. 

You actually use your hands and these pieces of "injera" (which is kind of like a sourdough pancake/sponge bread) to pick up the food. And, everyone eats from the same platter.  

Dan and Jen... they are funny (and cute!). Dan was really loving the food (despite the funny face he is making). They are in the process of adopting from Korea. 

Drew and Christina, also funny (and cute!).

Don and I

We actually finished most of the food!

Apart from the delicious food and spending time with friends, I really loved just seeing Ethiopian people. They are so beautiful! And, our servers were very friendly, which helped develop all of my positive stereotypes about Ethiopian people! 

Happy Late Anniversary

I originally was going to post this last Monday... I had put together a little video to celebrate our first seven years of marriage. Since this is probably going to be our last child-less anniversary, I had wanted to put together something special. I think it turned out pretty great, thanks to imovie and some fun pics and music. The video ended up being a little too large to post here, but I'll include a few pics that represent some of my favorite memories from our first years together.


Of course, these pictures only capture some of the special memories... I think our favorite times together are the kind that you don't normally capture with a camera- like an impromptu bike ride, going out for coffee, getting a late night pizza, renting a movie, or just being together doing normal things at home. Even though we would have loved to have children many years ago, I am thankful that we've had all of these unique, pre-children years together!

Leaving the church after the ceremony... happy day!

Super fun vacation in San Diego, CA. It was one of those weeks where everything seemed perfect!

Outside one of our favorite restaurants in the city. Delicious!

In Michigan- I love this state!

Our recent adoption photo shoot... so thankful to be on this journey together!

As a special surprise, even though we said we were NOT going to get any gifts this year, Don surprised me with this pretty little Africa necklace. He is generous and sacrificial to the core... love this man (for many, many reasons!).

                                                            

Oh, What a Day...

So, I finally finished up the linguistics class that I've been taking. On the last day of class (yesterday) our professor gave us our exam to take home and send to him via email today. This was on top of another 4-5 page language paper, and an 8-12 page research paper also due this weekend. (Wasn't the class supposed to be done- done when we walked out yesterday?!). 


Anyway, the exam was impossibly hard and took close to six hours to finish. 
1. If it hadn't been a take-home, I never would have passed. 
2. If it hadn't been a take-home, I never would have finished in time. 
3. Did you know that disestablishmentarianism has 7 morphemes? It contains a free root and 6 derivational morphemes which have been circumfixed.
4. Is this knowledge ever going to matter in my life? 


Yes, this is the kind of thing we had to do on the exam- 33 of these words. We also had four essay questions, and we had to use a tree diagram to analyze sentences like, "Some of my most deserving students will have been teaching this course to similarly situated ELL colleagues next summer."
A. Who talks like this? 
B. This sentence took an entire page to diagram using the "complementizer" and "AUX" rule (we're not talking nouns and verbs, people)- I teach language arts and never knew such things existed! 


So, I finally finished the entire exam around 1:00am- I was determined to finish before Friday so I could "enjoy" my day off. 

Transracial Adoption

A good quote from Dan Cruver (Director of Together for Adoption):

God promised Abraham that in him “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). From the very beginning, God’s promise to Abraham encompassed every ethnic and racial group.

Jump ahead 1,800+ years.

When Paul wrote Galatians 3:7-8, Jesus had already completed his redemptive mission by living, dying, and being raised from the dead.

The result of Jesus’ redemptive achievement is the fulfillment of God’s promise that in Abraham all the families of the earth would be blessed: “Know then that it is those of faith who are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed’” (Galatians 3:7-8).

If we’re not careful, we can step right over the significance of Paul’s words. Because of the work of Jesus to fulfill God’s promise to Abraham, a principal identifying mark of God’s family is that it is decidedly multi-ethnic — as multi-ethnic as it’s possible to be!

Because of Jesus, the church is the theater of transracial adoption. It is the place where the drama of redemption — God’s work to adopt children from every ethnicity — is played out over and over again. The church is, as Kevin Vanhoozer writes, “the theater wherein the world sees God’s love played out time and time again” (The Drama of Doctrine, 400).

As Christians, we have the privilege of playing out this drama on both the macro and micro levels. The macro drama, of course, is the church itself. The universal church continually displays the drama of the multi-ethnic family of God for all the world to see. There’s nothing like this macro drama to be found in all of human history.

But there is also a micro drama in which families within each local church can participate. No, God does not call every Christian family to adopt, transracially or otherwise. But the families God does call to adopt transracially have the privilege of being a micro-theater of the macro-drama of redemption for their communities to see.

The earthly practice of transracial adoption is much more than a way to build a family. It’s an opportunity to display the grand story of redemption before a watching world.

Waiting well...

Well, the waiting is almost unbearable, and we haven't even officially begun to "wait"! Completing the paperwork process has been much more difficult (and time consuming!) than we imagined. The first part of our adoption went so quickly and smoothly... our home study was done by March, and I thought for sure our paperwork would be in Ethiopia by this summer. Now it's looking like it might not get there until the fall. 


I was hoping that waiting for our I-171H (approval from the government to adopt and approval for our child to have US citizenship) would only be a matter of weeks, and I've since learned that it can take up to 3 months to receive this form- we're 3 1/2 weeks in right now. This is the last form that we need in order to submit our paperwork to Ethiopia... and, like everything else that we've waited on, there's nothing we can do to speed the process along.  


Please join with us in prayer that this last step would be completed quickly. In our minds, it seems best for us to bring our child home sooner rather than later, but we know that God has ordained all of the details of our lives (and our adoption!), so we continue to submit to His will and trust Him while we wait. 


Speaking of waiting, I've been trying to think of ways to maximize these last months that we have before bringing our child home. Here's what I've come up with so far:

• Memorize more scripture
• Pray for our child and his/her/their birthmother- it's likely that she's pregnant right now!
• Read some good books on parenting
• Enjoy my husband- this is an easy one!
• Enjoy our friends and families- another easy one!

These are probably the most important goals I've set, but I have a whole host of others, including:

• Learn to cook :)
• Buy more healthy food- or start liking healthy food!
• Exercise regularly
• Get in the habit of taking pictures
• Organize all of the papers we have stored/tucked away throughout the house
• Paint a few pieces of furniture I haven't gotten around to

It's funny that the first three on this last list have been goals for quite some time... I'm afraid my taste buds stopped developing around age 8, and I haven't been able to get much past pizza and macaroni & cheese! As for exercising, I don't have a good excuse- I'm just inconsistent! 

Can anyone relate? 

Checking In...

Life has been busy, busy. I'm in my second session of summer classes- who knew linguistics would be so hard? I had no idea- seriously, it's insanely difficult, and I'm in over my head! 


We've done a few more things around the house but still haven't gotten our camera fixed to prove it!


We're waiting to hear about our next round of fingerprints from USCIS. They cashed our check, so hopefully it will be soon! Our paperwork could be in Ethiopia sometime in August- then it's a 4-6 month wait for our referral! It feels like this process has gone so slow, and yet it's possible that we'll have our referral by Christmas (at the earliest). Either way, we're getting closer!


On a side note, we're getting ready to celebrate seven years of marriage (more on that later), so for lack of any other pictures to post, here's one from our wedding day back in 2003.

Startling Statistics

In Ethiopia:


• One in six children die before their fifth birthday
• 44% of the population is under 15 years old
• 60% of children are stunted because of malnutrition
• The median age is 17.8 years
• 1.5 million people are infected with AIDS (6th highest in the world)
• 720,000 children have been orphaned by AIDS alone, and there are 4.6 million orphans in Ethiopia.
• Per capita, Ethiopia receives less aid than any country in Africa
• In the 90s the population (3%) grew faster than food production (2.2%)• Drought struck the country from 2000-2002 (first year no crops, second year no seeds, third year no animals)
• Half the children will never attend school. 88% will never attend secondary school.
• Coffee prices (Ethiopia’s only major export) fell 40-60% from 1998-2002.
• The doctor to children ratio is 1 to 24,000.
• In 1993, after 30 long years of war, Eritrea broke from Ethiopia and became an independent nation leaving Ethiopia landlocked without any major seafaring ports