I have been realizing as I get older I become more forgetful, not just names/dates/etc..., but I quickly forget God's goodness. For those of you who are familiar with Troy and I's struggle to expand our family, you may not be surprised that we have been on quite the roller coaster where faith is concerned. We have seen pregnancy and children come so easily into the lives of many of our friends. The wait has been excrutiating. It is almost second nature now to believe that God has forsaken us. We both have had to really fight against feeling abandonned, and we have had to cling to what little hope we have left that God is good.

And He really is good. He is better than good, He is almighty and He has a plan. That plan may not be what we envisioned when we first set out on this journey toward parenthood. The plan may be the hardest thing we have ever gone through (and hopefully ever will go through). Some days I think it has been a blessing because it has refined our marriage in ways that nothing else could. And it has led to a place of great expectation.

We continue to wait, but this is the fun part. There is no paperwork to be done (at least temporarily). Instead we get to brush up on our Spanish, figure out how to raise the remaining funds we need, watch as much TV as our DVR can hold, and (as a friend recently pointed out) go out to dinner.

Stay tuned!
Andrea

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"In this [God's great mercy] you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed."
I Peter 1:6-7

OK, so we have been a little slow getting the word out, but we received our approval letter last Monday. Hooray! We are now waiting on our children. That has been so mind blowing for us because we have been waiting for so many other things for so long (i.e., waiting to start the next fertility treatment, waiting for our passports, waiting for various pieces of paper).

So, what happens next?

We wait for our official "referral" (or match). We are not really sure of the timeline. Our letter states that we are approved for a sibling group of two children under the age of four. This could take up to 30 months (the same as one infant). Due to recent events in our lives, we have decided to ask to be approved to adopt up to three children under the age of 6.

In July, our agency informed us of a group of 3 siblings (ages 1, 3, and 5). We did all that we could to pursue them, but a few weeks ago, Colombia assigned them to a family whose paperwork was already approved. We were devastated because we did not know that they had been offered to other families. On the bright side, we realized that we definitely want to pursue a sibling group. For one, we will not have the luxury of having one biological child at a time, and we definitely want more than one child. We are also uncertain of how many times we can afford to adopt. More importantly though, there are many orphans across the globe who are overlooked simply because they come as a group.

As always, we will keep you posted as things progress. So check back often.

Ahhh...Fall!

The air is cooler (except in Charlotte), the leaves are changing (especially since everything has died because of the drought), and someday (probably in February) I will be able to get out my sweaters. But the thing that makes Fall the Esienbergers' favorite season is the return of television!

Survivor: China started last week and we actually had our first Survivor party in Charlotte. We went out for pizza instead of making chili, but it definitely brought back the excitement of "Survivor Night". I was sad to see Chicken go first because the boring people always seem to obtain the upper hand early on and vote out the more interesting folks. It is going to take a couple more episodes before I decide who I would want in the final four. I can tell you though, that the sooner they send Courtney packing the better. Hopefully, I will be able to get Troy to give weekly commentary because his view of the world is really hilarious.

The one show we have been holding our breath for is Heroes. How did Sylar sneak down that manhole without anyone else seeing him? Hopefully they will tell us tonight on the season premeire!

It is a sad, but true statement, that our blog will be far more interesting now that TV has returned. So, if you love TV even half as much as we do, stay tuned! Oh, and when we get adoption info, we will throw that in too!

Andrea

We found out today that what we were hoping for has fallen through. Sorry to be so vague. Please continue to pray for us. From here on out, we will not be posting anything until something develops. We are in for a long wait.

Andrea and Troy

HOPE

Some say HOPE is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.....

....others say HOPE dangles on a string , like slow spinning redemption
winding in and winding out, the shine of it has caught my eye....

....however WE say there is reason to HOPE....to HOPE big.

Details to follow soon.

Love,
The Eisenbergers

Waiting, waiting, waiting...

We found out on Tuesday that our wait to be matched with a child or children has been extended to 30 months once we get approval from Colombia's welfare service. We are still waiting on that approval which is apparently taking longer than the 2 months promised. It has been discouraging news to say the least, but we also know that God has a plan. We may not know what that plan is, but we know that it is perfect. In the mean time, we hope that you all won't get bored of waiting for news too and that you will stick with us. We can promise that once the Fall TV season starts, we will have a whole lot more to say! Til next time!

Why Colombia?

Well, if you are a regular blog reader (yeah, I'm talking to you Jimmy Vandal) you have been harrassing me to update our blog after the promise in our last post to write something that didn't have to do with NASCAR. Have you ever been lied to since the end of Back to the Future promised a quick sequel?...So here is a post on something that was immensly educational for us, so hopefully it is a fraction of that for you. Well, blog readers....start your proverbial engines.

To answer the "Why Colombia?" question, and starting the timeline after we decided to adopt in the first place, we had to pick between domestic vs. international.

We chose international adoption, to be honest, because we were tired of uncertainty. Domestic adoption problems are MUCH more rare than is conveyed by the mass media, but domestic adoption still has its unique issues. That being said, @ the end of the international adoption road was a child (or two...) for us, and after a few years of doubting if we will ever be parents, that was all we needed to know.

Once we decided on international, the big question became where. We quickly learned that a very big world gets reduced to a much smaller one, once you consider 1) countries that allow for international adoption.....and 2) the various rules that they employ.

A quick glance around the world reduced our search quite quickly....

Canada - Closed to non-resident adoption.

Nepal - We were too young.










Ethiopia - We haven't been married long enough.


Nebraska
With no regard to Andrea or Troy's heritage.....not a country. Didn't know that? Yeah...me neither. I told you in this first paragraph how educational this would be.




We ended up with a list that included Guatemala, Colombia, and South Korea. Guatemala and Colombia were close geographically, but not in price range, with Guatelmala costing much more. The last decision was one of South Korea v. Colombia, and in the end we went with the country we could visit the most throughout our child's life.

So there you go...part process of elimination, part chasing after what we knew in our hearts we needed to do, and the rest just hope and trust.