I-171 Received!!!

Hey Everybody! We received our I-171 from Dept. of Homeland Security today! Woohoo! This is our pre-approval to bring an orphan into the US. We will have to file our actual I-600 once we know names of children to put on the forms.

I was SO excited. Our new phrase in our house is forward motion. We may still not know very much about the end result of this process....but as long as we are moving forward.

We still have our 'eyes' on a set of siblings. Would you pray for them with us? One of them may be very sick and we are waiting to hear a final word on this - hopefully within the next month or so. We are feeling more and more drawn to these children. We just want it to all be the Lord's idea!! His are always the best ones, right?

Our hope and prayer all along (from the very start in January) was to have our children home by this Christmas. A local magazine called yesterday who heard our story back in March from a friend of mine - she had considered putting our family in the May issue about Mothers but decided against it and never called us. So, I thought it was just a passing thought for the owner of the mag. No biggie. But she called yesterday and wants to feature us in either Nov. or Dec's issue. She wants to have pictures of our new children with our family in the issue. November's issue is about families. But Decembers!! December's issue is about a Season of Miracles!!! Of course, it is!

We are believing the Lord for a season of miracles. He has orchestrated so much already that Mark and I couldn't have tried to write this many details into a story if we tried. I was thinking the other day about 'our adoption' story. A friend recently said to me, 'This isn't really your story. It belongs to your children." I LOVE that. I love that God is allowing me to walk this side of a journey of how a child is 'born' into a family.

He knows who will belong to us for their time on earth - I can't wait to squeeze them!!

Thanks for your prayers!!
Love!!!
a for the Fritchmans