Hello Family and friends,

I am sitting here on an early morning, Christmas music softly playing with the glow of our Christmas lights and processing the past week. It was a big week full of emotions for us. It started out with our nerves on high alert over the anticipation of our application meeting on Thursday. After an evening of barely any sleep for either one of us, we woke up Thursday, spent time in prayer as a couple, and headed to Greater Hopes ( our agency) for our 3-hour long meeting. 

During this meeting, we went over our application, answered some interview questions, and paid for our home study. We also signed our application in person with the agency after we showed photo ideas to prove our identity. As we signed one of the most important applications of our lives I thought to myself wow, this is really happening. The meeting went really well and our caseworker Miya and Cathy, the president of Greater Hope, said they see no red flags with our application and went ahead and scheduled the next steps in our adoption process. 

Our next steps are more paperwork and appointments for medical clearances and home visits and background checks. They were able to schedule us that day for our federal fingerprinting and background checks, so we made it a long day and got them done. In the next two months, we have several appointments scheduled and will be setting aside time to fill out more paperwork. Please keep Monday, December 27th, and January 25th in your prayers. Those are the days are case study worker will be coming to our home for more interviews and to physically approve our home. It is going to be a very busy two months for us...but we are so excited for every step of this journey. 

Many of you have asked how long the home study should take, State law states that adoption agencies have 98 days ( i know...why 89 and not 90...I don't know, the state is weird..lol) from our application meeting to approve or deny us as a waiting adoptive family. Therefore we now can mark it on our calendars...Home study completion by Mach 8, 2022.

After leaving our meeting on Thursday our hearts were full of joy and excitement. And then reality set in and we thought....wow, this is happening, in 3 months we are going to be awaiting an adoptive family.  This brings us a new feeling of joy during Christmas that makes the next two weeks so special for us. During this Advent time, we are waiting for Christ's birth and now we have our own special wait. As we prepare our hearts for Christ's birth we also get to prepare our hearts and home for our own child. With our eyes on the manager in the next two weeks, we get to start the nursery and put together our child crib. This is the best gift we could ask for this year and words cannot describe how we are feeling. Christ the King came in the form of a baby and the world waited years for him, therefore he brings us hope and Joy for our wait.  We understand its going to be a very long wait till our arms are full with a child to love. But we focus on God's hope and love and know it will happen in God's timing and in his way. 

Thank you all for the prayers and support, we wish you all a Merry Christmas. May you experience the hope and love of Christ this year!

P.S: check your emails and Facebook for an evite to our chili cook-off on January 2, more info coming soon. 

Ethan and Valerie Niemeyer