Carmody News!

Here's a letter we sent out to some of our family and friends earlier this week. Wanted to share it with the blogging world too!

Dear family and friends,

We just wanted to let you all know that we have begun our homestudy update. For those of you who don’t know, a homestudy is a detailed written report of our family compiled and prepared by a social worker. It was one of the first steps in our adoption process to Samara. So why are we updating it? Well, we have decided to begin the adoption process again to add another child to our family – this time from Ethiopia.

God is awesome. How he works in our lives is amazing and new everyday. We as parents are so blessed to have Victoria, Austin and Samara in our lives. We have learned from them, laughed with them, lost hair over them (ok just Mike) and cannot imagine how we lived without any of them. We are a family and God had intended so very long ago for the five of us to be together. The idea of being 'called' by God has always been difficult to understand . . . what does it mean to be called, how do you know it is from God, etc., etc. Although there is no "Finding God's Calling on your Life for Dummies" book, there are times when you just know. You know that, for whatever reason, God leads us in ways and our job is to listen. We did that when we started the adoption journey to bring Samara home and, well, we would have an empty spot in our hearts and home if we didn't listen to Him then – that is for sure!

One of the questions I’m sure we’ll be asked a lot is “why Ethiopia?” That’s a hard question to answer. When we started our first adoption process, we thought that would be our last child. But somewhere along the line we started researching Ethiopia – the county and their adoption process and we feel very lead to adopt from this country. I guess we could say the reason is that the need is great in Ethiopia and their process of adoption is fairly stable and predictable. And those are two true facts; however, a more accurate response would be that God has placed Ethiopia on our hearts and that’s where we know our child is.

We ask that you will please pray for us as we begin this journey for a second time. We’re told that the process from Ethiopia will take about 9 – 18 months but we know from experience that this is just an estimate and things can change almost overnight. When our file went to China over two years ago, we were told it would be six months and it actually took 15 months. Please pray that everything goes smoothly and that God will prepare our hearts and our home for another little addition.

Thank you.

Mike, Karen, Victoria, Austin and Samara Carmody