This has been a busy week for the Staus Family. We have begun to receive responses from our recent letter that we sent out. We thank each and everyone of you that has sent contributions toward our missions trip in October. We continue to be excited about the opportunity to reach out to the children of South Africa.

Also this week we finished the rough draft of our profile for Bethany and have sent it for them to look over. My mom took care of proof reading it as well so I already have some changes to make before having the final copies printed.

Yesterday we had the opportunity to spend the day in Willow Grove attending an all day adoption preparation class. This had nothing to do with the "nuts and bolts" of parenting but focused on the process of adoption - specifically "Open Adoption" we had the chance to meet other potential adoptive parents (including fellow Houghton grads!) and to listen to presentations from birth mothers, adoptive families and even adoptees.

We had been very nervous about the prospect of an open adoption, but after this class we are excited about this unique opportunity, not only to grow our family, but to minister to someone who is going through a hurt that no one can imagine as they face the decision of choosing life for the child they are carrying. We have no idea how the concept of open adoption will continue to play out in the coming weeks / months / years in our lives but we have felt a deep conviction that even now we must remember to keep the mother of our future child in prayer as she will be facing some very difficult times.

One adoptive mother asked me yesterday what we were doing to prepare for our baby at this early stage (we are about 2 months ahead of them in the process). She had been wondering if she should think about a nursery etc. It made me think. I am feeling like preparing the nursery is, for us, a sign of trust in God. We are working on this (I spent today cleaning out the closet in what will be the nursery) fully expecting that before we know it, that room will be in use. It reminds me of Field of Dreams....sort of "if you build it they will come."

Coming up - Our Home Study should be complete in just over a week or so. After that we will be officially listed and our profiles will be ready to be shown. We will use the time while we wait for the study to be written to finish preparing our profiles.

We are also working on sending out some e-mail / facebook notifications to friends / family concerning the South Africa trip as well as announcing this blog so that others can keep "up to date" as we continue our exciting journey.

Progress

Spring has come to the village of Kimberton. Clarke just came inside from his first "lawn cutting" session of the season. The garden has been laid out. Clarke just told me he need to borrow a saw to cut the wood for the borders. Due to my back issues, he'll have to do most of the manual labor for the early stages of the garden this season, but he did point out that he doesn't think I should have any problem handling the weeding.

Our flower beds are active even this early in the season and Cookie and I are enjoying walks around the property watching the new growth on a regular baisis.

It's been over a week now since the home visit portion of our home study. It went AMAZINGLY well. Now we wait.

We have a few items still left to take care of. We need to put together our profile for potential birth mothers to peruse. This has been a fun project. I bought some scrapbooking software which makes it easy. I always enjoy a chance to be creative.

Coming up this week we need to get the draft of our profile to the agency. We also have a mandatory day long class that we will be attending on Friday.

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Spring weather is here and Clarke is excited about being outside and working on the yard. I hurt my back and fractured my tailbone - so I am mostly helping by encouraging his hard work and attempting to heal in time to get my garden planted when it's ready.

On the adoption front things are progressing as planned. Tomorrow night will be our final Home Study meeting. This one at our home. We are excited to have reached this point. We will have about 6 weeks after the meeting to finalize our profile information and get ourselves ready to be "listed" as possible adoptive parents.

Also coming up we plan to get our "spring letters" out in the mail by the end of next week and officially announce our coming missions trip.