We are overwhelmed, blessed, and absolutely overjoyed to announce that we have received our referral! Monday evening, I got a call from Holt telling us that they had a baby boy waiting for us. He is 2 1/2 months old and itty bitty, but absolutely precious! My arms are already aching for him!

I got the call Monday evening at 5:30 that our agency would be e-mailing us his pictures and information to review. Sure enough, the e-mail popped right up on my account. Then I had to wait an excruciating fifteen minutes for Casey to get home so we could see the pictures of our son together.

I think we were both in disbelief for several hours. We weren’t expecting a referral until May or June at the earliest. After our agency had told us many times to expect a 6-9 month wait for an infant, I can’t believe we got our referral in a little over four months! We are praising God for his wonderful faithfulness and perfect timing!

We are still working on a name for our baby boy because we thought that we still had a few months to think about it. We will use part of his Ethiopian name as his middle name, but we want to give him a new first name. We’ll let you know as soon as we decide.

So what’s next? Now we will wait for our court date, which will hopefully be assigned in the next few weeks. Usually the court dates are scheduled 2-3 months in advance, so we are hoping for a June court date. If we pass court the first time, we will be able to pick up our son three or four weeks after the court date. If not, we will have to wait for a second court date. So please pray for an early court date and that we will pass the first time.

Unfortunately, we can’t post pictures of our little guy on the internet until he is legally our son. But here is a video of Caleb sharing the good news with Daddy.

And here is a picture of Caleb seeing his baby brother for the first time. And Roger and Abby, if you’re reading this, I just happened to be wearing my 7,990 shirt that day.

Thank you so much, all of our dear family and friends, for your prayers and support over the last several months. Please continue to pray for our little guy; we know God is answering our prayers!