Please Pray!

I really thought that doing a blog would be something I would take the time to do and something I would be good at. As you can see I very rarely update and I'm not so good at it. I do want to try to do at least a little bit of updating while we are here in South Africa though just so those of you who want to follow what's going on actually can. :)

We arrived in South Africa on May 17th. We stayed in Johannesburg for our first two weeks. We met our daughter for the first time after being here for only 1 full day and we hit the ground running after that! We are now in Cape Town and enjoying winter all over again. Their winters are very mild compared to winter in Nebraska, but still we are quite chilled much of the time. Since their winters are milder they definitely don't cater to the cold and there is heat very few places. We are staying in an apartment right across the street from the ocean and we have still managed to make sand castles, search for sea creatures and shells and even do some "swimming." Things don't really dry very quickly here so it always seems like we have wet clothes and shoes laying around. We've been able to make our own meals for the most part and most of the ingredients we find here are the same as we would be using back home. The people here are wonderful and we've been invited to some family gatherings and meals. We've enjoyed worshiping with a wonderful body of believers here and Scott has had a chance to meet with and share in the ministries with several different pastors.

It has not been seamless adding an 8 year old to our family, but it has been going well! The kids all get along quite well. Busi is always desirous of hugs and cuddles and we've been able to spend some good quality time together as a family. I don't think this would have happened in quite the same way had we not been required to stay here for so long. Even though there are times we really just want to be back home and enjoying summer activities, I'm afraid that if we had done that immediately we would have gotten so caught up in activities that we wouldn't have bonded together so quickly and spent so much quality time together.

Our big prayer request right now is that Home Affairs will move our papers through quickly. Even though Busi is officially our daughter we still need to wait for official papers showing her name change so we can then get her passport and visa so she can travel home with us. Home Affairs has been showing some resistance to all families trying to adopt right now and it slows the process down quite a bit.  There is another family here from California who is in the same dilemma that we are in. Please pray that Home Affairs will speed or paperwork along, not just for us and this other family, but also for families in the future. We desire to travel home together as a family, but if we need to Busi and I will stay longer and the rest of the family will travel home on July 4th.

Our internet situation is not the best here, but I will try to continue to blog a couple of times a week and keep everyone updated on what is going on with us and some of the activities we have already done. I don't know that I'll be able to upload photos, but I'll also try and upload pictures separately on Facebook so you can see a little of what we've been doing.

Please pray!
Hannah