So blessed.

Our life has been so busy up to this weekend (and still is!) with the moving of our business that I have barely had time to contemplate what's in front of us. I am so consumed with work that I almost feel like I am missing out on the fun anticipation of getting ready and packing and dreaming of things to come. Even now, John is at the shop rebuilding shelves and moving things across the street. Here at the house has been an amazing weekend of blessing. Friends raking our yard, stopping by with last minute gifts and hugs, setting up meals for us, cleaning our area rugs, and family helping to put cribs together and organize. All of the things that we have had no time to think about since we have been working until 7:30 or 8pm most nights and eating dinner at 9. And our crazy life is about to get crazier! Sitting in the playroom I can remember being with the boys in the playroom at the orphanage. Believe it or not, we have a pretty tough act to follow, but I think there will be many great memories created here. We might need a few more riding toys if we are going to compete with what they are leaving behind! We spoke with Soojin this week and have a tentaive schedule for how our days in Bulgaria will look. We fly out of GR on Tues and arrive in Sofia, BG around 2:30 in the afternoon (7:30 am Michigan time) Wednesday. We will be picked up by our translator and taken to the apartment where we will be staying. We will either drop our bags off and head back to the airport to fly to Varna or spend the night and head to the coast to pick up the boys on Thursday. So our gotcha day is either Wed or Thurs. We will pick them up and fly right back to Sofia with them to stay at the apartment. We apply for their passports on Thursday. Fri, Sat and Sunday are resting days. We are encouraged to spend most of our time in the apartment so that we start getting comfrtable with each other. When we go out, it will be for a short time only. Monday, their passports are issued and we do the TB testing and medical checkup. Tuesday is a resting day. Wed we get the TB results (and hopefully do not have to go for a chest xray!) and we submit results to the Embassy. Thursday is the Embassy interview. Visas issued on Friday. Bring them home on Saturday!! Of course, they ask us to be flexible as changes may be made to the schedule. Whew! That's a lot to do with two little guys who have just been taken away from everything familiar! We are so thankful they have each other. Please pray for our hearts, for sleep (I get sick if I don't get enough), smooth transitions, connections and luggage to arrive on time, kindness for each other and ourselves, grace, appointments to go well, plane rides to be tolerable, general health, a feeling of family that only Jesus can give us...and everthing in between! Once we are home we will be "cocooning" with them - encouraging attachment to us as mom and dad. What this boils down to is that we will be their only caregivers (feeding, changing, holding, putting to bed) for about 3 months. This doesn't mean we don't want visitors! Only in small doses though...we don't want to overwhelm them with strangers and commotion. We absolutely want to see you and if anyone wants to help out with grocery shopping, laundry, dishes, etc....it would be a huge blessing to us. A friend has already set up a place for people to sign up to bring us meals. Here is the info for that: www.takethemameal.com and search by our last name Ferguson and the password is Sofia. We will have wireless access at the apartment so we hope to send some updates and post pictures...we shall see how that goes! For now, we thank every one of you for what you have done for us - seen and unseen. So blessed.