Still Here

I lost touch of my blog for a while when I changed some sign-in settings. I was so worried that I'd lost it and so thankful that I was able to recover it.

Near the end of September, our dossier finally arrived back at our agency, after months of circulating through many different hands. Haiti was in the midst of making law changes, changes that are going to be good but they seemingly put our adoption in jeopardy and we were worried. Well I was worried...faith is not my spiritual gift! Haiti was going to stop accepting dossiers under the old laws at some point and implemented a deadline. The way our paperwork was going, we would not make that deadline. Then a miracle! They extended the deadline, they offered grace to the families scrambling and praying that a miracle would take place because that was the only alternative left. Kevin was invited to Haiti for work on a project HFAP was doing. The week he was traveling our dossier arrived at our home so that he could transport it to Haiti himself. After he landed in PAP, they drove to the lawyers office and he laid in on her desk. Relief.


And now, we wait. We still have about $5,000 to raise plus travel. We have done multiple fundraisers this fall. They've been such a gift and people have been so beautiful and generous!
We pray for provision for the rest....knowing that somehow it will come. We know that because we are working hard for it and we've seen too much of God's hand moving in our lives to doubt it.


This holiday season has been emotional for me. One, because a third of our family is in another country and two, because we had one of them in our arms last Christmas. There is no way to not feel that pain....if i didn't feel it I'd be worried.
Again, I see and feel how the inexplicable connection that adoption creates is only possible because, I believe, God writes the story.


These stories do not always have the endings we plan, our family knows that all too well. Honestly, finding the ability to praise Him despite that still proves difficult for me sometimes, even now.
But without Him, I always, always come to the end of myself and that is a very cold and empty place to be.


So we continue to wait and trust and look forward to the next year. We pray 2013 will be the year our boys come home and that next Christmas, there will be 6 of us around the Christmas tree:)
Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Sponsorship need!

Every child at Hope House has multiple sponsors. It is how HFAP provides 24 hour care for each of the children, in a country where food/supplies can be outrageously expensive. Our boys have had sponsors, in addition to a monthly payment we send that is equal to a typical international adoption's In-Country expenses. They have us pay monthly instead of in one lump sum.

We just found out that 4 families who sponsored the boys needed to drop sponsorship, 2 sponsors for each of our boys. The cost goes to us. HFAP encourages adopting families in this situation to find sponsors through friends and family.

It is difficult to ask anymore of those who already support us so beautifully. However we do feel that we need to put it out there and make the need known.

So here is the need: we need 4 sponsors to pay $30 per month, $120 per month, total.

We have experienced God using people in our lives, and those we don't even know, to provide where we thought it impossible.

We are trusting in His provision and we are doing all we can to just get our boys home so we can provide for them in our own home.

Our dossier is very close to being done on the US side and actually getting to Haiti. We are praying over our dossier and timing! Right now that is all we can do. Could you please join us?

Anonymous

Last week my parents, brother and sister in law came to stay with us. It was the first time my brother and his wife have ever been to MI and it was an amazing week! One of the wonderful things we were able to do was to Skype with Caleb and Guerlens...my family was able to "meet" both of our boys and it was awesome! Caleb waved and smiled at seeing them and said Grandma and Grandpa..it was precious. Ging was his busy little self and gave us some great smiles and showed us his continuous love of eating:) Technology can be a magical thing!

We also received our immigration approval from the USCIS! Woohoo!

On Saturday afternoon, Kev opened the mail first and in it was a money order for $200! There was a short note that said "To bring your boys home!! Love In Jesus" Anonymous. I felt overwhelmed holding such a gift from someone we can never thank. And it's obvious that they don't want verbal thanks from us...so instead, as I'm sure they would hope, we gave thanks to our Father. In my hand was an extension of Him...this note was written by someone who is part of the body of Christ...and it felt like church, not "going" to church but someone was the church. And we are grateful.

Garage Sale and Tears

Our garage sale is next week! AAHHHH! We've gotten a lot of donations and have a lot of stuff for the sale. I'm starting to move everything over to our friends home where the sale is being held. Their house is at a much better location than ours and it's where we held our sale last year. It will be held next Thursday the 30th, Friday the 31st and Saturday the 1st. Today I was busily going through some of the kids clothes, focused on getting organized, when I came across this snowflake sleeper. I immediately burst into tears as I held it up to my face, remembering holding him while he was wearing it. I remembered the smell of his hair, the sight of him sucking his thumb and me kissing his cheek. I missed our boys so terribly in that moment...I miss them everyday, we all do. But this snuck up on me unexpectedly. In the grind of paperwork, applications, getting references, making appointments, redoing documents and getting so frustrated and saddened that this is not the adoption timeline we want, I sometimes miss the moments that allow me to remember what we've experienced already and to dream of what will be. I needed that moment.

Where we are....

We've been getting the "where are you in the process" question quite a bit, so I'd like to answer that here. Our dossier is done and is with our agency. We are still waiting on our Home Study though, this has taken much longer than it should have and is getting frustrating. The reason it has taken this long has been affected by both factors in our control and factors outside of our control. Our part is done and now we just have to wait for it, this is hard and only the beginning of our waiting. Once we have our HS done, then we can send it along to our agency to have it translated, we can apply for US permission for our boys to come to the states, this is called the I600A form, and then we can also apply for interest free loans and grants. Once our dossier is in Haiti I will be able to breath a little better. It will go into what's called IBESR. It's kind of like a Dept. of family and children's services...this has been closed for a while because they want to get the backlogged cases sorted through before they move forward. Our hope and prayer is that our dossier will be translated and sent down to Haiti before they reopen in early August, and will be in the pile and get processed through quickly. This is scary and time is not on our side but we are still trusting in God's perfect timing, no matter how outside our personal timeline that may be. We miss our boys terribly...a hole is felt in this house as long as they are still not here to fill it. Melat has told us that she will do any paperwork we need or help us get money so the boys can come home:) The next time we will be able to travel to Haiti will be for court that we will need to be present for. This won't be until early 2013, or later. We are thankful for pictures, videos and Skype until then. Oh and some great news is that Guerlens is walking! He started 11 days after we left Haiti..I was praying he would take those first steps when we were there but he saved them for later. We Skyped so we could see him walk and of course he had absolutely no interest in walking but wanted to be held instead...true to form.:)

Chip In at right..

If you come to this blog at all, you've probably noticed the Chip-In widget on the right side of the page. Several people have asked about where we are in the process but also how much $ we still need to raise. We thought the Chip-In meter would be the best way to gauge the cost remaining and for people to give if they choose to. It's very easy to use and will automatically track our progress. This figure of $8,000 is based on agency/International fees that are needed as soon as possible.

Son Son

When Jivenson's 2nd birthday came last year, we talked about doing something of remembrance for him, something that would last and would be shared between us. We decided to get tattoos, each of us sharing a "Son" and when put together would be our SonSon. It got put off...then the first anniversary of his death came and we planned to do it that night, but something came up with a friend and we were unable to go. One week later we finally were able to do it. It was a little painful but so short and when we were done it just felt right:) And since the pic seems unclear as to where we got them, they are on our right ankles:)