We received many pics yesterday of our little angel. You can tell how tiny he is in them, and that he has lost weight. But those beautiful brown eyes just sparkle.

We are hoping his paperwork made it to 1st legalization. For all of those that are wondering what happens over in Haiti, here is a run down of the procedures:

1st legalization 6-8 weeks
IBESR 3-5 months
Minister of Justice 2-4 weeks
Parquet 2 weeks-2 months
Moi ??
Immigration/passport 2 weeks-2 months

The time frames can change but this is an approximate timeline!

There are suppose to be some missionaries coming to the orphanage, and we been told that they will solely be caring for our baby. We are still praying though that either God will bring him home on a medical visa or that He will heal him if He wants him to stay in Haiti a little while longer.

The orphanage is also having a hard time getting the needs that they have, since one of their main sources was through Gonaives, Haiti which was flooded from the recent hurricanes. The orphanage is in need of many items; such as:

Things the orphanage needs right now:
photo printing paper
Plastic mattress covers for the cribs
Lacto free formula,
Nutramagin formula
Black Print cartridge, we use number 96 and are on our last one,
colour cartidges number 95
when we print out photos we also use a colour print cartridge that is no. 99, we are on our last one of those
baby cereal
Diapers!!! Especially newborn, size 1, and size 2, but also some bigger

Things they always need:
• Similac, Lacto-free, and Soy powder formula
• Enfamil AR formula, Pregestimil or Alimentum
• Disp. diapers, all sizes especially size newborn, 1, 2 , and 3
• Liquid Pediasure
• Infant Iron drops
• Antibiotic Cream
• Fungal Cream (clotramizole)
• Diflucan and Nystatin
• Hand sanitizer
• Disinfecting wipes (like Clorox wipes or equiv.)
• Regular bottles, no extra nipples needed (please no "special" bottles)
• Mountable oscillating fans
• Liquid antibacterial hand soap
• ELIMITE "Permethin" 5% cream
• Baby cereal/baby foods

Life!

Our baby is not doing the best! He has just been so sick lately and it is so frustrating and dishearting to have him so many miles away. And here I am and I can't hold him, tell him I love him, and take his hurts away!
I am just praying that God will either allow him to come home on a medical visa or that He will heal him!

So much to tell!

First let me just shout out......WE ARE OFFICIAL ....LET THE COUNTDOWN BEGIN! Ok now that I have that out of my system...LOL. Our dossier is in Haiti, and our countdown begins for when we can finally bring our baby home.


Second, our baby needs lots of prayer! He is not doing well right now! He was diagnosed with Pyhillis (sp?). When he was first brought into the orphanage his test was negative for this, but now it is showing up. He was tested because he is not growing/gaining weight (another prayer request). So he was tested for various things to find out why he was not growing. Well now the pyhillis test came back positive. He is on penicillin, but doesn't seem to be improving as of yet. The orphanage is very concerned about him right now! Both the orphanage and agency wants us to start looking for medical doctors that would be willingly to treat him at no cost incase he has to come here on a medical visa. If he comes here on a medical visa, he would live with us (Yay!!), but it could complicate the adoption, and he might even have to go back to Haiti for awhile after treatment (so that would not be good).

On a brighter note, I'm sending him a little something this week. I know he is still young and won't really know, but it was sure fun shopping for him :).

Dossier Done

We just sent in our Dossier to our agency....Whew finally! Ok so maybe we have a few bumps to work out (might have to change our Power of Attorney). It seems that there might of been a few mistakes that have to be fixed, I am hoping not, but we'll see! Other then that we are good to go! Our agency is going to be translating and preparing our dossier to send to Haiti.

Our baby angel (by the way, since people are asking; angel is not his name but we are protecting our kids by not posting their names on here) has moved on his orphanage webpage - to a child with a family! YaY!!!!!

We just finished up two fundraisers in the past month and it feels like the summer just slipped by. We now are leaving to take a much needed family vacation! Off to the magical land of Disney World. Our family is in dire need of family time, and what better place then Disney World. Even Nate is looking forward to it LOL ( and he doesnt like crowds). Please keep us in prayer while we are there (as there are a few storms in the atlantic that might affect us while we are there). Also, please keep Angel in your prayers has he might be in the path of these storms as well.

When we get back, I will be starting school with peanut butter, and monkey. This is my first year homeschooling, so I'm a little nervous, but Nate and I feel this is the best route right now for our children! I will be buying the school curriculumn on Thursday, and picking up the last bit of supplies when we get back, so we will be good to go! I'm planning on using Abeka this year!

I will update more later, hopefully with more pictures of Angel and our Disney trip!

Psych eval!!!!

Whoohoo we finally received our psych eval in the mail. What does this mean, you might ask? Well, it was the last piece of paper we needed to authenicate! We will go on thursday to get everything authenicated at the Secretary of State and then off to the library for copy making. After the library I will go to the Post office with my complete dossier (big huge smile here), to mail off to LBB.

Right now, I've been getting ready for the Mops/adoption garage sale on Sat. We have probably more then 30+ families that have donated. Lots and lots of stuff. I'm planning on posting pics later (if i can remember to take them before people show up to buy! I've been almost living at church (or at least that is how it feels), for the past week. I am planning on being at church tuesday, thursday, friday, and Saturday this week for the garage sale.

Referral Time!!!!!!

I can't believe it is finally here! We received part of Angel's referral today....his history! Oh my, the Joy that is overflowing right now, is really undescribeable. We are waiting on a few more parts of his referral, and then we can officially say yes we want to adopt this precious little guy.

He is a little over 5 months right now, and weights 9lbs 13oz. He is little guy! He has been having a lot of episodes of dehydration, and some vomiting and diarrhea; but I know he is in good hands and that he is being taken care of. It is soo hard to hear about him being sick though, as a mother I just want to be there to hold him and make sure he is ok. It made me almost cry when I read it. Nate was overly emotional reading his history as well. If you are a parent, I'm sure you would know what I mean when I say "It pains us to know about him being sick."

On another note, we finally received our final homestudy today! Whoohoo!!! I can't believe we are almost to having our paperwork in Haiti.

We are just waiting on our psychological evaluation, once we receive this we will authenicate our document with the secretary of state. Next we will be mailing them off to LBB (Love beyond Borders). Were getting ready to send in our translation fee of $300, and they are going to start the translations to Creole (the language in Haiti), while we are waiting for the psych eval and authenicating.

Dive by Stephen Curtis Chapman

I am reminded often (especially when I hear it) of how amazing God is and the total reliance I need to have on Him; when I hear the song "Dive" by Stephen Curtis Chapman. I feel the words of this song describe exactly how Nate and I have felt this whole adoption process (from the time God told us to "leap in back in August of 07, to trusting in Him each and every day). In this song, the lyrics are:

The long-awaited rain has just fallen hard upon the thirsty ground
Have carved their way to where the wild and rushing river can be found
And like the rain I have been carried here to where the river flows
My heart is racin' and my knees are weak as I walk to the edge
I know there is no turning back once my feet have left the ledge
And in the rush I hear a voice telling me it's time to
Take a leap of faith
So here I go

[CHORUS]
I'm diving in
I'm going deep
In over my head I wanna be
Caught in the rush
Lost in the flow
In over my head I wanna go
The river's deep
The river's wide
The river's water is alive
So sink or swim
I'm diving in
I'm diving in

There is a supernatural power in this mighty river's flow
We can bring the dead to life, we can fill an empty soul
And give a heart the only thing worth living and dying for
But we will never know the awesome power of the grace of God
Until we let ourselves be swept away into this holy flood
So if you'll take my hand and close your eyes and count to three
And take the leap of faith
Come on let's go


This whole adoption we dove in head first, just trusting God. And like the song says "we will never know the awesome power of the grace of God, until we let ourselves be swept away into this holy flood;" If God is tugging on you for something....just "dive in". Let him carry you and overwhelm you with his power and grace. Don't worry about what will happen, how you will have the finances for it, what others will think, what the future of it will bring....just do it! God knows and He plans to prosper and not to harm us....so go ahead and drown in Him!

July 31, 2008

Welcome to our journey! I can't believe this is happening and so quickly. A little over a month ago, we were in the China program. But we felt like God was telling us to wait a little longer for our daughter from China. While this was heartbreaking, we felt like God had something else in store for us (at the time we did not know what it was, but thought it might be that there is another child out there somewhere that might need us quicker then our daughter from China who is not even born yet). It was heartwrenching to have to agree to wait, but we decided it was what we needed to do. I would say within a week after agreeing that we needed to wait for China, God opened up a door to adopt a beautiful little boy in Haiti.

At first, I saw his picture on the web, and I was thinking he is so precious...but really nothing more. Every other day or so, I would check to see if his picture was still there and of course it was! I also told Nathan about him and how adorable this baby was. Finally after about a week went by, i awoke one day and could not get the picture of this little boy off of my mind. It was seriously driving me bananas as I could not think of anything but him. Nate suggested I should email the adoption agency. I did, but was not holding out much hope as he was up on their site for awhile and I was thinking someone has to already be trying to adopt him.

Well, lo and behold the agency said he was not taken and no one was interested in him at that time! I was amazed and couldn't believe it! Nate and I talked after that and felt like God had brought this little boy into our world. So we jumped in and said we wanted to adopt him. But at the time we didnt even have a homestudy. We did have a portion of our paperwork already (from the China program), so we were able to use that. Well we found a place to complete our homestudy and it is now about a little over a month later and we are getting ready in the next week or two to be able to send our dossier in. I can't believe it! God has been moving so fast with this adoption. Not only that but this baby angel will be officially ours very shortly.

God has been doing amazing things with this adoption. We needed $12,000 pretty much right away (split between upfront, and within a month). We have payed out $3950 (this is not counting all the fees for gathering the paperwork, fingerprints, psychological evaluations, government fees, medical fees, etc). As soon as we are ready to send our dossier into the agency we will need to pay another $8050. We had a garage sale and were blessed by numerous people (donating, prayers, and help during the sale), and brought in over $1200, but we still had a long ways to go. With our savings and the sale we still needed to come up with $4708. But the other day we received a call from Stephanie our adoption coordinator from A love beyond Borders and she told us that one of our fees we will be able to pay later in the adoption (because of our circumstance and how fast the adoption is moving). This knocks off $2500 which brings our total needed down to $2208! Praise God for that blessing! I know that God will help us bring in that last amount, because He has been working miracles throughout this whole adoption so far. But please continue to pray that the money does come in and that God keeps this adoption in the palm of His hand.