We received our referral on Monday!!!
For those who aren't familiar with the adoption lingo, the "referral" is when you are officially matched with the child you are going to adopt.
We were sent some pictures and videos which I am not allowed to post (if I see you in person I can show you:), but he is absolutely adorable. I still tear up every time I look at his sweet face. It blows me away that God knew before He created this precious child, before this child became an orphan, before we even started this process and through all the bumps and curves in our adoption journey, that THIS is the child he was leading us to, that this specific little guy would be our son.
Of course now that we have a little son waiting for us, it is so hard to wait to meet him and to hold him and to bring him out of the orphanage and into our home and family. It kills me to be missing his babyhood milestones and not to be the one to hold him and kiss him when he cries and all those other things that mommies are supposed to do. Our paperwork is already with our attorney in Uganda, and there are some more paperwork steps we need to go through, but assuming all goes fairly smoothly, we are hoping/expecting to travel in January or February.
The estimated time in country for the adoption is 4-6 weeks. Scott and Javen and I will all go over for the first 7-14 days for court, and then because Scott can't miss that much work, he will come back to the states while the rest of us stay behind to wait for the paperwork and visas to be finished so that we can come home. I cannot wait for that day!
We are naming our little son Malachi. We have always loved that name, and I think it is so fitting for this baby because I just love the underlying theme of God's incredible faithfulness and abundant grace that resonates throughout the book of Malachi in the Bible. Malachi is believed to have been born around February of this year, so assuming that is fairly accurate, he will be about 10 months younger than Javen.
We covet your prayers over these next few months. We are of course praying overall for a fast and smooth process, safe and healthy travels, etc., but here are three specific things we are praying for right now . . .
-For Malachi's health and safety in the orphanage
-For the women who are loving on and caring for him in the orphanage (it's a Christian orphanage)
-For our paperwork to be processed quickly - in particular that the officer assigned to our case at the USCIS would move on it quickly.
Thank you for praying for and rejoicing with us - we can't wait to introduce Malachi to all of you!
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Our Adoption Rollercoaster
This started as an adoption blog, and maybe you have noticed that I haven't mentioned the adoption in a while. . . .
We have had some pretty MAJOR changes of plans over the last couple of months, but since we felt like we keep announcing new plans and then having them fail to work out, this time we decided not to share our updates with many people until we actually were fairly certain that the latest set of plans would actually come to fruition. You know the phrase "We plan, God laughs"? Well, he's been doing lots of laughing at us (me in particular!) lately as He has been teaching us that try what we will, everything will happen in His perfect way and in His perfect timing - not ours!
We have have been thrown some new loops in this wild adoption roller coaster ride in the last couple of months, so I'll start at the beginning and recap and try to keep it as short and sweet as possible. . .
Since before we got married, we have felt the call and the desire to grow our family through adoption from Africa. When we were getting close to starting the process and started researching our options to see which African countries' criteria met ours and we theirs, it came down to two countries - Uganda and Ethiopia. While there can always be bumps in the road, Ethiopia's process was very stable and simple - an agency would do most of the legwork for us on the Ethiopian side of things, and the travel was short and predictable. With Uganda, we would do all the legwork, it required a much longer in-country stay of an unknown length, the process was not as stable, and it was not nearly as predictable or as "easy" as the Ethiopian process. After talking and praying about it, though, we were surprised that we both felt absolutley certain that we were supposed to adopt from Uganda, and we began moving in that direction.
The month we made that decision, it seemed like everyone we talked to had some connections with friends or family or missionaries in Uganda (mostly in the capital city of Kampala where we planned to be!), and we thought these sudden connections affirmed that we were making the right decision.
A few months into the process, Uganda had some major issues with their adoptions, and things came to a standstill. We could not get answers from anyone, orphanages stopped giving referrals, and no one knew when or even if adoptions would continue in this country. We decided to get out while we still could, and we went back to the drawing board.
This was when we learned about Rwanda. The program was fairly new (but became popular fast!) but also seemed stable, and we found a Christian ministry that facilitates Rwandan adoptions that would walk us through the steps. Since we had been SO certain that our kids were in Uganda, we were very surprised and disappointed and confused when we made the change to Rwanda, but I surmised that since Rwanda wasn't on our radar before, perhaps this failed Ugandan side trip was God's way of getting us to Rwanda . . .
Fast forward a few more months to August. Most of our Rwanda dossier documents are gathered and ready to go to Tallahassee. All we need is our USCIS approval, but due to a change in the way they are processing the adoption applications, what was supposed to be a three-week process is at 3 months and counting. All we need is that approval, and then within a few weeks, we can have our dossier in Rwanda (it has to go through Tallahassee and Washington first) and will officially be a "waiting family."
Then one day toward the end of August, we received an e-mail from our facilitating ministry informing us that without warning (NO ONE saw this coming), the Rwandan Embassy was about to announce that they were closing to new adoption applications as of the end of August. While they said they plan to reopen at some point, no one knows if it will be in six months or in six years. This was quite a blow, and since we did not feel that we were able or willing to put our family on hold indefinitely, we were back to square one. On the bright side, because everything was still in process at the USCIS, changing countries would require only a fairly simple amendment to our home study and a change of country request for the USCIS.
The same day we got the e-mail about Rwanda, I got an e-mail from an aquaintance (a Mama who recently adopted a little boy from Uganda) . . . . . it was an e-mail about how she was helping a long-established and and highly reputable agency start a pilot program in Uganda and was looking for families who were interested in adopting from orphanges there. The problems that had halted things earlier in the year were resolved, and Ugandan adoptions were again moving smoothly and with enough stability for this agency to start a program there. Feeling (again) that Uganda was the place, but wanting to do our due diligence, I called a couple of Ethiopian adoption agencies, and it became more and more clear during those conversations that Ethiopia was not a good fit for us at this time.
So . . . we are back to Uganda! After researching and talking and praying about this decision, we feel that this is the direction we are supposed to take. Part of me wonders if we jumped out of the Uganda boat too soon a few months back when things there were looking pretty grim and impossible, but I do think we are on a better track now, as it will be a much easier process for us now that we have an agency to make the connections for us and to guide and help us through the process - and since our paperwork is taking forever at the USCIS (it's finally starting to move!), all these changes of countries have not been the cause of any delay!
Another change (and it is a long explanation - you can ask me in person if you're really curious!) is that we will be adopting ONE child instead of TWO as we had originally planned. We want to keep the birth order with Javen as the oldest, so the baby we adopt will be a boy born some time after May of '09.
We hope to be able to share some more exciting updates very soon such as travel specifics and time frame, but for now we wanted to share what has been going on and to let it be known that it is a UGANDAN baby who will be joining our family.:)
Hopefully there will be no more crazy loops on this ride!!!
We have had some pretty MAJOR changes of plans over the last couple of months, but since we felt like we keep announcing new plans and then having them fail to work out, this time we decided not to share our updates with many people until we actually were fairly certain that the latest set of plans would actually come to fruition. You know the phrase "We plan, God laughs"? Well, he's been doing lots of laughing at us (me in particular!) lately as He has been teaching us that try what we will, everything will happen in His perfect way and in His perfect timing - not ours!
We have have been thrown some new loops in this wild adoption roller coaster ride in the last couple of months, so I'll start at the beginning and recap and try to keep it as short and sweet as possible. . .
Since before we got married, we have felt the call and the desire to grow our family through adoption from Africa. When we were getting close to starting the process and started researching our options to see which African countries' criteria met ours and we theirs, it came down to two countries - Uganda and Ethiopia. While there can always be bumps in the road, Ethiopia's process was very stable and simple - an agency would do most of the legwork for us on the Ethiopian side of things, and the travel was short and predictable. With Uganda, we would do all the legwork, it required a much longer in-country stay of an unknown length, the process was not as stable, and it was not nearly as predictable or as "easy" as the Ethiopian process. After talking and praying about it, though, we were surprised that we both felt absolutley certain that we were supposed to adopt from Uganda, and we began moving in that direction.
The month we made that decision, it seemed like everyone we talked to had some connections with friends or family or missionaries in Uganda (mostly in the capital city of Kampala where we planned to be!), and we thought these sudden connections affirmed that we were making the right decision.
A few months into the process, Uganda had some major issues with their adoptions, and things came to a standstill. We could not get answers from anyone, orphanages stopped giving referrals, and no one knew when or even if adoptions would continue in this country. We decided to get out while we still could, and we went back to the drawing board.
This was when we learned about Rwanda. The program was fairly new (but became popular fast!) but also seemed stable, and we found a Christian ministry that facilitates Rwandan adoptions that would walk us through the steps. Since we had been SO certain that our kids were in Uganda, we were very surprised and disappointed and confused when we made the change to Rwanda, but I surmised that since Rwanda wasn't on our radar before, perhaps this failed Ugandan side trip was God's way of getting us to Rwanda . . .
Fast forward a few more months to August. Most of our Rwanda dossier documents are gathered and ready to go to Tallahassee. All we need is our USCIS approval, but due to a change in the way they are processing the adoption applications, what was supposed to be a three-week process is at 3 months and counting. All we need is that approval, and then within a few weeks, we can have our dossier in Rwanda (it has to go through Tallahassee and Washington first) and will officially be a "waiting family."
Then one day toward the end of August, we received an e-mail from our facilitating ministry informing us that without warning (NO ONE saw this coming), the Rwandan Embassy was about to announce that they were closing to new adoption applications as of the end of August. While they said they plan to reopen at some point, no one knows if it will be in six months or in six years. This was quite a blow, and since we did not feel that we were able or willing to put our family on hold indefinitely, we were back to square one. On the bright side, because everything was still in process at the USCIS, changing countries would require only a fairly simple amendment to our home study and a change of country request for the USCIS.
The same day we got the e-mail about Rwanda, I got an e-mail from an aquaintance (a Mama who recently adopted a little boy from Uganda) . . . . . it was an e-mail about how she was helping a long-established and and highly reputable agency start a pilot program in Uganda and was looking for families who were interested in adopting from orphanges there. The problems that had halted things earlier in the year were resolved, and Ugandan adoptions were again moving smoothly and with enough stability for this agency to start a program there. Feeling (again) that Uganda was the place, but wanting to do our due diligence, I called a couple of Ethiopian adoption agencies, and it became more and more clear during those conversations that Ethiopia was not a good fit for us at this time.
So . . . we are back to Uganda! After researching and talking and praying about this decision, we feel that this is the direction we are supposed to take. Part of me wonders if we jumped out of the Uganda boat too soon a few months back when things there were looking pretty grim and impossible, but I do think we are on a better track now, as it will be a much easier process for us now that we have an agency to make the connections for us and to guide and help us through the process - and since our paperwork is taking forever at the USCIS (it's finally starting to move!), all these changes of countries have not been the cause of any delay!
Another change (and it is a long explanation - you can ask me in person if you're really curious!) is that we will be adopting ONE child instead of TWO as we had originally planned. We want to keep the birth order with Javen as the oldest, so the baby we adopt will be a boy born some time after May of '09.
We hope to be able to share some more exciting updates very soon such as travel specifics and time frame, but for now we wanted to share what has been going on and to let it be known that it is a UGANDAN baby who will be joining our family.:)
Hopefully there will be no more crazy loops on this ride!!!
Monday, October 4, 2010
Weekend in the Swamp
The last weekend in September, we joined Scott's dad and stepmom in Gainesville to watch the Gators defeat Kentucky. It was the first time I've been to a game in three years, and we had a blast. A sweet friend in Gainesville offered to keep Javen while we went to the game, so we got to bring him along, too (much to the delight of his grandparents!).
Javen loved playing on the luggage cart with his Papa (notice Papa's cute "Papa Gator" shirt!
Javen loved playing on the luggage cart with his Papa (notice Papa's cute "Papa Gator" shirt!
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