Merry Christmas!!!

Got some new Chirstmas pictures! My heart breaks and I want them here for the holidays so bad when I look at these pictures. We got an update on them and heard what they will be doing for Christmas. Sounds like they will have so much fun and activities that they won't have time to think about where they are. Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!!! I love you all!

Allison

Onto Parquet

Falancia

Sivencia Jiovenda

Finally!!! Our paperwork is out of IBESR and onto Parquet. Traditionally Parquet takes about 2-3 months, but we know some people that have been in there since April. We are praying that we are not one of those. Parquet has not been processing dossiers with people that have biological children, we are unsure why because that is IBESR's decision to make. So, although we are happy that our paperwork has moved on, we are also nervous about it being in Parquet. Well, like we always say, it is in God's hands and He will get us the girls in His perfect timing. Anyway if everything goes smoothly the girls will be home sometime this summer, but we all know how that goes! Please keep us in your prayers and pray for the people working in Parquet that God will soften their hearts for these children and want to get them all home as quickly as possible!

Good News

Hey Everyone!
Just got some great news, our Power of Attorney that needed to be redone is now with the lawyer down in Haiti and it is about to join the rest of dossier. Our dossier is being held at IBESR and we were hoping to have it out of there by Halloween until this delay occurred. Now if it makes it out of there by the end of November, we are only a month delayed due to the error on the POA. This is wonderful news, we thought it was going to take longer. Praise God! Will let you know when our dossier comes out of IBESR and visits its next Haiti government office. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers! Have a Happy Thanksgiving for those I won't see or talk to.
In Him,
Allison

Noel and Pictures

Many of you have asked about the effects of Tropical Storm Noel on the orphanage. They got some wind and rain, but since they are up in the mountains a bit they did not feel the full effects of the storm like the coast did. Everyone at God's Littlest Angels faired just fine. Thank you for your prayers.

As for our paperwork, the Power of Attorney that needed to be redone made it down to Haiti within a week. Praise God! The Consulate and the translator processed it super quickly. We are not sure where it is in Haiti though. Hopefully it will get to IBESR quickly, which is where the rest of our dossier is. I will let you know when we find out. Hopefully this littls glitch won't back us up to much.

We received our monthly update on the girls this week. They are doing well and staying healthy. Looks like Jiovenda has lost a front tooth.

Brison has been doing well in school and we go for our first conference next week. He has been also taking piano lessons and seems to really enjoy it. We bought an old, used piano for $50 and we all love it.

Walker loves preschool and enjoys spending time with his big brother. His favorite saying now is, "whatever Brison is having/doing, I will have/do". He loves his big bro (see how long that lasts).

That is about it, had a nice Halloween and looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas. Thank you again for your thoughts and prayers.

Love,

Allison

Problem

Well we have hit our first (and hopefully only) glitch in the road last Thursday. When we began our adoption paperwork everything was done to adopt one child. When we decided to adopt the three girls we had to switch some of the paperwork over. Well one piece of paperwork did not get switched over and that was our Power of Attorney form. In some places it states child and in others in says children. As you know our paperwork is in IBESR and they are the ones to notice the problem and kicked it out. The good part of this was that they were reviewing our paperwork, earlier than the three month wait. The bad news is that there is a problem with our POA.



So what does this all mean. We typed a new corrected form, had it signed, notarized, state sealed, translated, and sent to the Haitian consulate in Chicago to have it stamped. When it gets back from the consulate we will have it sent down to Haiti and they will start the paper trail all over again. First it has to go to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and then back to IBESR. We are hoping since it is only one piece of paper and not our entire dossier that it will go through more quickly, but we don't know. We are not sure if we are starting all over again with our paperwork or not.



As frustrating as this has all been, we are comforted knowing that this is all part of God's plan and we just have to be patient and trust in Him. As I have said before, His timing is perfect and the girls will come home exactly when they need to be with us. This has been God's plan all along and we trust in Him with this latest delay. Up to this point it has been all blessings and we trusted in His plan, so how can we not when the going gets tough. I honestly would have been freaking out right about now if it wasn't for our trust in the Lord.



So I just ask for your continued prayers, thus far they have been felt and I thank you for them. The one thing this has taught me is the depth of how bad I want the girls here. We will keep you updated as we hear more.



God Bless,

Allison

The Boys!

Here are some pictures of the boys on their first day of school. See new update on the girls below.

Allison

Status Que

Well we got our latest update a little early. Molly who writes them is coming to the States for a month, so she got it off a little early. Which means the next one will probably be a little late. Everything is status que with the girls, nothing much new with them. It is the rainy season down there so they are struggling with colds and sniffles at the orphanage, as are we in our household. Brison was out of school last week for a few days and then made his brother sick. They had sore throats and fevers.

We got some great pictures of the girls and they look great! I will post some here. Our paperwork is still in IBESR and expect it to be there for another month. We just got an update on the status of the different governmental agencies our paperwork has to go through and IBESR seems to be the only one running smoothly. The others are all a coin toss and those are the ones our stuff goes to next. So who knows what our timeframe is going to look like. We are hoping Spring, but at this point it could be Summer. I just hope it is prior to the start of school next year. Only God knows and His timing is perfect!

I just had lunch with a woman who is also adopting from Haiti. She is adopting two girls, who are 5 and 7. Our girls and her girls are friends down at the orphanage and now they will be living 20 minutes away from each other. Isn't that great? I love that our girls will have some kind of reminder of home up here.

Brison has been at school for a month and is doing great. He loves his teacher and is making friends. He has also started piano lessons and seems to be really enjoying that as well.

Walker started preschool and loves it! He doesn't understand why everyone is in school and he is the only one home during the day. Tough to be one of the youngest in the neighborhood. We have bible study and Kindermusik to keep us busy during the week as well.

Well that is about it. Thank you for your many prayers, they sure are felt. We have such a great peace about our adoption and we know it is all from God. I hope this message finds you all well.

Love,

Allison

Latest Update

We have received a new update on the girls and I thought I would share some of what they wrote us. We will be receiving monthly updates on the girls and if anything else happens with the paperwork, I will post it here. As far as we know, it is still in IBESR and will be until around Halloween (we hope). Then it is onto another agency. Our timeframe is still Spring sometime (we hope). Also, see below on the new hold up on our adoption process.

Dear Allison & Brian,

I hope you are doing well there! I know it sounds repetitious every month when I say this, but it really truly has been a great month! Even with the trials, sadness, sickness, set backs, and frustrations that are laced throughout seemingly each moment our days are full of goodness and grace. God blesses us beyond measure with His joy and fills us with His strength. Without His continuing presence we would not be here, there would be no God’s Littlest Angels. His protection covers over each of these little angels and His arms hold them even when ours cannot. What a gracious and compassionate Father! And what a privilege is it to serve Him!

Thank you very much for your email! It was so nice to hear from you and to be able to share you letter with the girls making another connection and helping them create more of an idea in their head about you. It has been very hot here! The afternoon sun bakes down on everything and makes it hot to the touch. No one can walk outside in the paved yard after 1pm without sandals on because its too hot for their feet. So… we brought out the wading pool! Falancia & Jiovenda LOVE the pool!!!! Sivencia loves it too, but not the same way the other girls do. Its quite small, so that we don’t have to use too much water… only about 15 gallons. We put it up on the balcony, so that the kids have some privacy and they are in the shade. Then because it’s so tiny, we get one group of three or four at time to come and play. When Jiovenda was called up to play she could not get out of her clothes and into her swimsuit fast enough! She was the first one changed (with a little help cause those stretchy suits aren’t so easy to get intoJ) and out the door, she hesitated for a moment at the edge of the pool, but with just a word of coaxing, she had her feet in and was laughing. She didn’t stop laughing for over and hour, even when her teeth were chattering and she was all goosebumps she was still giggling away. She loved everything about the water. As I dried Jiovenda off she kept asking when she would get to swim again!! I wonder what her thoughts will be when she sees a real pool, or a lake? I can only imagine how big her eyes will get! Sivencia as well enjoyed the pool, but in a much quieter more subdued way. She came up to play with three other kids that were her size. She didn’t want to lay in the water though, she just wanted to sit on the side of the pool and put her feet in. She picked up a squirt toy shaped like a fish and held it out to me. I showed her how to fill it with water and I squirted it at her. She wasn’t so sure how she should react. Then I gave the fish to her and told her to squirt me. She wasn’t too keen on the idea and traded the fish in for a boat to float around instead, pretty much ignoring me for the rest of her play time. I think she figured it was the best way to make a statement and let me know she did not appreciate my getting her wet. Falancia could get wet enough. By the time her group was done playing in the pool there was no water left in the pool, it was all over the balcony floor. Somewhere along the way someone had decided it would be fun to dump water from the balcony on to the dry unsuspecting kids below. This seemed to interest Falancia more than playing in the water herself and she spent most of her time just refilling her fish and taking it back to squirt everyone through the railings and watch then scream and run away.

The other afternoon, when all the kids were down for nap, I was walking through the yard and glanced up to Jiovenda’s room’s balcony. There she was outside with her little friend Ketia, just the two of them quietly sitting on the floor doing something. I was curious what it might be, so I went to investigate. And here was Jiovenda happily working on her homework and trying to explain what she was doing to Ketia. One of Falancia’s many pastimes is playing jacks. She plays pretty much every day, and is quite good. The only thing is she has never played with a real set of jacks. She plays with rocks. It’s an important job to make sure you get the right rocks. They have to be a good size and shape. There are several other creative games that Falancia plays with the rocks, one is similar to marbles.

The girls are growing! All have good appetites, are sleeping soundly through the night, and are fully of energy and ambition. Their current measurements are:

Falancia - Height: 112.5 cm / 44.25 in Weight: 40 lbs

Jiovenda – Height: 106 cm / 41.75 in Weight: 31 lbs

Sivencia– Height: 85 cm / 33.5 in Weight: 24.5 lbs

Hope you have a great week!

Blessings,

Molly

GLA – Haiti

The latest update on the flow of paperwork is not on the Hatian end, but the US. We received the following email today, so if any of you are interested in helping, please call your Senators.

Bureaucracy Stops Adoptions in Haiti

A CALL TO ACTION

Dear friends of Haiti, A bureaucratic nightmare has forced the stoppage of Haitian children fromreceiving their U.S. visa and joining their forever families here in theU.S. A simple phone call from the U.S. Department of State to the U.S.Department of Homeland Security would quickly and easily resolve thissituation. To date, no such phone call has occurred and Haitian childrencontinue to suffer needlessly. We are asking everyone with a heart forHaitian children to rally together, make some noise and help our childrenfind their permanent, safe and loving families.

What can you do? Make four simple phone calls.

1. Call your U.S. Senator. You can find your Senators' phone numbers at www.senate.govo Ask to speak with the Legislative Director or Chief of Staff

2. Call your second U.S. Senator.

3. Call your representative to the U.S. House of Representative. You can find your representative at www.house.govo Ask to speak with the Legislative Director or Chief of Staff

4. Call the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Their number is 202-544-8500

When should you call? Today, Thursday or Friday For maximum affect, we are asking you to make these calls within the next 72 hours - sometime before the end of the day Friday. What should you say? Speak from your heart and give them the following information. The Department of State has stopped issuing visas to Haitian orphans. The problem behind the stoppage was fixed by the Department ofHomeland Security. BUT, no one told the Department of State. Your office must get involved and make the Department of HomelandSecurity communicate with the Department of State. Your office should contact the Office of Children's Issues at theDepartment of State. Their number is 202-736-9090 Can you explain the problem behind the stoppage? Here is some additional information... The U.S. Department of State (the consular office in Haiti) is ruling that visas can not be issued to legally adopted children due to theabsence of the words 'irrevocable and unconditional' in the Haitian parentalrelinquishment documents. The Department of State is incorrect. USCIS hasalready resolved this issue and has been approving orphan status since June2007. Sadly, USCIS has not communicated the resolution to the Department ofState. USCIS has already written a legal opinion that orphan status canlegitimately be granted to these cases, but the Department of State andUSCIS have thus far failed to communicate the information that will releasethe children. We need to send the same concise message to each of these offices: there arelegally adopted children in Haiti who cannot get Visas and come home due tothe lack of communication between DOS and USCIS. Please act on this message yourself, and pass it along to anyone you knowwho has children waiting, has adopted in the past, or just has a heart forHaiti. Each adult member of your household can call separately. We need to depend upon sheer volume to get our point across so please call today!

Well that is about it! Brison started school this week, he is very tired going all day, every day, but enjoying it. Walker starts preschool next week and he can't wait. He has declared that his classroom is better than Brison's, because it has more toys! We went to Chicago last week for a few days and had fun. I think their favorite place was the Lego store! Hope all of you are doing well. Thank you for your prayers and as always you are all in ours!

Love,

Allison

The Girls Know Who We Are

Jiovenda Sivencia Jiovenda All 3 girls Falancia Jiovenda
Sivencia

We just got a new update from the orphange last night, thought I would share some of the new information about the girls and some new pictures. I wrote to them about our 4th of July party and told them about playing kickball and they are excited to learn how to play. They received our photo album and got to look at pictures of us and our house. It has been explained to them that we will be their new family and that they will eventually be going home with us. Falancia, the oldest, is very interested in us and wants to know more about us.

They are also taking English lessons and have begun learning some easy to say phrases. We also learned that having a favorite color is an American thing and they don't really understand when asked. So I guess I will pick the colors for their room, darn.

The following is how to pronouce their names correctly:

Falancia is pronounced: fah-Len-see-ah

Jiovenda is pronounced: gee-Oh-ven-dah

Sivencia is pronounced: See-ven-see-ah

The girls are doing well. All have good appetites, are sleeping soundly through the night, and have PLENTY of energy. Their measurements as of the 16th of July were:

Falancia - Height: 44 in / 111.5 cm Weight: 38 lbs

Jiovenda – Height: 41 in / 104 cm Weight: 29.5 lbs

Sivencia– Height: 33 in / 83.5 cm Weight: 23 lbs

Falancia enjoys playing with baby dolls and putting them to bed and feeding them. Jiovenda likes playing with kitchen toys and likes to serve others. Sivencia enjoys floor toys, cars, blocks, figurines, etc.

From everything we are gathering about their personality. Falancia is smart, not shy, opinionated and a take charge kind of gal. She is outgoing with friends and very protective of her two younger sisters. Jiovenda is quieter, enjoys playing with just one or two friends, but is also protective of her little sister. Sivencia is a typical two year old and enjoys all the attention from her big sisters.

Well that is about it, probably won't get another update till next month.

Brison is finishing Christian Day camp this week. Walker has been my constant little companion, he starts preschool in the Fall. Brison is going into 1st. My mom comes next week and we are looking forward to it.

Talk to you all soon!

Love,

Allison

Latest Update

Early in July we got our first update on the girls and I emailed that to most of you. It was mostly about their daily routines. Hopefully we will be getting a new update within the next few weeks. However we have received some new information in the past week. A friend of ours daughter from our West MI Haitian adoption group just got back from spending over a month at God's Littlest Angels in Haiti. Kristin (a high schooler) volunteers her time spending time with these kids and gives many of them one on one attention. Well she spent time with Falancia, our oldest. She sent pictures and told us a little about Falancia's personality. Here is some that she wrote...

Falancia is a very outgoing girl, definitely not shy. She seems to always have a smile on her face, and is always playing with a friend (she has a lot of them). She doesn’t speak much English yet, but because they now know that she will be going to an American family, I’m sure that she will get started in Joyce’s English class very soon. She seems really smart, so I’m sure she will pick up very fast. Most of her friends, the kids that she hangs around with, are pretty good at English, so I’m sure she’ll pick it up even faster from being with them.

I have posted a picture that she sent as well.

We also heard on Friday that our paperwork made it to IBESR, which is Haiti's Social Services. That is good news and now we have a little bit of a better time frame. We are hoping it leaves IBESR around Halloween. Our timeframe is still sometime next Spring. The paperwork has a few more places to stop after IBESR, so it just depends upon how long it takes at each place. Right now there are a few problems with obtaining a Haitan passport, but we are hoping that this is beginning to become resolved. There also might be some changes to the Hatian adoption laws in November, we are hoping that this will not affect us.

Please keep us in your prayers and I will update you as I get more information. Pray for the orphanages' workers, as they attend to the girls' daily needs and love on each of them. Also, pray for the girls' health and well being, as this is a difficult and scary time for them.

I posted some pictures of the boys as well, take a look below!

Love,

Allison

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. – Ephesians 3:20-1

Some Shira Pictures

Brison and Walker with their Webkinz.
Brison and Walker playing with chalk and water.

The Shiras at the beach last summer.

Not 1, not 2, but 3!!!

Yes, you read it right and here is their picture. We have agreed to adopt three sisters from Haiti. They are ages 6,3, and 2. Their names are Falancia, Jiovenda, and Sivencia (and yes we are keeping their names). We received the official referral last week and this week we intend to accept it. They won't be coming home until sometime early next year. So it is going to be a long wait, but plenty of time for me to paint some kind of girl color in their room. Also time for us to buy some sort of larger vehicle to fit five children into (oh yeah and us too)! And did I mention clothing as well, I'm only use to buying boys clothes.

So here is how this all took place. Back in early May I got an email from Bethany Christian Services, asking anyone adopting from Haiti to please consider these girls. When I saw these three beautiful faces, my heart melted (God working through me). I had secretly prayed for a sibling group, but I was thinking two sisters, God had other plans. Lesson to you all, pray specifically or this could happen to you! Anyway, I forwarded this email onto Brian at work and wrote, "How about 3?". Well he didn't call me back, till much later in the day. I figured he was ignoring me or trying to hide. After he finally called, he said he'd been in back to back meetings all day. Oh and not to send him pictures of the three cutest girls. I said, "Well I would do it, if he would", he said "Really", I said "yes" and then we were both saying, "I can't believe we are considering this".

I called our social worker that afternoon and told her we were interested in these three girls. She said we would have to be put on the list of interested parties and then they would let us know. Needless to say, there wasn't anyone else on the list, we were the list! So we did a lot of praying, thinking, and going over finances. The adoption was going to be a lot more, plus everything, plus college, plus everything.... We finally decided that whatever financial burdens we had, their lives would be much better if they stayed together and with us.

After getting the official offer, we found out more information about the girls and their specific circumstances. Their mother had no job and was living with her sister (the girls' aunt), who was supporting the entire family (including two older siblings of the girls). The aunt was no longer able to support them and the mother was forced to give them over to the orphanage and legally sign over her rights to the girls, knowing they will be adopted. The girls were malnurished when they came to God' Littlest Angels (GLA), but relatively healthy. Because of their malnutrition, they are small for their age, but are beginning to thrive at GLA. The older ones are very protective of their little sister. Falancia, the oldest, was a little overwhelmed when she came to GLA, but has transtioned well. Jiovenda sounds like Walker, is quiet at first, but then makes friends quickly. And Sivencia sounds like a typical two year old. They speak Hatian Kreyole, which is similiar to French, with African languages mixed in (which we are currently trying to learn some). There will be a learning curve after they come home, especially for the oldest, but hopefully they will catch up quick.

The boys are excited to have the girls come. We pray for them every night and can't wait to meet them and get to know them. I have tried to answer most possible questions, but if you have any, feel free to email me. I love talking about them! The biggest fear I have at the moment is hair. I can't even do little white girl's hair (trust me I have tried). I do have a connection, so hopefully I can get some tips from her and she can guide me along.

I have bought some dresses and some PJs for them. When I showed them to Brian, he commented on how happy I was to finally buy girl clothes. Yes, I am! I am guessing on sizes at the moment, but I figured at least one of them will get to wear it. They are small for their age, so it is a guessing game. We will get monthly updates and weights, so as time gets closer hopefully I will have a better idea.

Well that is about it for now. I will post more pictures as I get them and keep you updated on our progress. Hopefully by this time next year, we will have them! Please have them and us in your thoughts and prayers! This was God's plan, not ours!

Love,

Allison

FYI

God's Littlest Angels website has changed names and has been updated and changed. Check it out...

http://www.glahaiti.org/

Waiting

Sorry it has been so long since I posted, but all has been quiet. We are currently in the waiting for our referral time, which means waiting on finding out who our daughter is going to be. This process normally takes 2-4 months, but there has been some delays down in Haiti. The govenment is adding some steps, so the process is taking a little longer. The orphanage can't get the kids they have to their forever families, so no new kids are coming in. The process is now taking 3-5 months, which is still pretty fast. Thank God I have two kids already or I would probably be going crazy. Brian and I watched American Idol last week, where they showed the poverty of kids all over the world. After watching that, it made us want our daughter all the more. All in God's timing and His timing is perfect! The following is from Dixie, who is in charge down in the Haiti orphanage....

UPDATE April 26, 2007
We are unable to give new proposals as quickly as we always have done them. We used to give a proposal to a family within 1 month of their dossier arriving in Haiti. Today, it is taking 3 to 5 months for a proposal. Due to some delays with adoptions, we have not been able to send children to their forever families for a couple months. This means that we have no beds to take new children into the orphanage. We have to turn them away.
We have 32 children waiting for passports. The Ministry of Interior, responsible for approving the passports, has added a step in the process. They did not tell anyone that they were adding this step; however, no adoption passports have been approved since January. Finally in early April, we were told that the lawyer needs to fill out a form. They have since changed their mind, and now anyone from the orphanage can go to the Ministry of Interior and fill out this special form asking for the child's passport.
The form is very long, asking for a lot of information about each adoptive parent. LaDawn spent one whole day this week just finding the information for the forms, so that Terriot can go and fill them out. Of course, when he arrived with 32 forms, they would not receive him and gave him an appointment for Friday, the 27th. They told him they could not do all of them in one day, and he would need to come back three days next week to get them all filled out. They will not give us the forms so we can fill them out in advance. Rather, we must fill them out sitting with the person in charge of doing the form.
We are praying that once we have filled out and submitted these forms, that the passports will be approved quickly and we can get some children home and beds opened up!
Parquet is better, but still not going quite as smoothly as we would like. We have heard that they are adding lawyers (commissioners) to approve the dossiers. They added one person already and immediately we received a dossier that said the parents could not adopt because of a problem! It was sent back to Parquet and a commissioner that had been there longer fixed it. However, we fear there might be more problems until the new Haitian Adoption Law is legalized.
Now, having said all of the above, we did take in 4 children this week. Two are newborn babies that we felt needed to be taken in now. Please pray with us that we can get passports quickly and children out of Haiti to their forever families. Pray that we can find beds for the children coming in to the orphanage. For those of you waiting for a proposal, I look at your dossiers every day. I have not forgotten any of you! Hopefully, I can start giving out some proposals in the next week or two. Once children start going home, then we should be back to normal on giving proposals and families will not have the long wait.
And Life in Haiti goes on...

We are one of the ones waiting on our proposal. Pray that the process speeds up, so that these kids can get out of the orphanage and into their forever homes...
Love,
Allison

History

We decided to start a blog on our adoption process, because we realized that we were not reaching some people with our progress and repeating ourselves with others. This way we decided to put any changes and updates into our blog and then people can stay updated when they are interested. Don't worry you can still ask us how things are going, we love to talk about the adoption progress and the excitement we feel about adding a daughter and sister to our family.

So let's start from the beginning. Why adoption? I (Allison), being adopted myself have always felt that adoption was something that I wanted to do. Brian and I discussed it, even before we got married and felt it would be a great way to add to our family. Once God gave us two wonderful little boys, we decided that we wanted to experience what it would be like to have a daughter as well. Not wanting to get pregnant again (plus we know God would grant us another beautiful boy, not that there would be anything wrong with that), we decided to do what we had always discussed doing and that was to adopt.

We probably would have started this process a lot earlier, had Pfizer not shut down in Holland and Brian not lived out of state for six months. Once Brian landed a job again back home with Mead Johnson, we decided to begin thinking and praying about adoption. We went to Mexico in October of last year and decided to wait until after that to really start pursuing it. In November we went to an informational meeting given by Bethany Christian Services in Holland. They discussed both domestic and international adoptions. At this time we had no idea which direction we wanted to go. The only thing we knew for sure was that we wanted a girl. After this meeting, we made an appointment to meet with a social worker at the Bethany offices. We went in and spoke with a domestic adoption coordinator. The one thing that she said that really struck us was that by us already having biological children, we would be taking a child away from someone that possibly cannot have children. This made us think about why we were doing this. We wanted to provide a home to a child who really needed one. She asked us if we would consider a child of a different race. We said, "yes". As that time she brought in a international adoption specialist. We spoke to both of them about the possibilities of an African American child or a black child from another country. We went home from that meeting with a lot of things to think and pray about.

We prayed and prayed about it and finally decided to go international and after looking at all the countries, we felt God was really calling us to Haiti. Looking at all of the different countries, something always came up that deterred us from choosing that country, some were cost, length of stay in country or length of time for us to get our child. But the one that really spoke to us, and that helped us make our decision was the story we heard of a baby dying in his mother's arms. You see Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere and many of the people there are malnourished and are poverty stricken. This mother was taking her child to the orphanage, because she had no money to feed him. The orphanage was full and could not take the child. As the mother was talking to the orphanage workers, the child died in her arms. This story stayed with us and we felt that it was God calling us to adopt in Haiti.

God didn't make it easy on us though. Shortly after we made this decision and began our application process, Haiti made a few changes. One of the officials down in Haiti changed positions and the new official decided to go by the books. One of their rules is to not let families that already have biological children adopt. Our social worker told us to start thinking about another country. We did and agonized for a long time, because we truly felt that this was where God was calling us. In the end we decided to wait to see if this Haitian official would realize the amount of children that needed homes and would relax the rules again. Once we decided to wait, God answered us quickly and a few days later Haiti opened back up. Yeah!!!

From there it has been full steam ahead. After our application (which is very large and very personal), we went into the home study process. This involved a series of interviews with our social worker (also very personal), one involving a visit to our home to meet the kids. Once this was done, our social worker wrote up our home study and it was ready for the next two steps. One was the immigration paperwork and the other was the gathering of the dossier. They involved blood work, doctor's visits, psychologist visits, visits to the police station, pictures taken, etc. We also had to wait on certified copies of our birth certificates and marriage certificate. Everything all came together on the same day a few weeks ago and I ran around like mad getting it all off. We mailed off our immigration paperwork and on the same day I got the dossier certified by the state, so that it could be sent to the translator to be translated into French (Haiti's official language). This involved going to Grand Rapids and going to the State Seal office, Kinko's, and the Grand Rapids Bethany office. This was all done on a Friday and the translator had it back to us on the following Monday. On Monday we gathered everything and sent overnight to the Haitian Consulate in Chicago to be certified. They got it back to us by Friday of that same week and I was off again. I gathered everything for the dossier, brought it to Kinko's and had it copied seven times (that was fun!). I then drove to Grand Rapids again, dropped everything off at the Bethany office and made it home for Brison's bus with two minutes to spare! The Bethany office looked it over and the dossier was got off to Haiti. They received it on Monday of this week and now our wait officially begins. Whew! We thought these steps would have taken a lot longer.

The paperwork will first go to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Haiti where everything is legalized, this takes about 4-6 weeks. We also begin to await our referral, which should take 2-4 months, this is when we find out who our daughter is going to be. The whole process takes about 12-16 months, so we are hoping to have our daughter home by Summer of 2008.

Today I just got our fingerprinting appointment for immigration, which is part of the paperwork that eventually has to go down to Haiti.

We ask that you pray for us and continue to do so throughout this whole process. God has been faithful and a lot faster through these steps then I could have ever imagined. Now comes the hard part, the wait! The paperwork made me feel in control, now I have to rely on others to do the work for us. This is where God wants us to lean on Him and He will deliver us our child in His timing and not ours (which is always best!). We will continue to post, as things happen. When the paperwork goes from one place to the next, they keep us continually posted, so we know what stage we are at. I hope to post pictures when I have them, hopefully I will be able to do that. If not here, then on email. Thanks for reading and praying for us! If you want to check out the orphanage from where we are adopting from, please go to God's Littlest Angels website at
http://gla-missions.org/index.htm

Love,
Allison