What a trip!

December 22, 2012

Gideon's 7th birthday

 

Wow! What a trip we had. We travelled for @ 24 hours to arrive in Haiti. The airport was hot and more primitave but not as scary as I thought it was going to be. We were picked up by the man we were told would be there and off we went in an unairconditioned Ford Bronco. The drive is about 40 miles. It took us 1 hr and 30 min to drive it. I was in awe of what I saw. I saw everything you see in the pictures, the garbage, the small plastic covered boxes families live in, really skinny dogs, people selling all kinds of things. I also saw beautiful people. They were all beautiful in their own way. It was hard to see but I loved that I was there and tried to take in every sight to not forget it.

As we pulled up to the orphanage I tried to take in everything around the concrete wall. I wouldn't see outside of these walls again for 5 days. As we drove in the gate their were many children all around. I saw Gideon right away. I was scared for this moment when I would first see my boy but once I was there it wasn't scary anymore. It was natural. It was beautiful. I hugged him. I looked at him. I said "Hello Gideon" and touched him gently, "I am so happy to see you." The children immediately took all of our bags. They would not let us carry any of them. They took them to where we were sleeping. It was a bunk room with screens for windows and no electricity. A board came down to lock the door. It was great. In the past people slept in tents so this was fine.

Driving up- Gideon in red

The boys taking our luggage

 

We spent the next five days seeing how our Gideon lived. The food was plentiful. It was different then what we are used to but it was good. It was hot. You wanted to sit and get away from the heat but there really wasn't anywhere to do that. You just had to sit still in the shade. We got used to it but really enjoyed our nightly shower in the cool water.

Calvin reading to the boys

 

The kids gathered each night and sang worship songs and then a good night song. Then they would gather in their bunk room while someone read a story. Gideon had over 15 boys in his big room but he got to be with us while we were there.

Gideon was great. It was easy to see him fitting into our family and running around our house. He is generous, he is caring and thoughtful, he is smart, he is fluent in english which made things really easy. He was translating for us when others would say things. He loved playing games and watching movies. He loved being silly and laughing and smiling. He called Calvin "Coalvin" and water "Rotter" and lunch "lunsh", because of his accent. Calvin and I repeat those words often just like Gideon was with us.

It was hard to leave. I really don't know when we will go back. It was not an easy journey, physically, mentally or financially. What do you say when you say goodbye? I told him Haiti will tell us when we can bring him home. I told him we would take him right now if we could. Does a 6 year old understand that? I walked him back to his bunk with all the other boys. Those boys were so precious. They all clung to us all week. They were all asleep now except for Gideon who curled back up on his bunk with everything we gave him in an envelope and a bag. He knew as I did that one or two of the other boys would be taking a lot of it from him once they woke up and we were gone. We cried but it is as it is right now. I left knowing I would see him again, knowing God orchestrated every moment of this, knowing God is good and he loves this little boy so much. He has a plan and a purpose for this little boy and He is allowing us to be a part. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord that you did not allow me to sit back and be comfortable in our easy life. This life is not about being comfortable. You give us life to the full. Life to the full is not a comfortable life.

We wait now and pray. We pray that Gideon feels Gods presence. That he always knows God has a plan and purpose for him, that he will walk in peace through the waiting. We pray that God would move our paperwork through the Haitian adoption process quickly. We received the birth certificate we had been praying for. We are now waiting for 4 signatures and then it will go to the President of Haiti to sign. These steps can take months. After these steps are many more steps. We are expecting to be waiting for more then a year for the Haitian side of the process and then it will take many months for the US to do what they need to do for us to bring Gideon home. In the mean time all of the paperwork we have done to this point will expire and we will have to have it redone as each expiration date passes.

 

As crazy and complicated as it sounds I wouldn't change a moment of it. I listened to a broadcast on Focus on the Family. It was a couple who had been married and them divorced, found the Lord right after the divorce and then were remarried 7 years later. The woman said she didn't know why the Lord waited 7 years to bring them back together but she reflected on how she was taught new things by Him each year. She said, "If we would have remarried at year 3 I would have missed out on all I learned year 4-7". I wonder how much better her life is with her husband now because they got remarried at year 7 versus year 3? I want to learn more. I want to be exactly where God wants me when our son comes home!

"Lord, I never asked for this."

We are moving forward. God has been so present. I can't wait to see how this unfolds. When we received our dossier back from the translator it seemed there was no urgency anymore. It seemed nothing would happen if we got it done now or later. However, we wondered why we felt we needed to get it done before? Was God saying something different now?

No, it didn't seem like it.

I went and saw Beth Moore speak at our church. She has been a huge mentor of mine. She spoke on two stories in II Kings 4. The first was about a woman who was told to collect jars from neighbors. The more she collected the more oil God gave her to save her and her son. This was a story God had brought to my mind when I prayed about if we should continue our dossier. he was telling us if we did the hard work He would perform the miracle. The second story was of a woman who was fine and didn't feel she needed anything. The prophet Elisha wanted to give her something so he told her she would have a son. She had this son within the year despite her old age. Several years later this son died and she found Elisha immediately and asked "Did I ask you for a son, my Lord? Didn't I tell you, don't raise my hopes?!" It occurred to me that this is what I have been saying lately as adopting Gideon seemed to be slipping away, "Lord, I never asked for a son, you were the one to raise this hope in me!" Elisha went and brought the boy back to life. God will breathe life into what He has given us. What an encouraging word

So Jeb took the dossier to FedEx Tuesday night and paid a lot to overnight it to the Haitian Consulate and included a return envelope for them to send it back legalized. When he got back I asked why he paid so much to overnight it when it didn't matter how quick it was done? He said "I thought that was our plan?" Coincidence that I wasn't there to talk him out of overnight? I had planned to go with him. I was concerned about all of the money and that night we were told our fliphouse sold for cash. Coincidence? In the meantime we went to get passport photos at Costco. I thought we needed 6 each but Costco would only sell sets of 4 so we had to get 8 each. When I was putting our dossier together I realized we did need 8 each. Coincidence? As I said the fed ex was sent Wednesday and we had it back in our hands legalized Friday morning. This timing allowed us to overnight the finished dossier to our friend in Missouri who will take it to Haiti on Monday. Coincidence?

What will God do next.

By the way, we are flying to Haiti next weekend to meet our little boy :)

Wait, Wait, Wait, Wait, Wait...

It is hard to do. It builds ones faith. I wish I didn't need my faith built. Do I trust that God is good? Do I trust that He loves Gideon more then me? Yes I do but I forget and I fret and I stumble and then I remember and then I wait.

We were waiting and not doing anything then we felt we should get our Dossier done (our Dossier is the paperwork that is sent to Haiti to be approved for adoption). Many things needed to happen to get this done and it all seemed to fall into place. As I type our Dossier is en route to us through the mail from South Carolina, sent from a kind hard working translator that grew up in a Haitian orphanage. Once we receive it we need to send it to the Haitian consulate in Chicago to be "Legalized". We don't know what this does but it is another step and several hundred more dollars to spend. As soon as that step is done we can send it to Haiti. The problem is... we have no one to send it to.

Haiti is changing things. This should be a good thing for future adoptions but for those of us still at the early steps it is not good. No one knows what these changes are. No one knows if these changes will really happen. No one knows how this will effect us. Possibilities are: we can adopt from OLTCH but we will need a lawyer, we can adopt from OLTCH but we will need to go through an adoption agency (at this time, no agency works with OLTCH), and the worst possibility of all is OLTCH will no longer be able to have children adopted from it. The thought is that we should know the answer in mid- October which will mean we will have a lot more questions.

We can wait a few weeks more to find this out, but... we have another problem. We are flying to Haiti the end of September to meet our sweet boy Gideon for the first time ever. We are so excited to see Haiti and meet him but... should we go? Gideon knows of us and asks for us to come but what if he meets us and then we can't adopt him? It seems impossible to imagine but it is a possibility. We are praying constantly about whether we should go.

Please pray for this process with us. There are a lot of precious families still waiting for their kids to come home. Please pray for wisdom for us to know what steps we should take in moving forward and pray that it will be clear to us if we should go to Haiti as planned.

Thank you for taking this journey with us. It is a wild one!

I finally have a moment to update you on our journey. We received a letter in the mail that we our home study is approved! It was so exciting to get that even though it is still only the beginning. There are going to be so many more moments to be patient and to celebrate.

Now that Arizona has approved us we start working with a different agency that helps us put our Dossier (pronounced DOS- EE- AY) together. The Home Study is a part of this as well as a background check a psychological report, a medical report, financial reports, references, birth certificates, marriage certificates, pictures, our I600A and a whole lot of money :). We just sent off our I600A to the government letting them know we would like to adopt. This takes 2-3 months to come back so we will work on the other things in the mean time. Once it is all gathered it needs to be authenticated and translated to Creole and then it will be sent to Haiti. We are hoping it will be sent by mid September.

Gideon has been asking when we are going to visit him. Our friend let us know that he threw out October as a good month. October sounded good to us too so we are going to meet him on September 30 and will be with him until October 5th. We are flying to Haiti. Who does that? It sounds so crazy. When we get there we get picked up at the airport and are taken straight to the orphanage. While we are there we sleep in a tent and have Gideon with us the whole time.

We get many pictures and updates from fellow adopters. Please go to the website http://www.operationlovethechildrenofhaiti.org/. This is the orphanage Gideon is at. They are teaching him english and about God's love. It is such a blessing. They are getting ready to build on property they were given. They continue to need financial support for the new buildings and to help support the kids in a top-notch way. Samaritan's Purse is building a road to the property which is so exciting. Please check it out!

Speaking of financial help. I have no idea how to make my thermometer rise. That will be for another time that I have a moment to learn. We have been so blessed by several hundred dollars that friends have felt led to send. Wow! It is even cooler then I imagined to partner with you in this endeavor. I know there are a lot of prayers going up as well. Thank you so much!

Please pray for: Gideon to feel our love and God's love, patience for the process, me to not be overwhelmed by all that needs to be done and for a miraculous quickness of everything! We figure we might bring him home the mid to end of 2013.

Making a blog is very new to me. It has been quite frustrating to my non-techi mind. I also feel very hesitant about putting so much out on the internet. If you talk to me in person I will tell you everything you want to know plus a lot you probably didn't. I become very different when I am putting it out on the world wide web. I am not a story teller so I feel quite insecure about trying. There it is- my apology for my amateur blog. I am trying to push past my comfort zone for you. I want you to be involved and know what life is like in the world of our adoption of Gideon.

We are just about done with our home study. When that is turned in to the Arizona Court we wait for 1 to 2 months for them to approve it. Unfortunately, we live in the one state that does adoption this way. The other states don't have the court process so home studies are approved quicker. However, this will give us time to do the 10+ hours of education that our agency insists we have and that we can not move forward without.

You might have noticed the donate button on the side. I can not tell you how long that took me to figure out :). I now know that you can google pretty much everything. I kind of knew that but now it is ingrained. I was hesitant to put that. I in no way want anyone to feel obligated to give anything. I don't want anyone to think I am keeping track or feel it is your duty to help us in this journey financially. I simply want to give those who feel led to give to have the ability to do that. I still hesitated but the Lord reminded me of last Christmas. Our church offered a love offering that they spoke of for several weeks. This offering was for the building of a church in Haiti that was destroyed by the earth quake. The congregation was asked to pray about what they might give. The goal was $60,000. As the day approached we had decided we did not have the money to give. We were giving quite a bit to Haiti all ready and thought if we give any more it needed to go to help the orphanage Gideon was at. However, as everyone walked forward to give their gifts I was moved to give $20. I didn't do it out of guilt or obligation I did it because I wanted to be a part of what our church family was doing. When the church is built I can know God used me in a small way to make it happen. We ended up raising $80,000. $20 seems awfully small, but it was my part I was asked to play. Maybe you are being asked to play a part, even a small part, in this journey?

Our Journey with Gideon began about one year ago. Actually, it really began almost 9 months before that when some new friends came and lived with us for a summer while they were looking for a home to buy. Eric and Darci had planned for years to adopt from Haiti. Jeb and I had never thought about it once. We had thought about adopting but had never thought about from where or when. We knew God would make it happen if it was supposed to. As our friends began their process with adoption something in us became more and more interested until it became clear that the Lord was leading us to this one particular boy.

We began the process to adopt in March of 2011 only to have to stop everything in April when Jeb was laid off from his job of 11 years. Wow! We wondered what the Lord was doing. He seemed to speak to my heart a few days before we were to hear the dreaded words, "we have to let you go." He seemed to say "I am doing this because I love Gideon and he is going to need a father who is at home 7 days a week. This is how much I love him." At the time Jeb was gone 3-4 days a week for work. So we waited and He encouraged us often. Many job opportunities came and went. I often said to Jeb, "This job just doesn't seem to be the job God has for you because of the travel" and the job would not come to be. In July we started wondering if the Lord was asking us to move back to Arizona to be near our family. As we pursued that possibility doors began to open for us to start our own company here.

It was hard and easy to step through those doors. It was easy because we were moving near family and because the Lord made it very clear we were to go. It was hard because we moved ourselves and said goodbye to so many special things God had allowed us to be a part of. As we drove we had no idea where we would live or how to own our own business. It felt like a lot to figure out but of course, he all ready had it and has it figured out.

It is now a year later, we take one day at a time. We are learning as we go. The business seems to be on the right track. We have added new clients and Jeb is learning the ins and outs of pools very quickly. I had no doubt he would. Jeb and I are together cleaning pools 4 out of 5 days and enjoying it. They are very complicated luxuries that a lot of people in Arizona own. That is a good thing for us.

We have just begun the adoption process again. We had to change agencies and had to wait for that agency and Gideon's orphanage to get some paperwork in order. We are now good to go. We have received the mound of paperwork and have begun the enormous task of putting together a home study. We are so excited to get started. We hope that you will take this journey with us...