To Congo or Not to Congo

That is the question. The question that runs through my head over and over again all day long.

International adoption in DRC is very messy right now. The DGM there issues Exit Letters. An adopted child cannot leave the country without receiving an exit letter. However, in September 2013 the DGM completely shut down. This happened soon after a lot of articles came out about internationally adopted children being abused and rehomed. I don't think the DGM has ever issued an official statement about why they have closed, but this is believed to be the reason.

At first it was said they would be closed for up to 6 months. No one ever imagined it would take the full 6 months for them to open again. However, it has now been 7 months and there is no end in sight. We could start the process of an adoption there...get a referral, go through court in DRC, receive visas, etc. But could we ever bring the child home? Not sure. There are actually over 100 legally adopted children stuck in the DRC right now.

We're getting to the point where our home study is about to expire, so we have to decide if we want to renew it or not. I have researched adoption for just about every other African country out there and everything seems to be a shut door. Either we don't meet the age requirements for the country or they're in the same "messy" state as DRC and it is advised to not start an adoption there.

I emailed with one of our agency workers looking for advice. She said that DRC adoptions are very risky right now. But one silver lining/thread of hope we were holding onto was that a delegation from DRC was scheduled to come to the US from April 16-26 to meet with the Department of State. Everyone was really hoping there would be more information available after that meeting. Many families who have completed DRC adoptions were even going to travel to DC at this time to show how their Congolese children are safe, healthy, and thriving. However, yesterday the Congolese authorities announced that they would no longer be traveling to the US as planned.

So that pretty much crushed my spirit and blew away any hope I had left about us starting an adoption in DRC. We still have one potential lead with another country that we're looking into. But if that doesn't pan out, I think the idea of us going through an African adoption right now is done.

It hurts me so much to even think about that. Africa is heavy on our hearts. We can't imagine not doing an African adoption. I still collect African things while dreaming of creating a nursery for my girl. The other day Ari and Jude were both in my lap and Ari was playing with my necklace which has a charm on it with a picture of Africa. He picked up that charm and said, "See Jude, that's baby sister." Tears formed in my eyes immediately. We all dream of our baby sister from Africa.

I do believe that God blessed us greatly with the timing of Jude's adoption. I just know all this news and delay with African adoptions would be so much harder to take if Ari was the only child in our life. Jude came to us at the absolute perfect time. That blessing overwhelms me.

But there's Africa...still on my heart and mind every day. Please pray for us as we try to make the decision about what the future holds for our family there. Please also keep in your prayers the children and families affected by this exit letter shutdown. 

And Baby Makes Four

Since our sweet Jude Bug is almost 4 months old, I thought it might actually be time to update this blog about him. haha!

So yes, “baby brother” was born December 12th, named Jude, and is the sweetest blessing to our family.

We arrived at the hospital around 6:00pm on December 11th. However, he was a stubborn little boy and quite comfy in the first home his birth mom created for him, so he wasn’t born until almost 12 hours later at 5:23am. We stayed in the tiny labor and deliver waiting room the whole time. And even stayed awake the whole time because he really continually kept us thinking it would be “any minute now.”

We waited together with birth mom’s family in the waiting room. I waited some with her in the delivery room. We were all in constant texting communication with each other. We met Jude for the first time right next to her. I gave him his first bottle with us all in the room together. Over the next 24-ish hours after delivery and before discharge, we had rooms next to each other and visited often. It was such a tremendous blessing to share those moments, and Jude, during that time. I will never forget it.

Before she was discharged she came to our room to say goodbye. She was crying, I was crying, I think we were all a mess. There are just no words to describe what I felt at that moment and what all was happening. Some family members were in our room at the time and one of them said that seeing that moment, he felt and knew he was standing on holy ground. I’m bawling my eyes out just typing this. It was just very special and still leaves me pretty speechless.

We feel incredibly blessed to have these sweet boys in our lives. I was just telling Mike yesterday that it’s pretty amazing that we’ve had two successful adoptions in two years. I’m not really sure how many people can say that. Adoption can be expensive, stressful, lengthy, complicated, and unsuccessful. But here we are with two boys, within two years, through two pretty easy adoptions. We are truly and abundantly blessed.

(And now get ready for picture overload.) ;)

Sweet coffee cups my mom brought us.

Sleepy, but excited, eyes around 4:00am.

Ari meeting Jude for the first time.

My sweet boys!

First family picture! This was when we had been awake for about 32 hours, so please excuse the haggard look. ;)

Headed home!

Sweet newborn picture in his superhero nursery.
© Jenny White Photography

And a recent picture of my precious boys for Valentines Day.
© Jenny White Photography

Ch-Ch-Changes

About three weeks ago Mike and I went to the USCIS office in Oklahoma City to have our fingerprints done. This completed the process of filing our I-600A, the first big piece of government paperwork for international adoption. We were silly and giddy the whole time and just really excited about being one step closer to our girl.

A few days ago we received our I-600A approval in the mail. This means that we are now approved by the US government to adopt a child from a foreign country and bring them back here to the states. It also means that we are now able to be matched with a child through our agency. Such a big and exciting step! However, we are asking our agency to hold off on giving us a referral right now and here's why...

About six months ago someone contacted me and let me know that they were pregnant and looking to place their child for adoption. Now, let me tell you this...I, obviously, have a passion for adoption, but I also have a passion for birth moms. I love and respect them so much. So I was really excited to talk with her and give her any of my advice and support I could offer.

Over the months one thing kind of led to another aaand...she has chosen us to be the adoptive parents to her baby! So yes, we are now on plan to adopt a baby boy here in the states in early December. The due date is a little less than 10 weeks away. We are shocked, thrilled, honored, and excited. And I mean seriously, talk about an honor. I never expected this when she and I first started talking, so what an honor that she wants us to be this part of the process and journey now. And though I'm sure Ari isn't quite sure what it all means, he absolutely loves talking about his "baby brother" to come!

So the million dollar question is, "What about Africa now??"

I wish I had a solid answer I could give you. All I have is our thoughts and plans for this moment and here they are: We still have a passion for Africa and Congo. We still believe strongly that our daughter may be in Congo. So we are not closing out our international adoption process. We are still keeping everything current with our Congo agency, but just asking that they hold off on giving us a match/referral right now. We are doing this to simply give ourselves some time to adjust to having a two year-old and a newborn. Because heaven knows, that's going to be an adjustment!

How long will we be asking them to wait on giving us a referral after the baby is born? 2 months, 6 months, 1 year? I don't know. We're just going to wait and see how things feel once "baby brother" is with us and then take things from there.

For a personality like mine, that's difficult to do. I like rules, structures, and timelines. So this is certainly giving me an opportunity to put more faith in God and His plans for my family. I wish I knew exactly what was going to happen, but I never saw this coming in our path and wow, what a blessing it is!

So our faith and family is in God's hands and we will just take it all one day at a time.

My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name.

On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand; all other ground is sinking sand.

Progress

It has been a crazy two weeks for our family. The quick run down is Ari got tubes put in his ears, we had our carpets cleaned, Mike and I celebrated five years of marriage, we celebrated Fathers Day, we had our home study, we had to travel to OKC for an adoption orientation, and then we had a two day garage sale. Phew! I'm exhausted. But it feels SO good to have all of that done. Definitely a big step forward in progress.

Our home study visit went great. It's always a nerve racking experience leading up to it, but things are just fine once all is said and done. I was pretty nervous about having a home study with a toddler in the house this time, but he did really well, even though he woke up sick that morning.

Our garage sale fundraiser went great! We raised $887 from it! Some people were very generous with donations and some people still wanted everything for a quarter. haha! But we still came out very well. Three moments during our garage sale really touched me... First, a man who owns a used bookstore close to us stopped by. He paid way more than my suggested price for our books and then paid $10 more on top of that. Second, an Ethiopian woman came to our garage sale (we advertised everywhere that this sale was for our adoption from Africa) and she paid four times my suggested price on something. She asked where we were adopting from and when I told her Congo she said she was hoping it was Ethiopia, but she was still happy about that since they're neighbors. :) And third, we posted an advertisement picture for our garage sale on Facebook and asked everyone to share it on their pages. 75 different people shared it! That's a huge blessing on its own. But then a man we don't even know and lives in a different city saw the picture and mailed us a check.

I said this on my Facebook page, but there are so many times that adoption leaves me breathless and speechless. We are SO blessed!

And as a puzzle update, we have sold 9 more pieces! We're almost to 50 sold total. 954 more to go!

How to Donate: We are selling the puzzle pieces for $10 each. If you can, please donate money in-person or by mail. If that's not possible, you can click on the "Donate" button on the right sidebar under "Adoption Donations" to send money via PayPal. Please add your name(s) in the special note to sellers. Thank you!

A Few Updates

Doing a weekly puzzle fundraiser update has proven to be pretty much impossible with having a toddler in the house. That's been made kind of obvious since the last update about this was a month ago. But here's a new one for you!

We have sold 17 more pieces. That puts us at 37 pieces sold total, so only 963 more to go! And, as you can see from the fundraising thermometer on the left, if/when we finish this puzzle we will already have over half of our funds together! This is very, very exciting for us. So spread the word!

I love my late night evenings of working on the puzzle with this guy.

We almost have two whole sides done!

How to Donate: We are selling the puzzle pieces for $10 each. If you can, please donate money in-person or by mail. If that's not possible, you can click on the "Donate" button on the right sidebar under "Adoption Donations" to send money via PayPal. Please add your name(s) in the special note to sellers. Thank you!

Another fundraiser that happened in the last few weeks was Congo prayer bracelets. A very sweet friend asked if she could make and sell these for us. We, of course, said yes! And they have done very well. It's such a cool thought to think of so many friends, family, and people we don't even know wearing these.

And for my last update, we finally have our home study scheduled!! I never would have thought it'd take this long to get the initial paperwork processed and the visit scheduled, but now it's only two and half weeks away! After our home study is done and we have the official report, we will file what is called our I-600A with the USCIS. Hopefully just a few weeks after that we will have our fingerprints done at the USCIS office and then we are able to accept a referral! It could be months and months before we actually receive a referral, but it will still be very exciting to be in the phase of being able to accept one. Love seeing some progress be made in this long process.

That IS My Child!!

Back in February Mike and I attended a marriage seminar along with several couples from our church. It was called Love Worth Fighting For and featured Kirk Cameron and Warren Barfield. As much as the middle school girl inside of me loved seeing Kirk Cameron (in fact he sat just two pews behind me for a few minutes!), it was actually Warren Barfield who had the biggest impact on me.

First of all, if you haven't heard him explain his inspiration behind writing the song "Love Is Not A Fight", you really need to! (This is the song that was the theme to the move Fire Proof). I will quickly explain the background of the song, but it's nothing compared to hearing him explain it...

Basically, he and his wife got into a fight over something incredibly stupid. But the fight then brought up every frustration they had been holding against each other for years. He said they stayed about into the wee hours of the night fighting, screaming, and yelling. When they each had said everything they could, they just sat and looked at each other in a "Now what?" type of situation. They decided that if they were going to stay together in their marriage, they had to fight for it just as hard as they had just fought against it. That simple idea really stuck with me and has been so great. I have to fight for my marriage harder than I've ever fought against it. I just love that!

And if you haven't heard the song, you really need to listen to it. Powerful lyrics.



But then when he really got to me is when he started talking about Food for the Hungry, an organization focused on ending world hunger. Warren Barfield was talking about how he got involved with them by doing a monthly sponsorship for a few kids. After awhile he decided to take a trip and see first hand some of the kids receiving sponsorships.

When we were at this seminar I knew that international adoption was our next step. This was actually about the point in time where I had been spending a couple of weeks researching Congo like crazy and crying every night. So with that in mind, I was extremely emotional listening to him talk about his trip to see all these needy children. And then he took it up a notch...

He said he was actually telling this story at another marriage seminar and advocating for these children, but apparently it bothered a woman. She came up to him afterwards and basically told him that she hadn't paid money for the evening for him to try to make her feel guilty and she didn't appreciate it. He said he was speechless. But that he wanted to say to her, "What if that was your child's picture on this packet? What if that was your child having to daily fight for water? Wouldn't you want everyone to pay attention and help them out??"

At this point I was an absolute bawling, ugly cry, mess of a person. I'm telling you, I was weeping and sobbing. All that was going on in my head was, "That's my child! That is! THAT IS MY CHILD!!"

My child is somewhere in the Congo right now and is potentially hungry, thirsty, and in desperate need of a hug. They are so worth the cost, the paperwork (and paper cuts!), the time, and the advocating. They are worth it all and deserve it all.

A few weeks after that a friend posted this video on my Facebook. It sums up all my thoughts so well on the Christian call to care for orphans. That. Is. My. Child. And I can't wait to have them in my arms.

Puzzle Update - Week 2

In Week 2 we have sold 14 pieces! That makes for 20 pieces put together total. We almost have the whole bottom edge done!

How to Donate: We are selling the puzzle pieces for $10 each. If you can, please donate money in-person or by mail. If that's not possible, you can click on the "Donate" button on the right sidebar under "Adoption Donations" to send money via PayPal. Please add your name(s) in the special note to sellers. Thank you!