Close?

On Tuesday we received an exciting e-mail from our adoption agency that we should keep our phones on as a few families from the crèche we plan to work with in the North received referrals last week.

This step of the process should go something like this:

IBESR signs the last signature needed to our paperwork approving a referral.

At that point the clock starts to click down, as we will have 14 days to accept the referral.

Then IBESR needs to contact the crèche where our child/children live. This unfortunately can take several days. The crèche in turn contacts our agency.

The agency then needs to translate the child/children's information into English. Then the phone call should come.

Once we receive the referral we pray and decide if we will accept. A formal letter stating that we plan to accept the referral needs to be written and then signed in front of a notary.

The letter then scanned-back to the agency, translated and returned in some form to IBESR before the 14 days run out [not sure if that includes weekends or not.

So you can see things will need to move rapidly when we get our referral. For us the notary may mean a long 6 hours or so to the Embassy if we can get an Embassy appointment rapidly.

Encouraging news if it happens soon...as we just read that IBESR may be stopping processing any children's charts for up to 3 months while they work on the 1,200 parents charts waiting at their office.

Please pray!

Thankful for a reminder!

After I posted yesterday's update I considered that often filling in paperwork feels better than waiting.

Doing something feels like progress, even when mourning the fact that due to the length of the adoption process, the papers need to be done over.

Checking off the home study meant back to praying for patience...but wait a minute. A small uncomfortable feeling started to surface. That brain itch that tells you that you missed something.

After shutting down the computers for the night and completing our family devotions it came to me.

While Lindsay would send her report to Nightlight, we also needed to send in some papers didn't we?

Back to the computer. Searching the old e-mails. Found it!

Yes, a list of paperwork we need to send in that came in an E-mail the end of January.

Arriving between my parents leaving and our trip to Babaco/LaGonave I neglected to add it to the to-do list. As soon as we returned home Anna became ill, and we prepared and hosted the Warsaw team. The day they left we cleaned for the home study visit the next day!

Thankfully, I remembered last night. This allows us to get the papers filled in, copied and signed for tomorrow's mail run. Tomorrow we will head to Cap Haitian joining a medical team until Sunday afternoon.

Saturday will make two months until our I-600A expires. So a couple of months remain before the deadline but we do not want to cut the deadline close at all.

Nightlight responded rapidly to our request for help. In addition to the papers they need, we will also send the papers that need to go to the USCIS, and they will attach the additional papers and mail it in for us.

We remain very grateful for all the people working on our and our child/children's behalf.  

Social Worker visit

Thankful for all the prayers concerning our social worker visit.

Issues that came up while trying to set up  the visit included: no social workers in northern Haiti, finding someone willing to come [one possibility is stateside for the month of March], travel strikes, local protests closing roads, vehicle issues, flight costs, passport/visa issues/finding the time to come, finding a rider...

Despite all these obstacles the home visit occurred this weekend!

March 14, 14 months to the day after our chart entered IBESR.

Someone this week who entered 15 months ago received a referral!

Thanks to Lindsay for packing up son, dog and friend to drive 4 hours to visit us.

She will now write up the one page update needed by Rhonda, our original social worker based in California so that we can proceed with the paperwork to renew our I-600a paperwork.

Request for the I-600a extension will need to be submitted before it expires on May 21.

Monday, Cathy plans to bring our updated information to the post-office to send off to our US adoption agency.

So now, once again....we wait. Pray and wait.

Need home study update.

Our updated paperwork just needs to be put into a large envelope and addressed, as the team will bring it to the USA and put it into the mail.


We used a Haitian notary to complete it before we started getting busy with the team.

We located an American social worker to come visit so that she can write a one page update for the original social worker who did our home study. Unfortunately for us, due to vehicle troubles she has not yet been able to drive up to visit.

Praying we figure out a way for her to visit soon or we'll need to start to look for someone else.

The paperwork needs to get to CA, assuming notarized, and the gold seal added before being sent in to the US government office.

Due by May 23.

Continue to wait for our referral. Think the step after accepting the match is to write a letter stating our intent to adopt the child/children and that will need to be notarized as well.

An Embassy meeting is scheduled to occur in Cap Haitian on March 19th. Many reasons we'd like to match by then but one would be so we don't need to travel the 6+ hours, overnight to get one letter signed at the Embassy....but will do it if need be.

After then we would schedule our two week bonding trip. Over one year ago we started the wait for our referral.

We continue to wait.

Last week the countdown to our USA trip started with the purchase of tickets for June 12th.

Trying to wait well, trusting in the Lord, in His plan.....but it is hard. Getting harder.

Please pray for us. Pray for us to have patience. To increase our faith. For the Lord to open the doors and make a way for our family to grow according to His plan. No delays from the devil.

[Photos-my new Amazon lily (Eucharist lily). Fitting as we just celebrated 20 years after our engagement in the Amazon rain forest of Brazil.]