And our NUMBER is....

83!!!!


They are currently working on #40!


This is AWESOME news!

1/2 a Year...6 Months and Counting...

Well, it’s now been six months since our dossier was submitted. In the last post, we thought that all of the dossiers would be processed by the end of the year. Unless God is planning to have the dossier reviewers work at warp speed, it will more than likely be mid next year before we hear word about our child(ren). I know that there are many other families that have been waiting much longer than us, but it is still a little bit of a bummer.

When you are pregnant, you have an end date. It may vary one week earlier or later, heck even two, but at least you have a light at the end of the tunnel. Our tunnel just keeps growing and the light keeps getting a little fainter. I know in my heart that our child is over there; the perfect match for our family and the child that God wants in our family. I just wish the timing were mine! That’s not too much to ask, right?

I have been slightly more emotional around babies. I am happy for all of my friends and family that have little ones. I LOVE kids! I think it just gets a little harder to handle when you want something so much, and you are getting it, just not fast enough. I know that God’s timing is perfect. Maybe it’s taking longer because the mother of our baby hasn’t decided what to do yet, or he’s not born. The list could go on and on, I just wish it was now!

I know that God’s hand has been in our journey up to this point and I know that He is still running the show – not the workers at the Ministry, processing the dossiers, not our POA, not the government and certainly not me. I look at other timelines of potential adoptive families. Some of them took over 1 year to get their dossiers done. We started in February 2010 and it was in Rwanda June 2010. 4 months! That’s unheard of! God was there, pushing our paperwork through, and putting the right people in our path to lead us in the right direction. Everything went soo fast, so I figured this would too. It may still go fast as some people wait over a year for their referral, I just was hoping we were still on God’s super fast track.

We do know that this was our last Christmas as a family of 4. There will be 5 (or 6!) stockings hung on the mantel next year. We will have cookies for Santa, read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, and we won’t get to sleep in! I am so looking forward to that, I can’t even describe it! I want to thank all of my family and friends for going on this journey with us and keeping my spirits high.

Thank you for your prayers and thoughts. I love each of you very very much!

Four!

We had our 4 month anniversary on Saturday the 23^rd. We are still patiently waiting and have been told by the US Embassy in Kigali that the dossiers should all be processed by the end of the year. This is fabulous news! The Rwandan Government has decided to become Hague compliant with their adoption process, so they stopped accepting new dossiers on August 31^st. Ours is somewhere in the middle of the stack, but we don’t know what our number is for sure.

It’s exciting to think that our baby has been born and is just waiting for us to come get him (or her). It’s hard to believe that this time next year, we will be planning a Halloween costume, getting ready to celebrate the holidays as a family of 5 instead of 4 and just having a blast with our new little one.

We are just so thrilled to be sharing this experience with all of our family and friends, and appreciate all of your unending support! We will keep you posted on our progress!

Still Waiting...

just not so patiently! I know that it's only been 3 months (3 Months on September 23rd...) since our dossier was submitted, but it seems like forever! I wish we knew where we were in the line of applications, not that it would be any better, but some part of me thinks it would be easier if we knew how long. 


We are planning another Garage Sale Fundraiser in the near future, we just need to gather enough items to have a full-fledged sale. 


Have a wonderful week!

New Orleans Trip

We recently took a whirlwind trip to New Orleans for Alex and Lauren’s (sometimes spelled Lauryn). We were able to celebrate their day with them, but we also visited a few other places while we were there.

Alex & Lauren were married on Thursday, September 16^th and our whole family was able to go out there and share their special day with them! Joe was even a groomsmen and he got to walk 2 bridesmaids down the aisle!

Alex is like a brother to all of us, so it was an emotional and happy time for our family! We are looking forward to getting to know Lauren better and making some great memories with them!

Here’s a few pictures of my family before the wedding in New Orleans!

We took some pictures in the Lower Ninth Ward during out stay. It was a good experience for us all to see the devastation and the rebuilding process. It was also good for Jeff to see where the people he helped with the Red Cross after Katrina came from.

We also got to experience the swamp. Alex’s friend Jason went with us since his flight left around the same time as ours. It was great to have him along for the ride! Now, we thought that the swamp was going to be smelly, dirty and full of bugs. We couldn’t have been more wrong! It was beautifully serene, the bugs only come out at night and we got to see alligators! It was awesome. Here are a few pictures of that.

We ended our time in Louisiana by visiting a few Plantations. We didn’t have enough time to do the full tour, but we were able to take some pictures.

All in all we had a wonderful time! We hope our next family adventure is to AFRICA!

Waiting...

Well, our Dossier has been in for almost 2 months! Staying busy this summer has helped with our impatience when it comes to wanting to meet our new baby so desperately. It’s hard to imagine that he or she is over there (probably born by now) and is just waiting for us to come get them! I know the reason behind the dossier (to stop human trafficking, making sure that we are not crazies, etc), but it’s hard to believe that the key to our baby is sitting on someone’s desk and is just waiting to be reviewed.

We were so excited to hear of some airlines offering adoption fares! We even worked it out so that Andrea & Joe would be able to come with us to get their brother or sister. Well don’t get excited too fast…the adoption fare is around 65% off (awesome!) BUT, you have to buy the most expensive ticket to get the discount. So, you end up actually paying more for the ticket than if you just purchased a regular one without the discount.

Now Phase 236 of this process starts: FUNDRAISING! We are trying to raise enough money to get at least Jeff & I over there and an absolute bonus and opportunity of a lifetime, would be to get Andrea & Joe there too! We are going to hold our first Adoption Garage Sale at the end of the month. We have some amazing friends who have already donated items for us to sell, but still need more. If you live relatively close to Ventura and have some items that you would like to donate, please email me! Our family would be forever grateful for your generosity!

Also, if you know of any great airline deals or special code words we could use to get the best deal around or maybe you own a international airline company and would love to help us get to AFRICA, please let me know!

Thank you to everyone who has been praying and will continue to pray for our journey. We love and appreciate each and every one of you!

It's In!

Our dossier was formally submitted to the Minister of Gender and Family Protection on Wednesday, June 23rd! This is an amazing step. It only took us 4 ½ months to get to this point! It’s becoming so real, that we could get the email with our child’s picture and history at anytime now.

What’s next? We wait…and wait…and wait a little more! We also need to save, save and save!

Thank you to all of our family and friends who have helped us along the way! You are all going to be Uncles and Aunties very soon!

Much love,

Jeff, Maddie, Andrea, Joe and Baby Hendrych

Blessings from God

Our dossier is off to Rwanda! It should be in the hands of our lawyer by Tuesday, so please keep its safe travels in your prayers. FedEx doesn’t insure the actual value of the contents, only the materials inside. So basically, they would buy us a ream of paper.

Let’s back up a few days. We received our certified dossier from our courier in Washington DC (Dependable ACS – Totally AWESOME experience!) this past Friday morning. I waited until Jeff was home from his trip so we could open it together. After we got over the shock of it being here, Jeff actually read the letter from the Embassy. He noticed a slight typo (really not a typo since God is fully in charge of this ENTIRE process!). Instead of it reading:

“The couple has expressed a desire to adopt one child, 0-2 years old, or a sibling set, 0-3 years old,” it said: “The couple has expressed the desire to adopt two children, 0-2 years old, or a sibling set, 0-3 years old.”  After hyperventilating for a few moments, Jeff was able to calm me down.

From my conversations with Becky and Suzanne, the only way that an adoptive family would get two children is if they specifically asked for two. Since our home study said one and maybe two, we figured it would 99.9% be a single adoption. While this single sentence doesn’t guarantee that we will get two children, it certainly has opened up the door.

We knew that it may be heading this way because we got two identical cribs & changing tables from two completely different families; two almost matching gender neutral swings and playpens; and everything else has seemed to come in sets. Is this typo merely a coincidence? –or-  has the door been opened to have our world changed by two beautiful children?

Another bit of exciting news was an email from our lawyer, Agnes, who said that Rwanda is hiring a group of consultants to help process the backlog of dossiers. This means that instead of the minimum 6 month waiting period, we could get our referral much sooner. We should be a larger family before the end of the year!

It’s amazing to watch God in this entire process. His hand has been in every aspect. Any time we have had a challenge, He has conquered it for us. Any fears that we have had, he has put us at ease. Our pastor talked about pressing into God this past Sunday. When you feel alone or scared or unsure of where you are going, press into God and your path will be revealed to you; He will guide you. It’s become more and more evident as we go through this process that we are pressing into God, fully trusting in Him, to the N-th degree. We are trusting Him with our family, finances, safety, worries…the list goes on and on. I think we have both always known that God will never let us go, but this is the first time as a couple and a family, that we are surrendering every aspect of our lives and His provisions have been more than we could have ever imagined.

Last year was a rough year. I wanted to be a mom more than anything. Maybe it was the ever-looming birthday that is coming this year. Maybe it was that all of my friends were having or had had babies, and it seemed like every woman I saw was pregnant. I wanted to be happy for all of them, and I was (honestly!), I guess I just wanted to be part of the club. Andrea & Joe are wonderful kids, but I’m not their mom. To them I’m just Maddie. I wanted someone to call me mom. I was in a sad place, feeling a little deserted by God. Why had this desire been put into my heart? Why had I had to go through two unsuccessful pregnancies? I knew that He hadn’t abandoned me deep down, but I was beginning to want to start a pity party.

As I look back, I had to go through all of that so that I would be able to fully appreciate this adoption. I want this more than anything in the world! I knew that Jeff and I would adopt, but my plan was all laid out. We would have already had a few kids and then we would add to our brood. I’m at a place in my life that if this is the only way I will be able to have kids of my own, I will be completely content! (I will miss not being able to wear all of the cute maternity clothes though!) I feel like I will be able to help other women who want to be moms and have kids, see that adoption is just as good! You aren’t less of a woman or wife or mother because you didn’t carry them in your womb. It’s just a different way of being a mom!

Sorry for the long post, but my mind is racing! The bottom lines are:

1. Dossier is sent to Rwanda

2. Rwanda is trying to process them sooner, rather than later

3. The door has been opened for more than one baby

4. There is a huge possibility that we will have our baby/babies by the end of the year

Our family would like to thank you all for your continued prayers and support! We wouldn’t be this far without it!

Adoption UPDATE

Everything is going so well with our adoption! Our dossier is currently in Washington D.C. at the Rwandan Embassy, getting certified. We should have it back by the end of this coming week and have it sent off to our attorney in Rwanda by Friday! Jeff & I can’t get over how God has just placed the right people in our life at the right time, to help guide us through this process. I’d like to give a special thanks to Suzanne Watson and Becky Fisher for all of their help!

Please keep our finances in your prayers. We are starting to save up big time for the travel expenses as well as all of the fees we will incur when we are in Africa. Also, Joe has expressed a deep desire and calling to go with us to Africa to bring his brother (he’s convinced it will be a boy, and chances are, he’s right!) home. Please pray for a softening of hearts, so he will be able to go!

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers! They are WORKING!

Andrea's First PROM

Andrea’s first Prom was May 1^st and I got the opportunity to get her ready! Let me tell you, this was an exciting day! We borrowed the dress from one of my co-worker’s daughters (Thank you MaryAnn & Katy!) I knew that Andrea was going to love this dress the minute I saw it (her favorite color is ORANGE), but she still had to try on all of the other dresses in order for her to figure out that this was the dress.

We got her nails, hair and make-up done. Then, we came home, figured out the dress (the back is beautiful, but a little crazy to hook), and then had everyone over to our house to see her off. It was nice to be able to have all the sets of Grandparents over – Jeff’s Mom, my parents and her mother’s parents over, both sets of parents, sisters, brother, two cousins and Adrian’s dad. It was a full house, but Andrea said that having everyone over was the BEST part of prom. That just warmed my heart!

Here are a few of the pictures from her special day!

Andrea & Joe

The CRAZY back!

Andrea checking the hair in my Grandmother's Mirror 

Andrea & her date, Adrian

Wonderful, Amazing, Unbelievable News!

God’s timing is AMAZING! We would have never imagined that we would have our approval this fast! It took 8 days to get our approval letter from the U.S. Government, not the 5-7 months that we were originally told. This is just wonderful. Our family is so excited to be moving ahead at light speed! We are now madly trying to get everything notarized and figuring out what to do next. We made our checklist tonight and Jeff and I want to have everything done by the end of next week! We know it’s a tight schedule, but we know now that anything is possible!

Praise God for His help through this journey and all of our friends, family and prayer warriors! Our baby (or babies!) is already so loved! I can hardly wait to meet him or her and introduce them to everyone! We’ll keep you posted!

Easy, Breezy, Biometreezy!

Our appointments were on Friday, at 9am & 10am. We both showed up at 9, not knowing what to expect at all. We were the first and only people there besides the workers, so they took us back at the same time! It was PAINLESS! We each got fingerprinted again – this is for the FBI Database – and we were done from start to finish, within 20 minutes!

Jeff got to check in with the nice lady at the counter, where he got instructions and a smile. I got a grunt from the Security Guard who forgot to tell me which parts to fill out (she said the white part, but the entire sheet was white!) but she did make sure to look at my hands…It was interesting to say the least.

So, what’s our next step? We wait for the approval.

According to the USCIS, we have about a 5-month wait for our approval letter. This was slightly discouraging, as our Home Study will need to be updated if we have to wait that long. During my research, I found a new mom who has just adopted from Rwanda. She was able to go directly to the Los Angeles Field Office and pick up her approval letter roughly 2 weeks after being fingerprinted. I was ecstatic when I saw her timeline and sent her an email. I wasn’t really expecting a reply since she probably gets a ton of emails a day (it’s like striking gold when you find someone who has gone through this process already), but I nearly jumped out of my seat when I saw that she had replied. She lives nearby and said that she would be willing to meet and/or talk on the phone. I can hardly wait to meet her son and pick her brain as to what worked & what didn’t, and things that she wished she would’ve known. She is an amazing woman and I am so glad that she emailed me back!

Our new prayer is that we will be able to go down and pick up our approval letter by the end of the month and have a dossier ready to go roughly one week after the approval. Please continue to pray for our baby or babies in Rwanda. We are so excited to see how God is going to work through this adoption and in our family!

Biometrics

Maddie and I received our appointment notices to have our biometrics taken. Not sure if this is simple fingerprinting or not, but I'm hoping it doesn't involve turning my head and coughing. Either way, it's progress and we're excited.

The best part about this whole adoption process is watching Maddie. She's so excited. This week she said she was restrained, having only purchased four pieces of baby clothes. These were the ones she "couldn't live without." These four will join the hundreds of others organized in color-coordinated totes.

Happy Easter Everybody!

The Good, the Bad and the...Hope

By Maddie

GOOD = Our application is officially in the hands of the US Government

BAD = I called the Immigration Office and they said the processing timeline for the Los Angeles Field Office is 7 (Yes SEVEN) Months.

HOPE = When we logged in to the Website with our receipt number from Immigration, it said the wait was more like 5 months.

I think God is reminding me who is in control and who’s timing I need to be following. We are soo excited for this to happen and have waited so long to be parents together, that I think it is easy to forget who is really in charge. With God, anything is possible, so government timelines really don’t mean a thing.

I can see and say all of this now, but on Monday, when I heard 7 months, I was bummed, sad, semi-crushed. I had to leave work early (yes, I had a headache, but I had a heartache too). This morning, Jeff sent me a verse and I think it was just what I needed. This verse has always touched me, but it is so true for where I am right now.

“For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.” Jeremiah 29:11-12

Once we know more, we will be able to get a better timeline from our caseworker. We have great friends that have already volunteered to write letters and call our Congressmen and Representatives to help push our application through. It never ceases to amaze me how God puts the right people in your life, just when you need them. I have so many wonderful friends and family that have given our family support. I cannot name them all, but Christine, Cindy and Krista have been great through this. I love you all so much and am excited for you to meet your new niece(s), nephew(s) or both! 

Exciting News!

By Maddie
We’ve got some exciting news! Jeff and I have decided to begin a new phase in our family. We are moving forward with adopting a child from Rwanda! We just sent off our home study and application to the Department of Homeland Security this morning. We are hoping to have a new little one running around the house within the year. Andrea & Joe are both very excited to have a new brother or sister.

Adoption is something that Jeff and I talked about before we got married. We always thought that it would be something we did in addition to our own biological children. We are following God’s lead and starting with adoption. We wanted to wait until our home study was complete and on its way to being processed by the US Government before we made the announcement.

There’s still a long journey ahead of us, but we’ve made it over the first few hurdles. It’s amazing to think that our baby is out there, just waiting to be matched up with us. We pray that they are safe and warm, fed and loved, but most of all, ready to be part of our family.

We’ll let you know as we find out more information. Our current prayer is that our application moves smoothly through the process of review by the US Government and does not get hung up for any reasons. Thanks for coming along this journey with us!

Grace

For the last few years, when it came to "Our Church Home," our family had been one of nomads, trying a different church every so often. No place ever really felt like a home to us, where we could see ourselves growing in our faith as a family and serving God to the fullest. Well, we are happy to announce that...

We have finally found a new Church home! God's plan is always so divine...nothing is ever just coincidental! I met Pastor Tracy and his wife Jen at Vons late one evening while my friend Brooke and I were being the Crazy Coupon Ladies. They both asked what on earth we were doing and by the end of the conversation, I had Tracy's business card. A few months later, Jeff saw a church group doing a car wash for an upcoming Mexico Missions Trip. When he got home, he was telling me about how happy they all looked and what a wide variety of volunteers were washing, from young to seniors. That's when he asked me if I knew anything about Grace Church.

I thought for a moment and then remembered my shopping adventure. We couldn't deny that God was directing us to at least try out Grace Church. We were both a little nervous, going to a new church and not really knowing anyone. Would they like us? Would they be friendly? Would they even notice we were there?

Our fears were immediately put to rest when Pastor Tracy and his wife Jenifer (yes, only one "N") came up to us BEFORE Church even started and personally welcomed us. We felt blessed, extremely blessed. A few visits later, Tracy and Jen came over to our house, just to visit with us for dinner and answer any questions that we had about Grace.

Well, we've now been going there for about 9 months and are so happy that we're finally home. It's a small, humble church, but it is overflowing with God's love and grace. It just goes to show that God really does have a plan for each of us, no matter what the situation. He knew the perfect timing of it all, when we would be ready and receptive to Him. I can honestly say that the Hendrych Family has grown, both in God, each other and into our new family at Grace Church.