Non-Objection!

So Ella, our wonderful Beagle, needed to go outside this morning super early. Like 4 am early. I kept telling her to wait, since I still had about two hours before I had to get up for work. Well, at 5 am, I finally got up to let her outside. After she did her business and got some water, I decided to check Jeff's email, just to see if our lawyer in Rwanda, Agnes, had emailed him. 


That's when I saw it. It was a long name, beginning with a "K" and my heart started to leap, almost out of my chest! I ran over to Jeff's side of the bed and told him to "Get UP!" He thought something had happened to Ella or that there was an emergency.


We both opened the email at the same time and saw it. Our Non-Objection (Approval to Adopt) Letter was in Jeff's Inbox! They like us, they really really like us! The letter says that we are approved for 1 to 2 children and that the rest of the adoption process should take about 2 months.


We are looking possibly at Mid-May for travel. Please continue to pray for our child(ren) in Rwanda. We are coming as fast as we can little ones! Also, we need to make sure we are here for Andrea's Graduation from high school, so we can't be in Rwanda during mid-June. 


We are just so excited and can hardly wait to show some pictures of our little guy, girl, guys or girls! God is just awesome! We know that He has the perfect little ones for us; the children that we need and who need us. 


Thank you all for your support, prayers and just being here for us and going with us on this journey!

Progress

Just a quick little note. From what we can gather, the Ministry is working on or around #61 and is processing dossiers in record time. This is amazing news! I could be a full fledged mom before my birthday! What a great gift that would be! 


Here's to a great rest of the week!

Lucky Number 7

So last Sunday was our 7 month mark. No additional news at this time, other than we are a month closer to meeting our child, holding them in our arms, giving them kisses and hugs, and just being so in love we don't know what to do with ourselves. 


Thank you to eveyone for your prayers and words of encouragement. We are so thankful to have so many wonderful people in our lives. 

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!