Quick Update

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted, but I guess we have had a newborn in the house!  He is doing so well and is a very sweet and content baby.  His big (15-month-old) sister loves him to pieces and loves giving him lots of kisses on his big chubby cheeks...as do the rest of us!  I would be lying if I would say this hasn't been a big adjustment, but having a wonderful family (baby gifts, house cleaning, meals, prayer) and very supportive church family (clothing, meals, and more prayer) has been our lifeline.  Now looking back, it'd kind of funny - the day we found out about Wil we were so perplexed as to what to do.  But now, only two months later we can't imagine life without him.  We love him like crazy and are so thankful that God brought him into our life (we are also thankful that he is sleeping 7 hours at night!).

As for Shana, we have been signing a lot of papers and have a lot more to sign, but we are hopeful that her adoption will be finalized by May or June.  It's a little anti-climactic how they finalize it: Her 'file' goes to court, the judge approves it, and they send us something in the mail.  Not quite how I would do it, but you can be sure that the day that document comes in the mail this mama will throw a BIG party and celebrate the official addition of this precious babe to our family! Sometimes I think I'm almost as excited for her to be dedicated, though.  I have actually sat in church with tears in my eyes as other families have been dedicating their babies to the Lord, praying that one day we would be able to do the same with Shana.  I can't wait.

And then there's the Haitian adoption...Our dossier (adoption paperwork) arrived in Haiti in February, was approved by the orphanage director, was sent for legalization, has returned from legalization and we are now impatiently waiting for our proposal!!  In the mean time I pray for our little ones every day, I imagine how excited I will be to get the phone call (and the e-mail with photos and information), I imagine how I will tell Kevin and how excited the kids will be, and other than that I try to live my life as normal as possible.  Thankfully my life is very full and it keeps me well occupied!

Sorry, no deep thoughts or touching quotes about adoption today, just a quick update to keep everyone in the loop.  But if anyone out there is thinking about adoption, it really is not as scary as it seems - it's very beautiful and very exciting.  If you are interested there is going to be an adoption information session at West Edmonton Christian Assembly at 7:00 PM on Monday, April 16.  And now I'm off to do the midnight feeding!

God bless,
Lee-Ann
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Unexpected Blessing

It was Wednesday and I was baking cupcakes for our daughter's first birthday...and then the phone rang.  To my surprise, it was our fostering agency letting us know that Shana had a baby brother, born last Friday, and would we like to take him?  This was such a shock to us as we did not even know that Shana's birth mom was pregnant.  Kevin and I both had the same first thoughts: What...in...the world...are are we going to do?!  This was so out of the blue - this must be what women feel like who go to the hospital because they feel ill and end up giving birth, not having known that they were even pregnant.

We decided that we needed to tell the kids as they help out a lot and this needed to be a whole-family decision.  Their reaction was one of pure joy as they jumped around  the kitchen asking "when can we get him?!".  I must say, we were pretty surprised with their reaction.  These are not kids who romanticize what having a baby is like.  We have fostered other preemie newborns. They know how tired we get, how fussy the babies can be, and how much extra they need to chip in, but still they were willing.  Wow.  When I asked them why they wanted to do this they just replied "Mom, we can't let him go to a family who aren't Christians".

Kevin and I still had a lot of hesitations, and needed to pray and talk things out.  We dropped the two older ones off at Bible study and the two younger ones off at my brother's house and went for coffee.  We prayed together in the van and by the time we got to Second Cup we were both crying and feeling like we knew which way the Lord was pulling us.  As we chatted in Second Cup we talked about all of the things we are afraid of, all of our hesitations, and all of the ways this could affect our lives and our other children's lives.  But then we talked about Moses.  About how he was not expecting to see a burning bush that day.  About how he was asked to do something that was beyond himself.  About how he had to step out in faith, in spite of his fears and feelings of inadequacy, and about how God used him to do amazing things for the Kingdom of God.
We felt a lot of clarity and decided that there were two obstacles in our way of taking in this little one, but if God could clear those up, we would go for it.  Then I told my husband how proud I am of him for being willing to do this, and he said it was a good thing God didn't show us his full plan for us while we were dating or he probably wouldn't  have married me!  Funny guy.

So today, a little more than 24 hours after finding out about this precious little guy, the two obstacles have been lifted, the shock has diminished and is being replaced with joy and excitement, and we feel a peace far beyond our own understanding.  God is good.

Tomorrow we get to go see little Wil and we'll do what we did when we went and visited his "big" sister just barely a year ago in the same NICU:  We'll lay hands on him and pray God's healing power over him, that he would grow up to be someone who loves Jesus with his whole being, and that he would fulfill the great plan God has for his life.  But first I need to go on Kijiji and find a double stroller and another crib!

God bless!  We covet your prayers for our family and our new little boy.

Kevin & Lee-Ann
Carter, Jaelynn, Hunter, Shana & Wil

Is it possible to miss someone you've never met?  While I had a wonderful time with my family in Arizona over Christmas, I couldn't help but think of my little ones in Haiti.  I thought of them a lot on Christmas Day and was wondering what they did to celebrate.  Even though I do not know who they are, my heart was aching for them; wondering if they had a stocking to open or if anyone had told them of Jesus Birth.  Imagine my delight when I went on the God's Littlest Angels website and saw that they had decorated cookies, hung stockings, made decorations, decorated a tree, put up the nativity scene, and, most importantly, re-inacted the nativity story.  I love it! And I love God's Littlest Angels.

Decorating the tree with hand painted pine cones

That's some serious baking!

Can you imagine sewing 110 stockings?

    

The Nativity Story

A Few Thoughts On Adoption

I've been reading a great book lately, "Adoption For Life - The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches" by Russell D. Moore.  A few things have really been sticking in my brain:

1.  Jesus lineage in the Bible is not traced back through his biological mother, Mary, but rather through his adoptive father, Joseph.

2.  Satan works at trying to create orphans, and God works at redeeming them.

3.  "When it's Jesus versus the self, babies are caught in the crossfire.  And it's always that way."

4.  "The protection of children isn't charity.  It isn't part of a political program fitting somewhere between tax cuts and gun rights or between carbon emission caps and a national service corps.  It's spiritual warfare."

Pretty thought provoking stuff - I love it.

Our Dossier is DONE!

On Wednesday (Nov 30) I received a package from FedEx at about 10:00 am that contained the French translations of our documents!  I quickly went to Staples and began photocopying 7 copies of everything, sent photos to Walmart of our house, inside and out, as well as a family photo, then began stapling, paper-clipping, and collating all 17 documents (X7) with English on the bottom and French on top.  After putting it all together, checking and double-checking, I finally finished at 6:15 pm!  Whoosh!  What a day!  But it was all worth it because on Thursday I took our whole dossier downtown to Adoption Services to be sent to Ottawa for Authentication (4-8 week process), then, it’s off to Haiti!  It has taken us 6 months to get to this point and I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel!

I have to say though, aside from when I was stressing, I was often thinking “this will all be worth it when we can bring our little ones home”.  Adoption is a great labor of love and I am honored to be making this sacrifice for my two children, whom I do not yet know.  As I was working through the mountain of paperwork I was also praying that the Lord would use our story of adoption to inspire others to follow suit.  We certainly can’t adopt all 147 million children in the world, although I’m sure some think we’re trying, but if our story inspires even 5 other families to adopt, think how many little lives could be changed!

The other blessing in all of this is that I was able to forward all of our scanned documents to our foster daughter's Case Worker, who forwarded it to the Adoption Worker.  She said they have opened an adoption file for us and this will really speed things up!  Yay – one set of paperwork, three children adopted!  God’s timing is perfect!

Things have been going well, but we still have such a long way to go.  Some items that could use some prayer are:

- That our paperwork would not just sit on someone's desk being ignored, and that all the right people would see it and sign it at the right time (even though it is in Ottawa over Christmas).

- With our match only being a couple months away, that God would begin preparing our little ones for our family so that when they get here they would feel like they are coming home.

- That our domestic adoption would go smoothly and be finalized quickly.

- That our finances would be blessed and not have to be spent on things like broken vehicles, accidents, or those unforeseen, out-of-the-blue things that can cost loads of money - we just can't have our money going to things like that right now!

- That God would prepare our hearts and the hearts of our other children for the unique needs of our adopted children

- That many more families would open their hearts and their homes to children in need.

One thing that kept me motivated this week was a huge praise report for my sister's adoption!  Tammy and her husband Daryl got matched with their fourth child this week!  He is a beautiful little 16-month-old boy from China's Waiting Child (special needs) program, however his special need was a hole in his heart that has self-repaired - praise the Lord!  Isn't he perfect?!!

        

    

This is one pretty proud Auntie! Someone said to me a few weeks ago "adoption is so impossible".  Well, I'm not going to lie, it is hard, but it is not impossible!  And the joys and blessings of it are so worth the effort!  Thank the Lord for this new precious little life that will not only be introduced to his new family this Spring, but will be introduced to the love and knowledge of his Heavenly Father - the course of his life has just been drastically changed!

Yeah! Yipee! Hurray!

Our Home Study finally got approved by Adoption Services!!  So Friday I went and picked it up and arranged to go to our lawyers office to get it notarized.  I sat in the lawyers office for three hours while they made seven copies of several documents and then signed and put their seal on every single page (the assistant said it was almost 500 pages of signing and sealing).  I'm sure they love me there.  Now some might be thinking "three hours at the lawyers office?  Why didn't you leave and come back Monday morning to pick it up?", but all the adoptive moms out there are thinking "I totally get that!".  See, as adoptive moms our paperwork represents our children, and we don't just want to leave it with anyone!  I've actually laid awake at night thinking "I should go get our adoption file and keep it by the bed just in case there's a house fire in the middle of the night".  Sounds crazy, right?  It's no more crazy than after we had our first newborn.  The first few nights after we put him in his crib in his own room I actually slept with the baby monitor on my my pillow until Kevin convinced me that no matter how close I had it to my ear I would never hear him STOP breathing.  So this mothering journey, whether with my biological kids, foster babes, or adopted children is just one big long lesson in letting go of control and releasing it to my very capable Heavenly Father - at least for this mom it is.

So the next step for us now is to get the remainder of our paperwork copied 7 times, putting the whole thing together, with the French translations attached, and sending it to Ottawa for Authentication.  Some friends of ours just finished this step and said their stuff was in Ottawa for about 7 weeks.  So hopefully, if I can get this stuff out of here by the beginning of December, we should get it back and sent to Haiti by the end of January??  Here's hoping!

Some other exciting news is that God's Littlest Angels (our orphanage), posted on their blog that they just completed their first post-earthquake adoption (keep in mind there were no adoptions happening for several months after the earthquake).  Typically in Haiti, after you get your proposal (aka. referral, match), it takes 9-12 months before you can travel to pick them up. However this adoption only took 8 months between proposal and travel!  We have heard that the adoption process in Haiti has sped up some in the last few months, but this confirms it! When you are waiting for your little ones to come home every month, week and day counts!  We are so thankful for this news.

Some have been asking about our domestic adoption (adopting our foster daughter).  I haven't posted anything about that because nothing has really happened yet and we are just waiting for the adoption worker to contact us to begin the process.  But the other reason is, with fostering there are a lot of confidentiality issues and I'm not sure yet what I can and cannot post, so I'm playing it safe and not posting anything, as of yet.  Thanks for asking, though.  In the meantime we are just enjoying having her in our family and watching her grow and develop beautifully!

Anniversaries, Rats and Home Studies

So my husband and I went to the mountains this weekend to celebrate our 18^th anniversary!  Some people at this stage in their marriage might renew their wedding vows, but for Kevin and I it goes more like “don’t you leave me with all these kids, or I’ll hunt you down!”.  It’s not quite as sentimental as a vow renewal, but it’s very meaningful to us.

On our way to the mountains we discussed how, with the prospect of having six kids in our future, this would probably be one of the last times we can get away just the two of us.  We also talked about how we will probably never fly ANYWHERE when we have to buy eight plane tickets.  We also thought that we’ll probably never get invited to peoples houses…ever again.  Then to spiral our conversation further downward I told Kevin how I was reading the blog from the orphanage we are adopting from (God’s Littlest Angels), and how they had a list of tradespeople they would love to come for a visit.  On that list, one of the trades they are seeking is “rat exterminator”!!  I wish I was joking, but I’m serious!  Because we will be be staying at the orphanage both times we travel there, one of my first thoughts was “when we meet our little ones for the first time won’t they think it’s a little weird that I’m riding on Kevin’s shoulders?”  The other thought I had is “HOW IN THE WORLD AM I GOING TO FALL ASLEEP THERE?!!”  I think Kevin’s going to have to club me over the head, or buy me a full suit of armor…I’m only semi-kidding.

These are the fears we are working through.  These are the things our brains chew on when we lay in bed at night.  But then, morning dawns and we open our Bibles and read things like “I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you” (John 14:18) and we are reminded that the heart of God is passionate about rescuing orphans and that when we join him in this work we are being the very hands and feet of Jesus.  Jesus touched lepers, you know.  Jesus travelled to the slums and ate dinner with prostitutes and outcasts, you know.  Jesus suffered and laid down his very life.  Hmmm.  I guess I can sleep with rats (I can’t actually believe I just said that).

My spiritual side is constantly battling with my flesh.  Why do I think I deserve comfort so much when most of the world lives in such discomfort?  Why do I like it so much when it is the exact opposite of what Christ has called me to?  Pretty heavy stuff.

On a lighter note…I phoned Adoption Services today to find out what is taking our Home Study approval so long (what was supposed to take 4-6 weeks has taken 8).  I mean really, our home study shouldn’t take this long to approve – it’s probably one of the most boring home studies they’ve ever read.  In fact, I cannot believe that our social worker could come up with 20+ pages of information on us – she’s good.  Anyways, as it turns out, Adoption Services was waiting for some minor changes that needed to be made that our agency thought they already sent.  So now they sent them.  It will be ready by Wednesday.  Sometimes it just pays to make a phone call : )