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!