A Christmas Miracle

I have been following the missionary (Angie) at Maison's blog for a little while now. Recently she posted how she had been collecting ruble from the streets in Haiti. The rubble was being sent to a mission for unwed mothers in the states called The Oak Project. The Oak Project's mission is to advocate, restore and bridge the displaced, lonely, afflicted and the fatherless to authentic community and acts of service that build healthy, sustainable lives rooted in the love of God.  It's based on verse 3 of Isaiah 61: “..to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.”


The Oak Project took the ruble from the horrific earthquake and made something beautiful out of it. Here's a picture of some "rubble-wear" that I received this week along with a beautiful gift Stephen received from a colleague.  Along with the jewelry was a picture of this lady and this is what was written on the back: "This is our friend, Matte. She washes clothes at Maison orphanage. Your contribution helped us pay her lease for the next 6 months. You have played a part in keeping a roof over the head of her and her family. Love wins, The Oak Project. There was a card 
inside that said Your Rubble-wear makes a difference....
1.  because LOVE protects, defends, restores and is active
2.  it will keep conversations about Haiti active in your community 
3.  100% of proceeds help restore the hearts & homes of our Haitian friends
                                    4.  the ladies of The Oak Project joined 
                                    with local artists and made them
                                    5.  the caretakers of Maison orphanage                    
                                    gathered this rubble from their own 
                                    streets. 
Pretty cool huh? Here's the website if you are interested. Each necklace is only $ 20. www.theoakproject.com/rubble-wear


I bought a necklace for my mother and mother-in-law. I emailed The Oak Project early in the week because I was checking on the status of my order. I received an email back almost immediately and this is the miracle conversation that took place ........

Hey there!

We are so sorry for the delay. We had a HUGE response and the ladies have worked so hard to get them complete! We have been overwhelmed with joy at the response people have had!

Your order has gone out.  It went out on monday. A few people who we mailed to on monday have already written and said they received the order so my guess is that you will have it tomorrow!

I'd love to hear how you like your rubble-wear!

We love your feedback.  I hope you have a beautiful Christmas, Naomi.

Me--That is AWESOME! So glad you had a huge response. I love what you are doing and thank you so much. We are adopting 2 children from Haiti so this will be a precious gift to my mother and mother-in-law. 

You have a beautiful Christmas as well! 

are you really!?!?

I am adopting too!  SO CRAZY!

He sets the lonely in families!

Love well, 

Kelly Chambley 

Me--That IS crazy! Are you adopting from Haiti too? It's quite a process, but I know it will be well worth it. It's an honor to follow the Lord's leading and give a child a family and a home. Blessings on your journey. 

 yes!  that is lovencia and me.  She's my girl!   Are you adopting siblings?

She's beautiful! I can't wait to finally hold my kids. I just have pictures to hold for now. Our little girl is Lydie (6/5/09) and our little guy is Samson (5/24/10) They are not related. They are living at Maison.

I just became a "fan" of The Oak Project on Facebook. What a wonderful ministry. 

NO WAY!

YOU ARE GETTING LYDIE AND SAMSON!!!  THEY ARE AMAZING!

OH MY GOSH!

where do you live?

that is insane!  they are PRECIOUS!  I have so many pics of them!

WOW!!! This is an early Christmas present! I can't believe you know them!! We live in Independence, Iowa. Where are you? 

Chattanooga, TN!  I'm gonna send you some pics...WOW.

and yeah, they are two of the most popular toddlers when we are there. Everyone adores them. They are GOOOD kids. Actually, samson didn't even have a name when he arrived and the american girl (angie) who serves there named him and she regards him deeply in her heart. They are so well taken care of.  They are lovely lovely lovely!  I'm going back in february and I'll take pics for you. :)

and LYDIE IS A CHARACTER!

Kelly sent me 21 pictures of our kids that night. I couldn't believe it. What a gift. We got pictures of Samson when he just arrived and precious photos of them sleeping in their cribs. We suspected Lydie was a "character" and the photos Kelly sent reflected that.  Merry Christmas friends!!  I know many of you are praying for us and this is evidence that your prayers are being answered. 

Christmas while adopting

We've experienced a whole host of emotions during this season. We've been going through adoption training through our agency and we are aware of the grief and loss experienced during the process. We asked about sending gifts to our kids. The response we got back was if you send toys or clothes to the orphanage know that they will be shared with everybody. Of course, we wouldn't want it any other way. It's not fair for one child in the midst of many others to have something that the other kids can't play with. But we were given the opportunity to send a picture of ourselves to Lydie and Samson with a Christmas card. We bought them cards that played music when you open them up. It will probably annoy the nannies but hopefully will put a smile on the kids faces. Before we mailed the cards and pictures we prayed over them and asked God's blessing on them as they see our faces for the first time.

This is the hard part and we were warned about it by our home study case worker. We know that this Christmas they will not be with us and we are told we will be lucky to have them here by next Christmas.  But, the Lord grants us patience and he's working on the details of getting them home to us soon. Thankfully most of our family members are close by and we are so thankful for their love and support. This week my parents and I were watching a video on youtube from the orphanage the kids were at and my dad exclaimed "there's Lydie" and sure enough, there she was, my first live picture of my daughter moving and breathing and holding onto a young teenage short-term missionary. I'll post the video soon with a description of where she is in the video soon.

I post how we're doing not so you can feel sorry for us, please don't. But so you can understand the process and to pray with us as we are on this journey. The Lord never promises an easy road, He just promises to be with you while you are on that road. He's brought people in our lives like you to help strengthen us and we are so grateful.

Our Kids

Well, most of you know by now about who we are adopting from Haiti, so I thought we should finally make an official blog post about it!

In late October we were sent files on 3 children. One child was from and Lifeline orphanage and the other 2 were from Maison des Enfants de Dieu orphanage in Port-au-Prince. During that time Stephen and I were extremely busy going separate directions and hadn't had the time to sit down and prayerfully consider our options. We had been approved by our home study agency to adopt up to 3 children. The only stipulation was that the children would need to be from the same orphanage. When we initially opened the children's files, the first file we opened was of a little boy named Samson. I immediately fell in love. He was wearing a little red Google shirt (probably donated by Google) and had a sweet smile. He was born in May of 2010. The next file we opened was of a little girl named Lydie. She was born in June of 2009.  She looked spunky and her big brown eyes melted our hearts. Stephen felt a tug in his heart immediately for her.

We had been told by our agency that Maison's fees were a little more expensive than Lifelines. We were kind of feeling at that point that we would have to choose between Samson and Lydie. As the week went by, neither one of us felt settled in our hearts as we prayed and talked about our decision, so on Friday, October 29th we sat down and made our decision. We were supposed to take a leap of faith and adopt both! Immediately when we made that decision, both of us had tremendous peace in our hearts. We got home and called our agency and told them the good news. They were very excited for us and at that moment it became official.

Tonight, we received an email from the Haiti Program coordinator from our adoption agency, here is a little piece of it:  I am really excited to work with your family! When I lived in Haiti, I spent a great deal of time at Lydie and Samson’s orphanage where I also adopted two children from. I remember Lydie quite well…she is a beautiful child and was one of my favorite kids to play with at the orphanage. I had the pleasure to meet Samson in October and November when I was in Haiti…he is also an amazing child! I am really excited for you and consider it a privilege to work with you on bringing them home to join your family.

Potential travel dates and latest violence

If you watched the national news tonight you heard about the latest violence in Haiti over the recent election results. Once again we entrusting our kids to the Lord. We haven't received any updates on the orphanage, but we trust that mighty angels from heaven are standing guard protecting those precious babies.

On a happier note, Stephen, in his excitement to hear about the next step emailed our agency yesterday with lots of questions. We have some potential travel dates to share with you!! Of course these dates are not solid at all and still depend on our Dossier approval in Haiti. But we could potentially be making our first trip on 2/13-16 or 3/13-16. Right now American Airlines has cancelled flights and both airports are closed in Haiti because of the violence, so hopefully things will improve by then. We covet your prayers as always.

We've been approved by immigration!

Just got a letter from the Dept. of Homeland Security today. Our application to adopt from Haiti has been approved. This was a very quick response seeing that we just had our fingerprints done last Monday! Praise the Lord!

Hooray!!! Celebrate with us!! Dossier is sent to Haiti!!!!

Hi Stephen and Naomi,

I just wanted to let you know I FINALLY received your dossier back from the Consulate, completely legalized!  So our team has bound your dossier together and we have mailed it toHaiti!  Hooray!

We’ll let you know as soon as we have confirmation the package was received by Maison’s processor, so you know it made it there safe and sound!  J

In the meantime, I think this is great reason to start the celebration!  J

Congratulations,

Kim 

Bad fingerprints

We had our appointment in Des Moines yesterday for our biometrics scans. On Sunday my family's group sang in Ackley, IA then Stephen and I took off for DES Moines. We arrived at the Drury Inn at 10:00. The next morning we woke up early and ate our complimentary breakfast and got on the road. The Federal Building was just 15 minutes from our hotel but allowed a lot of extra time in case of bad traffic. We got there with 1/2 hour to kill so we sat in the car and listened to talk radio.

We went in the building and I had to get wanded because of the metal in my boots. We made it up to the 9th floor where there was a small gathering of Hispanic people waiting for the office to open up. We filed in and were handed a simple form to fill out. We had an advantage being English speakers so we got ours finished before anybody else. Stephen was the first to go back. He was done in no time. Then it was my turn. The lady started getting my fingerprints and she began to get very frustrated. Then she told me I didn't have very good fingerprints at all. I kindof chuckled and she snapped back quickly and said "no, that is not funny" then repeated herself again and said it wasn't funny. She said people who work with a lot of paper products or do a lot of typing wear their fingerprints off which makes it very difficult to capture. She finally finished with me after several tries and I got teased the rest of the day about it.

We got done at about 8:30 and headed back to NE Iowa. We had both planned to be back to work at noon that day so we had a little time to stop by the Tanger Outlet mall before having to go back to work.

Lots of new updates!

We got a little anxious this week about where our Dossier was in the process so we emailed our adoption agency. They wrote back that day saying we had great timing and our Dossier had just been finished getting translated into French late the day before! We were told that the next step for our Dossier is to be sent to the Haitian Consulate in the United States. They "legalize" it and send it back to the agency. She said this process usually takes 2 weeks. Once the agency gets the dossier back they send it to Haiti!!! So our Dossier could be in Haiti early December!

Next Monday, November 29th, Stephen and I are scheduled to get our biometrics scans in Des Moines at 8:00 a.m.  My family has a concert in Ackley the day before so we are going to drive down and stay at a hotel Sunday night. It's going to be a busy week!

We were excited to see an email from our agency tonight of new pictures of who we are adopting!  Cute, cute, cute!!!

For His Glory Outreach Blog: Hurricane Tomas Update

For His Glory Outreach Blog: Hurricane Tomas Update: "Thank you very much for your prayers regarding the hurricane. The Lord hears and answers our prayers. This verse is a reminder of the power ..."

Hurricane Tomas to hit Haiti

Please pray for the people there. They have been through so much this year, earthquake, cholera, and now this. We depend on the Lord's protection.

Maison des Enfants de Dieu orphanage - Afternoon praise and worship.3GP

Stephen and I have made a decision about who we are adopting. Right now, just our immediate family knows about it, but this is a worship service from the orphanage we are adopting from. Please pray for these ladies as well.

We will share with the rest of you about our decision when the time is right. The Lord has blessed us and we are extremely excited!
Stephen & Naomi

Letter received from Dept. of Homeland Security

We got a very official looking document today stating that the USCIS will schedule a biometrics appointment for us to have our biometrics electronically captured at a USCIS Application Support Center. We should be receiving a biometrics appointment notice by mail with the specific date, time, and place where we will have our fingerprints and photographs taken.

Sounds scary huh? We will definitely be "on the grid" now! Yikes.

The latest...

We had heard from Judy late last week about the two orphanages that CCAI is working with currently. The orphanage names are "Lifeline" and "Maison" Maison is quite a bit more expensive than Lifeline.  Judy said she didn't want to start sending us files and have us fall in love with a child and realize we can't afford it.  We told her we were open to both orphanages. She replied back today and said we should start receiving files by the end of this week or early next week. This is all quite surreal right now. It's hard to imagine that we may soon be looking at a photo of our child(ren) very soon. We are completely relying on the Holy Spirit's leading at this point. It's all we can do.

Stephen took a half day today to get some adoption things done. He's been blessed with tremendous health so he's got oodles and oodles of family sick leave that his boss has allowed him to use for adoption reasons.  His taking time off was definitely the leading of the Holy Spirit as we heard from CCAI about our Dossier today and there were a few corrections that needed to be made. One correction was a line in our home study that they wanted fixed. Stephen got in touch with our home study agency right away and they sent him a new copy immediately. Then, Stephen's birth certificate (a tiny, cute little thing in the words of Kim, our Dossier specialist) needed to be a full sheet of paper. For some reason Stephen's birth certificate was this tiny little card and even though it's legit, CCAI felt Haiti wouldn't think it was legit. So he drove up to West Union to get a new copy. The Fayette County Recorder's office was super helpful and had it all ready to go when he arrived. The last thing that needed to be fixed for the Dossier was we both forgot to sign our passports ...ooops and duh!! So we signed those tonight.

Stephen also completed the I-600A form. This form is an application for advance processing of orphan petition. It's for immigration. It gets sent to Texas with a big check and then Texas sends it to some place in Missouri. We're not sure how long that process will take, but the immigration office will contact us when it's complete and they will tell us where and when to get fingerprinted (again). There is a lot of redundancy in government. Even though we've been fingerprinted for the FBI, it's not good enough for immigration.

We just keep jumping through the hoops! ...

Important call received on Thursday

Our adoption agency called me and wanted to start the preliminary process of child matching. She acknowledged our Dossier had been received and wanted to get my feelings about the addition to our family. She asked if we were interested in a boy or girl, or whether we would be interested in twins (yikes) and what age group. It sounds like we can pretty much ask for what we feel would be best appropriate for our family. Of course, all of this will have to be taken before the Lord in big time prayer and we would appreciate it very much if you would pray along with us as we make a decision. We have some follow up questions for our agency. I believe they will be sending a packet of information for the kids that we get to review and decide from. The thing we have to keep in mind is the age of the child. They are still telling us the wait is up to 2 years, so if we pick an older child, they could be 5 by the time we get them, which is something we would like to avoid. The younger the better.

How long?

In case you are wondering how long it takes for the next step, we're not exactly sure. The adoption agency doesn't like giving timelines in case things change. What we do tell us is that once the dossier legalization is done and sent to Haiti, it usually takes around 3 months to get matched with a child. That means, we could be matched with our kid (s) around Christmastime. We were thinking that would be a pretty cool Christmas gift.

The Lord has really been showing me a lot of neat things lately. As some of you know I have been reading through the Bible chronologically this year, something I've never done, but was inspired by my sister-in-law Selena. I have been so impressed through my reading about how important the decisions we make are and the lasting effect they have on our lives and the lives around us. I have also been doing a Bible study on the book of Revelation with my friend Rita. We've had such a good time studying that book and there have been many new things I've learned out of that study. One thing I learned is that our greatest enemy, Satan, has access to Heaven and stands before Jesus accusing His saints. When I learned that, I became even more conscious about my decisions because I don't want my sin to be used by Satan as ammunition. Rita brought up a good point recently out of a message she watched online. The speaker said when you choose to sin, you are really choosing sides. You are choosing the side of your enemy, and I don't want to do that.

Stephen and I live a pretty comfortable life. We are debt free, we have good jobs, a nice home, great friends and family. Our relationship is solid and we aren't tied down to anything. I believe, that if we hadn't made this decision to adopt, it would have been sin in our case. The Holy Spirit was speaking to our hearts and we responded. It was what the Lord wanted us to do. It's not an easy road. We could have easily ignored God's guidance and continued to live our comfortable, uncomplicated lives. But He wants more for us. He wants us to trust Him and take this leap of faith. We know that the hardest job in the world is to be a parent. We also know that it has great rewards. But the greatest thing I can do in this short life I have is be obedient to my Father and honor him. Of course, you know that I'm not saying adoption is everybody's calling, but it is ours. And we boldly say "yes" to Jesus and allow Him to lead us over the next several months.

We're so grateful that you are along in this journey. So many of you reading this blog played a role in getting us to where we are today. We still have our many shortcomings and failures, but I am so grateful for Godly examples all around us who encourage us to keep the faith and not give up. We covet yours prayers, especially during the child match process. We love you all.

Time for a new hobby

Our case worker told us when we met a few months ago that when our dossier was complete, it was time to get a new hobby. The work is out of our hands now. Tomorrow the dossier gets mailed to CCAI, our adoption agency in Colorado. They will read and review it meticulously three times. Then the whole shebang gets translated into French and sent to Haiti. We are completely at the mercy of agencies and governments now. We've been told the waiting can be hard, therefore it is a good idea to take up a new hobby. Luckily Stephen and I start playing volleyball next week. Our regular winter league through the school district starts on Wednesday and we've decided to join another league that starts in October through the YMCA in Cedar Rapids. We can't wait!

Documents faxed for certification today!

You gotta love the State of Iowa. They are the only state that we know of that doesn't require original documents mailed to them. It makes it pretty convenient for us because I was able to fax the packet of stuff to them from work. It was about 28 pages worth. The Secretary of State will look over the notary signatures and certify that they are legit and mail us the certifications. Then we attach those to the original documents. They charge $5 per certification, so that's not too bad. Hopefully they will get them done quick (I am concerned because it's election season). Once we get those back we will send everything to our adoption agency in Colorado.

Dossier is done!

We have completed the paperwork for our Dossier!! We have been so blessed so far. Our agency told us the "paperchase" takes 4-6 months to complete but the Lord made a way to get everything completed in exactly two months. We took all of our paperwok to Veridian on Saturday where we had our documents notarized. The people we have worked with through this whole process have been so kind and helpful and our friend at Veridian was no exception. This week we will go through the documents one more time and then entrust the US Postal Service to get everything to Des Moines to get certified.

Adopting Sofia Part 2 (watch part 1 first)

An inspirational video

Praying for Haiti

Hurricane Earl is on a path to potentially do a lot of damage in Haiti (like they haven't had enough already). Please pray for the people there. We know that the Lord is protecting our child(ren).

Fingerprint results are back!

It took six weeks, but our case worker received the fingerprint results today! We are getting so close to this thing being done! Our case worker (have I mentioned how much I love her?) sent a draft copy of her home study report to our agency to make sure everything looked okay so far. We have a few edits to make, but things are looking good.

We have had one hiccup. Our county sheriff wrote a letter for us saying we were in good standing with the community and he tried to be helpful by having his letter notarized but it is missing language on it that the Secretary of State requires. We have to ask him to either give us a new copy or redo the letter. I hate to ask him that but these things have to be done a certain way.

Stephen didn't have any problems at his shrink visit. I received my letter from them already and his letter should come later this week. We laughed about it later but both of our psychiatrists (both were male) were very good looking. We decided it was a requirement to be "hot" to work there.

The Shrink

I had my visit with the psychiatrist today. It was at the Cedar Center in Cedar Rapids. The guy was very nice, smiled at me a lot. The visit felt kind of silly, but it's necessary to meet the requirements of the Haiti Government. My visit only lasted about 25 minutes. He asked me questions about my history, whether I had ever had a concussion that led to loss of consciousness, seizures, my general mood, thoughts of suicide, things like that. The bill for that quick visit was $280! It does get billed to my insurance though, so hopefully they will pay it.

I was nervous during my visit. He asked me if I had ever visited with a psychiatrist before. I said I hadn't and I think he sensed it. When I walked into his office he had three chairs to pick from. I asked him which chair he preferred for me to sit at and he said it didn't matter and "it's not a test". That made me crack up because I was so conscious of doing something that he might psychoanalyze.

Stephen's visit is tomorrow.

Things are coming together!

Our case worker wrote us over the weekend and said "we're getting close!" It will be nice to have the Dossier done and out of our hands. We received our passports this weekend. We have written the letter to IBESR (Haiti government) and sent a copy to our adoption agency to review. Our references have responded quickly (thanks everybody!) and we have the privilege of seeing the shrink next week. The shrink visit is the last thing we have to do for the home study. I probably shouldn't call him a shrink huh?

Home study visits complete

Our visit with Jan, our case worker went well yesterday. We met at my workplace to go over the 9 page report that she wrote about us, made corrections and finalized a few things. She has been giving us great advice. It's an answer to prayer that she is a believer in Christ and understands the process that we're going through because she's been in our shoes. I told her at the end of our meeting yesterday that I really felt we had gained a friend through all of this. It's been a huge blessing!

Today I am working on our cover letter that goes to Haiti. It basically introduces ourselves and expresses the desire to adopt from their country. It was a bit difficult to get started cause how do you write a letter asking somebody to let you have a kid from their country? But the Lord really guided me during the writing process and I feel like I have a good first draft.

Stephen and I plan on taking a short vacation next week before school starts. We decided to stay in Des Moines for a few days. We'd like to go to the Apple Store and the Woodright Shop (Apple for me, Woodright for him) and want to stop at the Living History Farm for Stephen. He takes his kids there every year for a field trip and needs to do a little research.

On Thursday we will no longer be Iowa State Fair virgins! We have never been there and decided this is the year to go. We are both anxious to try deep fat fried butter and food on a stick!

Last home study visit tomorrow

Thankfully, our home study went very well so we don't even need to meet in our actual home tomorrow. We are meeting our case worker in Cedar Rapids to go over the report and finalize the information she needs to finish stuff up for us.

We both got our blood tests back and they were all okay so that's one more thing off the checklist!

I think we passed!

Our home study went incredibly well. We started the day at 7:00 a.m. by cleaning. Stephen has actually been cleaning like crazy all week. I have been so blessed by him. He knew I had limited time to clean.

So our home study lady came at around 11:30 a.m. She was a God-send for sure. We sat down and started chatting about why we were adopting.  We knew the agency she came from was "Christian" but we weren't quite sure as to what extent that was. It became clear to us as we started talking that we had a kinship with one another and we had the same Father. We were so blessed during our interview. We both told our life stories, trials we've been through, what our relationships are like with family members, our financial situation, how we handle stress, basically anything and everything about us. It was hard to hold back tears during some of the time because when you really take a look back at your whole life and start talking about it, it can become a little overwhelming.

Our case worker told us she had adopted a girl from Guatemala 8 years ago. She gave us a lot of insights and was a great encouragement to us. At the end of our interview (which lasted about 3 hours) she told us she would be very comfortable leaving her kids in our home for a week.

Haiti's requirement is that a case worker only needs to visit our home once. The agency doing the study requires that we meet at least twice so next Friday she will have the report done and we will meet her in Cedar Rapids to review it and make any corrections and then our home study will be complete!!

Once again, God has verified that this is what we are supposed to be doing. He has made the path straight and easy for us. Thank you all for praying and thinking about us today. We certainly felt your prayers and we are thankful for your support along the way.

Personal questions

I don't know how many times I have written down my full name (including my maiden name) and social security number. How many times do they need the same information? It's going well though. Tonight I wrote out answers to 15 personal questions ranging from my relationships to my siblings to what I think about discipline.

Stephen has started a new habit in our house and it's working great! I've really been having a hard time keeping up with the house while working full time. I get home at night and just want to crash. So he came up with "the ten minute tidy." It's something he used in his classroom. (It's so sad he has to use the techniques he applies in his classroom on me but I need it!) Basically we pick one room to attack for 10 minutes each night. The rule is we can't pick the same room two nights in a row. So our house is getting clean 10 minutes at a time!  I am taking Friday off so I can attack the house full force. I'll be getting up early to start scrubbing the house from top to bottom to be ready for our home study at 11:00.

Stephen's growing

Well, Stephen went in for his physical today and they measured him at 6'8". He's convinced there is something wrong with their measuring stick. I hope he's right.

Things are in full swing now!

Well, the ball really got started rolling this week. Let's go back just a few years for a little history. Since Stephen and I were both children we had seen adoption as something we desired to do with our lives. I had grown up desiring to adopt a girl from Asia. Stephen had grown up desiring to adopt a boy from Ethiopia or Africa. I had desired to adopt from Asia because my best friend in elementary school was from Laos and mom and dad had a few young ladies from Japan living with us while we were growing up.

Adoption was starting to burn more in my heart and mind over the past few years but the Lord spoke to Stephen specifically earlier this year while we were visiting Denise in Minnesota. He told me that the Lord told him adoption was supposed to be our next "faith project." On the drive home from Minnesota we prayed and talked more in depth and by the time we got home, we knew He was asking us to take this step.

Just a few weeks later we headed down to Branson, MO for a church conference. The first night of the conference we sat down and turned around and there was a large family behind us, full of children from China. The mother was on her cell phone talking about adoption and mentioned something about expediting things in Haiti.  The Lord pressed on Stephen's heart to tell the mother of this family what God had told us to do and to just listen to what she had to say.  She was very open and kind to us. We believe the Lord prompted us to speak to her so she would point us to the perfect agency for us--CCAI or Chinese Children Adoption International.  Since we were looking at China to adopt from, it sounded like the perfect fit. She also mentioned that CCAI (although strictly a China agency) was making inroads to Haiti.  At the time we thought that was nice, but thought China was the way we were going.

We came home and stared our application process for CCAI. It took us a while to fill out the application.   I believe during that time God was starting to stir in us a different direction. We sent our application in with a $200 check and just a few days later, we were notified we had been accepted.  The next step was to send in a pretty large chunk of money which would allow us to receive the Dossier Guide which would take us through the process of the "paper chase."  We sent in the money and received the Dossier Guide for China.

At that time, we both recognized that we were supposed to go to Haiti first. The biggest reason is the need in Haiti is very great right now. We contacted CCAI and asked them how difficult it would be to change countries. They told us all it would take is a couple of different forms to be filled out and a little more money and they would send us the Dossier Guide for Haiti. We didn't lose a cent by switching countries, Praise the Lord!

So here we are. We are fully involved in getting our paperwork together for Haiti. Today we were fingerprinted. Stephen and I were talking about how blessed we are that we have a courthouse just a few yards away from our front door. The convenience of it is awesome. Another God thing!  Being fingerprinted was kind of intimidating for me. I didn't like the fact that I would "be in the system" now. But the corrections officer who did our fingerprints was so incredibly friendly. We had a lot of fun. I regret not bringing my camera along. Even though our courthouse has a new jail, they hadn't moved the equipment over yet so we had to go to the old part on the third floor. They don't use ink anymore. It's all computerized. Then they print it out on a card and that's all that is to it. They actually take 10 pictures of your fingers in different positions. It took longer than I thought it would. The charge to get fingerprinted is $5 per card and when we went to pay the officer, he said don't worry about it. Another praise the Lord!

The fingerprint cards have been mailed to our home study agency based out of Bettendorf. Our first appointment with the home study lady is next Friday, July 30.  Stephen has his physical on Monday and my physical is Friday. We have an appointment set up to see a psychiatrist at the end of August. We gave a letter to our county sheriff today asking him to provide proof that we were good citizens. We requested certified copies of our marriage license.

So now you are all caught up! We're so glad you are taking part of this journey with us. This was a long post. I don't expect them all to be this long, but we had a lot of catching up to do!