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.