Encouragment While Moving Forward

We were so excited to finally be able to hand over all of our paperwork. All 8 lbs. 11 oz. of it.

Our documents were all translated into French so they can go to Haiti. After we mail them they go to the Bethany office in Grand Rapids and then to the Haitian Consulate. After they go to the consulate they can go to Haiti. We were all so happy to finally be at this step. After filling out every form known to man and having them notarized and sealed and translated and copied~ it's a huge relief to have someone else who has to be responsible for them all now.

The kids each said a prayer for the documents to get to the right place and to the right people and for their future sister or brother. It was definitely a beautiful moment and of course I ended up sniffling from the sweetness. The prayers of little kids are so honest and wonderful and I know they went straight to Jesus' ears.

When I brought the paperwork to be mailed I asked the lady to tell me exactly how much they weighed. Curious how much that many papers could weigh. She had no idea what was in the box but said "8 lbs. 11 oz. The size of a baby!" This definitely made me smile.

Last night it was great to be able to spend a night with my hubby at the zoo to hear a National Geographic ocean photographer speak and eat some awesome food. My favorite (as always) had to be the dessert. The little square jar was salted creme brulee and the round one was toasted smores. It was SO good.

We have been pretty stressed and unsure about the process and everything going on with Haitian adoptions right now. We have moved forward in faith and hoped and prayed that we can continue.

This morning, Dixie, who is the director of the orphanage we are adopting through in Haiti wrote this to everyone on Facebook to ease our minds. A friend sent it to me right away so it's the first thing I read this morning~ before I even got out of bed.


Before I get too involved in my day, I wanted to put some anxiety at rest for adoptive families. The 15th of September isn't a "magical" day. it's important to us because it allows us to follow the "old" criteria for admitting dossiers into IBESR. The 1st of October is not a black hole and dossiers can't enter after that. We just have to handle them a little differently and we are not sure yet exactly what that will mean in the step to step process. It's a learning curve and we will have to learn as we go. So it may take a little longer at first, because we're all learning a new system. Very few of us like total change, but I think Haiti needs it. I will be very surprised if this all takes place the 1st of October. I would not be surprised if an extension was given. So if you are working on a dossier to send....keep working. Do not despair. We're working like mad to complete the ones we have on our desks just because we can get them in under the old criteria but I'm not obsessing over the ones that will go in under the new criteria either. If the agency, a family is working with is non-Hague, then they have priority right now. Hope that puts some minds at ease.

This totally made my day. We will continue to move forward and we can't wait till we can let everyone know that we have a new little Vander Zwaag. :)