Hope

 This was an update from our adoption agency today. I had actually hear rumors of this yesterday, but we didn't get confirmation until today.

Hello Haiti families and Happy 2013!

On January 2, USCIS posted this message on their website:

"Adoption Information: Haiti

Haiti’s adoption authority, the Institut du Bien-être Social et de Recherches(IBESR), has informed the U.S. Government that they are now accepting new adoption applications for Haitian children who were either documented as orphans before January 12, 2010, or who have been relinquished by their birth parent(s) since the earthquake. The U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince has also resumed normal visa processing."

This is the link to the statement:
http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=93f463fc4cbfb310VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=ecab18a1f8b73210VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD

We have also been hearing that Haiti will announce a list of adoption agencies that will be accredited to work in Haiti on January 10, 2013.

As we hear more information about the process of adopting in Haiti and about Bethany's accreditation, we will send out portal messages to let you know.

If you have further questions, please don't hesitate to contact your branch worker or your Global worker.
Have a great day, and best wishes in the new year!
The Bethany Haiti team

SO...what does this mean exactly? Well it means that IBESR is open to accepting referrals again. We don't know what the new procedures are yet. We don't know if there even are new procedures.

We also don't know if they chose Bethany as one of their accredited adoption agencies to work in Haiti yet, but we have Faith that they will choose Bethany so we can move forward.

If they choose Bethany this means they should start giving families referrals of children again. This is HUGE. We are hoping and praying that this is true and we once again have HOPE.

We would really appreciate your prayers for good news in the next week. January 10 can't come soon enough!!!

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope you all had a beautiful Thanksgiving!!!

Don't Worry

Trying to not worry. 

Trying to just be happy. 

The deadline for us to get our referral is approaching quickly. 

We need to be entered into IBESR before the end of the month. 

Will you please say a prayer for us. 

Please pray we officially know who our new child is this week and we get into IBESR before the cutoff. We can't even WAIT to celebrate. 

Charlotte made a family picture on Sunday. She included another sister. 

Hoping and praying that's a beautiful sign from God. 

Thank you.

 

 

Sheldon

I've been wanting to do a post about Hobbes, but it's still too hard to write about him. It's been wonderful to have Sheldon in the house, but we definitely still miss Hobbes. I suppose that's normal though. 

We are so thankful that this goofy 4 month old puppy stole our hearts and is now a part of our family. We found some pictures of him from before we knew him. It's great to see what he looked like as a baby. 

Here he is with his mom and siblings.

So tiny.

Sheldon's mom. 

Tiny baby.

He still has this sweet, gentle face. 

The lady who had him said that his favorite thing was to chase this stuffed snake. 

He definitely loves to chase things.

And he's fast. 

Finally stopping for a moment. 

About 4 weeks old. I love his brindle color. 

I REALLY love the white spot on his chest. 

We feel very lucky to be his family. 

Welcome to our home Sheldon. We are so glad you are ours!

HOPE

  
Another family that is also adopting from GLA in Haiti told me last night that Dixie (the director of the orphanage) posted this on facebook. 

I was just informed that IBESR gave a 2 week extension to creches to put their dossiers into IBESR! I know a lot of creches that did not get their paperwork in and this is a huge blessing for families. Now, maybe we can get a few who haven't accepted their proposals in if they accept in the next few days!

This about stopped my heart. 

We are now HOPING and PRAYING in JESUS name that we can get our referral this week so we can get into IBESR before the extension is over!!!!!!!!!!!

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. :) 

Sorry Trees

I spent most of my labor day laboring.

For a good reason.

We had everything state sealed and translated this week. The next step was copying. Lots and lots of copying. We had to make 7 copies of every single document and every translation of every document. Our homestudy alone was 20 pages. Sorry trees. A lot of you were sacrificed for this great cause.

This photo was the very beginning of an almost 6 hour process. My sweet friend Dawn helped me do all of this at her office. I seriously don't know how I would have done this without her. I will be forever grateful for her help in bringing our future child home.

We started by separating all the documents as they were getting copied.

We had piles everywhere.

This was lunch. :)

When we finally got to the point where most of the copies were made, it was time to put them into 7 piles.

Each document had to go into each pile with the french translation of each document placed behind it. It was tricky to figure out which french translation went with what. Kind of a big puzzle that we got to put together.

When we were finally finished this was THE pile.

Sorry trees.

We have just a couple things we need to add and as of tomorrow this ginormous pile will be mailed to Grand Rapids and then to the Haitian Consulate.

We aren't sure if we are going to send it to Haiti at that point or if we are going to wait a bit to see what the changes are that are going to be made with Haitian adoptions. Our biggest obstacle right now is we are waiting to find out if Bethany has been approved in Haiti to be one of their "chosen" Hague agencies. We are hoping and praying that they choose Bethany because this will make things WAY easier for us to move forward.

We would love if you would pray with us that we can move forward. That Bethany would be chosen and nothing would stand in our way to send everything to Haiti so we can wait for our child. We will continue to TRUST and move forward and hope. And plant a few trees.