Travel Dates

Today was our court date in Rwanda. We will not know the results for sure until January 8th, but do not expect any problems. We now have tenative travel dates! We will be leaving on January 22nd and arriving in Kigali on the 23rd. 24 days from now I will be holding my baby!!! I told Greg I had dibs on holding her first! The surprise is instead of then traveling to Ethiopia like we've thought all along we will be going to Kenya to get her visa. We should be arriving home on February 6th! All 9 families are supposed to travel together to get our 12 children. I am SO excited!

Court Date Set

Our court date has been officially set for December 30th! That means if all goes well, one week from now, Carington will officially, legally, 100%, forever and ever be our daughter! We will be getting tenative travel dates from our agency next week. My guess is mid to late January. There is once again so much to do. Please pray that all goes well at court and that all 9 families pass court so that 12 orphans will officially have families. (3 families are adopting 2!) As soon as I get word that we have passed court I will post her pictures for you all to see! We're praising God today for this great Christmas blessing!

Our baby girl's new room!

Today Mom, Bobane, and I spent the day painting and decorating Carington's room. I've been looking forward to decorating for a little girl for a long time! It was a little sad to see Noah's baby blue gone, but so exciting to be ready for our baby girl. Thankyou so much to Mom and Bobane for all your hard work, and for saving me in my panic when Noah dumped the container of paint! Thankyou to my sister Kimi for sharing your girl's crib bedding. I know it is so special to you and it is perfect!
The Kinyarwandan words on her door are very special to us. The horizontal word is Iribagiza which means we praise the Lord because you are a blessing. The vertical word is Imbabazi which means a place where you will receive all the love and care a mother would give.
Her room is done. Her closet is stocked with adorable girly clothes. We've gotten our anti-malaria prescriptions. Greg and I have both had our travel shots, (which Greg had a reaction to today but he is ok now). We are just waiting to hear word of when our court date is so we can buy tickets! Hold on baby girl, your family is coming soon!

Referal Accepted

This has been one of the most crazy weeks of my life. Today we sent in the paperwork and money to officially accept our daughter's referal. There have been some bumps along the way. We received her medical info and had some big concerns, but fortunately they turned out to be nothing serious. Another shocker was to find out that she is almost a year old (we think). We've been told the birthdate could be incorrect. Apparently the first pic was very old. We received a new pic on Wed. that was taken that day and she is a lot bigger! At first I was a little disappointed since I'd gotten all excited about a little baby and I was so so happy that we'd be getting her out of the orphanage at a young age. I have adjusted to it now and I'm so excited. I cannot wait to go get her!

I look at her pictures all the time. I take them with me everywhere. (I need to get one laminated so I can put it in my pocket when I'm outside with the kids.) I talk to her. Study her from every angle, trying to see some new feature. (She has Greg and Aiden's baby toes!) I wish I could see her smile. When there was some concern that she could have serious health issues (which means we could not get her since Rwanda only adopts out "healthy" children) I looked at her picture and told Greg, "This is my baby. This is the baby I want. I don't want any other." Praise God we now know that she is ok.

I have been setting up travel shots for us. Doing the necessary paperwork. Making calls to find out how the re-adoption process works when we return home. Talking to Drs. about her medical records. Trying to decide on paint colors to decorate her room. Buying her clothes that I now need to return since she is older than I thought. There is so much to do! I especially feel the pressure because we don't know how soon we might leave. On Monday our power of attorney will have the "act of adoption" done and try to set up a court date. So hopefully next week we will have a tenative plan in place. We have learned that while most courts are closed in Rwanda this month, not all are. We are hoping for a December court date.

Things are moving very quickly and I can't praise God enough for it. I still can't get over the fact that a week ago all our intel said we were a good 4 1/2 months away from this day. The lesson I've learned is that no mater how much we think we know, now matter how impossible things seem, nothing is impossible with God! You never know what He is doing behind the scenes!

A scripture that was very important and meaningful to me just after we made the decision to adopt is Psalms 139:13-16. On Wed. I was in a kids consinement shop and I came across a beautiful ceramic wall hanging with... you guessed it Psalm 139:13-16 on it! It was like it was placed there just for me.
"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be"

Carrington, I am so thankful that God ordained that you be my daughter. I praise Him because His works are wonderful. You are wonderful. And we will never forget the woman whose womb God used to make you the beautiful child of God that you are.

OUR REFERAL!!!

I cannot believe that I am writing this! This is unbelievable, so surreal, impossible... but nothing is impossible with God! Today, less than 48 hours after receiving our approval, we received our referal. I worked today and finally was able to reach our family coordinater at our adoption agency about 11 am. She asked if I had checked my email today (I had not). She said that some families were receiving their referals today and I should check it to see. There were so many signs that this was actually happening but I still didn't believe it. I had to wait until my lunch at 12:30 to check my email. I told myself that if it were there I'd wait to open it with Greg. When I saw an email that said referal I didn't really believe it was for us(perhaps someone else has sent us theirs to see). I opened it and saw it was addressed to us and a thumbnail shot of a baby. I started screaming(remember that I was at work) "this is it! this is it! this is it!" Many of my coworkers came running as I opened the picture of the most beautiful baby girl I've ever seen. Seriously that is my impression. I always wondered what that moment would be like, what I'd think. I guess I'm already seeing her through mommy vision, because she is Beautiful and I mean BEAUTIFUL. She looks to be about 5 months old, not sure of her age yet. She is so bright eyed. We cannot post her picture until we pass court.
The courts close in Rwanda for the month of December so we cannot get a court date until January. We will travel probably late Jan. or Feb. No one really knows yet.
We were also expecting a baby that was older. We had requested 0-18 months but it seemed that most of the referals were at the higher end of peoples age ranges. We hoped for younger because we'd like to get her out of the orphanage as soon as possible but thought she would be older. It's wonderful to know she will spend a much smaller portion of her babyhood as an orphan.
I made Greg wait till he was with me to see it, he can't open his email at work anyway. When I got to Mom's I came rushing in with a video camera and asked Aiden and Mom if they wanted to see a picture of Carrington. Aiden was cute, very excited. Mom crying and saying "are you serious?" before she even saw the picture.
I cannot believe this recent turn of events. Three days ago I thought that we were at least 4 months away from this day, today I am looking at my daughter's beautiful face! God is so good.

Our adoption

We have created this blog to keep our friends and family updated about our adoption. We have wanted to adopt for years. We didn't know when this might occur or where from. In February we felt a very strong leading to adopt now and from a country that I had never expected... Rwanda! Before February we didn't even know it was possible to adopt from Rwanda. At some point I will relate the whole story of how all of this fell into place. Long story short, we are adopting a baby girl! She will likely be 18 months or younger at the time of her referal.
All of our adoption paperwork arrived in Rwanda on 7/17/09. We have been waiting for approval from the minstry of gender and family promotion in Rwanda. Things seemed to be slowing down more and more and I was discouraged because it looked like the soonest we might travel would be May. Then yesterday we were thrilled to receive the email we've been waiting for saying that we are approved. We were at Greg's uncles house in Tennesee. I asked Greg to check our email even though it was Saturday and unlikely to be anything there. I left the room and when I returned Greg had this silly smile on his face and motioned for me to come to the computer. I thought he had to be joking. I immediately had an adrenaline rush and was afraid that he was kidding. As soon as I saw it I started to shake and cry. I was so overcome with emotion. I was very relieved because we were concerned that the approval could still be a long way in coming. Also no one seemed to know exactly how Rwanda would react to us having a foster child the same age as the child we are requesting. Such a relief. I was so joyful and full of praise. I drove the whole way home on cloud nine, yet I still didn't know just how wonderful the news really was. When I got home and had a change to look at our "non-objection letter" more closely I realized that the approval was dated Oct. 21st! We have been approved for 5 1/2 weeks and didn't even know it! Apparently there were a lot of families that for some reason the ministry had failed to inform. This puts the process so far ahead of where we thought we were. We could be very close to getting our referal and seeing our daughter's face for the first time!
I guess this just goes to show how little control and knowledge we have in this process and that we must trust in God and His perfect wisdom and timing. Here I have been stressing over how long its taking and all the while we have been approved.
God is all knowing and He is in control, therefore I don't have to be. This is a lesson I must learn over and over again. I am praising Him today for this amazing Thanksgiving blessing.
As I learn more about this blogging thing I will give more details of the process and especially how wonderfully God has lead. Right now I can tell you that I know without a shadow of doubt that He has chosen one little girl for our family and us for her. She is ours completely, not born of my womb, but born of my heart, and a part of God's master plan!