Thursday, January 19, 2012

Morning phone call...

It's been a while since we've written because things on the adoption front have been quiet since Christmas Eve when our home study arrived at the orphanage. The rest of life not so quiet, but the adoption hasn't had any progress that we've been aware of... until today!

Rebecca received a call from Erin at our International Agency, CAN, at 9:10 this morning. There isn't a ton of information, but here's what she said. In the past week the orphanage has taken in two sets of twins. (TWINS?!?!) Erin was calling to talk to us about the possibility of twins. Our home study said that we are interested in two kids under the age of 5, but we had never discussed the possibility of twins with CAN and she was curious if we'd be up for that. Rebecca told Erin that she thought that would be fine, but had me call Erin back to give her my affirmation as well. I said, "you bet, our whole marriage we've always talked about how cool it would be to have twins." Well, we'll see what God has planned, but this could be it. The two sets of twins are... 6 month old girls OR 3 month old boys!  Little ones! We had asked for kids under 5, but didn't imagine any kids would become available this young.  We'd love to have little ones again, and I think it would help so many transitional issues, but we'll see.  There are so many details to learn and work out yet.

Since both sets are so new to the orphanage they haven't even been through the medical tests yet.  Blood work, physicals, DNA testing, fetal alcohol or fetal drug syndromes, etc, etc. On the phone I had so many questions for Erin that don't have answers yet. It will take a couple of weeks for the kids' paperwork to go through the Haiti government for them to officially be internationally adoptable. At that point if we chose one of the sets and their paperwork was done, we would then get an official referral letter which would make them ours!

Of course that doesn't mean they're ours to bring home.  The road home will still be long... could be 10 months, a year, year and a half, only God knows. IF things were to fall together with one of the sets of twins, we could be traveling down to Haiti to meet them in the next month or two. CAN has travel dates for new families as soon as Jan. 23-27 (doubt we'd be ready for that), Feb. 20-24, April 23-30, May 21-28 and once a month from there out. Once we travel down there and meet them, we would also begin the Haiti's government paperwork while we are there. We would then have to come home without the kids until the paperwork is done processing in Haiti. (which would be tough) Average processing time right now for that processing is around 10 months. We think we'd probably try to get down there at least once with Aftyn, Haley and Aiden while we wait to bring the new kids home.

Speaking of Aftyn, Haley and Aiden; we told them tonight about the news and they freaked out!  They were all SO excited!

Erin told me on the phone that the US missionary at the orphanage has been busy working on matching kids to our family. So no matter what happens with these kids, we're excited to know that progress is being made. Our request for all of you is for your prayers! We're a long way from anything final, but today has been so fun! God may not send either one of these sets of twins to us, we know that, but just seeing some movement in the adoption process is encouraging.

Until we know more...
Craig