HUGE PRAISE and Awesome UPDATE!!! Our Dossier is in Colombia and is fully translated! What does that mean?!
Let me back up. What is a Dossier? dos·si·er
noun-1.a collection of documents about a particular person, event, or subject.
So our "collection of documents" has pretty much everything in it except for real life blood samples! I think I caught our social worker stealing hair from my brush for this thing. (kidding about the hair) but seriously they do know our blood types! So for weeks they were translating this mega folder...anyone picturing a 10 ft long filing cabinet... and translating can be difficult when you want it to be as accurate as possible but also have to watch out that something said in English might be reworded in Spanish and sound weird. We can't have us sounding weird, we are already crazy! So we got a call from B at the agency and she said she had great news before Christmas and it was that our Dossier had arrived Safely and fully translated in Colombia.
-Sidenote-whew so glad someone at fedex didn't steal every ounce of our personal info and get this thing into the wrong hands, this is the reason I pay $20 to ship a package :)
We have been assured that (contrary to our original thinking) it would not begin to collect dust on someones desk that they are actually reviewing our family and our files get passed around to multiple offices, officials, regions, etc. So nice to know its moving somewhere and not just sitting there. So right now the courts and ICBF close for a few days for Christmas and New Years and after that they open back up and will be back to reading ours (and numerous other families) Dossiers and decide rather to approve them or not.
-Scary little known fact, even though the USA said we are approved that does not mean Colombia has to agree. They could say no. We are confident, however, that if the Lord has brought us this far he will not drop us off (literally) on someones desk to be told NO!
So now we wait a little bit. About 3 months is average for the officials to approve a family.
During this time you will be anxious to know what we are doing....well....we are reviewing files! Yes reviewing, like reviewing as in we get to PICK, it sounds terrible and confusing and heartbreaking and it is a little of all of the above but also a little cool too that God would guide us in the direction of what Colombia names "waiting children." These kidos are who our agency has such a heart for. They are mostly "special needs" - If you do not know already about what is considered special needs in other countries please look up some examples of it before you come chasing me down asking "what are you doing!" You will gasp and gag at what they call "special needs" in other countries, some of them are huge lifelong needs and some are as minor as needing glasses, it floors me that they are all in the same category and that no one wants these kids because of these big or small issues.
(END of rant about that)
We currently have files for a sibling group of 3 kids we are praying about. We are praying God would reveal to us whether they are our kids or someone elses. We are praying for their safety, for their health, for their hearts, and most importantly that our Savior would grab hold of them for his name sake and find them a family! We are having some files translated (3 English pages=30 Spanish pages) so its fun to see and "get to know" them through paper and through tests that tell things like "she's artistic" or "he likes pets". Things that would not make or break our decision in any way but just things to start to get to know them.
Think of it like an ultra sound. We are getting to hear their heartbeat and see them move and grow
(sort of) :)So what can you be doing? I only have 1 answer for that, or maybe two.
--ONE- PRAY, pray for us, pray for our agency, pray for our kids (whether its them or not that we currently have these files) pray for our life after we're home, pray for us to be diligent in our Spanish learning attempts.
--TWO-Encourage. Don't get me wrong we both need to hear the "my friend has these kids and they are crazy" stories but please if you are going to "encourage" us with opinions let them first be thought through twice and please also remember that we have thought this whole thing through and even though there are about 1,000,000 answers to questions we don't have right now one HUGE answer we do have is that God is behind us and yet pulling us through this at the same time. He is the one who has CALLED us to do this and even though we know you love us (think we're crazy) thats ok! We like being different, we like being "not normal" we like being known as the crazy couple adopting siblings! We are excited and nervous all at the same time.
We are thankful and happy to have you as a part of this with us. THANK you for staying with us and thank you for asking~ It means a lot to me, personally, and to Nick, to get to talk about it with friends and people who are curious.
Goal for 2014: Update the blog once per month! Here's to January!
