Breaking the Silence

Have you noticed I've been silent the last couple of weeks? Well, it was certainly not because of a lack of excitement! It's been an INSANE two weeks!! It was more because of a concern for privacy for our family and so many unknowns it wasn't even funny.

Praise God, though, things are coming together and I feel like I can actually update with real live news! Just as a disclaimer, there have been other things going on the past couple of weeks that I could have (and should have!) posted about like Josh's 7th birthday and his cool ninja party, some crazy terrible news that was actually covered in the States about extreme violence in Congo (you can read about it here and here from some awesome bloggers who share not only what happened but what YOU can do about it), and hubby's birthday. But for some reason, when I couldn't write about the adoption, I found it hard to write about anything. Period.

So...would you like to know what all is going on in our home?

Well, I alluded to the fact in a previous post that one of us had some medical issues that needed to be sorted out. It was me. I had some weird results from the routine adoption physical which led to 7...count 'em 7! additional trips to a doctor including two specialists. I just had another trip to a specialist today and got the final verdict....

I'm completely healthy!

Praise God for that!!! Of course, I would have preferred that I not be poked, prodded, and examined quite so thoroughly but it's a wonderful feeling to get a clean bill of health and to be able to move forward with our adoption instead of changing the theme of this blog to dealing with some sort of medical crisis! God is faithful, and I know that no matter what my test results were, He would be with us, guiding us, but I sure am grateful that I am healthy!

So onto much more exciting happenings....adoption news! We were returning home from my brother and sister in law's house 12 days ago and were both on our cell phones talking to our parents. Hubby had a call waiting beep on his and I could tell by the nature of his voice that it wasn't one of his buddies. My first thought was that it was our lawyer through OFA and she had a referral.

Guess what? It was our lawyer and she had a referral!!!

Ohmygoodness. We were so floored! Our home study wasn't even done yet! She was calling, though, because it was really a matter of life and death. She was calling about a tiny one month old baby boy who needed to be moved from the orphanage into foster care, but couldn't be moved until he had a family.

Our prayer has always been that if God placed a baby on our doorstep, we wanted to be available. We had no picture, no medical information, really very little knowledge about him, but we felt like he was a baby who had been placed on our doorstep. In faith, we said yes we'd love to have him as part of our family!!

Well, unfortunately, days went by with no word that he'd been moved from the orphanage into foster care. The commune (Congo's equivalent of like a town hall/gov't center) had not signed off for his adoption. At this point, we believed that it'd just be a few more days and then we'd have either their approval or find out that they had located a relative who could take him.

Here's where our adoption story got even crazier. Our lawyer called again with ANOTHER referral! While the commune had not signed for this first baby, there was an 8 day old little boy who also needed a family and they had signed for him. We actually received a picture of him the day after we learned about him.

But here's the thing...while we were wanting to adopt two kiddos, we didn't think we could adopt two non-biologically related children less than nine months apart in age. (It's called artificial twinning and most of the adoption world does not recommend it.) How could we choose between the two boys!?!? After a sleepless night, much discussion and prayer, and many tears shed by me, we just really felt God calling us to be open to BOTH of these boys. I mean, when you look back at the fact that He so clearly led us to Congo and then opened our hearts to two children instead of one, and now six short weeks later we had two referrals of sweet little guys who desperately needed a family?? How could we not believe that He was still leading us!?! After a tearful call to our social worker explaining the situation to her, she agreed that it is certainly a unique situation and she was not going to stand in our way. She would support us if we wanted to adopt both of them.

We called our lawyer back the morning after we had received the picture and said that yes, we'd love to have that little guy as part of our family, too!

OH. MY. GOODNESS!!! So very exciting! TWO itty bitty boys!!

However, in the meantime we've learned that the commune is still not prepared to sign for the one-month old. They've told our contact there they'd like to wait a couple of months. We believe they either know someone who witnessed his abandonment or have an idea of who his family is. So we do not know if this little guy will join our family or not. Our prayer is that a decision be made by the commune soon, though. If he has family there that wants him, that is wonderful! But if he doesn't, he needs a family so that he can get out of the orphanage and into a foster home while the paperwork is processing. We are taking it day by day, but our lawyer has encouraged us to be open to whatever child needs us and fits in our family. We don't have a lot of time to wait as our US paperwork will hopefully be submitted within a week or so and our dossier will be sent to Congo soon after that. She said that we need to keep the two children processing within a couple of weeks of each other. We don't want to travel twice!

So, we know at least one sweet little (now two-week old) boy who will be joining our family hopefully in the next four to six months. We have another little boy who has also stolen part of our hearts, but are not sure if he will be joining our family or not.

Okay...I've held off long enough. Would you like to meet our little guy?? Here's the referral picture we received...

The email we received (translated from French) said that it was unfortunately a bad picture; he's a cute baby. We think it's pretty tough to get a good read on what he looks like from this picture, but isn't he just precious!?! Those big brown eyes...awww!!!!

We did get notice this week that he was moved to foster care and is safe and sound! Praise God!!There's a group going over there right now to complete a few adoptions (so exciting!!!) and we've been told that we'll get some new and better pictures of our little guy. I can't wait!!!