Translated Dossier!

Our case worker contacted us on August 21st and said that our Dossier had been translated! We were so excited to hear the news. This is another big step on our way to getting our baby! For the first time it feels like things are flowing and moving along at a good pace.

When we opened our email to see that our Dossier was translated we were so excited. It also makes this whole process much more real. We are both overcome with joy, excitement, nervousness and hope that God's timing is perfect. It's hard to sit back and rest in the fact that God has totally got this. We find ourselves wanting to plan, prepare and take control. Adoption isn't really something you can control, but we still try to fool ourselves into thinking we can. Each day we remind ourselves that our God is big, perfect and in control. He is way better at taking care of us and planning for the future He created.


We are thankful to have people praying and believing for us and we could not go through this process with out the love and support of so many people. We still have Messengers of Love for sale if you want to help us bring our baby home. I will post pictures in my next blog.

Big News!!!

The last few weeks have been so great for us! On July 21st our Dossier arrived in Colombia!!!!! This is so big!! It has been a journey to get or Dossier completed but seeing the Fedex receipt say it had arrived in Bogota Colombia was such a thrill.

What this means is that our Dossier will spend approximately 6 weeks getting translated into Spanish. We are hopeful that this translation process will happen more quickly. We are praying and believing for translation of our Dossier to be complete by next week! Once our Dossier is translated, it will be sent to a government agency for review. This is where we will get any requests for updates or corrections that Colombia may need. Our agency says that generally Colombia requests more information or clarification on the Psychology Report.

Once our Dossier is approved it will be sent to an Orphanage and we will begin out 6- 15 month wait time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are thrilled to have things really moving forward. It is exciting to have the wait be for things that need to happen in Colombia. Daniel and I are dreaming big and praying a lot for our little Colombian baby. Thanks for following:)

 

Add 1 cup of Dossier FRUSTRATION

The past 2 months we have been working on our Dossier. This is the next step in our process and it is how Colombia will know we want a baby!  These 2 months have proven to test my patients and ability to stay calm. Here are a few of our dilemmas.

We were given a manual and templates for completing our Dossier  paperwork, and I followed them to a T. After I completed the documents, I sent the documents to our agency for approval before I sent the documents to get Apostilled ( which basically means double verified). Our agency said we were good to go! Yay! So I sent the Dossier on to get Apostilled. Shortly after I sent the Dossier I received an email with 16!!!!! errors on documents.Quite frustrating with I had followed directions and got them "approved" before I officially sent them off. ( For those who are in the adoption process I would say ASK LOTS OF QUESTIONS as you are preparing your Dossier). So now we have to redo documents which I have already spent a significant amount of time on!  I am praying and telling myself it will all be worth it. The moment our child is in our arms all this will seem like a tiny "problem".


I was born in Indiana, and boy o boy is the state of Indiana making me a little upset. So I sent off for my birth certificate over a year ago when we began this process. When I sent my birth certificate to get Apostilled I was told I didn't have the right birth certificate. . . which is confusing. How do I have more than 1 birth certificate. My birth certificate has the state seal on it and it's the one I used to get my passport. So I followed the email instructions to order my "right" birth certificate. I paid a lot for it and the shipping to get it back to me overnight. 

So after only 4 days I received my birth certificate, paid a lot again to overnight it to get Apostilled. Got a call 2 days later that i YET AGAIN HAVE THE WRONG BIRTH CERTIFICATE! I guess following instructions lead me to get another county issued birth certificate and (per Indiana) I need a state issued NOT a county issued. AHHHHH. I tried to get the people I ordered my birth certificate to send me the right one with out charging me again and that did not work. 

I ended up ordering ANOTHER birth certificate. I paid to have it shipped overnight and then a week later I received an email saying they my order was on hold. WHAT! It was on hold because they needed a copy of my drivers license. Why in the world did they wait to tell me they needed my drivers license until a week after I requested my birth certificate!!! AHHHH.


I know that God is in control, it is just hard to feel that when I have put so much time and energy into gathering and filling out all the information and it isn't coming together. I am so hopeful that things will come together soon and we can get our Dossier to Colombia so it can be translated and processed and we can get assigned to an adoption house!!!!

Dossier mailed part 1

This week I mailed our Dossier. The Dossier is basically a paper version of Daniel and I and it is what gets sent to Colombia. The Colombian officials review our Dossier and then decide if we are approved to adopt and which city we can adopt from. I mailed it to a company here(in the US) that reviews, confirms and approves all the documents to ensure they are EXACTLY what Colombia wants and needs.

 Once we get our Dossier approved here in the US it will then be sent to Colombia.We are thrilled that we have gathered all the documents and now we are just waiting on verification. This is the last BIG step of paperwork pre-adoption. This is how Colombia finds out that we have a place for a baby already growing inside us. Once our Dossier is sent, translated and processed in Colombia the real wait time begins!! Our hope is that by August we will begin our official wait of 6-15 months!!! Though prayer and in our hearts we believe we will have a baby by THIS TIME NEXT YEAR!!!

We are trusting God with the details of this paperwork and that He has gone ahead of us to prepare the officials for an easy approval of our paperwork. We know we cannot work out the details ourselves, but He already  has a master plan that is better than we could even do in our own strength. 

It has truly been a great week for Messengers of Love!! I am blown away by the generosity of people to help us bring our beautiful Colombian baby home!

Special thanks to:

Shelly and Claire P.

Martha M.

Selena R.

Melissa L.

Sarah T.

 Here is a preview of more bags to come!!!

 This is a really nice navy blue fabric and a very thick white with blue stripes.

 Gray and Mustard, two of my favorite colors right now.

New Fabric for Messengers of Love

Today was so exciting! I found some really fantastic fabric to make new bags!! Below are some pictures of fabric for Messenger of Love that are to come!! 

Like Purple??? 

 Or maybe orange with a fuchsia accent. 

As soon as the bags are completed I will post them on the blog and you can purchase them directly through PayPal. Safe and Secure.

Thank you for helping us be one step closer to bring home our Colombian baby! Special thanks to those who have purchase bags:

Shelby Bjorlie 

Erin Horton

Hollie L.

and

Pash and Dennis McDowell

Messenger of Love #1

This bag is for sale for $40!

It has an adjustable strap you can tie at whatever length you prefer.

Here is the inside

 There are lots of pockets and an external cell phone pocket! There is detail stitching which really looks nice.

If you would like to purchase the custom Messenger of Love (for only $40) to help us bring home our beautiful Colombian baby post a comment in the box below. This could be a GREAT Mother's Day gift! It will be a first come first serve until I get Paypal up and running. I am happy to ship this bag to you if you are not in the Asheville area.


I will post another bag next week!

Our Story

This may be one of our longer posts, but I think some people are wondering the "why" behind our decision to adopt. Here is our story. It is a story being written by the Author and narrated by us.

I ( Danielle) have had a STRONG passion for children ever since I was not quite old enough to babysit. I remember being fascinated by how they grew and developed so much in a matter of months. Often I would catch myself wondering "what are they thinking right now, what is going on in the brain and hearts right now as they do this activity or as they look at my face". This curiosity fueled my decision to study Child Development in college and I loved it. I now had answers to questions I had been asking myself for years. Children have been such a joy and affection of mine for a very long time

I knew long before Daniel and I were married that I wanted to have a child from another nation. God had planted a seed in me to feel and know his bigness at a young age. To me, family was beyond a child I could bear and the people who shared my bloodline.Early in our marriage Daniel and I discussed our hearts for Latin American countries, which included the people, the food, the weather, the life style, the family values, and the language. We were both incredibly fond of Latin American culture and when presented with an opportunity to travel to Nicaragua on a mission trip, we KNEW we were called to go.

Prior to leaving for Nicaragua our first trip my sister-in-law said something that has stuck inside my heart since 2009. She said " you guys are going to come back with a baby, I just know it". What was so shocking was our mission trip was not adoption oriented. What my sister-in-law didn't know was, she was speaking( things I hadn't felt confident to speak out) to a deep desire in my heart and I think, watering a seed in Daniel's heart. After our second mission trip in 2011 we returned with huge fervor to begin exploring adoption SERIOUSLY.

At 26 years old, with no infertility issues, we decided to build our family through the gift of adoption. We know God has a baby for us in Colombia! What the Enemy has intended for evil( an abandoned, parent-less child), God will use to demonstrate that he has had a plan since the beginning of time!!!! It is clear to us that God will fulfill the desire in our hearts of have a Colombian baby and a family. He will also fulfill our child's desire to have someone to love them. I love Psalms 68:6 that says " God places the lonely in families; he sets the prisoners free and gives them joy" NLT. 

Ok, I am not sure how I am supposed to follow that up but I will give it my best! Not everyone is blessed with such an amazing Wife but I sure am. Danielle and I (Daniel) have a joined excitement to start a family and after lots of prayer and personal talks with God we have decided to adopt from Colombia, South America (Yeah!!). Our love for kids began early in our relationship, with the awesome opportunity to be involved in two amazing kids’ lives. The parents of these kids are good friends of ours and through opportunities to take care of these kids for many weekends we had the chance to grow ourselves into a couple who was ready for another member of La Familia (the Family). 

 To throw another spin on our motivation to adopt a beautiful child from Colombia, my heart pours out for children of every nation. But ever since traveling twice to Nicaragua on mission trips the passion for the children of Central and South America has risen inside me. This passion has sparked an indwelling fascination for the people and culture of Latin American countries. Danielle and I have had the opportunity to be apart of a Ministry in Nicaragua and the involvement consist of two orphanages and a school/feeding facility. The kids that we have been around have huge hearts and remember both of us each time we have been back. The last time we went it was so hard to leave. God was at work inside of our hearts and was speaking to even at that moment. 

I have grown a lot over the last few years and have had a chance to discover what is really important in my life. I can honesty say that my family is the most important priority in my life and will always hold that place inside of me. With that said, I can not wait for the call from our adoption agency to tell us that we have a beautiful Colombian child ready to be apart of our family. I hope that everyone continues to follow our journey until we are united with our beautiful baby.

About Us

We (Daniel and Danielle) are a young couple with a lot of love for each other, and the people around us. We have been married 4 years and have spent time traveling to third world nations spreading Jesus’ love. These experiences have stirred the desire to create a forever family for an orphan.

We are so excited to begin our journey to adopt our first child from Colombia, South America.  We feel that God’s plan for our family is to build it through the gift of adoption.  Our child is  growing in our hearts and we hope to have him or her join our family by June of 2013!

We will have more updates on our story and progress in the coming months! Subscribe to get notified when we post new updates!