unexpected...

It has been a few months since we last posted. We have been waiting for Dossier approval and we got word from our agency on May 29th.

Simply put Colombia has closed their adoption  program to anyone who does not have an approved Dossier. We do not have an approved Dossier so our dream of adopting a Colombian baby is over. Our dream to be parents to an unwanted child, OVER. There is nothing we can do.

Daniel and I are devistated, shocked, and greiving the loss of our baby. For 3 years I/We have carried this baby and now she is gone. We never got to meet her, hold her, or cuddle her. We do... love her! We are now among the thousands of people who have lost a child. I will think of our Colombian baby every day for the rest of my life.

We cannot even begin to put into words our feelings. Daniel is heartbroken, and shocked. However, he is the most incredibly strong and supportive person I know. He is holding us together. As for me, I am not really doing well. All I can say is I have lost our baby. 

This has been a roller coaster ride, filled with sickness, extreme highs and lows, crazy twists and turns, and confusion. But the thing keeping us going was knowing at the end we would be holding our little Colombian baby. Now, we will never get to. 

As for what's next.... we wait. We heal. We grieve. We hope God has a new story for us.

"The Life Changer" the roller coaster of adoption

Each family who choses to adopt is actually stepping on a roller coaster. Some rides may turn out to be a fair ride, some may be a wooden roller coaster, and some..... may be the most death defying innovative ride ever created. Now if you like roller coasters the death defying ride sounds like a blast right?! It may make you a little sick after you ride it, but the thrill outweighs the moment of sickness and you actually want to ride it again, and maybe even 3 times. But, at the end of the day, the park closes you step off the ride and go home. Even though it is fun, you don't really want to spend days, weeks, months, or years constantly riding the ups, downs and turns of the ride. Now you may say, "what does a roller coaster have to do with adoption?" Well let me tell you.....

It has been a few weeks since I last wrote because it has taken me some time to regain strength. As well as this year was starting, things have changed. If you look at our timeline our Dossier has been translated since last August. The next step was to have a IAPA (adoption house) accept our Dossier. We have been waiting, and waiting, and what feels like waiting. Unfortunately, things are not really progressing in country.

                              Passing the time with friends.
 We were faced with a very big decision. We could continue to wait for a IAPA ( which we have already been waiting for one to accept us for 8 months) or we could submit our Dossier to ICBF ( which is similar to the US social services department). We could hope that a IAPA would start accepting families, or we could submit with ICBF and have an approved Dossier in approximately 60 days. The reason we selected to go with a IAPA was because we were advised that it would be a better fit for our case and the wait times at IAPA's was less! Once ICBF approves a dossier the wait time is 4 years.  Not ideal, especially when we have already been waiting 2 years.

This was such a heart wrenching decision. We felt like our hands were tied. We felt devistated that we could potentially have to wait 6 years for our baby, when we were expecting 2- 2 1/2 years. We could continue to wait for a IAPA to accept us or we could send our Dossier to ICBF and get it approved. If we sent it to ICBF we would not be able to to transfer it to a IAPA until it was approved, approximately 60+ days.  So after tears, we decided to submit out Dossier to ICBF.

A month ago things seemed positive. God was talking to me, I had peace about our current waiting and now I feel heartbroken, sick to my stomach and like this roller coaster will never end. I ask God "will you, will you give us a baby?" " Is this too big for you?" I cannot tell you I know the answer. I can tell you that even in the pain, I am committed.

Walking through closed doors.....

It has been a while since we last posted. Overall not too much has changed. We have been talking with our agency a lot the past month just trying to stay connection and aware of what`s going on. Here is what we do know. This year is starting out A LOT better than last year! 2012 was a very difficult year with not really any forward movement, but 2013 feels more like we are moving and in a good direction.

Today one of our good friends and fellow adoptive parents are heading to Florida. Their beautiful baby boy will be born on Friday!!! So excited for them. We are praying for health peace and protection for thr entire Milan family!!

I was reading John this morning and it brought me some real hope. I have read the crucifiction and resurrection story hundreds of times, but a few words just really jumped out at me. To set the stage, let me give you my version of what was happening. (The story can be found in John 20) .

Jesus has just resurrected and is going to see his disciples. It says the disiples are hanging out together but are scared of the Jews so their door is locked. Ok, I totally get why the disciples are scared. They have just watched their own people turn on Jesus and fight FOR him to be murdered. They have lost their teacher, leader and friend. That is a lot of loss to deal with! So Jesusi on his way to see his friends and whem he arrives the door is locked. So Jesus walks through the locked door! hmmmm The disciples were sitting in fear and Jesus walks through a locked door.

Later that week the disiples are hanging out again( behind a locked door of course) and "Jesus came through the locked door". There is something so powerful about how when we are scared, no,  down right terrified God STILL comes chasing after us. So we go in fear and we are still covered and protected. The other really cool thing is both times Jesus walked through the locked door the first thing he said was " Peace to you"!

So today I am sitting in a place of "Peace to you" and resting in the fact that no matter how scared I am and no matter how much I lock myself away, Jesus will walk through a locked door to find and comfort me.

Renewed Mind

One thing, that I think, almost everyone adopting would agree is that adoption is hard.  Definitely not for the weak at heart. Please don't misunderstand me, I am not at all complaining! Rather I have such an appreciation for every family who has adopted or is in the process. Adoption is beautiful in every way!

When I look at the landscape of what it takes to adopt it is for sure an overwhelming experience. I don't think I have really talked too much about the "process" of adoption. This morning I was feeling a lot about how difficult adoption is. I thought I would share some of the details of our and share the hope I received while reading.

 Why adoption?

Each families adoption story looks a little different. The desire to adopt can come from a few places. For us, it was God breathed, and rooted in our hearts. I feel like we are in a small minority of people adopting because we do not have any biological children, and we do not have fertility issues. So our pre-adoption story is simply this: we have a passion for the fatherless(and motherless) and we believe God has a baby for us. He will create our forever family and it will be remarkable. 

Now all that being said, I will say that we are quickly approaching the 2 year wait time mark (which we were told the process would take 2 and 1/2 years total!!!) and the passing time has made it difficult. I am going to be transparent her. . . I have had the thought, "are we doing what we are called to do...I mean if we got pregnant right now the wait time would be set in stone. . .9 months" Then I take a deep breath, close my eyes and in that moment that follows my doubt, I KNOW we are supposed to be adopting. As always, we think life is about us and if we control it then it's easy. But both of our past experiences have shown us that  good (in our case wonderful amazing) things come to those who wait. So we wait!

Oh my gosh, how much does adoption cost?

One of the scariest most daunting parts of adoption is the expense. This has been such a faith builder for us! Let me just say God is sooooooooooooooo big and no matter what we think can or cannot happen God is bigger. I will do a post about resources at a later date so people can see how adoption can happen. But for this post I will say the cost of adoption is SO high. We have applied for grants ( which was another mound of paper work on top of the mounds of adoption paper work). I applied for 15 grants!!! WOWZA! Some have worked out and most didn't work out. 

So my mom is an expert seamstress! She made a lot of our clothes growing up (did I mention I grew up in tiny town). When we told our families we were adopting, I knew my mom's gifts could help us raise money. I read about this idea of making bags (we call it Messengers of Love) to help raise money for the adoption. My mom has totally taken control and is making bags left and right! My sister-in-law works for a furniture company and she has donated a TON of really cool fabrics! I am going to post some pictures and if you would like to buy one you can leave a comment with your email and I will contact you:) This would mean sooo much to us. The cost is $40 and all the proceeds go towards bringing our baby home. You can check out one of our first posts if you want to read more about Messengers of Love.

 Renewed Mind

I was reading( In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day) this morning  and something he said lept off the page and brought me to tears. In it he said, " Reframing problems is about shifting focus (I would add shifting focus from our head to our hearts). You stop focusing on WHAT'S WRONG with your circumstances. And you start focusing on WHAT'S RIGHT WITH GOD." It seems like so easily we forget how absolutely adored we are by God. He looks down on us daily and says, this is my son, or daughter in whom I am well pleased! He fulfilled the law by sacraficing HIS Son, because He loved me and you soooo much. I want to spend my moments renewed and focused not on what's wrong with me but what's right with God!!!

Sorry so long. . .

First I want to say sorry for having such a delay in the blog posts:( A LOT has changed... some not really for the best. Check out the timeline at the side to see some general updates.

So after our Dossier was translated we were waiting for our next step, which was getting assigned and accepted by a IAPA (private adoption house). In October we were with out a placement and beginning to get nervous. I guess for good reason. 
 Basically adoption was getting a bad wrap in the country and we were seeing a lot of changes in how adoption was seen and processed. In November we received a call that really shook us.

Our caseworker basically said that because of all the changes NONE of the IAPA's were accepting new families. For how long we were not sure. I felt like someone had just taken all the air out of my lungs. Also, we had to decide if we wanted to change over to the ICBF process- which is like their social services program. ICBF's wait time is more like 4 years!!!  

 THE EMOTIONAL PART

This hit me like a ton of bricks and I will try my best to paint the picture of what this was like for me but I may fall short. 

In all this I have had faithful confidence in God and his ability to bring us the baby we feel He has for us. In my heart, I had a loose plan charted out of how we would get accepted by a IAPA in 2012, then hopefully by June or so we would get a referral and then after Daniel graduated we would travel and pick up our baby! Sounds good right?! This was my plan, and here is the problem: God doesn't work around MY plan. His ways are higher and His plan is greater. I know that but when we got this news in November, I felt all the hope, faith and security ripped away. I had a loose plan, and I felt really sure that it would generally happen that way and in 1 conversation it was all gone. I know this may sound extreme but 2012 was not really filled with much good news for us in the adoption and in our world and this was the cherry on the sundae. 

I am not sure I can begin to explain the pain I felt. This may seem extreme to some but I felt like I had miscarried. I had been carrying around this hope, hope for our baby, that was wrapped up in a plan and now all that was gone. I was devastated. Had God forgot our address? I don't know if this was wrong, but I felt like the plan was what was giving me the strength to go through this difficult adoption process. Now what? 
  
It has been a few months now and I am trying to have peace in the uncertianty and trust that God has a plan. I remind myself every day that I am a daughter of the King and doesn't a father desire to give everything to His daughter!  

PASSING THE TIME

Here are some pictures of baby stuff one of our dear friends gave us. To pass the time I have put it all away in our garage and painted the crib an antique white. 
 











Thank you to everyone praying and believing for us in this journey.  

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!