Community Baby!

Today is bittersweet for our family.  It is Esther’s 1^st birthday and although we are sad that she is not here with us we are so thankful for her life.  We are thankful for her birthmother and praying for her today as she mourns the loss of her daughter, but grateful that she gave her life.  We are so very thankful for the staff at COTP for caring for our sweet Esther and hugging and loving on her in our place until she can come home.  We are happy that this is her first and last birthday without us. We had a birthday celebration for her today and in lieu of gifts we began our collection of items to take to COTP to help meet their needs. Let me know if you would like to contribute and I will send you the list of needs.

The collection begins!

 Miracles still abound! Yesterday we received a call from our agency (I apologize now for speaking International adoptionese) with some great news.  It seems as if, in the past two weeks since we sent in our dossier, Haiti’s government has changed its regulations to match other countries and now requires all documents (not just 4) to be certified by our state.  This would potentially slow our case down considerably.  However, our agency spent many hours working with the Haitian consulate pleading our case and they received word yesterday that we were granted sort of a “grandfather” clause and they would accept our four documents but ours would be THE last!

Whew – such great news but not so shocking since this has been one miraculous journey day after day!  After we received that news, late last night, I proceeded to fill our case worker in on our “Eat-In-For-Esther” fundraiser and how the blessings just keep pouring in and that we exceeded our goal. We will only have one more fundraising push before we travel and will be fully funded!  Her quote has stuck out in my mind all day “Esther is going to be the communities baby”! I love that! I love that so many people have sacrificed and gone above and beyond to help us bring Esther home and to play a part in her sweet life journey I welcome everyone that wants to join in with us and we are so blessed that she is loved already by an entire community!  Orphan care at it’s finest – lots of Christ-followers heeding the call to “defend the fatherless.” Now we have ONE less orphan!

One group of friends enjoying dinner together and raising
 $1000 for our adoption fund!

..once our eyes are opened, we can't pretend we don't know what to do. God who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls, knows that we know, and holds us responsible to act..... Prov. 24:12