Well, things are happening so quickly and I am not writing them down. I know I will regret that later. This blog should have started long before July 13, 2012. It should have started back in 1994 or maybe even a few years before that!
In high school I had a youth leader that worked in state foster care. I was always so interested in their family. I remember telling my high school guidance counselor that I wanted to run an orphanage after I went to college. She told me that was a "lofty goal" and that there really weren't orphanages in the U.S.
I went on to college and began by pursuing a counseling degree. I switched part way through to elementary education. Before my junior year, I signed up to go on a missions trip to Russia, Hungray and Romania. It was in those Russian orphanages that I saw God changing my life in more ways than one. In an airport in Moscow I knew that I had met the person I would marry...really. I spent the whole three weeks watching Matt play with the kids in those orphanages. I remember them telling us that the kids got all quiet when they heard us coming because they thought their parents were coming back for them. They told us the newest arrivals were the ones with the shaved hair because they didnt want them to spread lice. I remember returning home and knowing someday I wanted to adopt and I knew that Matt and I would get married. Really. He on the other hand didn't have either of those revelations!
A few years went by, we did get married. We talked about kids. We had Kate. We had infertility issues for 2 1/2 years after that. We decided not to pursue in vitro fertilization. We went to some adoption meetings about Russia. Afterall we always knew someday we wanted to adopt. That same month (February, 2004) I found out I was pregnant with TWINS. Shortly after they turned one, I was pregnant with Andrew. In the summer of 2008, another positive pregnancy test showed up. Ben was born in March of 2009.
So our house was full, our hearts were full, our hands were definitetly full! That desire to adopt was not quite as prevelant as it had once been, although I was always drawn to people who were adopting and loved hearing their stories. I was always a little sad that we wouldnt be doing that.
Then on January 12, 2010 a massive earthquake struck Haiti. I honestly didn't pay much attention to the news the first day or so. A few days later, every major news station was showing the hundreds of orphans trying to get to their forever families. We would have signed up that day if we could have. In fact we spent the following few months signing up to help with children who needed medical visas. I came across a blog of someone who I went to college with. Her story was compelling as I felt like I experienced first hand her story of being united with her two children through humanitarian parole.
Unfortunately, we did not meet the qualifications to adopt and Haiti was not continuing with adoptions at that point. As 2010 continued on, we began researching various adoption ideas, Ethiopia, Uganda, etc...but we kept coming back to Haiti. They opened up adoptions again, but we still did not meet their qualifications because we had 5 biological children. We were in contact with Barbara Walker at Reach Out to Haiti and we were trying to help a little girl with club feet. We had secured a doctor here in NJ willing to do the surgery for free. From Dec-2010 to June of 2011 we went back and forth with the US Embassy trying to secure her medical visa. It was denied a final time at the end of May. The very next day, Dixie at God's Littlest Angels posted that they would begin accepting families with up to 5 biological children. What the future holds will be the story that this blog holds.
