So we have decided that k is to be ours. We feel strongly that the date we received the referral was God's way of reassuring us of that.
So we have finalized the paperwork on our end and sent it off with the remainder of the agency fees. The paperwork has reached Uganda and the attorneys have submitted the paperwork to court. We are officially waiting for a court date now!
We should expect to hear nothing for the next 1-2 months. When we get the call for our court date, we expect to travel within 4-5 weeks and be there for 7-10 days. We will be taking Gabe with us and leaving the little lady behind. This will be a life changing experience for all of us!
We will get to meet k and spend some time with him. As of right now, we do not know if he will be left alone with us or if it will be supervised because we won't go to court until the end of that week.... We will have to appear before the judge and ask permission to adopt k. I am told that the decision most likely will not even be made while we are in country. We will have to return home, leaving our son behind. I just can't even fathom what that will be like! .....I think that it will seem less painful each time I have to say it, but it still has the same sting!
Another little surprise ...... Because K's village borders the Congo, it is of course extremely dangerous there, which means that we will not be allowed to go visit his village.... Never to see where our son comes from, so that as he gets older we could help fill in some of the gaps in his life.
I'd like to think that we will be all he needs, but still shutter to think there may be an emptiness in his heart for a home that he won't remember and for his native tongue that he will eventually lose. As much as we can give him, that will forever be a piece of himself that will be gone.
So, once we leave Uganda after the first trip, we will wait for the judge to make a ruling. When the judge rules, our attorney will be there to relay the news back to us. At this point we will be granted guardianship. .....Well, we hope!Then we will have to wait another 4-6ish weeks before we can travel back to bring our boy home. We will have to be there 2-3 weeks for the 2nd trip. This is where a lot of the expense comes in since we have paid all of our agency fees.
I hope I will have K with me while I am there, but do not yet know how that will work. Because Mike's job is not quite as flexible, I will have to go this trip alone. My mom has volunteered to join me. I'm sure this journey together will be one that will be etched, in detail, in our minds and hearts together!
The purpose of this visit is to get visa and immigration paperwork handled and then we will be bringing K home to the 2nd part of his life!
I think that this is how we will have to look at it...... there will be 2 distinct parts to his life...... one part that belongs to his biological parents and one part that belongs to us.
We will never know holding him in our arms as a baby and have the stories of his first word or first steps, but I'm ok with that because those will forever belong to the beautiful human beings who created him and loved him all those years before we were there. I am sad that there had to be such a loss to create the new love and life that we will have together. We will forever be thankful for it as well. It is such a beautiful bitter sweet journey.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Sunday, May 5, 2013
The Decision
So we have 2 weeks to accept or decline our referral. We decide to follow the original plan.....there is a special department at MUSC, the children's hospital, for international adoption. You basically pay a fee and then send all of your referral information, pictures, videos, etc. They will review all of the information and then give you whatever their assessment/findings are. They have 48 hours to review and get back to you. ....while I feel like every second counts, and that is 48 hours longer that we will potentially be separated from our son, we need to be diligent. So we send the info an wait.
The doctor calls and says that K appears to be healthy and well nourished> he has the sickel cell gene, but its not active and should have limited to no effects on him. She also says that he is probably more like 4, rather than 3. (We already knew that his exact age was in question, and thought he looked a little tall for a 3 year old.) She said this is very common with African adoptions. For whatever reason, the children are often stated to be younger that they really are. Sometimes this is intentional to make the children seem more desirable, and sometimes its just because they really do not know the exact age. How could this be? Well, if they find the children orphaned in the streets, then they have absolutely no history or source of information. Other than that, life is just very different. I am told they don't use calendars, they don't usually get birth certificates when they are born, they don't have their babies in hospitals, and they don't celebrate birthdays. So a specific date of birth really has very little importance to them.
Oh, and I forgot to tell you that there was one more little suprise...... You may or may not know this, but Uganda was colonized by England, so they actually speak English there. So we were very surprised when we found out that K's village borders the Congo, and they speak a very foreign language there!
So this adds to our trepidation..... He is really at the top of the age range we were looking for, or older, he carries a scary gene trait that we know nothing about, and we could have a 4 or 5 year old that doesn't speak English.....on top of the fact that we were saddened to think that he actually has a grandmother who loves him but can not care for him. On top of all the loss this little guy has already experienced in his life, how could we take him from someone who is blood who loves him? Take him away from everything h
e has ever known, to a land of strange faces and strange sights, sounds, foods?
I don't know what we had in our minds, but I feel like my picture was something more of us "saving" him from a life of desolation, where he knew no family and no love. Now it saddens me deeply to think of causing more pain in his life. I just don't know.
There are 2 things I know..... one is:
God is the ONLY one who truly "saves, so I realize that maybe the idea of "saving" him is something more of a "god-complex", and we should be more focused on listening for Gods quiet still voice.
The 2nd is this: Fear is of the enemy!
2 Timothy1:7 says: For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. KJV
I decide to go to prayer for God to speak to me and open my eyes to the answer.
Now that I am trying to re-focus and center back to home, I also realize God has already given us the answer, but I was so busy trying to figure it out on my own that I almost missed it! Thursday, the day before Good Friday, which is the Friday before Easter...... This is the day that we got our referral, which is also by NO COINCIDENCE the same exact day 2 years ago, that I found out we were expecting our 2nd child... our daughter Havannah Lilly. God knew us in our mothers' wombs and he knows our hearts. He also knew the fear that we would have and ever so perfectly planned this to calm our hearts and quiet our minds, many many years ago.
I think that as Christians we still often forget that we need not rely on our own wisdom and understanding, and if we could do it all and understand it all on our own, it would leave no room for God. We sometimes need to stop trying to do it ourselves and let God show up for us!
The doctor calls and says that K appears to be healthy and well nourished> he has the sickel cell gene, but its not active and should have limited to no effects on him. She also says that he is probably more like 4, rather than 3. (We already knew that his exact age was in question, and thought he looked a little tall for a 3 year old.) She said this is very common with African adoptions. For whatever reason, the children are often stated to be younger that they really are. Sometimes this is intentional to make the children seem more desirable, and sometimes its just because they really do not know the exact age. How could this be? Well, if they find the children orphaned in the streets, then they have absolutely no history or source of information. Other than that, life is just very different. I am told they don't use calendars, they don't usually get birth certificates when they are born, they don't have their babies in hospitals, and they don't celebrate birthdays. So a specific date of birth really has very little importance to them.
Oh, and I forgot to tell you that there was one more little suprise...... You may or may not know this, but Uganda was colonized by England, so they actually speak English there. So we were very surprised when we found out that K's village borders the Congo, and they speak a very foreign language there!
So this adds to our trepidation..... He is really at the top of the age range we were looking for, or older, he carries a scary gene trait that we know nothing about, and we could have a 4 or 5 year old that doesn't speak English.....on top of the fact that we were saddened to think that he actually has a grandmother who loves him but can not care for him. On top of all the loss this little guy has already experienced in his life, how could we take him from someone who is blood who loves him? Take him away from everything h
e has ever known, to a land of strange faces and strange sights, sounds, foods?
I don't know what we had in our minds, but I feel like my picture was something more of us "saving" him from a life of desolation, where he knew no family and no love. Now it saddens me deeply to think of causing more pain in his life. I just don't know.
There are 2 things I know..... one is:
God is the ONLY one who truly "saves, so I realize that maybe the idea of "saving" him is something more of a "god-complex", and we should be more focused on listening for Gods quiet still voice.
The 2nd is this: Fear is of the enemy!
2 Timothy1:7 says: For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. KJV
I decide to go to prayer for God to speak to me and open my eyes to the answer.
Now that I am trying to re-focus and center back to home, I also realize God has already given us the answer, but I was so busy trying to figure it out on my own that I almost missed it! Thursday, the day before Good Friday, which is the Friday before Easter...... This is the day that we got our referral, which is also by NO COINCIDENCE the same exact day 2 years ago, that I found out we were expecting our 2nd child... our daughter Havannah Lilly. God knew us in our mothers' wombs and he knows our hearts. He also knew the fear that we would have and ever so perfectly planned this to calm our hearts and quiet our minds, many many years ago.
I think that as Christians we still often forget that we need not rely on our own wisdom and understanding, and if we could do it all and understand it all on our own, it would leave no room for God. We sometimes need to stop trying to do it ourselves and let God show up for us!
Saturday, May 4, 2013
The BIG NEWS
Well, I'm not quite sure where to start..... So much has happened since my last blog. Hmm. Ok so rewind to the week before Easter.... Today would be March 28th....So I'm sitting at my parents house, where I go for lunch or a cup of coffee sometimes while I'm in there area on a work day, since they live about 45 minutes from my house. Meanwhile, Mike and Gabe are at home sick today with the stomach bug. So my mom isn't home, it's just me and my dad. My phone was over by the door, where I have to take my shoes off when I come in because no shoes allowed in the house. My phone was almost dead and I didn't have my charger, so I didn't think there was even any juice left in it. Dad and I are talking and I hear my phone ring, but didn't go get it because I didn't want to be rude. Then it rings again right after it had stopped, so I figure maybe it's something important, so I run over to get it but have now missed the 2nd call as well. Look at caller I.D. And it's an out of town number that I don't recognize so I quickly check my voice mail before the battery goes dead. It's our case worker at our agency , with a simple message to call her. I instantly get chills because I know there is absolutely no reason fer her to be calling me at this point unless she has news of some sort...... But the only news we are waiting on is that they have found our son, and it couldn't be that because we only started this process in December and I know people that have been waiting almost 2 years for a referal. Still..... I'm hopeful because I have had this feeling over the last few weeks that it was coming soon. I mean God has been planning this since the day I was born and even though everyone has said that it would be months or years, I know God has been working on this for longer than anyone realizes it.
So I call A (we are not supposed to use names.) The 1st thing she asks is if Mike is with me and now I know! I know I am about to get news that will change our lives forever, so I can't even speak. I get that slightly light headed feeling and my eyes start to water, and I try to talk but my throat is thick. So I am quiet for a moment to collect myself, and she checks to see if I am still on the line. I put my phone on speaker now because my dad is next to me and I want him to hear what she is going to say next..... I finally am able to tell her that I am at my parents house and Mike is at home sick. So she tells me that they have a referal for us.....they have identified our son! He is a 3 year old healthy boy named "k" , as we shall call him for mandatory privacy reasons. He lives with his grandmother and both of his biological parents are gone. A said she has a few pictures , along with his social and medical history that she will send me in an email, only if I promise not to open it until I am home with Mike. So I give her my word. Meanwhile, my dad is doing his dad thing. He is sitting next to me telling me to ask this question and that question.... What happened to the parents, what happens if the grandmother changes her mind, what if he is sick with something we don't know about. Ok, so I don't blame him.... This is what dads do, but I was kind of hoping that he could savor this moment with me and be a little more heart and less head for the moment.
So I go into the other room to call Mike and Gabe to give them the news. It's sort of bitter sweet since Mike is in bed, feeling near death. So I give them the news and head home. Now, I'm actually kind of glad that my cell phone is almost dead because I'm worried I will be tempted to look at his picture before I get home.
Now I'm home...made it all the way without peaking. Go into the room, where Mike is laying in the bed, so I get his laptop and call Gabe into the room. We open the email together and there he is! What a handsome little man! He's tall and looks to be healthy and he's handsome. So, tall and good looking.... Definitely takes after his mom already :) and he's wearing a Scooby Doo shirt, standing on a dirt road, next to Granny, and maybe he's wearing bedroom slippers? There is a small house behind them in the picture. Is this where he lives? So many things going through our minds, as we open the attachments. There is some medical information and social information about him, his birth parents, his village, etc.
Now we officially have 2 weeks to either accept the referal or decline it. If we accept, we are saying that we want him as our son. So this is the moment we have been waiting on, but how do we know for sure he is our son? I don't know how you "know". I think I thought that you would feel a certain way, or just know, but now there are all sorts of emotions and A sort of fear that I didn't expect. Fear? I just don't understand my own emotions. We agree that we will wait for Gods lead, meanwhile we will follow the logical next steps that we had agreed upon following at this point. God, I know you have brought us this far, we put our faith in you!
So I call A (we are not supposed to use names.) The 1st thing she asks is if Mike is with me and now I know! I know I am about to get news that will change our lives forever, so I can't even speak. I get that slightly light headed feeling and my eyes start to water, and I try to talk but my throat is thick. So I am quiet for a moment to collect myself, and she checks to see if I am still on the line. I put my phone on speaker now because my dad is next to me and I want him to hear what she is going to say next..... I finally am able to tell her that I am at my parents house and Mike is at home sick. So she tells me that they have a referal for us.....they have identified our son! He is a 3 year old healthy boy named "k" , as we shall call him for mandatory privacy reasons. He lives with his grandmother and both of his biological parents are gone. A said she has a few pictures , along with his social and medical history that she will send me in an email, only if I promise not to open it until I am home with Mike. So I give her my word. Meanwhile, my dad is doing his dad thing. He is sitting next to me telling me to ask this question and that question.... What happened to the parents, what happens if the grandmother changes her mind, what if he is sick with something we don't know about. Ok, so I don't blame him.... This is what dads do, but I was kind of hoping that he could savor this moment with me and be a little more heart and less head for the moment.
So I go into the other room to call Mike and Gabe to give them the news. It's sort of bitter sweet since Mike is in bed, feeling near death. So I give them the news and head home. Now, I'm actually kind of glad that my cell phone is almost dead because I'm worried I will be tempted to look at his picture before I get home.
Now I'm home...made it all the way without peaking. Go into the room, where Mike is laying in the bed, so I get his laptop and call Gabe into the room. We open the email together and there he is! What a handsome little man! He's tall and looks to be healthy and he's handsome. So, tall and good looking.... Definitely takes after his mom already :) and he's wearing a Scooby Doo shirt, standing on a dirt road, next to Granny, and maybe he's wearing bedroom slippers? There is a small house behind them in the picture. Is this where he lives? So many things going through our minds, as we open the attachments. There is some medical information and social information about him, his birth parents, his village, etc.
Now we officially have 2 weeks to either accept the referal or decline it. If we accept, we are saying that we want him as our son. So this is the moment we have been waiting on, but how do we know for sure he is our son? I don't know how you "know". I think I thought that you would feel a certain way, or just know, but now there are all sorts of emotions and A sort of fear that I didn't expect. Fear? I just don't understand my own emotions. We agree that we will wait for Gods lead, meanwhile we will follow the logical next steps that we had agreed upon following at this point. God, I know you have brought us this far, we put our faith in you!
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Update
Well, I haven't updated you all for a while, so there are some exciting things that have been happening!
First of all, we were officially approved by SC DSS a fe weeks ago! Although, we were already approved and put on the waiting list by our agency, it is just 1 more formality off the checklist.
S here is how the waiting list part works..... Each agency has its own group of orphanages or agencies that it works with in each specific country. So not everyone is looking at the same group of little ones. Our agency goes through the foster care system in Uganda, mainly because before they set up their program in Uganda, they met with the government officials to ask what the preferred method was..... This is very important because there is a lot of people AGAINST international adoption in Uganda, and since the country has only been open for international adoption for a few short years, it is still a very delicate situation.
So anyhow, now that we are "paper ready" we wait! How many families are paper ready, in front of us- who are also looking for a 2-4 year old boy? 0!!! So, what that means folks is that I just got goose bumps. So even there are 143 million orphans, they each have to have official orphan paperwork so to speak, before they can be adopted. This costs money, so they done start on the paperwork for any given child until a family has been cleared and approved, who is looking for a babe that fits their description, so to speak..... When i say description, I mean things like Ge, gender, health, ect.
So it's been a few weeks, and we have been pretty busy with fundraising through our yard sales and just normal life. It was weird to go from talking or emailing with our social worker almost every day for the past few months to now not talking for a few weeks, so I called the other day, just to see if there was any word.
She said they do have a boy who fits our wants. They are working on his paperwork, but she is not allowed to tell me anything about him yet. I almost cried when she to.d me thAt we might be matched and have a picture within a few short weeks to a month!
Crazy exciting and yes-a little scary too.
I'm loving life-my hubby, 2 children, and all of the other blessings God has already given me, and looking forward to even more blessings when we finally bring our boy home..... To be continued.
First of all, we were officially approved by SC DSS a fe weeks ago! Although, we were already approved and put on the waiting list by our agency, it is just 1 more formality off the checklist.
S here is how the waiting list part works..... Each agency has its own group of orphanages or agencies that it works with in each specific country. So not everyone is looking at the same group of little ones. Our agency goes through the foster care system in Uganda, mainly because before they set up their program in Uganda, they met with the government officials to ask what the preferred method was..... This is very important because there is a lot of people AGAINST international adoption in Uganda, and since the country has only been open for international adoption for a few short years, it is still a very delicate situation.
So anyhow, now that we are "paper ready" we wait! How many families are paper ready, in front of us- who are also looking for a 2-4 year old boy? 0!!! So, what that means folks is that I just got goose bumps. So even there are 143 million orphans, they each have to have official orphan paperwork so to speak, before they can be adopted. This costs money, so they done start on the paperwork for any given child until a family has been cleared and approved, who is looking for a babe that fits their description, so to speak..... When i say description, I mean things like Ge, gender, health, ect.
So it's been a few weeks, and we have been pretty busy with fundraising through our yard sales and just normal life. It was weird to go from talking or emailing with our social worker almost every day for the past few months to now not talking for a few weeks, so I called the other day, just to see if there was any word.
She said they do have a boy who fits our wants. They are working on his paperwork, but she is not allowed to tell me anything about him yet. I almost cried when she to.d me thAt we might be matched and have a picture within a few short weeks to a month!
Crazy exciting and yes-a little scary too.
I'm loving life-my hubby, 2 children, and all of the other blessings God has already given me, and looking forward to even more blessings when we finally bring our boy home..... To be continued.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Yard sale fundraiser for month of February!
Something for everyone!
We have been collecting donated items for months and the 2 car garage is now full of stuff waiting for you......
Men's clothes
Baby clothes
Furniture
Toys
Kitchen ware
Radio flyer wagon
Outdoor furnace
Bookshelf
Snow skis
Couches
Sleeper sofa
Toddler bed
Tvs
Printers
Scanner
Copier
2 retro ottomans
Entertainment center
Brand new recessed lights in boxes
Tons of high end trophies
Picture frames
Kitchen table and chairs
Curtains
All kinds of odds and ends
Also, we will have Duncan Donuts and coffee for the early crowd!!!!
7:00am
9105 Markleys grove blvd
Summerville,sc29485
Find some great deals AND your money will go to a great cause!
Check out our blog as well
Http://uganda-babylovestory.blogspot.com
Mailer Fund-raiser : Thinking outside the box!
Hi there- my name is Sundae, and it is nice to meet you!
If you are reading this post because you got a letter in the mil from us, and you're just not quite sure what to think, I would like to thank you for coming to visit our blog!
Yes, it my be a little unorthodox to personally request help from someone you have never met before, but then I thought we would "think outside the box" so to speak! I can't even count the number of times I have gotten a call or a letter from some company or organization, asking for donations for some cause that isn't local, and you never really get to meet or see who you are helping. So, with this in mind, I thought that it may actually make sense to ask others in the community for help. You can see us, meet us through our blog, and may even come to know more about us than you know about some of your friends.
And no,we did not hire some marketing company to do the letters....we printed them, folded them (with the help of the folding machine at James Island Baptist Church ) and put them in the envelopes ourselves.... We even put the stickers on just for you.
We are also praying for each person who touches these letters -that you and your family will be blessed.
If you are reading this post because you got a letter in the mil from us, and you're just not quite sure what to think, I would like to thank you for coming to visit our blog!
Yes, it my be a little unorthodox to personally request help from someone you have never met before, but then I thought we would "think outside the box" so to speak! I can't even count the number of times I have gotten a call or a letter from some company or organization, asking for donations for some cause that isn't local, and you never really get to meet or see who you are helping. So, with this in mind, I thought that it may actually make sense to ask others in the community for help. You can see us, meet us through our blog, and may even come to know more about us than you know about some of your friends.
And no,we did not hire some marketing company to do the letters....we printed them, folded them (with the help of the folding machine at James Island Baptist Church ) and put them in the envelopes ourselves.... We even put the stickers on just for you.
We are also praying for each person who touches these letters -that you and your family will be blessed.
Saturday, February 2, 2013
1TST BIG FUNDRAISER
Ok, so once we decided that the time was right, to start our adoption journey, we were shocked to find that it costs so much money! And each country is different, so of course we felt led to Uganda, which happens to be one of the more expensive countries to adopt from, in addition to just being more difficult to deal with all together. As a matter of fact, while we were interviewing different agencies, the message was clearly sent from each one in similar but different ways: "Unless you feel like God has called you there or you have a specific reason to choose Uganda- I would pick a different country".
Well, if this is the message that al adoptive families are getting, then what does that mean for the beautiful ugandan orphans?
We really hoped that we could just"pick" someplace that would be cheaper and easier to deal with, but we didn't have a choice.... we were clearly called to Uganda.
So now what- how do we come up with almost $40,000? Do we just save and wait, now knowing without any question, that we have a son already out there- who needs us?
When I asked agencies and other adoptive families about what most people do, and how people afford international adoptions, the response was quite surprising.... Fund-raising for adoption is a very common thing. I found this to be very interesting, but wasn't sure that I was comfortable in asking people to help fund our private adoption, and still considered weather we should just wait till we could save the funds.
It was told that if we really felt like this was God's calling for our lives, that we should not wait until we could provide, but to just say yes to Gods calling and let him provide.
If we do it all ourselves- it leaves no room for God , so "ok God- we are leaving you lots of room" :)
So for a lack of a better way to explain it, adoption is sort of a "pay as you go" deal. There are different stages, and with each new stage, another big fee is due. We are now waiting for them to match us up with our son. This is called a referral. We can not accept the referral until we have the next $9,500. We have saved about half of that, after the other fees we have been paying along the way.
This is where you can help!
OUR 1ST BIG FUNDRAISER: A YARD SALE
A very popular fundraiser is a giant yard sale, so we are collecting donated items of: clothes, toys, tools, furniture, and ll odds and ends. We have a storage unit full and are working on filling up the garage. We hope to have the yard sale in the next 2-3 weeks, so PLEASE HELP US FILL UP THE GARAGE!
I know someone who raised almost $5,000 this way. I know its a lofty goal, but we can do it with your help!
Please let me know if you have items to donate, and we will schedule a pick up day over the next week or two
Message me or email me at
sundaes.johnson@gmail.com if you want to help.
Also, if you want to help, but dont want to mess with digging out old dusty items, as always, you can make a tax deductible donation at:
THANKS SO MUCH!
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