REFERRAL!!!!

At 10:30 tonight I was on one of our phones talking to my mom when we got a call on my cell phone.  I didn't answer the cell because I didn't completely recognize the number, but suggested to Kevin that I thought it was the same area code that our adoption agency was from.  He was at the computer with Carissa and Tyler and quickly looked up the area code - and it was from the same state!  Rather abruptly (Sorry mom!  I was excited!), I hung up with my mom after telling her it was our agency calling.  While on my phone calling back our agency, Kevin's cell phone rang.  Kind-of in slow motion we all turned to see who was calling on his - our agency!  My belly was doing flip-flops by this time - why else would our agency be calling at 10:30 at night but to give us our referral???

We answered Kevin's phone and put it on speaker.  It was Nichole from Children's Hope.  She said she had just come back into the office to get a little bit of work done when she noticed there was a voice mail.  She checked it and got our good news!  Their contact in Colombia said they had a referral for us, but the oldest child was a little older than what we are approved for.  We are approved for up to 8 years and 11 months, but the oldest one is 9 years and 3 months.  Would that work for our family?  Nichole must have heard the cheers in the background from Carrissa, Tyler and Laurel.  They were really, really excited!  (They wanted us to adopt children who were their same ages, so they were really happy that the first child is 9 and not 8.)

So... the oldest child is 9.  I think that is wonderful.  That child will fit right in with Tyler and Laurel.  Want to know the ages of the other ones?  The next one is 6 years old.  Oh, my.  I love that age!  At times, I still think of Laurel as 6.  She will be 10 next month!  There's more...  the third child is 4!  Two 4 year olds?  Lyric, our daughter from China, is 4.  I think it would be great for her to have a sibling/playmate close in age to her.  I can just see them playing make-believe with the toy-kitchen.  We must not forget the last one!  Yup!  There is one more child that may by added to the Burgess family.  The last one is just an itty-bitty tyke at 2 years old!  Wow!  A 2 year old!  We are going to have A LOT of (busy!) fun in this house! 

Our family is going to be doing a lot of prayer over the weekend, but we are feeling really good about this referral.  At least about the ages.  We don't have any other information yet.  It feels like Colombia just let our agency give us a nibble of a freshly baked cookie instead of giving us all of it!  :)  We know the ages of the children, but we don't know if they are all boys, all girls, boy-girl-girl-boy, girl-girl-girl-boy, and so on... Ah, the suspense! 

Nichole said she would call or email her Colombian contact to ask if she could get any more information on the children, so that should be our next bit of news.  Other than that, we will have to get an update to our home study done.  We will need to be approved for up to 9 years old instead of 8.  Hopefully, it would be a quick process.  Oh, and if/when we do let Colombia know that it isn't an issue having a 9 year old instead of an 8 year old, we would soon be getting information on the children, including pictures!  One really good thing about adopting from Colombia - you get a lot of information on the children.

We would appreciate prayers for our family this weekend about our decision.  It's a big one that will have major effects on our family, including the children who were referred to us.  Prayers for them would be nice also.  Really, it isn't hard for me to imagine at all having 10 of us sitting around our dining room table.  If this sibling group is the one that God had planned to be a part of our family all along then Kevin and I would officially have 8 children.  They would be 13, 12, 10 (in October), 9, 6, 4, 4, and 2!  Perfect.

In His name,

Karen