Missing Our Children, When We Haven't Even Met Them

Sigh.  It has been pretty hard switching gears from "expecting to travel to meet our children soon" to "we won't be traveling until AT LEAST mid-January".

The strike is almost over in Colombia, but in some areas I have heard that it is still going strong.  One of these areas is where our children are: Bogota.  I have read that the strike has pushed everything back at least 4 weeks.  At this point, I will be really surprised if we even get to travel mid-January.  The judges aren't back to work.  When they do go back, they are behind at least 4 weeks.  There is a break from mid-December to about mid-January so adoptions are not processed during that time.  So...  will we even travel in January?  I have no idea :(

In the meantime...

We know for sure now that our little Colombians are in three different foster homes.  Juan David is in one, Briyic in another, and the youngest three boys are together in yet another foster home.  Not only will they have to adjust to being with us as a new family, but they will need to adjust to being with one another as well.  I pray that ICBF is doing everything they can to prepare them for being together again and for us being their new family.

It wasn't good news that we received from ICBF about our daughter, Briyic.  Because of the sensitive nature of it, I would rather not share the details here.  She is getting, as well as Juan David, some counseling sessions.  I suppose that may be good for them, but I can't help but think that if we only had them here with us...

I am anxious to hold each one in my arms.  I want to cook for them and bathe them.  I want to make them giggle and laugh.  I'm excited to teach them, and to show them the love of Christ.

One of the things that was holding up our travel, despite the strike, was the Visa photos of our children in Colombia.  Our agency's contact there has been trying for over a month to get their Visa photos.  We still don't know if she has them.  Hopefully tomorrow we will find out more.  It seems so wrong that a strike, a vacation in the, well, I don't know who all gets the vacation but it stops adoptions from being processed, and a few Visa pictures, are the only things that are stopping us from wrapping our arms around our children.  I know, it's only a couple more months, but it seems like sooo much longer than that.

One benefit of not traveling right away is that we have a bit more time to get our house in order before it becomes totally disorganized again while we adjust to being a family of 11!  We were able to clean out the house a little and have a yard sale.  I really didn't expect to do too well having a sale in mid-November, but the weather was great, and we were blessed to put a couple hundred dollars towards the adoption expenses!  Way better then I ever thought we would do.

Disappointingly, we were turned down for another grant we had applied for.  This one was a matching-grant, and I was pretty sure we would qualify for it, but were told instead that there were a lot of applicants and not enough funds... 

The good news is that our all-natural goat milk soap fundraiser is going well!  Not only do we get to raise money for the adoption expenses, but we get to provide those who order with an excellent product!  We have had many people tell us how wonderful our soap is and how good it is on their skin.  Even individuals with eczema say how great it is!  If you would like to order just click on our fundraising page listed above to see what we have available and email me with your order - simple!  Oh, and they are great to give as a Christmas gift to friends, family, as a secret-Santa, co-workers, or even for yourself!

Thanks for reading!

Karen