It's Our 1 Year "Referral-versary"!

 "O Lord, You are my God. I will exalt You, I will give thanks to Your name; For You have worked wonders, plans formed long ago, with perfect faithfulness." ~ Isaiah 25:1

We all have moments that will forever stand out in our memories as milestone moments.  They change our lives irrevocably and after those moments, we know that nothing will ever be the same.

September 10, 2012, 5:15 pm is a moment that will always be remembered as one of those life-changing milestones for our family.  That was the moment...one year ago...that we first saw the faces of the 2 adorable and precious Haitian girls that God has chosen to join our family through adoption.

At that point, I wasn't doing a good job of keeping this blog up to date, so I didn't share our referral excitement here.  We shared our excitement with phone calls, emails, and facebook posts, but I've never shared the story of those amazing moments here, in this space that is meant to document our adoption journey.  So, I decided that sharing that story here today would be the perfect way to celebrate our 1 year referral-versary.  Technically, I'm writing this on Sept 9th, and the anniversary is officially tomorrow.  However, it is a Monday evening as I write this, and it was a Monday evening last year when we fell in love with 2 (more) little girls and our lives were changed forever.

To give some background, we had started our adoption process (this time) in June of 2011.  It took us about a year to do the ridiculous amounts of paperwork for our home study and dossier, as well as to do enough fund raising to submit our completed paperwork to Haiti.  At the end of June 2012, we sent off that gigantic stack of paperwork (along with a gigantic check) and by early July, it was on its way to Haiti (after having been double-checked by our agency).  We were told that it would take about a month to get to our orphanage and that when they received it, the first thing they would do is look over our information and give us a referral of the children that they felt would be the best fit for our family.  We weren't sure how long it would take the staff at our orphanage, God's Littlest Angels, to make that decision.  However, once we got word that our paperwork had arrived at GLA in early August, I woke up every day wondering if this would be the day that we would find out who God had chosen for our family.  It's a strange feeling knowing that your life is about to change in amazing ways, with one simple phone call...but to have no idea when that phone call might come.  It's a REALLY good thing that I didn't know then just HOW MUCH of that kind of waiting we'd be doing in the months ahead!!

We had specified in our dossier that we wanted 2 children who were biological siblings, age 6 or under at the time of referral.  We were open to some moderate special needs and didn't specify gender.  We thought this might be the only way that we would get a boy, but God has such a sense of humor!!  We already knew that there were at least five sibling sets at GLA that fit into our age range, and all of them had at least one boy, except one. :)

As August rolled into September, we were hearing talk about how the Haitian adoption process would be undergoing major changes, due to the fact that Haiti was now becoming a "Hague" country.  (The Hague convention was put into place by several countries years ago in an effort to reform the international adoption process and reduce the corruption present in so many countries' adoption processes).  The Haitian government agency in charge of adoptions, IBESR, released a deadline of September 15th.  All families' dossiers had to be matched with a referral and submitted by that deadline in order to be under the "old" process.  If we didn't make that deadline, we would have to switch adoption agencies, which could've added several months and/or several thousand dollars to our adoption process.  No one really knew (and still don't!!) what the new process would entail.  We knew that it was in God's hands, and that if we missed that deadline and needed to switch agencies, He would work out those details.  As that date drew closer, I began to doubt that we would make that deadline.  I remember commenting to someone at church on Sept 9th that if we hadn't received our referral yet, the chances of us getting our referral and making that deadline were slim.

Enter your average weekday...Monday, September 10th.  Matt went to work in Winona, the girls and I had a normal school day and their first American Heritage Girls meeting was that evening.  As I was preparing supper just before 5:00 pm, I got a call and saw on the caller ID that it was from our adoption agency.  They very rarely call us...99% of our correspondence with them is through email.  So, my heart started racing as I answered the phone.  It was our agency director, Amy, and she said that I should get to my computer as soon as possible because she'd be sending me several emails with our referral information.  The call lasted all of 45 seconds, but our lives changed right then and there.

Matt wasn't home from work yet, the girls were spread all over the house, I was cooking supper, and everyone needed to be out of the house in less than an hour...and yet the pictures and information about our children was waiting for us in my inbox.  I don't know how but I managed to wait the 10 minutes until Matt got home so that we could find out all together.  As soon as he walked in the door, I asked him if he wanted to find out who his children would be.  He, of course, answered with a resounding YES and we gathered the girls together to open our emails.

The first email we opened, at 5:15 pm, had this info at the top of the message... Karmen and Matt, Congratulations, you have been referred two beautiful little girls by the names of Naika and Chelley. I am going to be sending you quite a few e-mails now, so cancel all plans for this evening! 

Immediately, I knew exactly who she was talking about because Annika had chosen Chelley and Naika for our family months before.  In April of 2012, we received a newsletter from GLA with pictures of all the sibling sets that were available for adoption.  We hung that on the fridge, stared at those pictures, and wondered if we were looking at the faces of our children.   Chelley and Naika were the first pair pictured and Annika picked them early on.  She even had the whole plan worked out for who would share rooms.  She wanted to share with Chelley, Livie could share with Naika, and Maria would finally get her own room that she'd been asking for.  (And that is, indeed, what the plan is for when they do finally come home!)  I had tried to let Annika down gently, informing her that we didn't get to choose the children and that I didn't want her to get her hopes set on someone in particular, only to be disappointed. So, my first words as we opened the email that night were, "Annika, you were right!" 

It was also not lost on us that they had just referred us two beautiful little GIRLS, bringing us to a grand total of FIVE DAUGHTERS!!  Matt adjusted pretty quickly to the idea of raising five girls and we all rejoiced as we looked at all the pictures they had sent us of Chelley and Naika.  We were instantly in love with both of them, and that love has only increased every day since then. We received about 10 pictures of each of them, as well as descriptions of their personalities, medical info, legal documents, and 4 videos (3 of Chelley, 1 of Naika).  We eagerly soaked up every little piece of information about our newest daughters. 

We emailed pictures and then called our immediate family so that we could hear their reaction to our news and to the sweet faces of our newest daughters.  After we'd given close family and friends the news, we joyfully shared our announcement on facebook so that we could spread the great news as far as possible.  The joy of finally knowing who our children were and being able to gaze at their unbelievably precious faces lasted for months before the waiting started to get really difficult.  I simply couldn't get enough of staring at their sweet and innocent smiles.  My facebook post from September 12th says it all...

"You know how when you first fell in love with your spouse and you could literally spend hours gazing at their picture? That's how I am with these pictures of our newest daughters...I'm particularly captivated by their ADORABLE dimples and big brown eyes!! Overwhelmed by God's faithfulness and great gifts for us!"

Here are a couple of the pictures that I couldn't take my eyes off of that we received that day...

 We received many more wonderful pictures that evening, but due to computer problems since then, these two are the only referral pictures that I can post right now.  Since this blog post is already one of the longest in the history of mankind, I'll save the rest of the pictures, and the videos, for another day. 

Thank you so much for walking alongside us on this journey.  You've celebrated with us, cried with us, and prayed for us and for Chelley and Naika continuously over the last 12 months and we are so grateful for your support, friendship, and love.  We look forward to NEXT September 10th, when we can celebrate this life-changing day WITH Chelley and Naika.