Our Little Treasure!!

We received our first update from GLA. Aidan is doing very well. His smile has been coming through and he really likes playing with other kids. He's happy and it looks like he's full of character!
This is what else was written, about this months theme.........."As you know, Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic and is located the Caribbean. The Caribbean is famous for its tales of Pirate folklore. Scattered throughout the Caribbean there have been stories of shipwrecks, deserted islands… And buried treasure!!!" Which brought them to the photo theme of “We Found Your Treasure”!

Aidan Manuel Brinks

Yes--we are officially one of 'those' families---all our kids have an A!! No- we didn't try for that. Actually I had my list of top 10 names in which none of them were an A name. Yet Alyssa kept insisting that his name be Aidan Maxwell, well----Maxwell wasn't going to happen because Manuel was non-negotiable, but after saying Aidan Manuel and praying for him..........it seems to fit perfectly. I do have to say sorry to the Baggechs--they have an Aidan too, and don't live too far from us! Sorry!
We haven't heard any updates from GLA about Aidan. I know they are actually in transition of who is in charge of doing the monthly updates.....so hopefully we hear soon!!
This past weekend we were at a West MI Haitian gathering----it was VERY cool to see all the kids! It made me just want to pick them up and squeeze them, just how cute they were and wanting to have Aidan with us too. I'm so excited that in the next couple months there are up to 3 different people or groups going to GLA in which I can send pictures/stuff to Aidan and have them love on him. It will be great just to get lots of different pictures of him instead of just a couple.

The general process from here

I mentally have prepared myself that this is quite a long process.....yet now that we are actually connected with our little boy I think this is going to be sooooo hard. I thought I'd fill you in on a general process that takes place. It seems all greek to me, but at least we can follow steps!!!

1. paperwork goes to Minister of Foreign Affairs and also sent to a laweyer with the child's social history.
2. Dossier (our paperwork) is given to IBESR (takes 4-6 months)
3. Once approved it goes to Parquet and sounds like a bunch of legalizing (1-2 months)
4. Attestation of the signatures-----more legalizing (couple weeks)
5. Legalization of the Minister of Justice Dept. (couple weeks)
6. Legalization of Foreign Affairs
7. application of his passport (6-8 weeks)
8. all is reviewed
9. Apply for a visa (week)
10. get air line tickets to pick him up!!!

So, as you can see it's quite a process. I know many of you have asked about why it takes so long. I'm praying the process continues to work out details so they can cut times down, so for now we will pray for his arrival as soon as possible, and that none of our paper work has glitches in it.

Our little boy is currently in an orphanage called "God's Littlest Angels", or GLA. They seem to do a fabulous job with the kids. We have followed other peoples adoptions and they seem to get great updates and pictures, so I'm excited to keep hearing more about him. Paul actually was able to see GLA on one of his trips to Haiti. He said it was a huge place and very well done. Of course there are tons of kids around so there is lots of chaos, but that goes with the territory.
Below is a link to their web sight, so you can check out some pictures of the place.

http://www.glahaiti.org/adoption_news

Well, thanks for all the encouragement. Hopefully you hear from us soon as we pick out a name yet!!!

Then the Referral Came........

On Tuesday April 22 we got a referral. There were ALOT of emotions that came with this referral. After coming back from spring break, part of me was actually feeling like, "what are we doing? and Are we doing the right thing? and Should we do this?" I think there was just so much over whelming feelings and also having had alot of time pass since our initial excitement that it just wasn't what we were expecting to feel.



This is where the story gets to be amazing and God is good!!



My initial feelings were that we couldn't do this. I was ready to throw in the towel and not proceed anymore. In fact in BSF we were studying Jesus in Gethsemane and just saying "take this cup from me, but not my will but yours be done". That was my prayer for a couple days. I went through many emotions and wondering why we have to deal with such hard decisions.
On Sunday as we were walking I said to Paul, "I can't do this, so here is God's fleece.....if this is His will, then someone needs to speak directly to us and not rationalize with us about why we wouldn't do this." Well, wouldn't you know it, we got back in the house and a friend had called. She said she was thinking about us and after her story about her experience, basically it was that everything was going to be good. We'd love this child and couldn't imagine life without him.

Okay---So God knew I needed that! We actually put a list together of 'why we would' VS. 'why we wouldn't' adopt. The 'why we would' list kept getting longer. To name a few, his age---there are tons of 2 year old boys in the neighborhood; his name---it fits right in with having an M for a middle name; the timing of our referral---- God knew exactly what bible studies I'd be studying at the exact time of our decisions; God knew we would be doing training on ''adoption expectations" and needed to hear that-------which was originally scheduled for January (but cancelled due to a snow storm); God gave us awesome Dr.'s to discuss stuff with. Everything was looking like this was God's path.............yet it scared me.

The most amazing part was on Wednesday April 30 I was ready to say NO. I just kneeled down before doing my bible study and prayed for one more assurance because I just couldn't do it. I proceeded with my bible study and God didn't give me one assurance, He gave me multiple assurance. In fact, He gave me 14 specific verses or messages that this was His will. A couple key things were John 15:16 "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit. Fruit that will last" and Luke 19: 21-27--Doing God's will and listening, God will bless us for following His will. And the promise that He anointed us and equips us. He means for us to be used with great effectiveness. He has given life experiences intended to turn into testimonies. God is good!!!

I'm an so thrilled to see how God's plan in going to unfold. We accepted our referral on Thursday May 1.

So let me introduce you to...........______ Manuel Brinks. (first name is not decided yet)
His name is Manuel, which we'll use as his middle name. He is 2 years old, his birthday is Feb. 14, 2006. GLA states, he is a happy boy and likes to smile. He is shy around those he doesn't know. He likes to cuddle and be played with. He likes to feed himself and play with other kids. But he gets angry if kids try to take his cookies. So I'm sure Austin and him will be fighting over who gets the most cookies!!! Oh....and he likes his thumb. Alyssa will think that's cool!

We so look forward to what God has planned for our adventure and this little boys life. It will be a while yet before we can pick him up. In fact I dare not say even up to 1 year, but our prayer is that we can spend Christmas or his birthday with him!!! So pray that the government process will speed up for his arrival at home.

Spring Break

Our family had gone to Haiti over spring break. It was really unrelated to our adoption. A group from church went to visit villages with GLOW ministries. An original thought of ours was to take the kids with us when we pick up our child, but having talked with other families and also the orphanage director, they really don't recommend that. I see their side, that the child needs to bond with us before just bonding with our kids. Our desire was to have our kids experience a little bit of Haiti, just so they have a little flavor of it, and things are totally out in the open that this child would look different than us. Not only that, it was just a trip that kept life into perspective. We've really been challenged with how we live since our church has challenged us with a year of Jubilee. It was a great trip, I'm really glad we were able to do that.

When we got home from the trip, there was a message on our answering machine in which the director was just verifying some of our information and that they were in the process of translating a referral, so we'd being hearing soon from them. So for a whole week we had to think about it!!!!!...............

How our adventure began

As most of you know we are adopting from Haiti. We thought this would be a great way to keep people updated, or if you want to know the process, we'd track it when we received news.

Our adventure began over 2 years ago. Austin had turned 2 and we were debating if we wanted to do a 3rd adoption. Through a couple events, we felt like we really wanted to pursue again. Well, before we even finished our paper work, we decided that maybe it wasn't for us, and stopped the process. Our prayer was that we would have complete peace with being a fabulous family of four!! As time went on, we were very restless. I was just so discontented and continued to think about having a third all the time. Really, you can ignore your feelings for only so long, but God knew he needed to keep after us. After about a year we looked into options.....from doing adoption, doing foster care, embryo adoption, we reached new frustrations. Not knowing what was our path, yet knowing we were not on it currently. One evening out of the blue Paul mentioned international adoption. I knew it. Just like that. I felt like doing a little dance and shouting "yes!" I felt like I was smiling and just knew that was our path. After feeling restless and thinking about it daily, I instantly had peace. I'm so glad God never stopped pursueing us, because having peace is so freeing.

After talking with our social worker, all things seem to point us to Haiti. Many aspects, as well as the fact that Paul had been there recently. So, we started our process, around June 14, 2007.

Just to give you a little history on the process, and things to get to this point. We've all had medical forms filled and refilled. We had to get criminal back grounds, finger printed, endless task of copying statements, employee letters, friends letters of recommendations, phyciatric evaluations, translations into Creole and so much more. I remember the night we had everything in a pile and Paul went to photo copy it for our records. Our stack of papers were 111 papers thick, and he copied it 6 times for various parts of the organizations. Wow!! that felt so good to send that out in the mail!!! (that was July 3, 2007)

The general flow from that point was to wait until you received a referral of a child. The typical waiting time was about 4-5 months. We were hoping for a referral around Christmas time, but soon time quickly disappeared and December turned to January and here we are in May!