Brief update~

So sorry to keep many of you waiting to hear how things are going with our fundraising efforts!  We are moving forward and are SO THANKFUL for the many gifts we have received so far!  We have 179 pieces sponsored so far, and we are GRATEFUL!!  Only 821 to go! 

We also received a very large donation from a family member on Thursday. We will combine that with our current puzzle piece money enabling us to send the (approximate) $12,500 fee down to Haiti that is needed in order for us to be matched!!  This is so exciting to us!  After we are matched (don't know for sure how long that will take), we will need to send the other half of the Haiti fees.  The way that our orphanage matches families is by prayerfully considering each adoptive family and each child available for adoption.  We don't look at photo listings and "choose" our children.  The director chooses who she feels God is leading her to choose and matches families with children.  Some of you saw on FB  that I mentioned a sibling group of babies (3 months and 24 months) who were just admitted to GLA this week.  While I could mention to her that we saw the post about them and would love to parent them, we will wait for God's leading.  We know and trust that He already has the children picked just for us.  We don't want to get in the way of His leading--even if the babies are SO CUTE!  We will keep you all updated on our match FOR SURE!

In other adoption news, if you are my FB friend, you know that we received our USCIS approval this week!  That was a major milestone in this journey.  One that took a lot more time than we anticipated!  It turned out that since our oldest bio child, Alli, turned 18 this month, we had to do all the same background checking, FBI clearances, and biometric fingerprinting on her that we did on us!  That was a bummer of a delay, but all the needed documents and appointments turned out to take less time to process than ours did, so we praise the Lord for that. 

I know this isn't long, and I am so lame at posting pics, but I will give a better update later when we know more.  And I will post puzzle pictures then too!

Thanks for your continued prayers and supportive gifts and comments!  We are so thankful for the community of friends and family we have to walk this pathway with us!

Does the teacher listen to the Teacher?

I have been mulling over and re-writing this post in my head for the past few days and pray that the Lord enables me to speak with His words what is on my heart regarding our adoption.  

First off, let me address our oft-asked questions: "Why in the world is this taking SO LONG??" and "Where are things in your adoption process?"  There are many reasons that it has taken us longer.  I have mentioned some of the reasons in previous posts---long ago.  :-)  One main reason was that it was a very difficult process finding the right agency who works with the orphanage that we wanted to work with.  Also, adoptions were technically closed until April of 2011, so we really were limited in what we could do anyway.  But mostly, the Lord has allowed things to take longer than we thought because He is accomplishing His will through the wait.  I will admit, however, that waiting for all of this to be completed is not easy.  Those of you that know us well can probably imagine how Mark and I handle the waiting--he is calm, cool, collected and just ready to do the next thing.  I, on the other hand, am so tired of having this "mountain" of things to do hovering over us.  My type A personality just wants to 'git er done' and get our kids!!  This is where the Lord is teaching me, and I am SLOWLY learning.

Right now we are up against a financial wall.  Haiti sets the fees for their courts to process adoptions, and the 2011 fee is $12,500 per child.  In order to even send our dossier into the country to be matched with children, we need to send half of the fee along with it.  Now, I am not sure what they will expect since we are adopting siblings, and we don't know how many that will be.  We are thinking that we probably need to send enough for 2 and be ready to send another $6250 if we are matched with a group of 3.  Our homestudy case worker has approved us for up to 3 kids ages 0-9. 

We have already spent several thousand on homestudy fees, agency fees, FBI clearances, fingerprinting, etc... and we are realizing that it is time to ask for partnership from our friends and family.  This is where the Lord is teaching me through my precious first grade class.  If you are my facebook friend, then you have likely already read the sweet things that happened in class just this week.  Teaching in a Christian school is such a blessing for many reasons, but one in particular is that we have a class prayer time every day.  We lift up the burdens they are carrying (like the cat's hurt eye, the scratch on their finger, and many other 'interesting' concerns!), we pray for a new school building, we pray for our business partners, and occasionally I will share something to pray about.  Several weeks ago when I realized that the financial component of our adoption was rapidly approaching, I asked the children to pray that God would provide the funds for us to complete our adoption. I think I mentioned it in prayer time twice over the last 3 months.  Well, 2 of my students have written me the sweetest notes and enclosed their hard earned money to contribute to our fund!  I was BLOWN away!  I went in to the school office to tell our sweet secretary about it (she is also the leader of a Bible study that I have attended and a spiritual 'mama').

As I stood there with tears in my eyes feeling guilty that my students had done this, she began to share with me,

"LET THEM GIVE TO YOU!"  

"LET THEM BE A PART OF THIS!"

"THIS IS SEED MONEY!"

 "THEY ARE BEING BLESSED AS THEY GIVE TO YOU!"

  

(and the one that REALLY got me)

"WHEN THEY GET TO FINALLY SEE AND MEET YOUR CHILDREN, THEY WILL  KNOW THAT GOD USED THEM TO HELP BRING THEM HOME!"

I knew that God was trying to get my self-reliant self to see the bigger picture. This is not just about us and our family!  All of His followers are called to help the orphan, but obviously not all of us are called or able to adopt.  My students were JOYFULLY giving from their limited means, and God was blessing it! 

Now comes the part of this post that I don't want to write, but know that I must.  I have been in somewhat of a "faithless funk" for the past few months.  I know that my God is able to do ANYTHING and I believe that He will provide for His children, but I didn't want it to be this hard.  I selfishly wanted the money for this adoption to just fall into our laps.  I justified my thinking with all kinds of rationale--"We both have  demanding full-time jobs!  We don't have time to focus on fund-raising or applying for grants that we likely won't qualify for anyway." Or, "Alli graduates this year!  We must go to every function of hers before she leaves us!"  Or, "Man!  Senior year is expensive!  Senior pictures, announcements, yearbook stuff, and all her concurrent (college) credit fees!"  On and on and on went my list of excuses.  Mainly, I wanted God to just show up in a big way and do it quickly!  I didn't really care if that was His way or not....

"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."  Is. 55:9

I BEGAN TO REALIZE THAT HE WANTED TO GIVE OTHERS THE OPPORTUNITY TO PARTICIPATE IN A STORY OF REDEMPTION.

I don't want our adopted children to feel "rescued" or "saved" by us. And I certainly don't want them to feel obligated in any way to us for "saving" them--God saves them, just as He saved you and me.  

 "I have made you, and I will carry you; I will sustain you, and I will rescue you."  Is. 46:4

We want to increase our family, and we know that the Lord has directed us to do it in this way.  He is allowing us to enter into a broken situation and be a part of bringing beauty out of the ashes.  He weeps over the orphan and longs to comfort and soothe their tears.

"God sets the lonely in families..."  Ps. 68:6

So as I have contemplated my precious students who have given with their BIG faith to their teacher with her little faith, I realized that I wanted a way to remember FOREVER all those who encourage us with their faith and joy.

I wanted a way to memorialize their sweet names and hearts.  

Here is our plan:  We are ordering a specially made 1000 PIECE PUZZLE with a map of Haiti on it. We are inviting you to be a part of our family's adoption story by first PRAYING about what the Lord might have you do.  If he directs you to participate financially, we will be adding your name to the back of a puzzle piece for every $10.00 increment.

SO EACH $10 OF YOUR GIFT GETS YOUR NAME ON THE BACK OF A PUZZLE PIECE!

After we complete our puzzle, we will have it mounted with glass on both sides so that our family will FOREVER REMEMBER 

the love and kindness shown to us by so many.

I know that there are so many worthy causes, and I certainly don't want anyone to feel obligated at all, but the Lord is reminding me that His ways are not mine!  He moves upon the hearts of man, and I need to get out of the way!

If you do want to give, there are a couple of ways: 

First, there is a Paypal button at the top of my blog.  If you have a Paypal account, you can give directly through that.  If you don't have an account, they are easy to get and very secure.  There are instructions if you click on the "donate" button.

Secondly, you can email me at "teachermahnke dot com" for my address if you want to send something through the mail. 

Thank you for taking the time to read.  Thank you for praying for our family.  I am humbled beyond words that many of you have asked how you can help--prompting this post.  Feel free to link this on your blog or facebook and share with anyone that you think may want to join us in this journey.

"I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants."

Let it be, Lord! 

 

 

Where we are now...

Guess what came in the mail yesterday??  Our totally complete and notarized home study!!  Yay!  In my last post I mentioned that we were at the end of that and were having our in-home visits with our social worker.  Those visits went so well, and now we are DONE with that portion.  We have also completed our Psychological Evaluations and have only a few more forms to complete our dossier that will be translated into French and sent to Haiti.  Just a refresher for those of you who don't know what a dossier is--it is a compilation of MANY documents that show who we are and reveal just about everything about us to a foreign government so that we can be cleared to adopt from that particular country.  Our dossier requirements include things like medical forms/tests; marriage/birth certificates; bank statements; tax forms; fingerprinting; government clearances (federal ones); verification of employment/income; letters that state our motivation to adopt (written by us to the head of the foreign gov't); personal reference letters; etc....  It is daunting, to say the least!  And everything has to be done just right--with the proper notarizations/authentications, or it might have to be done all over again!  Our new agency that we chose, All About Adoptions, Inc., has a dossier specialist on staff, so hopefully everything will get her stamp of approval!

We are growing more and more excited as we get closer to being done with our portion.  Then we just wait on the orphanage (we did go with GLA --see previous post) to refer us to the child/ren that they have for us, and we wait for our documents to make it through the Haitian courts.  People ask me often about how long this will take.  I wish I knew for sure!  If we get our documents there in the next month or so, we could have a referral by the end of this year, or early January.  Then, it's up to the courts on how long it all takes to process.  We did just hear a few weeks ago that files are making it through in about 8 months right now--that is WAY faster than before the earthquake!  The Lord knows the timing, and we are trusting that He also knows how we are going to pay for this, because I am still a little in the dark on that one!  We know that this is what He has called us to do, so we will trust that He will provide. 

Along with trying to gather the last documents we need, I am also beginning another school year!  I have 22 first grade students this year, and our first week went swimmingly!  Aside from the heat that makes my room almost unbearable by the last couple of hours, the kids did great.  Each year I find that I have just a few more tricks up my sleeve to get the results I am looking for in performance and behavior.  The keys that work best for me are extreme organization (everything in it's place and no extra clutter), and taking the time to really TEACH and practice all of our routines.  There might not be a whole lot of actual lesson teaching at first, but taking the time to show the class what is expected at school will pay off all year long.  I know that even though I have to watch where I step so that I don't trip over all of the MANY bodies in my little room, we are going to have a great year of learning together.

The first two months of school also bring volleyball season for the 2 big girls!  With Alli being a senior **sniff, sniff!**, we are trying to go to many of her games.  Thankfully, this year Alli and Erica's games aren't always on the same days like last year.  That was crazy!  So, I will be jetting out of school as early as possible to drive LONG distances (seriously--some are 3 hours away!) to watch my kiddos play.  I love it! 

God is doing great things!  Can't wait to share more...

So close!

So we are almost sure about the agency we will use to help us complete our Haitian adoption!  We will know for sure in a few more days, but after talking with them it sounds like just what we are looking for....

Here is a link to the orphanage they work with (and the main reason we are choosing them!)

http://www.glahaiti.org/home

If you go to this site, scroll down on the left-hand side to Blogs and click.

The orphanage director, Dixie, writes the "Life Goes On" blog, which is amazing reading.  We have been reading this blog for over a year, and just really believe that our kids are here!

They were closed to new adoptive families until just this last spring, so now we see one possible reason that the Lord was slowing us down....

Just look at those beautiful faces!  Anyone want to join us on this journey??  It would be amazing to do this alongside dear friends and family....:-)  (seriously!!)

Back on track

So this post might seem strange after my last one, but now here we are.  It is 18 months after we first knew that God was calling us to adopt from Haiti.  We haven't made many steps toward that happening.  After stopping everything while we considered whether God was leading us to adopt the little guy in the previous post, we now have officially started it up again.  We still have unknowns with his situation, but at this point, we feel that it is unlikely to lead to us getting to adopt him.  We will still continue our weekends with him, and we will trust God with the rest.

Anyone familiar with adoption knows that one of the first things that needs to happen is that there must be a Homestudy done by a licensed social worker.  Basically, our whole lives get investigated to make sure that we aren't crazy people that want to adopt kids.  We write entire histories of our lives that include what our families were like growing up (grandparent relationships, parental relationships, sibling relationships...) and what our own family is like now.  We have to have fingerprinting done, medical tests done, references written, tons of forms filled out, taxes copied, financial questions answered, guardianship chosen for our kids, and the lists go on....

Anyway....we have done all of that!  And now our assigned case worker is visiting us to document that what we wrote is true, and to walk us through the first approval process towards adopting internationally.  I am thrilled to say that we have an awesome case worker!  She lives in our town, and was a delight to meet.  She has completed our first in-home visit, and we will have our second meeting next week.  After that visit, she will write up our completed homestudy that will be the basis of our adoption approval.  Now our new job will be to finalize exactly what agency we will use to complete our international adoption.  The agency doing our homestudy only does domestic adoptions, but they are licensed to complete Int'l homestudies as well.  Some of you that have read from the time that I started this blog will remember that we did choose an agency a long time ago.  However, they seem to be pretty inactive right now.  Nothing has changed on their website in over a year.  We aren't receiving email updates at all.  Needless to say, this has us worried about continuing with them.  We are actively looking for a new path.  We need to find it soon since the clock is ticking once our homestudy is complete.  We would like to have this plan in place in the next two weeks.  But I am learning that what I think is a good plan may not be what the Lord thinks is a good plan!  We are asking Him to lead us to the path that He has for us to take.  Maybe the original agency?  Maybe a new one?  Maybe a direct adoption through an established orphanage that we know about?  We will keep on following His lead. 

On a side note, while I seem to rarely write here anymore, I do LOVE reading other blogs!  I especially love the ones that post a variety of topics.  So, I may diverge from the topic of adoption and our family occasionally to write about something fairly random.  Like how awesome the fresh raspberries are in my MIL's yard, or how excited I am to be almost finished writing my Unit Guides for my 19 unit math curriculum!  You never know, it could happen....;-)

Sweet Boy

He came into the classroom with huge eyes that looked to be filled with apprehension and possibly even fear. All of this was new to him.  His Kindergarten year had been disrupted by a very scary event that resulted in him now living with Grandpa and Grandma, and this was really his first foray into a real classroom and real learning.  I welcomed him warmly and made sure that he met some of the other boys who would become his best buds for this school year.  He slowly relaxed.  Our first days as a class are always a bit "out of the norm" as I focus strongly on teaching routines, rules and respect, but soon we settled into our normal daily schedule of reading, writing, math, etc...

Fast forward a couple of months....

I look over during our seatwork time as I am running through reading groups, and I see huge, silent tears streaming down his face.  This isn't the first time he has cried, but it is different in that it doesn't seem to be prompted by anything.  No one was mean to him.  Nothing happened that I can see.  I dismiss my reading group and call him over to my desk.  "What's wrong, Honey?"  I ask.  As I reach to hug him (a huge benefit of teaching in a Christian school), he lays his head on my shoulder and says, "I miss my mom.  I WANT a mom!"  I try and pretty much fail at holding it together myself.  This precious boy wants a mommy (and a daddy), and while his grandparents have been amazing in their love and care for him, he is realizing that everyone else in the class has something that he doesn't have.

It is now January, and grandma is calling me frequently to ask questions about school, about his emotional health and about how to minister in the best possible way to her grandson.  In one of our conversations, I offer to have him come stay with us on the weekends to help give them a break--caring for a seven year old boy is busy work!--and to help meet his need for "family".  And so begin our weekends for the next several months.  We are still in this ministry mode.  We typically pick him up on Friday afternoons and keep him until Sunday evening.  To say that he loves coming here, is probably an understatement.  I don't say this to sound like we are some kind of amazing family, I say this because children are wired to need a family.  Grandma and Grandpa are vital and healthy and amazing care givers, but they are supposed to be filling a different role.  They should be doing the spoiling, the sleepovers, the games, the sharing of family history.  Not the discipline, homework, chores, etc...

What does this mean for our adoption pursuits?  Well, this is why there has been a significant delay in our process.  We thought maybe the Lord had led us down the path of adoption so that when this little guy came into our lives, we would be open to adopting him (we are, by the way).  However, there is a mom in this boy's life.  She has rights that she is unwilling to give up.  I don't even know that she should give them up.  We pray constantly about this situation and at this point we feel the Lord saying that we are here to "stand in the gap" while mom is getting her life together.  We pray that she will be fit to care for him once again.

In the meantime, we love, we care, we read bedtime stories, we snuggle, we play, we teach, and we wipe away tears and tell him of God's immense love and plan for him.  We don't know what the future holds, but we trust the One who does.

Next time---Homestudy, Part 1!

We are alive! (I know this is probably a repeat title!)

Yes, folks.  We are still on the face of the earth!  We are still adopting, but nothing about the timeline or process is going quite like we thought or planned.  However, I am finally really okay with that.  I am loving seeing how God is directing things and knowing that He knows how all this will turn out.  I can honestly say that right now...I rest fully in that. 

There are exciting things going on in our home that are really doing a great job of preparing us more for this grand adventure.  I would love to share, but this blog is not private, so I can't give details yet.  We are all working on "not growing weary as we do good".  Our family has been serving in a particular way in the last several weeks, and we are pooped!  However, the One that we serve is faithful to give us what we need just when we need it. 

Since my last post many, many moons ago, we have been enjoying some fun things as a family.  3 of us have had birthday celebrations and the 4th one (Alli) is on Wednesday!  She is going to be 17--which she thinks is kind of a "bummer" birthday sandwiched between 2 milestone birthdays.  I told her it's my year to rest and begin to wrap my brain around the few days that remain before the big 18.  I can't believe it....  McKenna will be our last birthday in our one-birthday-a-month extravaganza that begins in December and goes through April!  My baby will be 10!!

In other news, we are looking into possibly visiting Haiti in the next few months to serve at a mission there.  They also have an orphanage (not the one we are adopting from), so that would be a great way to begin to see what God has in store for us as well.  We don't know details yet, but please pray.  Based on the information that I am seeing about this particular orphanage, it looks like adoptions in Haiti are becoming a much more rapid process!  This is great news for those of us in the middle of it.  There is also a vote happening in March in Haiti that could possibly lighten some of the restrictions on adoptions so that more people will qualify.  Right now the biggest obstacles are that couples have to be married for 10 years, have NO children (but can possibly get a Presidential waiver for bio children), and you must be over 35 years old.  Our agency says that the one about previous children is usually waived, but the others are hard to overcome.

I will try to be better about posting, but no promises!  :-)