The Best Christmas Presents We Could Ever Ask For!

Merry Christmas!  God has blessed us with three of the most precious gifts this Christmas.  Our agency called us last Thurs, the 16th, telling us we had been matched with a sibling group of three!!!  We are SO excited and can't believe we will have the opportunity to be parents in just a few months!  We will have a son age 6, a daughter age 8, and a daughter age 10!!  We have received preliminary medical reports and pictures of the children and are now waiting for updated information.  We wrote a letter of intent to the orphanage as the first step towards adopting them.  This reserves the kids for us and no other family can view their file.  When we receive the updated medical reports, we can then make our final decision and send our letter of acceptance.  Our prayer is that nothing has changed since the current information we have, which is about a year old now.  Once we send our acceptance letter, we will receive an official referral from Colombia.  We can share their pictures then.

Our dossier is now in Colombia and is being translated!  It was received by our agency's Colombian representative on Wednesday afternoon.  Sending the dossier to Colombia was a huge step in our adoption process so we now just have to wait for it to get through all of the channels.  As we understand it right now, here are the next steps:
- After our dossier is translated, it goes to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bogota to check all of our  
  apostiiles and stamp it.
- Then it is sent to the ICBF office in Bogota to be approved for us to adopt in Colombia.  ICBF is the 
   governing body that oversees all adptions in Colombia.
- Once ICBF approves us, our dossier will go to the kids' orphanage to make sure our information is still a
   good match with the kids.  The kids are in a foster home but associated with the same orphanage we were
   working with to adopt the boys.  It is called Ayudame.
- The next step is our official referral! 
- Once we accept, the kids will start a transition process with a social worker to prepare for their adoption. 
- We hope to travel late February to early March to get them!

We know God has a great plan for our family and everything happens for a reason.  If we had not found the boys, we would not have started working with our agency.  They have been wonderful to work with!  Also, because of the boys, we started working with Ayudame orphanage, so they had all of our paper work already.  Although our dossier has not been processed, they matched us, since they already had our home study.

We ask that you please pray with us that the adoption process will continue to go smoothly and there are no changes to the kids' medical information.  We pray that they are safe and happy this holiday season.  We know their whole world will soon change so we pray for a smooth transition as they are prepared to join our family.

Today we are a family of two and soon we will be a family of five!!  It is hard to imagine what the holiday season will be like this time next year!  Thank you for all of your prayers and support.  Your friendship is a blessing to us.  May God bless you and your family abundantly this next year!

Christmas in Colombia

Christmas celebrations in Colombia, shaped by the 90% of Colombians who are Roman Catholic, begin in early December with a ceremony in honor of the Virgin Mary. On the evening of December 7th, families light scores of candles and use them to outline streets, sidewalks, and parks so that entire cities are illuminated. December 8th brings a national holiday commemorating the Immaculate Conception during which more prayers and candles are offered to the Virgin Mary. Christmas trees are raised and decorated on December 16th with the start of the Novena, which in Colombia involves a nine-day prayer ritual with a rosary in anticipation of Christmas day. During this time of celebration of Christ's birth, groups of families and friends, often encompassing an entire village or neighborhood, will gather together each night to pray. Villancicos, better known as Christmas carols, are also sung around the nativity scene that plays a significant part of Colombia's Christmas celebrations. Most Colombians attend Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve before returning home for dinner. The Christmas meal often includes a special chicken soup called Ajiaco, homemade breads, fritters, roast port and natilla, a corn-based dessert. Presents are brought by "El Niño Jesus" to the foot of children's beds by the next morning, and after a relaxing day spent with family, the Christmas season is complete. Reference: http://www.msichicago.org/scrapbook/scrapbook_exhibits/catw2004/traditions/countries/colombia.html

Felize Navidad a Su Familia!

Our Dossier Is On Its Way!

It has been very busy around here, but we are so excited we have made it to the next step in all of our paperwork!  On Friday, we started the day off at the local USCIS office in Phoenix for our fingerprints.  They were sent directly to the FBI so we hope to have the approval from Homeland Securituy soon.  Then, we headed to the bank to notarize some more documents and then onto the Secretary of State's office to finish apostilling everything.  We put everything together this weekend and our dossier was FedExed overnight to Colombia yesterday!  Now Colombia will start translating everything.  We plan to spend the next week, while Dainis is on vacation, working on Spanish, learning more about Colombia, and start gathering recipes to try. We hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas week.

More on the Floods in Colombia

Relief efforts are under way for the victims of the floods and mudslides in Colombia.  This is the worst flooding Colombia has experienced in three decades, and it is estimated that damages are up to $5 billion.  Over two million people have lost their homes and are in need of food assistance, water, shelter, and health services.  Although Bogota has experienced the floods, it was not been affected by the mudslides.  All of the orphanages our agency works with are in the capital city of Bogota.  After speaking to our agency, the floods have not affected the adoption process for the orphanages we are working with.  Here is a link to a news cast taken last week regarding the latest on the situation.

http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/ns_sa/2010-12-15/875440022090.html

We're Done!

We finished our Spanish class last night.  It was a 13 week class focusing on Conversational Spanish, at a local community college.  We learned a lot and will now start working on Roseta Stone.  We hope to know as much Spanish as we can, before we go to Colombia.

Our Church's Dinner Theatre

We have a wonderful church with lots of great friends.  Each year, our church puts on a Christmas Dinner Theatre as an outreach to our community, and it is a wonderful time to reflect on the true meaning of Christmas.  We are blessed with a great support system and many of our friends' kids are the same age as the boys we hope to adopt.  We can't wait to share these special times with our own boys!

Terrible Floods Have Hit Colombia

The rainsy season in Colombia usually runs from August to mid December.  However, this has been the worst rainy season in Colombia's history. Reports say that 28 of the 32 areas of Colombia have been affected by these floods and approximately 1.6 miliion people have lost their homes.  On Sunday, the flooding caused a devastating mudslide in a Medellin, which is located in the Northwest part of Colombia.
This huge mudslide swept away about 40 homes and buried over 100 people.  Colombia has now declared a State of Emergency.  We are sad that this rainy season has affected and hurt so much of Colombia and hope the rain will subside soon.

 Here is a link to a video taken after the mudslide on Sunday:

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/multimedia/video-and-audio/detail.dot?mediaInode=a3294acc-3a92-44f9-8388-61d3139a7225

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Happy Holidays!  This is our favorite time of year!  It is finally cooling down here in Phoenix, just in time for the holiday season.  As we put up our Christmas decorations, bake cookies, and reflect on the true meaning of Christmas, we can't wait to share all of this with two new boys next year!  We are still waiting for a match of two more brothers, but we have been very busy.  We have had the opportunity to participate in Operation Christmas Child, had the joy of putting together gifts for the Salvation Army's Angel Tree, had our big fundraiser event, and are now working on Christmas cards.  We want to thank each of you for your friendship!