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!