our Christmas surprise

I think I could have kissed our mailman on Thursday...on the cheek of course! He brought something in the mail that caused me to literally squeal "thank you Jesus!" and jump up and down.

I am so giddy with excitement as I share the news that we have moved one step further along in our adoption journey; we got our approval letter from USCIS! It reads "notice of favorable determination concerning application..." and then goes on to say that we have been determined able to furnish proper care to an orphan, with other details of what steps to take next.

A different kind of Christmas

**We found out Thursday that it wasn't going to work out for us to participate this year. We know God has a perfect plan and pray some time in the future we are able to serve Him through the foster care system in this way. 

This year for Christmas, our family is planning to do something different.

After some friends told us about how they participated in a program called "home for the holidays" with DHS over Thanksgiving, we have decided we would love to have this opportunity as well!
In both Oklahoma and Cleveland county, there are many kids in DHS custody, and lots of these kids are in a shelter right now and will be for Christmas, which means they are not living with a family yet.

"New" news

I was on facebook last night and came across an article published in Haiti describing some of the new laws they are hoping to apply there regarding adoption. The laws right now in Haiti state that a couple should be married for 10 years and be over age 35, but under the new laws, a couple will be required to be married for only 5 years and be 30 years of age. This is excellent news for our family, since we have been married about 5 1/2 years and are both 31 years old!

USCIS

I don't even know what it stands for. I just know it's one more step we have completed, which puts us a little closer to bringing home our child(ren). James and I went today and had our fingerprints done for the United States side of our adoption. It's the beginning step to being granted permission to bring our children home to live with us as citizens of the United States. As we were driving, I couldn't get the song "Kings and Queens" by Audioadrenaline out of my head. I wanted to share it with you and hope you enjoy as much as I do.

Waiting for a match...

I wanted to update everybody as to where we are on our adoption journey. We collected, notarized, and legalized about every document you could possibly imagine and sent it off to our agency. They have received it, and we are now waiting for a referral, which is the step where we are matched with the sweet children that will be OUR children. We are so very excited and a little impatient at times for

In a nutshell

This is an update that we sent to family and a few friends near the end of the summer (2012) and thought it would be great to begin our blog with this as well. 

    God has really been working in our lives, and we want to share with you some of the ways He continues to bless us. We walked through a very difficult time in our marriage around a year and a half ago, but as we have both continued to seek God, He has remained faithful and completely restored our marriage...and then some!

Ready, Set, Go!

We are so excited to be adopting from Haiti! This whole blog thing is completely new to us, so it may take a little bit (or a lot) of time to get the hang of. We know that this is the best way to keep our family and friends in the loop with our adoption journey and are so excited that you want to be part of it! Through this blog, we pray that we can be an encouragement to you, on your journey as well, as we share our lives and our story with you! Keep us in your prayers as we pursue this wonderful calling that God has placed on our lives!