The experience

I'm not sure why, but I haven't wanted to tell the story of this trip.  We did so much in the 5 days we were gone I'm having trouble remembering things.

I got maybe a total of 6 hours of sleep during the entire trip.  I stressed over the details of the flights, fretted when we didn't get picked up at the airport in CAP, and nearly had a panic attack as I felt I was suffocating in the middle of the only night we slept at COTP.  Jason, on the other hand, had a great 'vacation'.  He loved all the flights, the tour of PAP, trying new foods, and just the adventure of it all.

Our time at COTP wasn't nearly long enough.  We were covered in kids as soon as they woke up from naps on Saturday.  It was beautiful to see Jason's arms always filled with kids.  Three kids in particular didn't want him to put them down.  One little guy, who was recovering from surgery, was an absolute love bug.  He wrapped his arms around Jason and snuggled into his chest.

The little girl didn't want much to do with us at first.  She's full of spunk and personality.  And she only does what she wants to do when she wants to do it.  She's exactly like her big brother.  She has the sweetest giggle and most beautiful smile.  But as soon as she sees a camera come out, she loses the smile and turns her head.  Again, exactly like her big brother.

Sunday afternoon we traveled to PAP.  It was pouring rain when we left.  We were given a broken umbrella and ran to the plane, laughing as we jumped in the puddles.  The wind was whipping, and I said a lot of prayers about our quick flight.

While rain is cleansing and healing and puddles are fun, my heart was raining as much as the skies.  I met her.  I held her and kissed her and made her laugh.  She fell asleep in my arms.

I don't want to leave her.

At 6:15 on Monday morning we were picked up for our appointment at the US Embassy.  We waited outside until 8:00 before being called in.  To a waiting room.  With about a hundred people.  Where we waited even more.  The process was emotional for a variety of reasons.  Not having all the required paperwork, having left the little girl behind, not knowing what to expect.

At one point we had to raise our right hands and swear to the truthfulness of the answers we were about to provide during an interview.  The question that got me: "Do you feel you bonded with her?"  How do you answer that?  I started to cry.  My response: "I want to bring her home right now."


I must have said, "Thank you Jesus" about 20 times on the trip.  From seeing Nick's face to the Embassy having our I-171H printed to landing in Miami.  The trip was a series of short prayers that were continually answered.

We are blessed beyond measure that we can be on this journey to bring our little girl home.  We are blessed that we were called and have the resources to do it.  We are blessed that we had the chance to meet her.

But...

I'm not patient and I'm not a saint and I'm not a wonderful person.  Right now I'm sad and bitter and cynical.  This process started 18 months ago.  Our paperwork has been in Haiti for nearly 9 months.

I'm tired.

I'm tired of the process.  I'm tired of errors.  I'm sick and tired of the unexpected and the extra money and the non-stop flow of additional paperwork.

To answer the #1 question we've heard since we got back, we have absolutely no idea when she'll be home.  There's no timeframe.  No details.  No general idea.  I will apologize right now if I'm rude to you when you ask that question.  (Unless you're my sister or Amy S or Mary or another adopting mom - then I won't lose it for some reason.)

I suspect this is what most parents go through after they've met, fallen in love with, and had to leave their child.

In all of this, the emotions, the impatience, and the ugly...I trust.  Our God is bigger than a broken process.  He is with her and all 147 million orphans every single day.  They are not forgotten.  They are not unloved.  They have a father who loves them greater than I can ever comprehend.

And because of that, I can sleep at night and trust that - one day - she's going to be home.

This says it all.

Do not be afraid

I'll be the first to admit that I had fears before our trip to Haiti.  I knew everything was going to be fine, but the irrational Karen thought of every single thing that could go wrong.  Six Seven flights, leaving our kids for the first time, places we've never been, depending on others.  It was enough to make me sick to my stomach.

On the flight down I read a book called Kisses from Katie.  While my sweet friend Kara thought it was the wasn't the best choice (she was kinda right - I was crying on the plane) it ended up being the best thing I could have read.  Here's an excerpt:

"Jesus called His followers to be a lot of things, but I have yet to find where He warned us to be safe.  We are not called to be safe, we are simply promised that when we are in danger, God is right there with us.  And there is no better place to be than in His hands."

I can't tell you how many times people said, "Be safe" before I left.  Yes.  I had fears about many things.  But our God is bigger than my fears.

The following scripture kept going on in my head: "From everyone who has been given much much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much will be asked."  Luke 12:48

Much was asked of us.  We were asked to leave the comforts of our home and our daily lives to travel to an unknown.  We were asked to work hard to bring a little girl home to be part of our family.  We were asked to shake up a lot of our world to make it all happen.

From everyone who has been given much...

From Katie's book:

"The truth is that the 143 million orphaned children and the 11 million who starve to death or die from preventable diseases and the 8.5 million who work as child slaves, prostitutes, or under other horrific conditions and the 2.3 million who live with HIV add up to 164.8 million needy children.  And though at first glance that looks like a big number, 2.1 billion people on this earth proclaim to be Christians.


The truth is that if only 8 percent of the Christians would care for one more child, there would not be any statistics left.


This is the truth.  I have the freedom to believe it.  The freedom, the opportunity to do something about it.  The truth is that He loves these children just as much as He loves me and now that I know, I am responsible."


On Saturday and Sunday we spent the day with a few of those children that He loves dearly.  We got to meet a little girl for the first time.  A little girl full of spunk and attitude and the greatest hugs a mother could ask for.  One who I can already tell will be sassy and big trouble when she's finally home with her brother.  One who I was in love with before I ever met her and I cry now thinking about leaving her.

This is a long journey to bringing her home.  It's filled with challenges and unknowns and a few times I've wanted to vomit my guts out.  But He has called us to fight for her.  To fight for these children.

The least of these.

God never said it was going to be easy.  But He did say He'd be by our side the entire time.

I have felt Him with us this entire trip.

Happy birthday, sweet girl

Today our sweet little girl turns two.  My sister Becky was the first to post about it on Facebook.  Seeing her picture, reading the post, it brought me to tears.  It's a mixed bag today.  I wish we were spending the day with her, but I know how much love she's getting in Haiti.

Sofia wanted to have a rainbow cake for her birthday celebration today.  It was quite a process to create, but it turned out just beautiful.

Here are 5 of the 6 colors.  Blue is in the oven.  We had to bake one layer at a time because I only have one round pan.

The six layers put together - waiting for the final cover of frosting.

The finished product.  This was a lot of work but it was so pretty!!

Sofia was very proud of how it turned out.

The end of the rainbow cake.

We had a wonderful party for her.  A dear friend of mine and her kids were out for lunch and got to share the moment with us.  It was fun watching the kids as they all blew out the candles.  It was even more fun to watch Sofia's reaction when she saw the first piece of cake.

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God blessed us with an amazing pre-birthday present.  As I sit here right now I can't believe this all transpired yesterday.  Early in the morning I received an email reply from USCIS.  They would not process my request until I gave them travel dates and attached a required document.

I was sitting at my desk.  At work.  

The document was sitting on the island.  At home.

I work 55 miles from home.

You can only imagine how frustrating that was.  If I had attached the document to begin with, we'd have a date.  

God smiled on me, yet again.  Our adoption worker, who doesn't work on Fridays, was at work.  She had a copy of the document and she sent it to me!

It was highly unlikely I'd hear back, but I quickly sent USCIS my requested travel dates and the document they required.  

Then I held my breath.  

Just a few hours later - an email response.  IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING??

Dear Ms. Gigure,

You are scheduled to file your I-600 petition at this office on XXXXXXXX, 2012 at 7:00 a.m.

We are located at the US Embassy Compound, Tabarre 41, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. 

Regards,

USCIS Haiti 

The afternoon/evening was a whirlwind of emails and searching for flights.  I'm happy to say our travel is officially booked.  Now we need to pack our bags, and wait.  Wait for that special day when we fly into Cap-Haitien and meet our little girl.

The only gift that will be greater than this is the day she meets her brother and sister.

One step closer.

Change of Posts

This week has been a week of frustrations.  Our file is at a standstill in Haiti.  There has been no movement, no news, for months now.  There have been meetings with officials, decisions made, blogs being posted, and information shared.  Most all of it has only increased my frustration level.

The other night my sister sent this message, "Maybe she's still doing God's work there."  (in Haiti)

When she texted that to me, I didn't have a very good response.  I shut down.  God needs to get her out of Haiti.  God needs to bring her home - to a mom and a dad and her brother and sister.  God needs to get her here - now - so that she's safe and she knows how much she's loved.  God needs to...

I had a post all set to type up tonight.  I spent the day constructing it in my head.  I knew exactly what it was going to say.

My post was going to be titled:  I want to be Angelina Jolie.

I'm sure you can guess why I'd want her.  It's not because she's unreasonably beautiful, or that she's rich beyond belief.  It's not even because she's with Brad Pitt.  (I don't find him attractive - hope he doesn't read this.  I'm a Team Clooney kinda gal.)

My reason for wanting to be her is because of...her adoptions.

What we saw in the media were flawless, very speedy adoptions.  Maybe she had to wait in line like the rest of us.  Maybe she had to fill out all the paperwork, go through all the frustrations, and wait without news like every other adopting parent out there.  Maybe her children were just case numbers, stuck in a flawed system.

Maybe I'm wrong in my assumption that she 'had it easy' with her adoptions.

Maybe I'm not being fair.

If I was Angelina Jolie, would I be experiencing all of this?   Or would our little girl already be home?

As I was rolling around in my pity party today, I came across a blog post that rocked me.  Sometimes I think God is up there just laughing at me.  He's giggling at how impatient I am.  He knows how much of a control freak I am and just shrugs his shoulders and says, "Ah, maybe some day Karen will learn."

And then he puts a jewel in front of me.  A gift.  A lesson.

A 2x4 to the head.

While reading this post today I started to cry.  It spoke to me.  It shook my core.

It helped me to see the other side of this process.  Click here to read the post.

No, I don't want to wait any longer.  But this gave me perspective.  We won't be sharing her birthday with her on Saturday.  But she's going to share her birthday with a lot of people who genuinely love her.

We're heading to Haiti

We received some exciting news yesterday - it's time to travel to Haiti to file our I-600!  While we're still not out of IBESR, they think it's best we get this step out of the way so we're ready when it happens.  The exciting news is that we finally get to meet her.  I was so excited yesterday that I couldn't think or do much of anything else.  Yet somehow I managed to consume and entire frozen pizza without tasting a bite.  (I didn't feel good the rest of the day.  Bleck.)

Of course it's not as simple as getting an email and instantly booking our flights.  We're still waiting to hear the WHEN and HOW.  It's going to be a whirlwind trip.  But I get to hold my baby.

Equally exciting is that Jason will get to experience Haiti.  Ever since I've gotten back I've wanted him to experience the country, COTP, and all the children.  Oh my, he's going to get an experience for sure!  We'll fly into CAP, spend a day with the little girl and all the other kids, then fly to PAP the following morning to file our paperwork.  Just a few days - but Jason's feet will be in Haiti.

Please pray that we hear when we'll be traveling by next week so we can make arrangements.  Please pray too that all the files that are 'stuck' in IBESR are signed and move to the next stage quickly.  Along with our little girl, there are hundreds of children who are waiting to go home.

It still hasn't sunk in.  Yesterday's euphoria has been replaced with lots of questions.  And I've got the weekend to just think about it all.

Hopefully we get more news on Monday so I can sleep again.  And stop eating entire pizzas.

She's turning two

Our little girl is turning 2 in two weeks.  We've already sent down a rockin' birthday box for her, and we know that it has arrived in Haiti.  There's a pretty dress and necklace, a few cake mixes with frosting, and lots of toys for her to share with her friends.  I will be thinking about her all day long.  Not that it's really different from any other day.

As you can see from the ticker above, our dossier has been in Haiti for over 7 months now.  There are some things going on at IBESR that have caused her file to just . . . sit.  We haven't moved since first legalization.  Each day I wait for an email that we're out of IBESR and need to travel to PAP for our I-600.  Each day I sit without any news.

The waiting is torture.  Any adopting parent will tell you that.  If we could all go pick up our children right now we'd drop everything and head to the airport without coffee or a shower or a change of clothes and fly to get them.

Since the waiting is difficult, and we have a lot more money that we need to fork over before she comes home, I've decided to channel my crazy energy into something more productive.  Fundraising.  We're in the process of setting up a bowling fundraiser in River Falls.  And right now we have a coffee fundraiser up and running.

What is that all about, you ask?  Well let me tell you!  See that cool graphic just to the right of the top of this post?  All you need to do is click on it and you'll be taken to the page that details our fundraiser.  Every item purchased brings us closer to bringing her home.  With every purchase, Just Love Coffee will give us money to be used towards the expenses that are looming.  And if you click on the link you'll be able to see who this little girl is that I don't talk about by name on this blog.

Here's a pic of the coffee I just purchased.  Henry chose Valentine Blend for me this morning.  You can search the coffees and more by clicking here:  Just Love Coffee for the Gigure Family

Good company.  Great coffee.  Awesome support for our adoption.

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A note after the post:

I realize there are many adopting mamas reading this blog.  You can get your own link and start raising funds for your adoption.  Click on the link here:  JustLoveCoffee  It's so awesome to find an organization that supports adopting families.

Can I cuddle with it?

Check out that Lilypie ticker at the top of the page.  Our dossier officially arrived in Haiti 7 months ago today.  Add on the 9 months that it took us to get to that point and it's been 16 months since we started the adoption process.  Just totally outed myself as a math whiz there.

It seems only fitting that I finished her blanket - exactly 7 months after we accepted her referral and took her into our hearts as our daughter.

The blanket was laying out on the couch - a proud display of what I was able to accomplish.  (With a loom, remember.  I don't know how to knit for real.)

It's a lazy Sunday for us.  The kids and I are playing games on their last day of Christmas break.  As Sofia was lounging on the couch playing one of her new Wii games, she asked, "Mama, can I cuddle with her blanket?"

Yes Sofia.  Fill this blanket with all the love you can.