That Mar we discussed again the idea of adopting and this time we both felt the leading that now was the time to move forward. It was, at first, such a fast process. We were so busy researching agencies and countries, then applying, then gathering documents, completing our home study and being fingerprinted several times. There was so much to do and we worked each day on getting it all done as fast as we could. Then in Nov 2009 our dossier arrived at the Ministry in Rwanda, and we were thankful to be waiting on someone else, to know that we had done all of our part as quickly as we could and now we would wait.
We had an understanding of the current wait times to be estimated at 10 months until we would be home with our son, that left us with the expectation that we would be in Rwanda in Sept of 2010, at the latest. Of course, we found as the time passed that things were going slower than that, many more families were applying to Rwanda to adopt which lengthened the time to complete the process.
Sept 2010 came and went and all we had heard was that we were assigned #20 in the families waiting. It was a hard, hard wait, but God was always with us and we could see his handprint on everything. Finally in Mar 2011, after 15 months, 3 weeks and 2 days since our dossier arrived, we received our approval to adopt from the Ministry. We were so ecstatic to recieve news and to have completed the first step. It was in some ways harder and some ways easier to wait after that. It was great to have made progress so that felt better, but of course we were so anxious to see our son. Over the next month we did start working on things to get ready to travel, we wanted to be prepared and it was good to have something to do to pass the time. Then about 5 weeks after our approval we were invited to travel with the next group from our agency. I can't even describe how thrilled we were with the news. We were feeling pretty bad knowing another group would be going soon and thinking we had little chance of being a part of it since we still hadn't received our referral, though we knew we had been matched.
We spent 2 crazy weeks getting ready to leave. We started with all the paperwork we needed to get completed, copied or ready to take with us. Then all the things we still needed to buy to take with us; we needed a variety of sizes of clothing since we still didn't have our referral. We had requested a boy up to 12 months old, knowing we also could have been referred a boy up to 15 months or so and we had no idea his size, so we ended up packing clothes from 0-18 months in our suitcases, we had a lot of baby clothes. We had to get some items for us, baby food, .... We had fun packing and getting ready to leave.
All the clothes we took for our son:
At the same time we got everything ready at home for the big kids to stay home while we traveled. My sister and nephew came to stay for the 3 weeks we traveled and take care of the kids, and my mom came to stay at our house after work as well so she could help. We had to get schedules and info written down so they would know all we could plan for, we had to let schools and activities know we would be gone and update the emergency contacts. We finalized all the plans for our own responsibilites to be covered while we were gone at work, bible study, cub scouts... Just many little details we couldn't do until these last 2 weeks.
It was so great to know that finally we would not have another holiday or special occasion when we would be missing one of our kids. We couldn't wait to see our son's face. The best news was that we were able to travel in the group with our best friends, the Stengels. They had been a little, or lot, ahead of us in the process the entire journey and we had hoped, but not sure how much to expect, to travel together. This is still one of our Greatest Blessings of our trip!!
Finally, one year ago today we boarded our first flight on our way to Africa! My mom was staying at home with the big kids, we said our goodbyes to them there, and my dad gave us a ride to the airport. (my sister and nephew arrived the next day). It was very hard to leave the big kids, so glad I didn't have a single concern with leaving them, just missed them a lot. We flew to Denver, then onto Washington, DC. We had a nice evening to relax and a good rest in the hotel. We were on our way!!
Sheri
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