Today We Heard Those 3 Little Words: "Got Humanitarian Parole"

The last email we received from our adoption coordinator looked a little like this:

WE HAVE HUMANITARIAN PAROLE, IT IS OFFICIAL!!

We are bringing the kids home!!

Our thanks to the people of JCICS, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security who have worked out the details to make this possible.

What this means:
It means that they're working with adoption agencies to get as much proof as possible of which parents were matched with which children in Haiti. (This means you really need to go register your adoption if you haven't - see jcics.com/haiti.htm for details or message me and I can forward more information to you.)

It means that if we can prove that our adoptions meet the criteria (which are very reasonable considering all the circumstances) we will be able to bring our children home. They won't have automatic US citizenship like they would have if we'd finished the process the "normal" way, but they'll be home. We'll work out all the rest of the paperwork on their citizenship and to formalize their adoptions later.

NOW - we just need to find them.

We did receive word that several of the children that were unaccounted for have been found. Connections are so spotty and communication so rare that it's hard to get much information.

For now, please keep praying for Collin, Vania, Abi, Joey, Jordan, Nathan and Jessica to be found. Pray for them to be brought to the Petionville LDS Chapel (which has become a makeshift safe haven). Pray that the doctor we sent the funds down with will make it to them soon. He has run into all sorts of problems trying to get there. The last word we got was that they were going to fly into the Dominican Republic and DRIVE to PAP. That's a LONG trip without a catastrophic earthquake. Pray that their way is sped and they are able to get to the people who need their skills and who need the funds we've sent with him.

Pray they're able to find Jessica - that her birth father is able to find Harry in this disaster. We had received word that he wanted to bring her back - that they were working that out with him before this hit. Please pray for angels to guide that process.

Pray, continually, for the men and women from so many countries, who are risking their own lives to be there on the ground lifting those who cannot lift themselves. Pray they can find those who are still living. Pray the supplies reach the people who need them most. Pray that those giving aid - in all the many ways they are serving - are sustained and given the strength they need to keep working.

Pray the world does not forget next week when "compassion fatigue" sets in. Pray that our sister, Haiti, stays on our minds.

36 Is the Loneliest Number....

It's my birthday today. I'm 36.

So far, 36 seems so much ruder than 35. 35 left me alone, quietly hovering at the top of the downhill slope to 40. It was subtle.

36 has grabbed me by the nose hairs and shaken me the way I was always afraid that very large lunch lady at my elementary school would do. 36 is gritty. It's raw. It's old.

I wonder what my current self would say if it could go back in time and have a reality check with the little girl I used to be - the one that always thought she'd finish college and have kids and be a homemaker, particularly by NOW. Bless that little girl's heart. I really was clueless. Hopefully I'm a bit wiser now.

I wonder how many people's lives have turned out the way they thought they would. I'd guess it's fewer than I'd expect.

I've been thinking as well about how my spirit is 36 but my body still feels at least 60. Funny how often Heavenly Father has used my body and the associated trials to teach me things. I remember when I was 14 and the doctors had decided they needed to fuse my wrists together to stop the pain in them (fortunately, my parents decided that it would be better for me to deal with the pain than cripple me like that - I still thank them for that.) I remember telling my mom that I'd finally realized that my body was an inside joke between me and the Lord. I think she was appalled. But I meant it then and I mean it now. The defective wrists, the ovaries that are more decorative than functional, the muscle problems, the tendons that don't hold things where they should.... they remind me that I'm not in charge and my ways aren't His ways and at the end of the day the Lord Never Cheats Anyone.

I had to do a little shower singing today. It usually puts me in a better mood. I've been talking to myself a lot today as well. Is that a sign of early senility? I find myself repeating the words to a couple of hymns. I find myself remembering a quote that one of my favorite missionary companions had me memorize:

I have an absolute belief that there is nothing unfair about life. There is only learning and sharing. A thousand times to fall is a thousand times to rise up again. If I can get up in the morning and rejoice for the light that shines into my eyes, then nothing is too difficult or impossible.

So bring it on, 36. Let's see what you've got.

And, while you're at it, if you could bring my kids home this year as well... that would be just awesome.

Wait

So my weird moment of the week was sitting outside a little cafe at lunch with my coworkers and seeing a runner go by while wearing (wait for it)... a bullet-proof vest. Yup, running shoes and tank top and a bullet-proof vest. I think they were trying to "sweat it out" because they were also running at lunchtime on a 100+ degree day.

In case you were wondering, seeing someone running down the sidewalk in a bullet-proof vest does make you subconsciously assess your entire environment in about half a second to see if there's some threat that you missed. It's a bit disorienting. And that's why I didn't get a picture of it on my phone. I know... I suck.

It's been a very crazy time for us. There's a lot going on and yet nothing going on in the one area where we want it most. Work is busy, home is busy, church is busy, adoption is not. No progress. No updates. And not just for us, but for our friends as well. It seems that pretty much no one's papers are moving.

I guess we're trying to be really great at waiting. It's hard when your family is being held hostage to a terribly disorganized process. And there's nothing we can do about it. Nothing except wait.

Water Mage

Dear Dave,
I wish you could have seen the reaction here in Haiti to your filters. We had some time while we were waiting for a family that wasn't on our flights to get checked in and we were all hanging out on the parking lot of the hotel. Nadia, the orphanage owner was sitting in the open back of a little pickup truck (on a chair... there were a couple of them propped in the back there. I do imagine it would be more comfortable than sitting on the floor while traversing the bumpy, potholed roads, but it's definitely not safer!) Harry and his wife, Pascal were there as well and they were translating what I was saying into Kreyol for Nadia.

I pulled out one of the sport-sized water filter bottles you sent and told Harry that you could put "any" water in it and it would come out clean. He looked at me skeptically and so I took the lid off and motioned dipping water up from the street, and then putting the lid back on and drinking it. (we were in a parking lot - no water around). Nadia obviously could see where I was going and she started laughing like that was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever seen me do. (and she's seen me do some ridiculous things!)

I explained to them that the Church sends these out with missionaries now and that they sell them at the Missionary Training Center as well. That convinced Harry. He translated to Nadia. While I was explaining to Harry that he can order them for the missionaries in Haiti, Nadia and Pascal were talking rapidly back and forth. Pascal finally interrupted and said, "What about brown water?" Apparently she and Nadia had been discussing the filters and had determined that you still wouldn't use them on just any water, because that obviously just be dumb and Lori obviously doesn't understand what she's saying. :) I said, "Brown, muddy, nasty water from the ditch on the side of the road... YES. You could filter that and it would be CLEAN." Harry translated all my adjectives and their eyes got wider and wider with each. They hooted with delight at this new marvel!

We made it to the orphanage. When I took the filter back into the kitchen to see if it would fit, to my horror I discovered the faucets in both the sinks (I didn't remember there were two sinks in their kitchen, but there are) are different than what we've seen before. They're going to need a female-to-female adapter to connect the filter to the faucet. Harry's working on that (He hasn't actually been able to look yet because we had him booked today and tomorrow he and Chareyl from our agency get to attend an historic meeting on adoption between Haiti and the USA where the State Department from both sides will be signing an agreement on how adoptions will work and what is expected from both countries going forward. Hopefully that will clarify the process a bit for future adoptions. But I digress...)

A bit later I finally had Harry and Brent together and Brent could demonstrate the black bag water filter. (For those of you that have no idea what I"m talking about, it's a bag you can take camping and then hose is antibacterial and then there's one of the wonderful Seychelle filters at the bottom so you can get clean water from anywhere again. The bag allows you to get a larger qty cleaned at one time than with the sport water bottle size.) So Brent pulled out the three pieces and he said, 'You take this bag and you attach this and then you attach this second piece" as he was assembling it for Harry. When Harry could see what he was doing, he clapped his hands in joy and he said, "And you can take it WITH you!" He was so excited! The grin on his face was priceless.

We'll get the piece we need to get the filter hooked to the faucet. Harry's very resourceful. I'm sure they'll figure it out. But you've given them something they couldn't do on their own and that is "get clean water from the kitchen sink".

May God bless you and all of our other angels who have given Christmas money and time and energy and sacrificed to make and give things or buy things from the store to help save these children. Haiti is a world where "survival of the fittest" plays out every single day. And you've helped to increase the odds for all of our babies. Thank you so much!

We Don't Realize How Blessed We Are...

Gloria Gaynor, Where Are You When I Need You?

I might have to make "I Will Survive" my ringtone. I need some reminders.

We got word yesterday that SUDDENLY Lexi has a father in the picture again. When we were in Haiti, her father was listed as unknown.

He apparently, is in favor of Lexi being adopted, but not of her being in an orphanage. Unfortunately, in Haiti, you can't exactly have one without the other. If you don't have a steady home or even a telephone, there's no way for the adoption process to move forward.

I think I'd become fairly adept at dealing with infertility. I'm not sure how to deal with this. Many people have said, 'Maybe you were only supposed to be in their lives to help Lexi when she was so sick." I'm not OK with that and I'm not sure how to resolve myself with that. Does emotionally crawling on your hands and knees still count as bearing your burdens? It seems like the only way this burden could "be made LIGHT" is to quit caring about the situation.

The strange thing about being a parent in Haiti for week – I'm not sure we were prepared for the JOY we had. It seemed like there was a purpose to all the STUFF in life and that we could do this. That's really the first time I think either of us have felt anything close to that type of joy.

If it were my brother beating on me, I'd just cry "Uncle" and he'd leave me alone. Can't figure this one out.