Referral Day!!!

On March 25, 2009, I was driving into our garage and received that all important call from our adoption worker at CAS! I knew immediately that she had a referral. She told me about little Cristina. Cristina will be two years old June 13, 2009. She has been at the orphanage since she was six months old. She is very tiny weighing only 14 pounds at 18 months. We will keep the name Cristina, add Hope as her middle name, and call her Hope.

If all goes well, we will make our first trip to Moldova in April maybe the week following Easter. We are CAS’s first family to get this far under the new Hague guidelines, so we may be experience some more glitches with the process. However, I am pretty confident that we will make our first trip before the end of April. That would place us returning for our second trip in May and bring Hope home. We are hoping Dow and Beth can accompany us on this trip. At this point, more documentation on Hope has to be gathered and you guessed it, more papers have to be filed and approved.

She is relatively healthy except for common problems that living in an orphanage can often cause. We have sent her information to Dr. Jennifer Chambers at the UAB International Adoption Clinic to check out. We have already decided to adopt her, but we want to be better prepared for anything that Dr. Chambers may alert us to in regards to her health.

One thing we definitely need to plan on is getting some cute clothes on her!!! I had so many wonderful emails from so many of you sharing your excitement. I can’t tell you how blessed that makes us feel. I plan to print each one and include them in her special memory book.

We were smitten immediately when that first picture came via email. How can we fall in love with a little girl we have never met and lives so far away and know that this is the child God intended for us? By the power of the HOly Spirit and seeking God’s guidance! He deserves all our praise. I already have that protective “mother feeling” inside me towards her and can’t wait to spoil her. Thanks again for traveling this journey with us.

Looking Up!

The adoption situation is looking up in Moldova. The adoption official who was arrested was found innocent of all charges. Apparently, someone who was eager for power made some false claims. Our agency was advised just to be patient and not to expect a court date until after the elections. The situation just needed to settle down some more, but things should return to normal soon. However, we were notified today that an Italian agency just completed an adoption. This is promising since we were told in February that adoptions would be delayed temporarily.

Our adoption worker told us that this was the hardest part - just waiting on a referral. Some days are harder than others. Some days, it is on my mind constantly; then other days, something triggers my mind and I think Oh my goodness, we are adopting!