Timeline

I added the timeline of our adoption journey to the blog. People have asked for it so I though this would be a good place to put it.

Kids had a snowday rain-day today. They were bummed. This is the one day of the WHOLE school year you do NOT want a snow day.  Not totally convinced it was necessary today. They all missed Christmas parties and a chance to give teachers gifts and have that last hurrah before the end of the year. I hope they get to do some celebrating when they get back in two weeks. That brings me to my next thought. The kids have 2 weeks off!!! This is both good and bad. Just as it is with summer break. The idea is nice, but the reality is a little less than. They get bored, and I don't always know what to do with them!! We can't go all over the place because everything costs money! Any ideas on CHEAP entertainment would be great. I do enjoy the more relaxed pace though.

I had a wonderful couple of days. Wednesday was our fingerprint day. It went fabulous! No problem.
Ran a couple of errands after that and then headed to the gym to blow off some steam. Thursday was filled with wonderful things as well. I went to the ZCS Christmas Chapel in the morning. I don't know how they do it but every time I go to one of those things I stand in awe of the Holy Spirit working in that place. There is NOTHING better than 850 kids singing "Go Tell it On The Mountain" at the top of their lungs!! I then headed to coffee with a dear friend who works for Beautiful Gate. She is leaving to go back to Lesotho in 2 weeks to do the work God has asked her to do. I could not be more blessed by her. If the Lord allows, she will have a part in raising our daughter at Beautiful Gate before we get there to take her home, for that, we are grateful! MWAA!! 

Until next time........Merry Christmas!!!

Fingerprints!

Tomorrow Jeremy and I will go to Grand Rapids for our fingerprints! Another step closer to our little girl. All this waiting!!! Wait Wait Wait!! And we are not even to the longest wait yet! That wait comes when our paperwork all gets to Africa and we wait for them to match us with our daughter! That will be excruciating!!

All this waiting hits home this time of year. The reason for this advent season is the waiting for the baby Jesus to come! We wait for Him, we wait for her! We wait for the paperwork, they waited for the Savior! We even wait for the mail truck!!

We have had a great Christmas season so far. Knock on wood, no one has gotten sick, yet. Last year Haylie and I had to miss our Freriks Christmas due to Haylie having a migraine. Then at that party, Noah decided to get sick. So, he was sick on Christmas day. Good thing we had no plans for that day because we had done my side of the family Christmas the week earlier. So, pray we all stay healthy this year so we can make it to all the family get togethers.

Thank you to all of you who  have prayed us through to this point. We can feel them. We could NOT do this without it. Thank you to all of you who have so generously given to our adoption fund, given us your pop cans, or sent an email at JUST the right time! It means more than you know! Keep it up, we have a long way to go.

We pray you have the Merriest of Chirstmas' and are Blessed in this new year!






 

5 Months Later!

It has been five months, to the day, that we applied to Small World Adoptions to adopt from Lesotho!
Today I picked up our home study from Adoption Associates! This is a huge step. It fees so good to have that in our hands!! Seems like it took forever to get this part done. People keep asking us if there is any news on the adoption. My response for the past 5 months has been, "Nope, still doing the home study." I don't have to say that anymore and it feels sooooooo gooooood!!!!! We are moving on to phase #2!

Our next step is to file an I800a application with the US government. Tomorrow I will send all that paperwork to Dallas, TX. They will then, review it and send us a date for Jeremy and I to go to Grand Rapids to have our fingerprints done. That could take 3 weeks to hear. After fingerprints it is another 2-4 weeks until we recieve our approval in the mail. That will be the end of phase 2! Slowly but surely we are making progress.

This holiday season already seems different to me than in the past. I have had a hard time getting into the spirit of things in years past. In some ways it seemed like just another day, save for the great food, and presents. This year is different. Different in so many ways. We have some great plans for our family for this year. We will be doing a Jesse Tree! If you haven't heard of this you should go to Ann Voskamps website. www.aholyexpierence.com. She is selling a book called The Greatest Gift. It sets the birth of our Savior in the context of the whole bible. Each day from Dec. 1 to Dec 25 there is a devotional and an ornament.  You put that ornament on the tree and it will remind you all month that the promise of our Saviors birth was there from the beginning of time! Excellent!!!!

I really pray that our Holiday season is filled with the presence of Him. I pray we don't get caught up in the hustle and bustle of parties and lists and forget what its is all about. I would love to turn our holiday season upside down (thanks Ann Voskamp for that analogy). Change how we "do" Christmas. Think about the poor, hurting, hungry and lost and not so much about ourselves. Maybe your Christmas can look a little different this year too?

Family Picture Preview

We had a family picture session this week! One of our dear friends was kind enough to go out on a chilly evening and snap a few pictures for us. Here are a few for your viewing pleasure!

Needless to say we are very excited to have an actual 4th child in that picture someday. For now, the pumpkin will have to do.

Transition

We have started the transition. Moving bedrooms around. We are moving the boys in together in the basement. Which means that my parents and I (ok, mostly my parents) spent the majority of last weekend moving Haylie upstairs to her original bedroom she had when we moved in 6 years ago. They boys moved back in together in their old room for the time being. Next on the list is to paint, again, the basement bedroom to make it more boy friendly. It is a bigger bedroom for them and has a bathroom. They like to say it will be the man cave.

This will make room for "Ruby" in the upstairs bedroom right by ours. That will be a fun project also! Picking out girl things! Will we need a crib? Probably....will she be in a twin bed, maybe. All depends on how big our little tootie is! I had bedding that Haylie originally had when we moved in. Pink and green, so cute. I tried to sell it a couple of years ago at my garage sale and then on ebay or something. It didn't sell. I was looking at this bedding and going to list it again and then decided that I just couldn't part with it. It was too cute, it had all kinds of accessories that were custom made to go with it.  For some reason, I just couldn't part with it. Now I know why. It was the Lord saying, keep it, you will need more girl bedding in the future. Right?

I have had a few of these God moments happen. Decisions Jeremy and I have made thinking it was just a good decision or a change of heart. Well, in hind sight, it was the Lord saying "Stop, those plans are not My plans. Follow Me! I have something better in mind" It has been so great to look back at the past year or so and see all those moments where God was working in our hearts but we didn't know it at the time.

Our home study is being written. She will be done with it by the end of next week. Then she has to send it to our Agency in Tennessee. They will review it and hopefully approve it. Then it is time to apply to immigration to be able to adopt. Step by step. Closer and closer. I am excited things are moving along. I am nervous because soon the process will be out of our hands. Nothing we can do to move it along. Once our dossier gets to Africa we are at the mercy of the government there. They do match days every 2 months. We could be waiting  a very short time or we could be waiting a very long time. Only God knows, and has His timing all worked out and it will be perfect.

That's all for now.
God Bless

Update

Sorry I have been MIA for a while. But in this stage in the game there really isn't much to report. We are still doing the paper chase that is called a home study. We have one more meeting on the 14th. She will come to our house and interview the kids and check out the house and make sure there is a place for "ruby" (that is what we are calling her for now, it will change).  I hope the kids are on their best behavior ;) 
We have also been doing A LOT of training. They have a requirement of 10 hours of training. Either we have to read a TON of books or do 3 different online trainings. So, we have had many evening of us on the couch with the computer watching and reading online. I have also had the job of keeping Jeremy awake during all of these sessions. They aren't the most exciting things to do! I do have to say I have learned a lot and have become aware of a lot of things that she is going to go through when she gets  home.
We hope to have the home study done by mid November. Then it is an application to USCIS to get approval to adopt. After that, the dossier gets to get mailed to Lesotho!!! After that we play the waiting game.
So, that is where we are. We sure can feel the prayers and support. Thank you! Keep it coming!

This weekend we are off on a shopping trip with my sisters, daughter, niece and mom. Its an annual tradition for us girls and I am very excited for the day when Ruby can come along!!!

I'll try to keep this updated a little better in the future!
For now, I'll leave you with a couple of pictures of the kids with their latest wild life scores!!

Haylie scored an 8pt buck her first time hunting. She went out with Jeremy during the Youth Hunt in Sept.

Jeremy took the boys fishing on the Pier Marquette river last weekend. They scored some HUGE salmon!!

Thats all for now. Until next time.......

Amazed

There have been MANY times during the journey I have been amazed. I've been amazed at my kids. They are over the moon about adding a little sister to this crazy bunch. The boys didn't blink when we suggested that they are going to once again have to share a room. Haylie has amazed us with her insight and confidence in the Lord providing for us through this process.
I've been amazed at my husband. He is always calm and collected. He showed nothing different through this decision to adopt. I, on the other hand, have had a couple of panic attacks.  He was there to calm me and talk me "off the ledge".  Always saying it will be ok! Love him!!!
I have been amazed by God, obviously. He has shown up SO many many times in the past 6 months-a year since we have started this process. He has answered questions, shown us His love, gave us assurance when we weren't sure.

Most recently I have been amazed by our friends and family. As you may know, we had a fundraising jewlery show last week.  Now, jewlery shows and home shows in general have not always been a great turnout for me. People always seem to be too busy, or aren't into whatever is being sold or just plain don't feel like it. Well that was NOT the case this time. I loved nothing more that seeing my home filled with people that love and support us. I was amazed at the people that showed up. It was a really fun night. We managed to have a great show. My cousin, Allison said that in her 8 years of selling Premier this was her BIGGEST show!!! GOD IS GOOD!!! You all amaze me!! THANK YOU!!!!! THANK YOU!!!! We are able to deposite a good amount into our adoption fund. 

We are still in the process of our home study. We have a meeting with our caseworker on Monday night, which also happens to be our anniversary! We will have individual meetings with her. I guess to just make sure our stories match! ;)  We have to do a couple of training things and then one more meeting with her in October and our home study should be complete!! Then we apply to the USA to be able to adopt. Once we have approval from them we can send in our dossier to Africa!!

Prayer Request:
Patience for us
Gods provisions
Pray for our little girl.
Pray for her birth family and the decisions they have to make.

I know the plans I have for YOU!

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11

 

This verse has been especially meaningful to our family in the past few months. God had been growing a desire in our hearts and we didn't even know it, for a while. Then, one day we were kind of slapped in the face with it.

 

The LORD was pretty clear to us that the PLAN He had for us was to adopt. Jeremy and I had MANY discussions about this. Should we, shouldn't we. But what about the money, but what about the fact that our kids are older now and our freedom is at our fingertips. The LORD didn't like any of those excuses! Because they were from the evil one. After MUCH prayer and more prayer we decided that this is what we were being called to do. The kids were more than excited! Haylie was a big part in our decision, she had all the answers to our questions, as all 11 year olds do.  :) 

 

Then it was time to decide on where our new addition was going to come from.  There were not a lot of choices, believe it or not.  After doing some research, and after talking with family, we decided on Lesotho, Africa. We have some connections to this country through Haven CRC in Zeeland, MI and really felt that this was the path that God put us on.

 

Then it was time to decide how old, what gender. That was a hard decision. But we decided we are going to add a little girl to our family under the age of 3. We cannot wait!!!! But we have to.......

 

We contacted our agency and got the ball rolling and sent our application in on Friday, June 21. By that Monday, we had an email that we were accepted into the Lesotho program. WHAT??? That was fast! Our next step was to find an agency here in Michigan that would do our Home Study, our placing agency is in TN. I contacted AAI and they were willing to do our home study for us.

 

We finished our application to AAI on July 2. It took a while for them to get the ball rolling. But finally on July 30 we received our requirements for the home study and started working on that.

 

So now we continue.....we continue with paper work and dr. appointments and all that comes with getting a home study and dossier done.

 

We would love nothing more than for you to pray for our family. Obviously this is a hard road, waiting is never easy. The unknown is never easy. We are trusting Jesus that he will guide us through this. My main motto in life has been....."If He brings you to it, He will bring you through it" We are clinging on to this promise right now.

 

We do plan do to some fundraising. Not sure what that will all look like right now. But for starters....we are doing a Jewelry Show!!! My cousin has generously agreed to do a Premier Designs Jewelry Show for us and donate close to 50% of all sales to our adoption fund. So, if you would like to come to our home and support us in this way please feel free!!! It is on September 5 at 6:30pm. I can get you directions if you need them. If you can't make it to the show, there will be other ways to support us in the future. Stay tuned!!!

 

In Him,

The Freriks