Approved!!!

WOW! I can't believe it has been almost a month since my last post. Sorry about that. There have been some exciting things that have happened. I guess they are exciting to us at least. These things mean we are closer to our baby girl being in our lives. Really each day we live we are closer to her coming to join our family!

Our case has been approved by USCIS! This means the government sees us fit to adopt from Lesotho! Great news! It took about 8 weeks for this process. Glad that wait is over.

Our dossier is in Lesotho! Our agency representative took a trip to Africa the last 2 weeks in February and carried along with him our dossier to hand deliver it to the government there! They now know that we want to adopt and it is all up to them now! We have to wait for them to schedule a match day and we have to wait for them to choose our file.  We all know that it is not actually the Lesotho government that is choosing our daughter/sister for us, it is GOD! He is going to pick out just the right one for us.  I love knowing that!!! I love knowing that it has nothing to do with our wants or desires, it has everything to do with His will. When she comes to us, it will be because she is the ONE little girl that fits in our family perfectly! I hesitate to say that she was born to be in our family. I do, because she was not. She was meant first and foremost to be in her birth family. God ordained that for her. He wanted her born right where she is and to whom she was/will be born to. In the life of an orphan, it doesn't stay that way, for a multitude of reasons. Her second best option is to be placed in a home with us so she will know the love of a family.  I thank God for this opportunity and it is not lost on us the sacrifices people had to make to accomplish this.

We had a great update from our agency in the middle of February. Small World has received their first referral from Lesotho. A family in California has received a referral for a little boy!! This is great news because Small World is new to doing adoptions in Lesotho. As I said in my previous post, they had no reference of time lines. Now they have a little bit of an idea of how things MAY go in the future. At least we know that they are matching USA cases and hopefully that will continue in the following match meetings. The next meeting is in March sometime. Our agency told us not to plan on being matched at that meeting as there are at least 15 cases ahead of us from Small World. We also know that this family was matched by Lesotho in December but wasn't notified of the match until February, 2 months later! Again, not sure if that is the norm or not but it is a point of reference.

We are working on a T-shirt fundraiser. Details on that are almost done!! I'll update as soon as I know all the bugs are worked out on the website. You will be able to order them right on a website and pay for them that way too. They can be shipped to your house or you can pick them up in Holland at Coast3, in the outlet mall.  Details to come!!!

Stay warm!!!