1 Month HOME!!!

FINALLY, there is an update. I know some of you are saying that. I'm so sorry. Since my last post in June there has been a lot of activity here at the Freriks home. Up until late August of this year there really was nothing to report. We were just waiting on filing of papers so we could get our approval to travel to go get Leah!

In mid August we knew the approval was coming down the pipe and would happen soon. We were hoping to get to China and back before the end of September because due to holidays there would be a shut down of offices in China the first few weeks of October. If we didn't make the last gotcha day in September (the 14th) then we would have to wait until at least October 19 for the next one. Well, our agency emailed us September 3 and informed us if we got approval by Monday, Sept 7, we could still make the 14th gotcha day.  If that was the case we should be prepared to leave on the 11th. That is EXACTLY what happened. We received travel approval on Monday Sept 7, and left on a jet plane that Friday, Sept 11. Talk about a whirlwind week! But with the help of family and friends, we made it happen!!

So, we were off on a plane for 24 hours of travel to Fuzhou, China to meet our daughter.

 

someday I will publish our daily diary I kept while we were there. We arrived on Saturday September 12, and were scheduled to meet our daughter on Sunday the 13th. Time to rest and psych ourselves up for that meeting!

 

We met Leah in our hotel at 4pm the next day. She was in a conference room with a few people from Civil Affairs and someone I assume was from the orphanage. The whole thing was so surreal. There she sat in a big office type chair, by herself, looking scared to death. I asked if I could pick her up, and was granted permission. She came to me without much fight. You could tell she was scared but was so quiet, and still is today. She is a very quiet little girl, most of the time ;)  We signed a few papers promising not to take off with her from the hotel, basically and we were done! She was ours to take. CRAZY!!! We were handed this 16 month old little girl that came along with NO instructions. We had no idea what she wanted to eat, or when she wanted to sleep, nothing. The orphanage person took off so fast we didn't have a chance to ask any questions, we were on our own! Off we went to get to know each other.

Gotcha Day! 09-13-2015

 

Saying goodbye to Fuzhou, her home city.

The next ten days were filled with meeting new people, sightseeing, appointments and fun. We were with one other gentleman and his daughter on the first 5 days of our trip. They were there adopting his and his wife's 51th and 16th child! They had 7? bio kids and the rest were adopted with some sort of special need! The girls they were there adopting, one had downs syndrome and the other had Apert syndrome, I believe. Such a great family. They arrived home with Brooke and Jillian in Seattle on Sept 24. On Monday Sept 28, their daughter Brooke, tragically passed away. It was found that she had pneumonia that went straight to her blood stream and the Lord took her home. Please keep this family in your prayers still today as they are dealing with this loss.

 

The second half of the trip was in Guangzhou, China. We were in a group with 9 other families and were so happy to meet them! In Guangzhou we had a medical appointment, consulate appointment and some more sight seeing, eating dinners with our new friends. Then, on the 23rd of Sept, it was time to come HOME!!!!! I was ready! WE were ready!

Guangzhou Zoo

Dinner with the goup

Shamian Island (shopping)

 

 

So, this happened exactly one month ago today! We were so excited to see the kids and let them meet their sister for the first time!





Leah is such a gift! It feels like she has always been here! We cannot believe that the Lord chose us to be her parents and her family. Everyday we look at her an are struck by how beautiful she is and how blessed we are to have her. She has changed us, all of us, forever. Her smile will light up a room. Her laugh is contagious.  She has really come out of her shell in the past month. She has gone from sleeping in our bed, to sleeping in a pack and play next to our bed and just today, we put her in her crib in her own room for her nap. She loves to cuddle, play, laugh, explore and eat! Eating was interesting to figure out. She started out really bland, but is starting to explore more flavor and textures. We have been out and about lately and she does so well!!! I would say transition and attachment are going beautifully! That all is possible because of all the prayers and support we have gotten from all of you! We cannot begin to thank you enough for the cards, meals, and visits. It means the world!

 

We are excited to see what the next months and years holds for her. I'm sure we will discover more treasures the is hiding from us! We'll keep you posted.

 

 

 

 

 

1 Month HOME!!!!

 



It's a GIRL!!!

"Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love Him." James 1:12

 

Well, that was the LONGEST pregnancy EVER!! At least that's what it felt like. In case you haven't heard me screaming it from my rooftop, we have a baby girl!!!! BABY!! We are thrilled to announce that we accepted the referral, and have been pre approved to adopt little 12 month old baby girl from China. She is simply gorgeous and a perfect gift from above.
We have given her the name Leah Joyce Freriks.

If you don't mind, we are going to keep her picture off social media and the blog until we have her home. We are MORE than happy to show you a picture of her should you see me or Jeremy out an about. My phone is permanently attached to me should I need my baby fix, which happens hourly :)
You can also ask any one of her aunts or uncles or grandparents and I'm sure they would be happy to share their niece/granddaughter/cousin with you! The kids are thrilled! Its been a long wait for them too. They can't wait to have a baby in the house, so they say right now, that may change when reality sets in and there is crying and screaming going on!

So, now what???? More paperwork, argh!!! We are waiting on an LOA, letter of acceptance, from China. This will tell us that they accept us to adopt her. We then file again with the USCIS, sending the LOA from China and her file to let them give us the ok to adopt her. We then send that approval from USCIS to China, along with some other paperwork, they look it all over and send us travel approval. They give us the ok to come get her! China will have given us a date to come to the Consulate to finalize her adoption, that is what we work our travel dates around. We are hoping this will be sometime in the next 4-6 months. This would mean we will have a pretty great Christmas this year!!

This will also mean we are starting over at the baby stage. She will be around 18 months old when we get her home. So, we need to restock our baby supplies! How fun will that be! I also get to decorate a nursery!!! YAY!!

We will keep you posted on the status of the remaining steps and when we receive the call to travel to get our baby! As always, we covet your prayers as we navigate these last steps in our journey to bring Leah home!!!

Where we are

Last time we talked I told you that we had made the decision to switch our adoption to China! YAY!!
We did the paper chase, again. Went back to the Dr. to get another form signed. "Yes, I know you already filled this out for us once but we need it done again, for China. Thank you very much" I said that sentence a lot in the last couple of months. We had to have references done again, along with new background checks and order ANOTHER copy of our marriage license and birth certificates. Crazy, I know but it is what it is.
So, our paperwork, for now, is all done. That was our goal before we left for Florida for spring break. I wanted to not have to think about that while we were gone enjoying our vacation.

We had 14 documents were sent to the State of Michigan to get authenticated, then they were off to DC to get another seal. That is where they sit. They will then come back to our agency in TN and they will send them off to CHINA!!!! We should be  DTC(Dossier to China) by May. Did that go over your head? It did mine at first. The world of Chinese adoptions has MANY acronyms. HS (Home Study), DTC, LID (Log in date), PA (pre approved), LOA (Letter of Acceptance) and MANY more. I can't keep up with them. All these Facebook groups I'm a part of talk in acronyms, so confusing. All I know is that our Docs should be to China in the next few weeks. They spend a couple, few weeks there getting processed. We then are issued a LID (log in date). Once we have that date we are eligible to be matched with a precious little girl. Our agency has seen referrals within 24 hours of that LID, it could also take a couple of months. So we could be just a few short months from knowing who our daughter/sister is!!! Can't stand it.
Our prayer is only that we hear the very clear whisper of the Holy Spirit when it comes to a referral. "She is yours" Oh, I cannot wait to hear it! I truly believe that there is a little girl on the other side of the world that the Lord has planned from the beginning of time, would be in our family. To think about that is crazy talk to me because just a few short years ago, I would have told you I was DONE having kids. I may HAVE told some of you that! Every time I said that, the Lord was laughing at me! "Oh, no you're not!" :)
For all my adoptive mamas out there you have to read Forever Mom by Mary Ostyn. This book was given to me by a dear loved one. It has been the best book, by far, that I have read on this journey. I will be reading it again.  It has invaluable information in it and is so relatable!
Thanks again for all your thoughts and prayers. We will keep you posted on the movement of our paperwork!

The road

Adoption is a winding road. It takes your heart one way, and then another, and yet still another.  There are hills and valleys too. You are so excited one day, weepy the next day because its Christmas and she isn't here to experience it with us. Then the next day you get angry for a plethora of reasons. Jeremy and I have been walking this road for a year and a half. Our heart strings have been tugged by so much.
The road to adoption for us began a year and a half ago. We started down the road to adopting from Lesotho. It was perfect! All the signs seemed to point that direction! So, we started walking the road that was paperwork, home visits and fundraising. We were on the road to adopting our daughter.
A lot of time has passed since that summer in 2013. A lot has happened, or not happened as it were. We were very excited about the prospect of having a referral within a short-ish amount of time. As with all adoptions, things don't go as planned all the time. There are match meetings that don't happen. There is unrest in the government that makes things difficult. Then, there are serious conversations you have with your spouse, wondering if we are walking the road we were supposed to walk. Well......we definitely believe we are on the right road in regards to adoption. But, we decided we were not on the right road regarding where our daughter was. Thus, another twist in the road. We have reset our course.......TO CHINA!!!! That's right. Your read that right, we believe our daughter is in China. We have added our name to the China Waiting Child program at our agency. This means, our daughter will have some sort of special need, according to China. We will be the ones to decide if she has a special need, or not. :) 
With this decision, we will be starting the paper chase all over again! It will be a busy couple months but we are confident in all of it! Please pray for us as we go through this again.

Until next time........

Merry Christmas!!!

It's Christmas week! I don't know why I am surprised every year that it comes so fast. But it always seems to! I was ready for it this year. I didn't feel too stressed or overwhelmed. I think I chose that for myself consciously. I don't like feeling like I have to perform or do all the expected things that a lot of people do during this season. It isn't because I don't care, cause I do!! I just decieded to limit the things I chose to stress about. I made a good list of gifts I wanted to get for people in my family. I love buying gifts for them and knowing that they will love (like?) them.  I did not however choose to do gifts for teachers, Sunday school teachers, mailmen, garbage men, and the like. I LOVE all of these people and value what they do for me in my life, and the lives of our children. I just chose not to add that to the stress of the season. It is too overwhelming for me. I feared that I was in jeopardy of doing these things out of the "have" to of the season rather that the "heart" of the season. I plan to show our appreciation to all these "extra" people in my life but maybe not during this specific season. Call me rude, call me unthoughtful (is that a word?). But you can ask anyone that lives in this house, when mom gets stressed it ain't pretty!

So this brings me to my next confession.......I did not do Christmas Cards this year either. There are a couple of reasons for this. One, I didn't get a great picture of the family this year. Second, if I'm being honest, I was a little sad to send them out. Why??? Because our family looks exactly like it did last year, and that makes me sad. I wanted our family to look different this year!! I want our daughter and sister to be with us! I want the picture to change and it didn't. Our prayer is that it will look different next year. Only God knows if that is true. 

There really is not a great update on the waiting front. Lesotho is still referring children to the USA but at a very slow pace. There were three referrals to the USA in 2014. We hope and pray there are more this coming year. There have been some improvements in communication between Lesotho and the US regarding how the US wants adoptions to go. The prayer is that things have been better communicated and kinks have been ironed out and we will see more match meetings and more referrals to the US this year! Please pray for that. There are children waiting for families and families waiting for children. Everyday these kids are not with their families is a day they are missing out! There have been multiple times this year where I would be sitting at a concert of one of the kids or out to dinner with my families or at a soccer game or volleyball game and thought, I wish she was here to be part of this. She is missing being part of HER family! And we are missing her being a part of our family too.

So, we are coming up on a year since our paperwork went to Lesotho. We have been officially waiting for almost a year. In some ways it went really fast but in others it has been long. As we look forward to 2015 we have great anticipation of a year that our family will look different! It is very likely that it won't but I will continue to pray that it does. Not only for us, but for all the other families waiting out there.

I would also like to take this opportunity to once again thank all the family and friends who have supported us in this journey. Be it a prayer, phone call, text, card in the mail, gift card or donation to the adoption fund. You have no idea how much ALL of that means to us. I get very overwhelmed when someone thinks of us in this season. There is so  much going on in the world and with your families that to stop and think of little ole' us is humbling, really, it is. It brings me to tears whenever it happens. The donations to the adoption fund have been incredible. We are a little less than half funded. Our expected total for this adoption is about $30,000. We have received almost half of that from various donations and fundraising. AMAZING!!!! I am excited to see what 2015 brings.

Merry Christmas From the Freriks Family!

"For unto us a Child is born, to us a Son is given" Isaiah 9:6

I know, I know.......

Sorry all. I know it has been a long time since my last post. I guess that has a lot to do with the fact that there is really nothing new on our situation. We are still waiting.

There has been some movement in Lesotho though. They held a match meeting in August and did match one more family from our agency. Baby steps. That is really all I know that is new.

We are just here plugging along. The kids are back in school. Life has been pretty manageable the past couple of months. Noah and Haylie are busy with soccer and volleyball.

It is so fun to watch her play a sport she is learning and learning to love.
Hunter is busy chasing deer. He would love to "one up" his sister from last year. She shot a 6 point last year and he would love to out-do her.

I am enjoying my quieter times at home since the kids have started school. I still keep busy with BSF and Church stuff and carting kids around from here to there.

I would like to thank all of you for your thoughts and prayers that continue to bless us. We still need them in this time of waiting. Waiting on someone else (Africa) is never easy. Our patience are being tested and we question our decision sometimes. But we are resting in the knowledge that this IS Gods plan for our family and we will see it through.

God Bless

The Process: A quick education on the process of adopting from Lesotho

Hi all,
We are still here, waiting.............. I get that you all may not understand why we have to wait. Afterall, there are millions of orphans out there. Can't they just go to the orphanage and pick one out and say "here ya go"! Ha! I wish. There is so much more to it. It is hard for us adoptors to understand, not to mention you all who have not entered into the adoption world.

For us, the process goes something like this:  I will try to make this very long process as short as possbile.
*Apply to the adoption agency on June 21, 2013(Small World Adoption agency in Tennessee) to adopt from Lesotho. They say yes. We hire another agency here in Michigan to do our home study. That process lasted from about August through November.
*Homestudy done so now we can send our home study to the US government to ask them if we can adopt. This is called filing a I800a form with the USCIS. They get our request and ask us to come for fingerprints to make sure we aren't bad people. ;)  When we get that approval we can add that piece of paper (I797 form) to our homestudy and a million other things. This stack of papers is called a dossier.
*We send our dossier to our agency in TN. and they review it. Making sure everything is there that the counrty wants to prove we are worthy of adopting from their counrty and adopting one of their precious children.
*Our agency sends that dossier to Lesotho. Lesotho translates it and logs us into the system.
***This is where details can get fuzzy. We don't know the exact procedures in Lesotho so it is hard to know what happens after our dossier gets there.
*We are then considered "on the list". This is when the TRUE waiting begins. This is when everything is out of our hands and into the hands of the Lesotho government.
*Our official wait began at the end of February when Jimbo, a representative from our agency actually hand delivered our dossier to the Lesotho government because he was there on a trip.
*We have been told by our agency that we are about 14th on the list of families waiting to adopt from Lesotho (out of about 30 or so). We aren't sure if that even means anything. We don't know if Lesotho goes in order or if they are random in the choosing a family to match with a child.

Sidebar: Lesotho is a new country to the Hague Convention ("an international agreement to establish safeguards to ensure that intercountry adoptions take place in the best interests of the child") They just became "Hague" in April 2013, only 2 months before we applied. So, this new way of doing adoptions with the USA is all new to Lesotho. They have to learn the process. As does our agency as they have yet to complete an American adoption from Lesotho. There is one in process, a family from California, and they are supposed to travel soon to go get thier little boy. YAY!!!!



THE WAIT: Here is why we have to wait.

Lesotho has match meetings to match families with children. The first meeting they held was in December 2013, 8 months after becoming Hague. They matched 1 family from the USA, it wasn't us :(. So, we know we have to wait until there is another meeting. That was supposed to be held in March, it never took place. I won't mention the reason here on the blog because I don't know if I'm allowed to. Ask, if you would like to know. So, we wait agian for another match meeting to get scheduled. They finally schedule one for June. They matched three families!!!! YAY. No one from the USA. But what a blessing that three more children will have forever families, in the Netherlands, or Sweden or Canada!
I have connected with a group of families on Facebook that are all adopting from Lesotho, what a blessing that has been. The theory between those families is that Lesotho is waiting for this first adoption from California to go all the way through to completion before they match others from the USA. We are thinking they want to make sure all goes smooth and they know what they are doing. That is just a theory but right now we are hanging on to all we can to make sense of this.
So we wait again for another meeting to be scheduled. We have been told that there will be one sometime around the beginning of september.
That is a HUGE prayer request: Pray that there will be a meeting. Pray that there are children ready to be referred. While there are over 350,000 orphans in Lesotho, that doesn't mean they are all in an orphanage, and it doesn't mean that they are all adoptable. The ones that are at the orphanage need to be researched to make sure that all options are exhausted to declare them adoptable. That is a lofty task for the social worker down there.

Because this is a new program for our agency and Lesotho, we have no frame of reference as to how Lesotho matches families. We don't know if they match only a certian amount of families, if they match all the kids submitted for adoption or just a few. There is soooooo much we don't have answers to as far as the process in Lesotho goes. We just have to wait and see. Go on faith, and trust in Gods PERFECT timing. What we DO know is that this is Gods plan for our family. We DO know that this WILL happen, at some point.

So, there you have it. In a nutshell, some of the reasons as to why we have to wait. 
Again, Please pray with us that there will be a meeting held in September. We most likely will not be matched at that meeting but our hope is that there are families from the USA that are matched so we can move up the list (if that is how they do it down there). I will keep you posted as to what I hear regarding that meeting.

Stay tuned for an update on our fundraising/donations. I want to give you all an update as to how much the Lord has blessed us through our friends and family as far as raising the funds to bring this little peanut home.

God Bless,
The Freriks

Update, or lack thereof.....

I get asked, daily, "How's the adoption going? Have you heard any news out of Lesotho? Do you know who your baby is yet?" I am really getting sick of saying, "It's at a standstill. No, we haven't heard anything. We are in the waiting stage."  I know, I know. Patience! Well, it ain't that easy folks!

I know that in the adoption world we have not been waiting long at ALL!! We have only officially been waiting since the end of February. Most people wait more than a year before hearing of a referral. We are waiting for Lesotho to begin the match meetings down there. They had one scheduled for the end of March. Due to some paperwork issues they were going to postpone that meeting for 2 weeks. Well, that meeting STILL hasn't happened! Not sure why. Our hope is that they are getting all their ducks in a row so that when they do start to have the match meetings they will be smooth and wait time to travel isn't too long. I know that we will not be matched at the first meeting or probably the second and maybe not even the third! We are about 15th or so on the "list" for the USA families that are adopting from Lesotho. So, we need to get some people crossed off the list. But we don't even know if they will follow the "list" when matiching families! We need to have some of these families united with their babies and the babies united with their forever families! Precious time is passing and these families and children are missing out!!!

I have said before that I do not do well when I don't know any information. I start to drum up scenarios in my head. I start to lay awake at night wondering.......My saving grace right now is that God's timing is perfect and there is a reason for all of this! Also, there is an end to this, at some point, we WILL have a precious little girl join our family at just the right time. This I know! What a day that will be! It will be worth every day I sit here waiting for an email that says there is a meeting scheduled!! Worth every pop can I bring back to the store. Worth every t-shirt order placed. Worth every sacrifice made! Someday, I will be sitting here playing with my daughter wondering what all the worry was for!

If I could be so bold as to ask for prayer for my heart and the heart of my family. Pray for patience and peace. I need prayers so I don't get bitter. I tend to get bitter when things aren't going my way. I don't want to be bitter. I want JOY pouring out of me when I talk about the adoption process and not bitterness. How is bitterness going to make anyone else want to go through this agonizing wait time!

I hope to update again soon with some NEWS!!!

T-Shirts!!!

T-shirts are ready!!!! Thanks to Trench apparel for getting the website ready for you to order the shirts you want. All you have to do is go to their website and order the items you want. You can choose to have the items shipped to you, or you can pick them up at Coast 3, in the outlet mall in Holland.

The design for the shirts were done by Lynnett Bell and she graciously let us use it for our fundraiser shirts. It represents the coming together of Michigan and Lesotho.  All the money raised from these shirts will go to our adoption fund to bring home our daughter/sister.  The shirts are navy with a white Michigan and Africa outlined in green. These are the colors of the Lesotho flag. The back of the shirts has

 

Isaiah 43:5 "Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west"

 

 

Thank you in advance for supporting us in this way. Please let us know if you have any questions!!

 



 

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!!!

Update

There isn't a whole lot to update on but progress was made. We heard from immigration on our application (I800a). They were not satisfied with a couple of things, boooo! So, we had to revise a letter by adding ONE SENTENCE!!!! No big deal, we did that. They also weren't clear on a couple of things in our home study so our case worker from AAI had to call Immigration to explain that what they were  looking for was actually in the home study. So, the revised letter is on its way to immigration and we hope to have our approval in the next couple/few weeks.

The dossier looked good to Small World. They only needed one thing from us, our police clearances, and that was it! It was easy enough. I just went online and paid $10 for a search for each of us and that was that! In case your wondering, nothing came up on a criminal background check for either Jeremy nor I :)  So our agency will email our dossier to Lesotho!! Our caseworker from Small World is taking a trip to Africa in the next couple of weeks and will be taking our dossier with him to hand deliver it to the Lesotho government! Woo Hoo!

There is so much unknown with this because Small World has never done a complete adoption case for Lesotho. They don't have much to go on as far as answering questions for us in reference to time lines. They have no point of reference. It's a little frustrating not to have any sort of idea how long this could take. But then, I just keep remembering that the Lord knows the perfect time for "Ruby" to come to our family and it won't happen until then! He said not to expect to get a referral from the meeting that is taking place shortly because there are 15 families with dossiers in ahead of us. How many families they match depends upon how many kids they have ready to be adopted. And by ready to be adopted, I mean this. In order for a child to be deemed adoptable the country has to make sure that there are no other people in the child's life that want to take care of the him/her. They also have to make sure that the parents sign off their rights, if the parents are still alive and can be found. While there are millions of orphans around the world it's not as easy as it sounds to have them all adopted. All the red tape really is meant for the best interest of the child.

Our family is doing well. Noah is playing indoor soccer with his cousin Parker. They are having a great time! So glad Noah is getting to know so many new kids. They are all from a different school than him. We are finally going to have a full week of school since before Christmas break, i think. We have had snow day after snow day! All this snow is getting a little out of hand. I'm ready for spring!

I am excited for my weekend. I am attending a live web cast of a conference that is taking place in Austin, TX. It will have speakers like Ann Voskamp, Jen Hatmaker, Jennie Allen and a few other women in ministry. It will be a very Spirit filled weekend and I cannot wait for how the Lord is going to speak to me through these women.

Thanks for keeping our family in your prayers! We can feel them. This next step is going to be the hardest, as I have said before. Now all we do is wait.

God Bless

Hurry up and WAIT!

WOW. I feel like so much has happened in the last month. We had some wonderful Holidays! Christmas was wonderful! Very blessed to have time to spend with family and friends.
With Christmas and New Years being in the middle of the week we didn't get to do a few things we had on the list for Christmas break but the kids still managed to have a good time for 2+ weeks.

We received some good news from our agency. We were told that we do not have to wait for our approval from immigration in order to get on the list for a child in Lesotho. We can send our dossier in and they will accept it without that piece of paper. When we get it then we will send it in. That changed the game a little. So, we had to hurry up and get a few last minute things done but it wasn't too bad. We sent all our documents to Small World on January 2, 2014.  They have to review it and make sure everything is in order and then they will scan it and electronically send it in, with the originals following in the mail. Once Lesotho gets it they will do whatever they have to do with it and hopefully put us on the list for our baby girl.

Lesotho does things a little different than most countries, I think. They have "match days" approximately each quarter. So, the next match day should be coming up in the next couple of months. We could get matched then, if our file gets picked. If we don't, then we wait until the next match meeting. So, it will be a lot of waiting from here on out!! So, I will just have to keep busy somehow from now until we hear something.  To be frank, the unknown, I don't do well with that! So pray for that for me. I need to give it up to God and let Him.....It's all up to him at this point. His timing is perfect and "Ruby" will join our family at just the right time.

We are in the process of getting our T-shirt fundraiser finalized. We will be selling t-shirts to raise money for our adoption. It should be ready to go in the very near future. I will keep you posted on the details.

God Bless                                                                                                                                           

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