God is so good!!!!!!!

We received our referral!!!!!!! Gary and I were overwhelmed when we heard the news and saw the first picture of our absolutely beautiful baby girl! We were not expecting a referral for another 4-6 months so this came as a wonderful surprise! I am just dying to share all the little details about our sweet little baby, who we are naming Kayla, but for legal and safety reasons we are not allowed to give any personal information about our new child. Please keep us in prayer as we are in the process of buying our first house, moving out of state, redoing our homestudy, and flying to Africa all in the next few months. God is good and we are resting in Him as we face the busy season ahead of us!

Finally an update!

I am so sorry for taking this long to write an update! Things with the adoption have been slow for a while and we have had some big life changes affecting us! Because of Gary's work situation we are having to move with his job, which will take us out of state, probably sometime in January. This was not our first choice, and it will be incredibly difficult to leave our dear family, friends, and of course our church (there is only one Coast!)! In the midst of the hardships we see God's hand and know that He is working all of these changes for our good and His glory! We look forward to what God has in store for our family in the years ahead!

A quick update on where we are with the adoption process. In an email with our social worker this week we found out that we are now number 7 in line for an infant girl referral (possibly number 6 since there is a family on hold ahead of us)! This was really exciting news since it bumps us into maybe the spring of next year, rather than summer, for a referral! As soon as we move we will need to redo parts of our homestudy, like the house inspection, and get that up to date before we get our referral. We will try to do a better job of posting in the weeks and months ahead as we continue to get closer to bringing home Gilchrist kiddo number 3!

Please be in prayer for Ethiopia, they are still experiencing severe famine! I am including a link to a food drive being offered by a branch of our adoption agency, Christian World Foundation, that will help feed hungry Ethiopians through the holidays. CWF has bought a large plot of land where they intend to begin building an orphanage, hospital, crisis pregnancy center, and adoptive family housing. They will be using this land to set up a temporary food bank called Food4Kids.

http://www.christianworldfoundation.org/food4kids/food4kids.htm

If you can give a donation this holiday season, please prayerfully consider giving to this organization, the need is overwhelming!

The Famine in Ethiopia

Gary and I had a talk with our new case worker recently, who we both liked very much! She was able to get us more up to date with why so many of us 'soon to be parents' are experiencing a delay. Apparently with the terrible famine taking place in Ethiopia right now the orphanages are packed full, and so all the babies who were placed in orphanages have already been adopted and now the orphanages are mostly full of older children and sibling groups. The need is so overwhelming that my heart breaks when I think of all the suffering! The famine has been especially devastating for the children. Lack of food and water is fatal much sooner in growing little ones than in an adult. Also the long term effects of hunger can cause any number of diseases and stunt mind and growth development permanently in children. I read in the BBC news that this famine is predicted to be a far greater tragedy than the one that took place in Ethiopia in 1984, which caused the deaths of almost 1 million people. Approximately 6 million people are at immediate risk, and without significant aid soon it is estimated that 15 million will be facing starvation at the turn of the year. This is almost inconceivable in our country where we scrape leftover food into the trash every day. I cannot imagine real hunger or thirst. I cannot imagine having to helplessly watch my children starve! This horror really hits home for me when I think of my Ethiopian baby girl over there hungry, maybe sick, while I live in such abundance! If I could do anything to make her life better, easier, to soothe one night of crying, I would. I will be searching to find some ways to physically help in this crisis and will post what I find.

Update

At the present we do not have any real news on the adoption. We have been transferred, in our agency, to a new case manager who will walk us through the referral and travel aspect of the process. We will hopefully be meeting with her for a phone conference soon where can ask questions and maybe get some more specifics on time frames.

As our family is going through this waiting season we are continually filled with excitement and anticipation as we pray for our Ethiopian little sister and daughter. Although the timing has not been what we had in mind, our good God, who is in control of all things, is bringing about a beautiful story in His perfect time and we are thankful!

The Good, the Bad, and the Excellent

The Good...
Our dossier is on its way to Ethiopia. We've been officially added to the waiting list for referral of an infant girl!

The Bad...
We were notified this week that the Ethiopian government has not been referring many infant girls to our adoption agency lately, and consequently, the waiting list is quite a bit longer than normal. Instead of traveling in a few months to pick up a little girl, it will probably be well into next year before we can bring her home. This has been really disappointing for us.

The Excellent...
A good God is in control of all of this. His plans are always excellent, His timing always perfect. And He promises to work all things for His glory and our good. In a very real sense, we cannot lose...

Dossier Paperwork Completed!

Our dossier is finally complete! We got the call yesterday that the dossier has received it's final authentications in Washington DC and is on it's way to our adoption agency (CWA) in North Carolina. There it will be translated into Amharic and sent on to Ethiopia. We will then be officially put on the waiting list for the referral of a child! Things are happening! We don't know for sure how long it will take to get a referral, but CWA says 2-3 months is typical. We are looking forward to that phone call already...

Yesterday we had our first round of immunizations. Yes, folks, that means needles. Lots of them. We had 387 shots each. Well ok, maybe it was only 5, but it seemed like more than that. So, today, we've got sore shoulder syndrome, which I suppose is better than sore that-other-place-they-give-shots-sometimes syndrome.

God has been so good to us as we get ready for our next child. One of our biggest prayer items is that we wanted to see Lana progress in some areas before we add another family member. We have needed her to take a bottle and solid food better, so that Jamie can be gone to Africa and the poor girl doesn't starve! Just in the last week, she has begun taking a bottle well and eating several different kinds of yuk... I mean... mashed veggies.

Also of note - between our economic stimulus payment and a reimbursement from Jamie's doctor for over-charging, we have over $2000 of unexpected money to put toward the adoption. We are grateful for God's continued provision.

God is good, and we believe His hand is in our effort to honor Him with our family. We look forward to seeing Him do more in our lives.

All Quiet on the Adoption Front

We have completed all of our dossier paperwork requirements and are waiting for the final version of the homestudy report. Once this is received, we will send 2 copies of the entire dossier to CWA for review. After corrections are incorporated, we will send the dossier originals to the U.S State Dept for authentication, and then it will be ready to send to Ethiopia. We would like to have all that completed this month, but God's timing is best.

Moving Forward

It looks like our homestudy has been written up by our social worker and sent to our agency for review. This means we are moving forward! When the homestudy is approved by our agency we will then be ready to send off our complete dossier. After the dossier is sent and approved then we will wait for a referral. During this waiting period we are trying to prepare on the home front. I have been decorating the girls' room. This morning Bryant and I were hanging butterflies from their ceiling. I am very pleased with how the room is turning out! Above is a picture of the curtains I made. Along with decorating, we have gotten a totally cool double stroller (I use it with Bryant and Lana now) as well as a second crib. The big purchase we will have to make before the baby comes is a minivan. Goodbye compact parking, cute car, and zipping around corners, and hello to practical Mommy! We have been keeping busy, but we are very excited to once again be moving ahead in the adoption process!

Happy Mom's Day Jamie!

Thanks for all that you do for our family. Thanks for changing all those diapers, doing all that never-ending laundry, patiently working with Lana's poor sleeping, helping Bryant learn new words, taking care of meals, buying the groceries, cleaning bathrooms, washing dishes, always taking time to talk, never asking me to watch Anne of Green Gables with you, playing with the kids, offering encouraging words, coming up with creative ideas around the house, listening to me practice presentations, planning special occasions, steam cleaning the carpets, giving us all haircuts (well, not Lana yet), acting interested when I get technical, working to keep Christ central in all things, never wasting money, feeding Chi-Chi, getting up often in the night when kids are crying, loving your husband on his melancholy days, taking great photos of the family, stomping creepy-crawlies in the middle of the night, taking the kids to their doctor's appointments, loving my family and friends as your own, keeping your hair long at my request, and loving a child you haven't even met yet. Our children are blessed to have you for their mother. I am a better man because you are my wife. I love you very much.

The Process

Here is a top-level overview (Jamie is laughing at me for using these words - totally a Gary post) of the process we are going through in order to adopt internationally.

We have to complete a California homestudy. This involves filling out lots of forms, getting fingerprinted at the local police station, being interviewed by a social worker, and having a home safety inspection. The homestudy agency uses all this information about us to make a determination about our suitability to adopt. Assuming no problems arise out of all this, a final report is written up by the homestudy agency documenting their findings and conclusions. We are currently complete for all this except the final report is still being written.

The dossier is another big stack of paperwork. This one includes the final homestudy report as well as quite a few other forms and documents of various kinds. Everything must be notarized. In addition, there is a requirement to complete a minimum of ten hours of adoption/parenting training, per requirements of the Hague Convention. When all this is completed and reviewed by our adoption agency, it is sent to the U.S State Department for authentication. After this is done, it is ready to go to Ethiopia. The dossier basically contains everything the Ethiopian government will know about us, and it is what they will use to approve or reject us for adopting one of their children. We are nearly complete with our dossier paperwork now - we need the homestudy report, one notarized doctor's report, and we need to complete and notarize our letter to the Ethiopian government requesting adoption of an Ethiopian child. We hope to have all this complete and ready for review in another week or two.

A third leg to this process is the paperwork for the USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services). You can't just go and bring a foreign-born person into the U.S. without more stacks of paper. The USCIS requires more fingerprints, more moolah, and a review of the homestudy report to give a preliminary approval for our bringing in an orphan from outside the country. We are just waiting on the homestudy report at this time. There will be more forms later when we are closer to our travel time.

OK, so once all the front-end paperwork is complete and submitted to Ethiopia, we wait for a referral. The referral will consist of information (perhaps all that is known) about an orphaned or abandoned child. This will include pictures, sometimes video, medical history, family history if known, as well as personal tidbits if known. We will be requesting a reasonably healthy girl, age 0-18 months. We don't know how long it will take to get a referral once our paperwork is submitted, but other adopting families seem to have had times varying from a month or two to four or five months. Our agency quotes three months as typical, but nothing is guaranteed of course.

Orphaned/abandoned children in Ethiopia typically start out in the state-run orphanages. Once we agree to a referred child, that child will be removed from the orphanage (hooray!) and placed in foster care. From this point, it could be another month or more before we can arrange to travel to pick up the child!

We're anxious to meet that little one, whomever she may be!

Why Ethiopia?

So, how did we settle on Ethiopia for this adoption?

First, we considered what countries, or areas, we had an interest in. I had an interest in Eastern Europe, probably based on the horror stories I had heard years ago about Romanian orphanages. Jamie has long had a heart for Africa. Next, we started looking into what countries in these regions allow adoptions to the U.S. Not all do. We considered Malawi, since our church has an ongoing ministry focus there. However, Malawi, as of the writing of this post anyway, requires two years residency in country in order to adopt. Cross that one off. We looked at Romania, but it is currently closed to U.S. adoptions.

So, as we prayed about which country to choose, God began to move my heart toward Africa. Certainly, there is much need there. AIDS and war have orphaned many children. So has poverty. Perhaps my main reason for not wanting to adopt from Africa was that the child would not look like us. My heart began to change quite dramatically on this point over a period of weeks. If our lives are to glorify God, and the Gilchrists want their adoption to do so, what better way than to have a child that will bring questions? Africa it is.

Next, we started looking at Christian adoption agencies that work with African countries. It turns out there are only a few African countries that are currently working with the U.S. for general adoptions. Ethiopia was the primary one; Liberia was open as well. There were far more agencies that worked with Ethiopia than Liberia, so we started leaning that way.

Then we had to check out the requirements as set forth by the Ethiopian government for international adoptions. Fortunately, Ethiopia has less restrictive requirements for prospective adoptive parents than some other countries. Requirements vary by country, and may include such things as minimum age for both parents, no small children in the home, no more than one child in the home, maximum age difference for mom and dad, maximum age for either parent, stays of 6 weeks or more in country at time of adoption, minimum income, minimum education, can't adopt a child younger than age two, can't specify gender of child to adopt, must have blood ties to country, and the list goes on. For Ethiopia, we met all the requirements!

We sent out requests for information from quite a few Christian adoption agencies, and chose Christian World Adoption. They have placed a lot of children from Ethiopia, and simply put, they were great at answering all of our many questions, even before we signed with them! All of our correspondence with them has been excellent. We have seen God's blessing in this choice.

One step closer!

After weeks of dreading, as well as much organizing and cleaning, we finally had our home inspection and personal interviews, and we passed! The social worker and her understudy were both nice and the visit was quick! I think we really did not know what to expect from the interviews or home inspection, so we tried to cover all the bases, organizing closets and cupboards, even going so far as to clean behind furniture. I think we went above and beyond the call of duty, but we passed the homestudy and are all done with home visits until after we bring our sweet baby girl home!

Why are we pursuing international adoption?

First blog post ever.... drum roll please....

We've had a number of people ask us about how we decided to adopt internationally, so here are some thoughts along that line...

Both Jamie and I had an interest in orphanage ministry when we were young... um... well... when I was young anyway. I don't know that either of us ever thought that our interest would lead to anything in particular, but I suppose now it has in a way. God seems to have awakened that heart in each of us again, and we are working toward that end, albeit not exactly George Mueller style. Three things happened last year to move us to the place of pursuing international adoption.

One - I was studying through a great little book by John Piper, entitled "Don't Waste Your Life", and desire for something more than standard temporal pursuits began to gnaw at me again. The reminder that "Life is Short, Eternity is Long - Live Like It!" began to grow and bear fruit in my heart. If our lives are to count, we had better be about the things that God is about. As Jamie and I talked and prayed about this, we grew more and more confident that God is not so interested in "stuff", but in people.

Two - Jamie's pregnancy with Lana was a very difficult one, with 9 months of daily hugging the porcelain throne, a few trips to the hospital, loss of weight, lots of medicine, etc. By the end of that pregnancy, Jamie and I agreed that her body needed a break - not permanently necessarily, but for a few years at least. But, we were still interested in having more kids in the near term. This consideration sparked the adoption conversation anew. We had considered it before as a way to love a needy child, but we hadn't been thinking of doing anything along that line until later in our marriage.

Three - Some friends of ours were in the process of adopting two special needs kids from the Ukraine (see their blog at the Finding Zoe link in the sidebar). We followed their exploits with interest, and suddenly it dawned on us... you know, we could do that! We hadn't considered international adoption until that point. There is a HUGE need in some countries, and the desire to demonstrate the good heart of our good God by giving of our resources to one (or hopefully more later) truly needy child from overseas loomed ever larger in our hearts and minds.

At this point, the proverbial ball began to roll...

Anyway, lots more to be said, but it will have to wait for another post. We appreciate your prayers as you think about us.