Miracles in the Making

Well I slept of my grief over plane ticket prices and am feeling more hopeful today. When I think about the challenges that we have faced with this second adoption experience it feels sometimes like it has been a uphill battle but then it occurred to me that for every challenge that we have faced we have also experienced true miracles in the making. We have been blessed with people in our lives, sometimes complete strangers, who have went our of their way to make things happen. So here is a sample of people I would like to thank and miracles I would like to highlight:

• Thank you to our home study caseworker who completely understood when we called her after we had completed a international home study for Ethiopia and told her that we needed to change our country to Rwanda.
• Thank you also to our home study caseworker to introduced us to a family in our community who was in process of adopting a baby boy from Ethiopia. Turns out they lived only a few blocks from our home and up to that point we did not know one other person in our city who had adopted from Ethiopia. Their son is now home and doing wonderful! They have followed our own process in Rwanda and given donations to us for the orphanage.
• Thank you to our church community who has been 100% supportive of our daughter, our family, and our second adoption. They opened their doors to allow us to hold a fundraiser at the church this summer and nearly 80% of our church members should up to purchase baked goods, enjoy a African lunch buffet, bid on silent auction items, and brin donations.
• Thank you to one specific church member named Lesley who went out of her way during our first adoption and then this summer held a rummage sale for us and donated all of the proceeds.
• Thank you to our interim pastor who wrote us letters of support for a home study reference and for our grant applications. He looks great in the traditional Ethiopian shirt that he purchased at our fundraiser!
• Thank you to our general medical practitioner who took the extra time to complete our medicals and to the notary who ran to his office upon request to correct a notary error.
• Thank you to both our home study agency and international adoption agencies who have put up with my endless questions and updates throughout this process.
• Thank you to the amazing public nurse at the Weld County travel clinic who went out of her way to schedule a later then usual appointment to give our son his travel vaccinations and then to arrange a free replacement of his Typhoid pills when they went bad (our fault).
• Thank you to Laura, a adoptive mom in our same city who I was introduced to by the previous Ethiopian adoptive mom who I mentioned. Laura is looking into Rwanda adoption as well and gave us literally bins full of donations for the orphanage in Rwanda. They are a amazing family and truly we would have never met them had it not been for the previous chain of events!
• A preemptive thank you to the travel agencies who I have contacted to investigate lower airline tickets and alternative flight options to get us all to Rwanda safely without exceeding our savings account. I have faith that someone and by some miracle we will find a reasonable deal and that we will be able to bring extra luggage to carry the orphanage donations at no extra charge.
• Thank you to my employer, who while they may not be thrilled about me taking a extended leave, have provided me with enthusiastic congratulations and support!
• A big thank you to the other adoptive families who I have met on the Internet and who always seem to know the right time to drop me a note of inspiration or to pass on a important resource. The more adoptive families I get to know the more I am amazed by their resourcefulness and love of ALL children.
• Also a HUGE thank you to a friend who I have met over the Internet who lives in Rwanda. She has been a excellent source of information, a enormous support, and I cannot wait to meet her and her family in Rwanda!
• Thank you to my own family who has accepted our desire to adopt even when it did not always make sense to them and who love our children dearly. It is our family who has provided us the greatest amount of monetary resources to make adoption a reality and it is our family who come to stay with our children when we travel.
• And their are three remaining groups of people who have been in my thoughts constantly. They are the people in charge of caring for my children in Rwanda and now responsible for completing the steps necessary so that we can travel to get them, they are the very dedicated officials at the Ministry of Gender and Promotion in Rwanda, the diligent and loving nuns who care for the children daily at the orphanage, and most importantly our Power of Attorney in Rwanda who is tirelessly working on our behalf to advocate for our request for a second child and to facilitate the paperwork process so that we can travel to get our son (and maybe a daughter as well!)

It is through this and many other challenging times in my life that I have learned to believe in miracles. You have to look at the little things and then they are there. I don't believe in coincidence. People and things are placed into our life for a reason, we just need to watch closely and attentively to appreciate what is happening. I hope to teach this to my children, so that they know they are never alone and their is always hope for themselves and for this world. Today they will be experiencing a miracle as we go to shop for clothes for a little boy who they have never met, who lives on the other side of the world and who up to this point had no family, but now they call him brother.