Kennedy's Memorial

Dear friends,
Well our last blog sums up our Ethiopian adoption journey to this point. We had a memorial for Kennedy last night and our home. We were overwhelmed at the response of our friends.

Our friend Craig planted the idea of having a memorial for Kennedy. We had thought it might be cool to have a couple of friends to our house and have a time to pray. More than a few friends showed up; I'm not sure if we've ever had that many people in our house before. We felt so loved and so supported; you guys lived Christs love. Craig led our time, Clark sang some songs, Katie and I shared our journey (we read the blog below), we took communion, we all cried together and prayed together. It was amazing.

After everyone left, Katie and I felt an incredible peace. I felt free to be excited about our daughter waiting for us in Ethiopia. We experienced God through you guys last night; thanks for being the body of Christ.

Rudy and Katie

Our hope is in Him

We’ve been on a journey. Since long before we were married, we always new we wanted to adopt. In October 2007, we decided the time was right to begin the adoption. After taking too long to finish our home study, a 4 ½ month wait for our USCIS approval, and scrambling to finalize our paperwork we were ready to submit our dossier. In January 2009, we felt strongly that we needed to switch adoption agencies. On January 17th we partnered with our new adoption agency; on January 28th, less than 2 weeks later, we had a referral for Kennedy. She was 4 months old; we later found out that she weighed ~5 lbs and was severely malnourished. She was moved to another orphanage location, where she was better nourished and gained almost 4 pounds in two weeks. Since January, we were able to get 20 cans of formula delivered to the orphanage by parents traveling to pick up their children. On March 13th we received our first pictures of her. It was a few hours after Katie left for the weekend women’s retreat. We wanted to see the pictures of her together. Holy smokes; we had pictures, but couldn’t look at them for 2 days; we looked at the pictures on March 15th. On March 31st, Kennedy got sick and was taken to the hospital. It started with diarrhea then later was diagnosed with pneumonia. She wasn’t strong enough to fight this illness. On April 1st Kennedy passed away.

Shortly after we got a referral, Katie started writing letters to Kennedy. She had planned on giving these letters to Kennedy someday to help her know as much as she can about our journey to her. This past week, these letters have meant so much to us; we’ve read them often. Yesterday, Katie and I wrote a letter together to Kennedy that we wanted to share with you guys.

Our Dear Sweet Kennedy,

What a week this has been. We anxiously checked our email a million times a day hoping to get pictures or an update on how you are doing. Tuesday of last week we got new pictures of you. This was the fifth set of pictures we had gotten of you in the past few weeks and we were so excited. We love to stare at your pictures; you are so beautiful. Then on Wednesday, the very next day, we found out that you went to heaven to be with God. Our hearts are breaking continually.

We cannot express how much we love you. You are our beloved daughter. Our hearts are breaking because we wanted so much to bring you home; to hold you; to hug you; to care for you. There were so many things that we were looking forward to sharing with you; we wanted to watch you grow into an incredible young woman.

Our friends have been amazing; they all shared in our joy when we would hear something new about you and are so sad that you will not be home with us. They have comforted us and lifted us up in prayer. Today they are joining us in honoring you, our sweet girl.

You are our first daughter and you will always be part of our family. We love you with all our hearts. We know that you are in peace. We don’t know what heaven looks like, but we know that one day we will hug each other.

We love you.
Mommy and Daddy
xxoo

Our hearts were shattered by the loss of Kennedy, but we have no regrets. We always knew that God wanted us to grow our family through adoption. We know that He is calling us to adopt from Ethiopia. But through this process, God has broken our hearts for the people of Ethiopia. God has broken our hearts for what breaks His heart. He has planted in us a desire to fight malnourishment and fight for the lives of orphans in Ethiopia. We know that this fight begins by trying to get another orphan out of Ethiopia. On March 30th, our second daughter was born. We are going to do everything we can to bring her home.

Our journey continues. We have been deeply wounded, but have an incredible amount of hope. God has been with us throughout our journey; through the tremendous joys and tremendous sorrows. Our hope is in Him.

WOW!!!!

Big news, for a few reasons I am not going discuss online we have decided to switch agencies. We are now with a local agency here in Georgia. We are very excited. We met with our new agency January 17, 2009 and made our decision to switch.

We should have everything together for our dossier by the end on next week. We are just waiting for a few documents from the doctor and the bank to arrive. When they do all our documents will be delivered to our Agency. Rudy's office is literally five minutes from the agencies office. How cool is that. The documents will then be authenticate at county level, sent to new Secretary of State, and finally to the US Ethiopian Embassy. The documents are then sent to Ethiopia.

Our agency believe we will have a referral approximately a month after we have our documents in. In fact they said they are already looking. How amazing!!!!

We are really excited and will keep you posted on the progress.

We Run To The Mailbox Everyday!!!

We got it, We got it, We got it......We finally received approval from USCIS!!!

Yesterday I ran out to our mailbox hoping, but not really believing that our our USCIS approval would there, and to my surprise there was an envelop from Homeland Security, which mean something from USCIS. I ran as fast as I could into the house dropped all the other mail on the floor and called Rudy.

Just by the envelop I could tell it was the approval. Rudy asked me not to open it until he got home, so in the mean time I did the happy dance and told Lawson and Eli what we got in the mail. Finally, Rudy came home and we opened the letter. It was our USCIS approval. Yeah!!!

We sent our intial request July 28th, we sent the requested paperwork the end of October and recieved our approval in the mail on December 19,2008.

We went out to dinner with the boys to celebate. As soon as we come home from Buffalo for Christmas we will finish up our paperwork so we can send our dossier to Ethiopia. We will keep you posted.

Merry Christmas and Happy NewYear!!!

USCIS Fingerprinting!!!

On September 6, 2007 we were fingerprinted for the adoption process a 3rd time. We received notice from the Department of Homeland Security USCIS of our ASC appointment. In other word we received a letter stating when and where we were to report to get fingerprinted. Everything went really well. Our appointment was for 10:00 am on September 6, 2008. The boys came with us and they were great. The entire appointment was over in an hour. Although Rudy almost got sent home without getting fingerprinted. In the letter they send you it states: if you have open wounds or bandages/casts when you appear, the USCIS may reschedule your appointment if it is determined your injuries will interfere with taking your biometric. Well Rudy had one spot of poison ivy on his finger with a band aid over it. The girl who was taking his fingerprints called over the girl that was taking my fingerprints to see if they could get a good fingerprint or was the band aid in the way. My face was probably turning red at that moment, because if his appointment needed to be rescheduled, who knows when that would happen and that means things would be delayed even longer. We are approximately 60 days into our potential 90 day wait for our approval form I-171H. So far God has done wonders for me. I have really been at peace while we are waiting for the approval.

3rd Time is a Charm!!

Last Friday August 29, 2008 we received notice from USCIS that we have been scheduled on September 6, 2008 for our fingerprinting. Yeah!!; this means USCIS is processing our paperwork for our Orphan Petition. My guess is that after we get fingerprinted tomorrow it will take another 2 months for us to get our approval back from them. This is just based on how long is has taken others in this area recently to receive there approval. Lets hope things have gotten faster. This will be our third time getting fingerprinted for the adoption.

We are waiting for USCIS

We sent our paperwork to USCIS on Friday July 25, 2008. They received it on Monday July 28, 2008. We are now waiting for their approval. They sent us an acknowledgement of our application. The letter said it could take up to 90 day to process. Typical time in Atlanta these days seems to be 1 month for your fingerprinting appointment (yes, we need to get fingerprinted for a 3rd time), then it takes approximately 3 months from application to receive approval.

While we are waiting on USCIS approval we will be finishing up all of our dossier documents and doing some reading.