SCREECH!

That is the sound of our tires as we pulled out of the MIGEPROF's office after waiting in her office for hours today to get our "To Whom it May Concern" letter. This was the last document we needed from them to allow us to take Zeke out of the orphanage once and for all! HE"S OFFICIALLY OUR SON!! And tomorrow is his 6 month birthday! So we got to bring him home with us tonight for the first time and he's sleeping next to us on the bed right now. What a cutie!

Oh, but back to the screech! We were screeching because we got the letter at 4:30 and we had to get the letter copied, notarized and dropped off at the passport by 5pm. God, working through our driver Bebe and other people, made it happen. It was pretty amazing. He continues to pave the way to get us out of here by Saturday, so we can embark on the next adventure in Nairobi.

But before that happens, there's another day of trusting God for mini-miracles to make this work. Tomorrow we have to get Zeke's passport. We applied today, and asked for a rush job. The Director of Immigration, whom we spoke with and pleaded our case, initially said, "No. It takes 5 days. Just postpone your plane ticket." After we told him we have 3 other children waiting at home for us, and praying the whole time for God to soften his heart, he said, "ok, i make exception." Another miracle. However, he's not the one who actually processes these things, so we'll see if his exception makes it's way down the chain! So we're getting there at 8am tomorrow to start gently "pushing" as our lawyer calls it. :) Pray that God works another mini-miracle so that we can have the passport by 2pm. We have our final appointment of the Kigali Amazing Race at the US Embassy at 3pm. This was another mini-miracle that we got this appointment. It was a definite exception (they normally only take appts on Tuesday and Friday, but they're closed for good friday, so...) If we don't get his passport by that appt, we don't leave kigali til who knows when. So please join us in praying for God to continue to pave the way to bring Zeke home.

Here's a picture of us reclining after dinner at the home where we're staying.
OUR FIRST NIGHT WITH ZEKE!


Oh, PS. Pray for Zeke adjustment to the new formula we brought along. He cried for about an hour tonight when we tried to give him his first post-orphanage bottle. He eventually took it. Pray he adjusts to the new stuff quickly.
Thanks!

God is Paving the Way

We had a day full of mini-miracles yesterday! Our lawyer kept saying, "This is blessing!" and looking at us with this incredulous look on her face. We got a ton done that needed to be done to get a court appointment to finalize the adoption (along with some other stuff). And on our way home from the orphanage at 4pm, we called our lawyer and heard that they did in fact get us an appointment in court for 8am this morning (Tuesday). So our driver Bebe is picking us up this morning at 7:30 for the big event that will officially make us Zeke's parents. We're thrilled. We packed a diaper bag to take with us, as we're hoping to be able to take him out of the orphanage with us for a few hours today to go apply for his passport. Please pray for that. We're a bit nervous about the transition into our care and how he will do.

Prayer requests for today: After our court appt, we need to get copies of the official court ruling. We're not sure if this will happen right away or if it will take a few hours (we're praying for right away). We need those papers before we can do anything else. Then we go to the MIGEPROF office to receive from her our "To Whom it May Concern" letter, which is a letter saying we can officially remove the baby from the orphanage permanently. Then we go to the passport office to apply for his passport. We hear this can be a bit tricky depending on who you get, some are a bit more picky and hard to work with than others. And we need to receive his passport in 24 hours for this whole deal to work. So to have that happen we need to get to the passport office today before noon, and have God move in their hearts to have mercy on us and do a rush job! After that we head to the American Embassy to finalize the adoption with them, called the Form I-600. They say they need the baby's passport to complete this, which we won't have yet. They normally only allow americans appointments only on Tuesdays and Fridays, but they'll be closed this Friday for Good Friday, so we really need them to either make an exception for us and stamp our papers without the passport in hand, or allow us to schedule and emergency appt for Thursday when we will have the passport in hand. Please pray again for God to go before us and pave the way in all these things.

Zeke seemed a little better yesterday - still very stuffy and congested, but more alert and not feverish. Boy, he's a cutie. We still haven't heard him make a peep other than cough noises. We're hoping to hear him make some kind of sound, even a cry, soon. This seems to be a pretty normal orphanage thing. No one comes when they cry, so what's the point?

Praise and Request Update

In case you hadn't heard, our bags were lost on the way here. We made the plane from DC to Ethiopia, but they didn't! And the next plane to ethiopia got here Saturday, followed by the little hopper from Ethiopia to Uganda and then on to Rwanda. So after many calls to different people whose first language was not english, a very helpful man in the Kigali airport tracked them down, and we were able to pick them up today! What a joy to put our own clothes on and return those we'd borrowed from our hosts. God is good.

A few prayer requests:
1. Pray for Zeke. He has a bad chest cold, cough, congestion and seemed slightly feverish today. They'd also given him some cough syrup so he was pretty glazed over and lethargic. He actually fell asleep in my arms, which was precious apart from the reason for it. The nuns say, "They all have that pretty much all the time," which makes sense since they live in a petrie dish, but is disconcerting for the mommy and daddy. And we aren't allowed to take him from the orphanage to see a doctor until after our court appointment finalizing the adoption (probably Tuesday or Wednesday). Please pray for his health and for us to entrust him to Jesus.
2. Tomorrow starts the real race to get all the stuff done we need to before all the offices close for Good Friday, including documents from the Minister in charge of adoption (the MIGEPROF), the Act of Adoption, our Court papers, Letter of approval from the Sisters at the orphanage, Travel approval papers from the MIGEPROF, passport photos and application, all of which must be translated and notarized before our appointment at the American embassy to seal the deal. We're slightly stressed and are needing to trust God to pave the way. We honestly think it may take a few mini-miracles to complete it all by the end of Thursday.

Now for some more fun pics of Zeke...



This is our driver. He asked us to call him Bebe. He speaks english pretty well.


Here's Heidi and Kristen (our hostess) standing in front of the home we're staying in. God has been caring for us though his body in amazing ways.

Our First Day with Zeke!

Our First Meeting...



Getting to know him...



A View of the Orphanage




What an amazing day. Can you say surreal? We can't believe we just met our new son. More to come...

Meeting Mugisha

We're here. What a day it's been! We'll give you more details about how we arrived and how our bags didn't later, but for now we know you just want to see Zeke! So we'll let the pictures speak for themselves. We'll work on editing the video soon and get it up for you. We're running low on brain power at this point having only slept about 5 hours since Wednesday morning. But we've got some good footage, so stay tuned!


Just slightly larger than the Carlsbad airport, though not as nice!


Driving to the Home of Hope Orphanage - the famous blue gate!


Signing the Act of Adoption with Sister Catherine


Meeting Zeke!






Finally with Mommy and Daddy!

It all seems a bit surreal. We can't believe we're here and have met our son. He's really a cutie. Videos to come.
By the way, we're 9 hours ahead of California time. It's 9:30pm Friday night as we're posting this. So it's 12:30pm in California.
We're heading to bed. Good night!

The Amazing Race!

Things are moving at a rather frantic pace around here. We got Zeke's picture on Tuesday and we're leaving one week later to go get him!! Yes, you heard that right. We have two more days to gather baby things, documents and rain ponchos and get out the door! So, we have some prayer requests:

Pray we don't forget anything important, especially all the documents we need to complete the adoption.
Pray we are able to complete all the steps on time to make our flights back so we don't have to delay our return.
Pray for our other 3 kids, that they'll do all right emotionally while we're gone and be prepared by the Lord to meet and welcome their new brother.
Pray for safety and wisdom for Dave and I as we travel.
Pray for health for Zeke.
Pray for our meeting with him and the days we travel, for good bonding, health, etc.
Pray God would continue to provide for the finances of this adventure.
Pray we'd trust God with the details and enjoy the ride!

We're excited, anxious, emotional, and loving Zeke already. If all goes as planned, we'll be meeting him Friday afternoon this week. We'll try to post video of the event as soon as we get settled in and catch our breath. Thanks for running this race with us!

"I MET MUGISHA!"

I received an email this morning from a friend who is in Kigali and visited the orphanage today (yesterday Kigali time). Here's what she said:

"You are going to love him! His picture doesn't reveal his very happy personality. He is so smiley. Interesting - the nuns couldn't tell who he was when I said Mugisha. I looked around the room and my friend was with me and we both felt like we found him, but they said no. Then we said, "Mugisha Vincent" and then they all knew and it was him. He seems very strong. He has a round belly that is great for his beautiful smile and laugh. I told him his mom and dad were coming to receive him soon and what your names were. The nun was great with him.

They feed them every 3 hours and they get a bottle of millet and a bottle of milk. They also wake them up in the evening every three hours while they are sleeping to feed them and they are usually up in the morning at 5 am."

As you can imagine, I was crying tears of joy and longing as I read her wonderful email. We can't wait to meet him!
Please keep praying for our travel arrangements... things are moving quickly!! :) YEEHAW! We're off on "The Amazing Race" to bring home MUGISHA!

WE GOT OUR REFERRAL!

HERE HE IS! Our newest Blessing!
His name is........Ezekiel Mugisha William Michaelian.
Ezekiel (this means "May God lift up" or Strengthened by God" and we think was given to us by God for him- We'll tell you the long version of that story when we see you!)
Mugisha (Given to him by the nuns at the orphanage. It is Kinyarwandan and means "blessing". )
William (After my dad... our other kids all have a family middle name, and we want him to know he's part of our family, and my dad has played a very supportive role in our adoption.)

Here's what we know about him. He's approximately 5 1/2 months old. That is approximate because he was abandoned (as are all the babies in our orphanage). When the policeman brings a baby to the door, the nuns and the policeman together estimate how old the child is and pick a birthdate. For Zeke, they chose Oct 1, 2009. They made him a birth certificate on November 6, 2009, signed by 3 witnesses, stating he was abandoned, so i'm guessing he was brought to the orphanage sometime around the first of November. That is just a guess. The Sisters gave him the name MUGISHA Vincent. The Rwandan name is typically given because it defines something the parents see in the child's personality and they usually wait until they're a year old so they can see what the child is like. We're wondering if the nuns gave him the name MUGISHA because he truly has been a blessing to them, as we know he'll be to us!

We don't know how much he weighs or how long he is, but we did have lots of medical tests done, including HIV, Hepatitis, Tuberculosis, and a bunch of others, and they all came back negative. He certainly looks healthy! We were surprised at how chubby he looks. Most kids that come from orphanages are skin and bones. He must be a good eater. :)

We spoke with our lawyer in Rwanda today and she is going to court tomorrow to see what kind of appointment she can get for us. Hopefully tomorrow, we'll know when we will be traveling. She thinks it will be around 2 weeks. AAAHHH! :) Please pray for God's perfect timing, for Dave as he arranges our travel, for me as I pack and gather all the documents we need and all the baby stuff, that we don't forget anything, etc, etc. And especially, please pray for little Mugi - that he'll be guarded by God, that he'll stay healthy, that God will be preparing his heart to be loved by us and to love us, that the transition to our arms and family will be smooth and not too difficult for him, and most importantly, that God will be softening his heart and drawing him toward himself, that his nannies will be whispering words of Truth in his cute little ears.

It all seems so amazing and surreal! We all love him already. The kids and I each marched into Bible Study today armed with pictures to share with our friends who've been praying with us for him all this time, as you guys have. What an amazing couple of days it's been! We are thanking God for our new little son. And can't wait to meet him.

Thanks for all your prayers. Now you can pray for him by name!!
Love,
Heidi and the fam

PS. Have I confused you on what we're calling him yet? Here's a few options that are in the running... Zeke, Zeker, Mugisha, Mugi, E-dub, Dubya, ... we'll see!

PPS. We posted pics of his hand and feet because it's best not to put his full picture on a public forum until he's legally ours. As soon as he is, you'll be getting the full view.

"If it seems slow, wait for it."

"And the Lord answered me: 'Write the vision... For still the vision awaits it's appointed time; it hastens to the end- it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay." Habakkuk 2:2-3

God has given us a vision of His purpose in this adoption, why he led us to do it. There have been times in the waiting when I've been tempted to doubt that. Was this "vision" really from him or did we make it up? This verse was his answer when I asked him that question. Wow. He cares. He's in this. He knows me. What an amazing God he is!

Jackson's "Waiting" Project

People have been asking how our kids feel about the adoption. They are excited and pray for their little brother nearly every meal and at bedtime! Jackson often says things like, "I'm going to teach my little brother how to play guitar, " or "I'm going to save these (too small) pajamas for my brother," or "I'm going to give this to my brother for a present." I think, honestly, the thing he's most excited about is getting bunkbeds. He's envious of his sisters who always have someone to sleep with.

A few days ago, Jackson decided he wanted to do a project. He told me what it was, and then kept after me all day until I made time for it, "Mom? Can we do my project now?" The results are below. In case you can't see it, it's two maps of Rwanda and the Rwandan flag. He posted them on his bedroom wall, which he will be sharing with "Little Baby." I love that he is excited to meet his brother. He really seems to love him already, as we all do.

We heard today that our file has been sitting on the Minister's desk for a week waiting to be signed so it can be sent to us. She's been out of the country, out of town, in a meeting, etc. this week. :) But our source says she thinks she'll sign them in the next 24 hours, then they'll be scanned and emailed to us. This seems encouraging.... but we'll see! Today at Bible study, we were singing a praise song that reminded me that "Time is in your hand, Lord." I'm so thankful that is true. He knows what he's doing, we truly believe that.

"So have you heard anything?"

This is the question we get most often. If you've been with us on the journey for a while, you can skip to the last paragraph for THE LATEST update. If you're just joining us on this journey, let me give you some context.

We started the Rwanda portion of our adoption journey last May. (The journey really started November 2007, but that's another story for another time!) We gathered all the documents we needed and updated our homestudy during the summer (while on our summer mission trip which added it's own complexities). We submitted our dossier (the pile of documents) to the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion in Rwanda on August 31, 2009. Then the waiting began.

On December 10, 2009, we received our "Letter of Non-Objection", which is basically our approval letter from the MIGEPROF (the Minister of Gender and Family Promotion, the cabinet member who handles all Rwandan adoptions). This was a biggie! Celebration time. With that letter, however, we received a note saying they'd changed the process. Instead of receiving our referral (the match with a baby) directly from the orphanage - Mother Teresa of Calcutta Home of Hope Orphanage in Kigali Rwanda - we would receive our referral from the MIGEPROF's office. And instead of receiving it in two weeks, they informed us it would now take 2 months. While it was a setback, we were kind of relieved in some ways, just to have a time line.

Then, the last day of January we got an email from Veronique, who was the MIGEPROF's right hand girl, handling all the interactions with prospective adoptive parents like us. She told us our file was at the orphanage and we should call Sisters about what medical tests we wanted done on our baby. We talked with the chief Sister on February 1, 2010. She matched us with a child that day! She said we would receive his picture sometime the next week, as they had to return it to the MIGEPROF's office and we'd receive it from Veronique on email.

Well, then that weekend Veronique resigned! It was a week and a half before they were able to replace her. Jeanne Marie stepped in to the role about 3 weeks ago. Since then, there's been little setbacks, but mostly there's just lots of work she has to get caught up to speed on.

THE LATEST: Our lawyer in Rwanda emailed us this morning and said that she thinks we'll probably receive his picture sometime late next week. We're holding that loosely. :) We've been matched with a little cutie for 5 weeks now and have yet to see his face. We're still hoping to travel in March... hmm.... i'm not sure that's still realistic. Ok, April!

The Waiting Continues

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life." Proverbs 13:12

This has been our theme verse the past few weeks. Our hearts have been sick with the waiting, but we're looking forward to the longing fulfilled. God has been sustaining us through his Word, an unexpected date night (thanks, friend ;)), good fellowship, prayers of many, and opportunities to serve him and others. As I was crying out to the Lord for help this week, he brought to mind the song you are hearing while you read this - "While I'm waiting" by John Waller. The lyric he brought to mind is the chorus, "I will worship, while I'm waiting. I will serve you, while i'm waiting." He showed me (gently) that the key to surviving the waiting of life is to focus on the right things while I'm waiting; to focus on worshipping him and serving him and others. I'd been focusing on the waiting, and it was making me miserable. So this has been a great revelation, but frankly I haven't been too effective yet at changing my focus. Please pray I can have joy in Him as I worship and serve while i'm waiting, instead of focusing on the wait.