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Ignoring the bad news of yesterday, we went to apply for passports today. It was an experience for the kids. They are excited to have their own passport.

When we saw the family of five children and thought they were the ones for us to adopt, we let our adoption counselor know right away – a few days ago. We got a message on voicemail today stating “It just doesn’t work that way.” We thought about that for a while and came to the conclusion that it ‘should’ work that way. Then we remembered our friends who just adopted the four children from Colombia who it DID work that way for. If it has worked that way just onec, it can happen that way again. i will continue to pray every day for each of the 5 children: that they are healthy spiritually, physically and emotionally, that they remain pure in thought, word and deed, that they come closer to God, that God would bless the Children’s Shelter of Cebu and all the children and workers there, that God would give them peace and hope and that they would hear from the Holy Spirit that ‘something is up’ and that someone out there wants to adopt them, that God lets it be us and that our families integrate with grace and ease. I also pray for our current family; that we are able to be aware of the needs of our new children, be good parents and family members, that we don’t alienate or ignore our biological children and continue to give them the same love and attention that we always have.

OH NO! ‘Our’ kids may not be available!

I sent an email to the US Director of the Children’s Shelter of Cebu, telling him about seeing the 5 children on the website, reading all about them, looking at their pictures and us wanting to adopt them. He was excited about that, but then said that they may be placed with another family. It was devastating to us – even though we actually know little about them and they have never heard of us. We’re not going to give up. I am not giving up hope that they will still be available for adoption when our paperwork gets far enough along. Each of us in our family were drawn to them immediately. I will continue to pray multiple times every day that God will bring them home to us – yet we will have to accept His will if it doesn’t happen. We need to trust, yet obey. He knows what is best for them. Please pray with us that it will happen.

It is a terrible thing to get excited about something (before you really should) and then have the possibility of it being taken away (when you don’t even have it, or are not entitled to it). We really should NOT have looked at any children until our paperwork was complete and we knew more about how the children are chosen. We put ourselves in this situation. Or maybe God is testing us? That’s what Brenda thinks. That this is a test.

I’ve heard from most people who have adopted that the process is painful. For us, it hasn’t been that bad – all 22 days if it so far. sure, we’ve been frustrated at the slow process and the amount of paperwork, but overall, it’s not far from what I expected. We’ve heard about how long and drawn out the process usually takes. We’ve heard about many of the last minute things that can come up when finalizing the adoption. We’ve also seen our friends adopt the four children from Colombia in under 5 months. I suppose everyone’s story is just a little different, even how the the same struggles can affect each of us in different ways. God won’t give us more than we can handle (with His help) and this won’t be any different. We’ll just need to accept what His will is – which will likely be wht’s best for those 5 precious children.

- OK -

How do you stop thinking about children you want to adopt? They have no clue we exist. Their orphanage has no idea we exist. We’re not even far enough into the paperwork and home-study to say that they could be OUR  children. Yet, we already have them in our family and in our hearts. I know it’s probably a bad idea to get myself too attached at this point – just the opposite of what really happens in adoption, lack of attachment to the new parents by the adopted children – yet I can’t help it. It would be devastating if we built up our hopes to bring these children home and then have it fall through.

When we look at their faces and read about them on the orphanage’s website, it feels like we know them, yet in reality there’s so much more there – things we have no idea about and things we can’t begin to understand. They’ve lived 7, 8, 13 and 14 years of their lives without us, in a different country. We know they’ve been at the orphanage around 4 years, but know nothing about their lives before that. We really only know a few bits and pieces of their lives at the orphanage over the last year.

We need to slow down.

We looked into plane tickets to/fro the Philippines. Wow! They’re considerably more than to Colombia, but I guess it takes a bit more jet fuel to get half-way around the world. At $1350 each for four of us round-trip to Cebu, plus an additional 5 tickets ($700 each) one-way from Manila to MSP, it really adds up. Like someone said about the government: “A billion here and a billion there – pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” Total airfare so far is $8900. Northwest Airlines does have a really good discount on tickets when flying for an adoption – up to 65% off. It’s still quite a chunk, just for plane tickets (see the donate link on the right to help us out).

Guess how many miles round trip it is….18,440 miles round trip from MSP to LAX to NRT (Tokyo) to MNL to Cebu and back.

Here’s an overhead view of the Cebu airport: LINK

I didn’t know that the Philippines was so close to Viet Nam.