Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Childrens Vision International


Well the last two weeks have been crazy, with my mind spinning. Am I ready to take on two more children? I don’t know enough Spanish! Are our children being briefed on the fact that they will be adopted and not returning to their birth parents? Are they in Bogota or another city? We must be getting close. March?

A few families are in Colombia right now and I so desire to be there too. I am beginning to prepare my heart, my emotions for what is about to come. I can’t wait to see what God has in store for us.

On a side note, about he books for the orphanage in Colombia. We have had great response so far. Almost 30 books and just a week into the show! Holy Cow! Second, I now have more info on the orphanage we will be donating to. This will not be a place our children will be from, but a much deserving orphanage. If you don’t mind this being a bit lengthy I will explain.

I spoke to the Colombia Program Director from our agency about how to work out donating these books to an orphanage and if we could hand deliver them when we go or should we have them shipped. The shipping verses taking them with us will just depend on how many books we have to take. Will they all fit in our luggage? What city will we fly into, etc? However, in our conversation she gave me a name of this great Christian Orphanage that our agency supports. She gave me some info and I did some research. She also told us we were welcome to visit this orphanage at any point in time, once we are in Bogota. Even if our children are from a different city, we will spend the final week in Bogota. So going for a visit is no problem.

I have spoken to the director and can hear the sincerity in her. I wish I had millions to give. But here is the scoop. They are a non-profit, non-government organization whose purpose is to help the needy and homeless. They take in (as stated on their website) “children that live in boxes underneath bridges; children that not only endure birth defects, but are victims of neglect and abuse. Most children which we receive into our home suffer from chronic malnutrition, bronchitis, parasites, severe diarrhea, as well other intestinal diseases. They are children whose parents are drug addicts, prostitutes, delinquents or victims of war who were forced to leave their homeland and are unable to provide and care for them” They take children who have never been registered, no birth certificate, no record of being alive. These children have no hope with out this organization. These children can not be adopted because the government has no record of them as ever having being born.

Here is the story of one child they have taken in (as stated in their newsletter) “Little Jhon, 5 ½ months old, was an extremely sick baby. He slept in a pile of rags on the floor. His right lung was failing and thousands of parasites were buried deep under his skin. He cried so long and hard he developed a hernia. His whole body was full of infection. Drugs and neglect were part of his daily life. He lived like an animal in an abandoned building; no lights, no water, no windows, no doors and no hope. We immediately started health care. Every two hours we had to do different treatments. It took a month for him to be stabilized.”

Check out the website, your heart will be touched. http://www.childrensvision.org/

I personally can’t wait to meet these children in person. This orphanage is one of a kind. We pray God’s wisdom and guidance for the caretakers, health and peace for the children. The only problem I see if we go for a visit, is that I will not want to come home. I will want to stay and be a part of the lives of these hurting souls. Please, look at the website and pray for these children and the caretakers.

Hopefully, more adoption news for us to come soon!

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Books for Orphans


I am so excited to tell you that I am having an Usborne Books Show so that I can get lots of FREE BOOKS, in Spanish, that we will be giving to an Orphanage in Colombia when we travel to adopt our two children this Spring! They have lots of books in Spanish, which is why I am having a book party. I would really appreciate it if you could visit my special show website to browse and perhaps order some books for your family- this will help me to get more free books to give to the orphans.


Any books you order will be shipped directly to you! You can also register to win $50 in FREE BOOKS while you are browsing- a winner is selected every month! If you do not want to order any books for yourself, but would like to purchase a book for the orphanage, you can purchase the books, but under the shipping address you can put my address. My address is 8041 Dry Fork Rd, Cleves OH 45002


Here is the information: You are invited to an Usborne Books e-Show to explore the world of Usborne Books. My friend who has set up the party has already given me $50 to spend on books in Spanish and discounting the books to half price. She also said she would double all of my points so that we could hopefully stock the orphanage with lots of new books for the children.


Usborne Books- the books kids love to read!

Hosted by: Beth Hollis


When: Today thru 2/23/08 at 11:59 PM

If you prefer to not order on line, you can call me with your order, 513-237-3124

Everyone is welcome, so invite a friend.Thank you so much!I will be sure to keep you up to date with how many books we were able to purchase here on our blog.


Thank you Thank you Thank you!

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Way to go Nate!

Nate was in the school spelling bee today and came in third out of his whole school. Way to go Nate!

I posted three of his words on our YouTube account. You can go to www.youtube.com/babshollis to see the other clips. Mom, I knew you would want to see him in action, so i really put the clips out there for you. Plus keep the youtube site handy because when we travel I hope to put some video clips of the kids out there for you to see.

I have such great kids, have I mentioned that lately?

Love to all of you!

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Papi Makes Everything Better



(Daddy in Spanish is Papi)
As the photo shows, Emi is in a cast. She was ice skating at a friends birthday party and broke both growth plates in her wrist. I felt terrible for her when the doctor was poking on her. She was very brave, but no one makes her feel better than her papi. She saved him a special place on the top near her fingers for him to sign her cast.

Now for adoption news. The Colombian offices are officially back open today. I spoke to our agency late last week. I felt very encouraged that we will travel in the spring…sooner than later. There is another family who also requested two sibs ages 0-7 who just received their referral. They were approved mid October and received a referral just 3 months later, and the slow holiday time was during that three months. So our rep felt we would be hearing something soon. I immediately felt my head spinning with all that I need to do to prepare. I pulled out the travel guide and began to brush up on all we will need to do and what to expect. She also said that normally step one is that the paperwork is sent to a region and then step two is that the region will match us with 2 siblings. However, in our case we will skip step one. The next time we hear from Colombia, they will be telling us which children they have matched us with and which region we will be traveling to. There will be no waiting between step 1 and 2. So naturally we are very excited!

Adios for now…

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Buddy Passes - Good News


I heard back from our agency about whether or not we could fly using our buddy passes that our dear friend gave to us. The agency said that it will be no problem. WhooHoo! They advise us to leave a few days early, just in case we run into trouble flying stand by, but that it’s really no problem. I was wanting to go a few days early anyway, just to allow Emi and Nate to acclimate to a foreign land. I want some time with just the two of them in Colombia before we introduce two new children to our family.

I realize now I may have confused some of you a tad bit by my verbage of “leaving early” so let me explain. Once we have been given a referral and we send our acceptance letter back to Colombia, the Colombian Government will assign us a “Gotcha Date”, the day we will meet our children. Generally you fly to Colombia a day or two before your “Gotcha Date”. But because we will be flying stand by with four of us on the way down, we will need to leave ourselves ample time incase we get bumped off of our flights.

I have complete peace about flying stand by. The tickets were given to us and however the flights work out will be fine with me. God has been in control of every detail so far, so why worry about our flights. I just can’t wait to get on the plane and go!

Friday, January 4, 2008

It's Offical, We're Approved!

We received word today, Yes, it’s true, Colombia has approved us for two siblings ages 0 – 7 as we requested! Our approval date was 11/30/07, but they just let our agency know late yesterday, who let us know this morning. I guess with the holidays it just took some time to get the info back to us.

So the next step, which could take a few months, is for them to let us know which city our paperwork is sent to and then info on our children.
We are hoping to go in the spring but it could possibly be as late as summer.
With that being said…What a great start to 2008. But my sister pointed out that November really was a big month, Nov 30th was our approval date, they were just a bit delayed in telling us.

Also, if we look at the timeline given to us, which was 3 – 5 months before we should expect to hear of approval, it means our approval date was just shy of 3 months. So we are ahead of schedule…hee hee. If travel time follows suit, we should be hearing more info in March (ish). Can you tell I am a planner, not a spur of the moment kind of gal? I like to know what is going on and when. But again, I remind myself that it is all in HIS timing and it will be perfect no matter when we get the call.

Can’t wait for Spring!!!

Thursday, January 3, 2008

2008 will be Great!!!


Happy New Year

2008 is going to be an awesome year!


We expect a referral sometime between March and September. It’s been just about 4 months since we sent in our paperwork and began the official wait. The time frame was 6 – 12 months, which means sometime between March and September we will be a family of six.

Hopefully all of you had a wonderful holiday and enjoyed your time with your family and friends. We had a very busy but enjoyable time. My mom made stockings for us to hang for our two new kids. She filled each one with a very soft teddy for us to give each of them. All we have left to do for the stockings is add their names. Then Santa left us a very sweet note with a prayer along with two angels for them. He also brought them in two other stuffed toys that light up and play music. So the family was good to us in helping us to include our two new children, even though they are not with us physically yet. They were definitely with us in spirit as the family got together.

As of January first I have had a new energy toward our wait. November and December were difficult; however, January brings new hope. November and December flew by, which made the last two months of waiting also fly by. So with turning the corner into January I could feel the closeness of being able to complete our family. I am ready to work on the kids rooms, make room in the closets and dressers, and get a suit case out to start adding things to. I started on the photo book that we want to take with us and have the website ready to order them small backpacks to stuff with goodies to give them when we meet them. We are just waiting on gender, ages and names to make the final touches.

At church this last week, God offered me encouragement that He is faithful to His word and that 2008 would be a wonderful year. Also, I have referred to His fingerprints being all over our adoption, and I mean that very literally. Well I had a dream, a very vivid vision of sorts, that He pulled our paperwork this week, kissed it, and placed it somewhere, where I am not sure. Then I saw the back of two small children, one a girl, the other I am not sure. They were our children no doubt and safe. Again, perfect peace that the timing is in His hands and assurance that we will meet our children in 2008 and bring them home for the rest of our family and friends to love too.

I’m just a little excited! I am feeling very anxious to see their faces!
More later…