Beautiful new update....

Getting the new monthly update from GLA orphanage is about one of the most exciting things to happen to us around here!  We wait all month until we get a little glimpse into what our children, who feel so far away, have been doing over the past month.  The updates make us feel so much closer to Judith & Kerby...so much more connected.

Today we got our February update.  Judith and Kerby are both doing so very well.  The theme this month was "love" and they focused on what the kids love...love to eat, favorite color, favorite toy etc.  Judith loves pink, brown dogs named Buddy, flowers, and pizza with hotdogs and cheese on top.  Hmmm, hotdogs on top---that might be a new one for this family :(  Kerby's favorite color is yellow and he loves yellow dogs named Buddy, basketball, and riding bikes.  The update coordinator says she loves to spend time with Judith and Kerby and that Kerby is so gentle and loving. She said that both kids are so kind to other children and always include them in activities.  A group of individuals from a church in Iowa spent a week at GLA recently and made a youtube video of their experience.  One of the ladies described her most precious moment as being when a "girl named Judith" stood from the group and sang them a solo before they left.  Who knew...Judith can sing !

Not only did our update come today but so did our paperwork that we have been waiting months for so that we can move the adoption forward.  We were so very excited about that.  The paperwork did point out to us that we had been given the wrong birthdate for Judith and her birthday is not April 19th but rather April 1st---which happens to be Ryan's moms' birthday !  A special day indeed.

I attached some of the pictures from this months update.......  What amazing, beautiful pictures!  What a gift from the Lord and how very thankful we are to get to be a part of their lives.  We really are blessed.

Birthday gifts, family books....and new friends!

I follow a number of blogs about Haiti including 3 from Canaan Christian Community in Montrouis, Haiti and 3 from GLA orphanage etc.  One night, a month or so ago, there was a link to a blog that I began reading. Well, at 3:30 am I was still reading every posting and was in complete and utter awe of what I was reading. So much of the story was so very similar to Ryan and my story. I was really overcome with the fact that God has led me to feel an immediate connection to Rochelle, the author of this blog. I have since contacted her and we have emailed multiple times and talked on the phone. She is adopting 2 twin baby girls from the same orphanage as us (which I didn't know when I began reading her blog!). It has just been an amazing blessing to have connected with her, truly a blessing !

Well, I spent the day yesterday wrapping Judith and Kerby's birthday gifts and packaged the gifts and the family photo album that Molli made for the kids. Rochelle gets to go to GLA orphanage and spend a week with her babies for their first court date as the Haitian portion of the adoption progresses. Rochelle is taking our gifts and family book with her so that the gifts will be there in time for the kids birthdays. If I were to mail the gifts they would not make it in time for the birthdays. What a wonderful heart Rochelle has to be willing to do this for us !  We are so grateful !  Rochelle told me she was looking forward to meeting Judith and Kerby and that she would love on them while she was there.  What reassurance and peace that gives my heart and I so look forward to hearing all about the visit when she returns.

By the way.....Judith got a new pair of capri pants, tank top, and sweatshirt.  Molli made her a locket necklace with bead that was adorable with a picture of Judith & Kerby inside.  Kerby got a pair of shorts and a new shirt along with a new lego toy.  I hope they like them and feel special when they get to open gifts from a family that loves them !  The kids know they have a family but they do not know who we are, what we look like, where we live etc. yet.  The director of GLA will take the family book out until they decide it is the right time for them to get the book and learn about our family.  I sooo wish I could be a mouse in the corner when that time comes. I just pray for peace and comfort that can only come from the Holy Spirit when they learn who we are...that they immediately feel how loved they are!

God is truly amazing!  He works in amazing ways and was able to connect me with Rochelle.  I look so forward to seeing the journey that God has for Rochelle and her family and am so thankful that He connected us.

Choose to make it a good day today.  Pray for opportunities to be the eyes, ears, hands and feet of Jesus throughout your day!

with love,
Rori

Molli jo's "passion project".....

A desire that all of us as mothers have for our children is for them to grow into individuals who love Jesus and who are able to think outside themselves and be a servant to the Lord.  These are characteristics that we all must continue to work on throughout our lives and ones that I wish I possessed more often.  There isn't much better than when we see a glimmer of those qualities in our children and we can stop and acknowledge that within them. So often I find myself "correcting the missteps of my children" and realize I don't always give enough recognition to the amazing qualities that my children demonstrate--- those gems that each of all of our children have !

Molli is in a leadership class this semester at school and is required to work on a "passion project" for 4 months. This project can be of her choosing and can be an awareness campaign, service project, fundraiser etc.  When Molli came to me and said "what should I do?", I told her that she needed to think about something was she was "passionate" about and go from there.  She immediately said "well mom, of course I am very passionate about Haiti !"  She went on further to describe that her real passion was for the starving and suffering children in Haiti.  Molli is doing an awareness campaign and collecting donations for 2 different malnutrition programs in Haiti. Plumpy Nut and Medika Mamba are 2 different fortified, peanut butter based treatments that are revolutionizing how malnutrition in 3rd world countries is being treated.  Molli's plan is to briefly introduce this project in church and throughout the community. Molli (with a little help :)  ) made a video for her project, which is calling The Plumpy Project..... and I have attached the video below.  It gives a mom such a wonderful and hopeful feeling to see a deeper spirit  and a love for others evolve within a daughter..........

not mere coincidence.....

At first this post may not sound like it is going to make sense and you may wonder where the story is going, but hang in there because at the end it will all come full circle.....I think !  

The thursday before Christmas, Mason and I were doing some last minute errands downtown when we got a call from Carrie, our wonderful social worker. At this point in time we were anxiously waiting to hear back about our acceptance from the orphanage regarding Judith and kerby for our family. Carrie asked me to pull over and said that there had been a little "curve" in the road. Long story short, our social worker informed us that they just found out that Judith and Kerby have a little brother  who is 23 months old. He was airlifted out from Haiti the week after the earthquake and they were trying to locate him and find out if he had a family etc. Our social worker wanted to know what our thoughts were if he was in foster care and didn't have a family. Would we be willing to adopt him too and possibly fly to get him in the next couple weeks? WOW. That was a lot more than a curve, that was like a 90 degree angle in the road at 100 mph !!!!  

We were not getting answers as to where the younger brother was so I began searching articles and everything I could find on the internet. I found the brother--- he was part of a group of 12 children that got airlifted out but didn't have adoptive families, known as the "BRESMA 12 or Pittsburgh 12".  He has been living in an orphanage in Pittsburgh for the last year but was adopted by a family in Colorado and moved there within the last few weeks. ---I can tell you more about that amazing story later :) Judith and Kerby (and the younger brother) lived in an orphanage called BRESMA before the earthquake. Their dad took them in and out frequently (putting them in when he couldn't feed them or care for them etc.) the dad had taken judith and kerby out of the orphanage the week of the earthquake. After the earthequake all of the children from BRESMA were airlifted to the US because their orphanage was destroyed. A couple weeks after the quake then Judith and Kerby were put into GLA orphanage (where we are adopting from). That is how they were separated.  

Back in January 2010 about 3 week after the quake, I called a lady, named Virginia,  in town that a "friend of a friend' told me adopted from Haiti right after the quake. One of the things she mentioned during our conversation  was that she used an adoption agency from Kentucky. I never talked to her again, out of sight out of mind thing. Well when I was online looking for the younger brother, I came across an article that said that the BRESMA orphanage used an agency from Kentucky and "light bulbs went off". I wondered if  Virginia's daughter, who I had not thought much about since talking to her for a few minutes over a year ago,  might be from the BRESMA orphanage and if it was possible she would know the brother or even Judith and Kerby. I called her again and she said "yes, I know Judith & Kerby's brother. He was on the plane coming home after the quake with my daughter. He was very sick and near death"......I sent her pictures of Judith and Kerby and she showed them to her daughter. She emailed me back and said her daughter was "over the moon" because Judith was friends with her while they were in the BRESMA orphanage together. She used to have to do Judith's hair because her hair was short and they didn't have mirrors and if Judith did it, it was just "terrible". She said she didn't know Kerby well, because he was "a boy".   

Yesterday I got to meet and have coffee with Virginia. I had the best time and LOVED hearing her story. When she saw some of the other pictures I had of Judith and Kerby, she said she remembered them from her visits to the orphanage. She said Kerby was always smiling and was a active boy. I asked her if that was code for "ADHD" tendencies, and she laughed and said no, just a health boy who liked to do boy things.  She said she felt confident in saying he would probably like sports here in the US.  She said she remembered Judith to be quiet, reserved, and shy.  Virginia also has a connection to Freddy's parents and asked me if they had contacted me yet. I didn't want to ask too much more information and decided it was best to let that information come out as the brothers parents would like it too. We were both really excited that the kids would have a connection and found it quite amazing that the dots were connected. She also informed me that what makes it even more amazing is that she had to switch agencies 4 times during her adoption process, so for me to remember the Kentucky one is certainly not an accident.  We have plans to keep in touch and I really enjoyed my time with her.

So amazingly, her daughter Lulun was adopted from BRESMA orphanage using an agency from Kentucky, and our kids are being adopted from GLA orphanage using an agency in Portland........and they both ended up in not only the Pacific Northwest, or state of Oregon, but in little ole McMinnville. It is not like Mcminnville is Seattle even. Truly amazing and certainly not a coincidence.  God has been working like this for the last year in the amazing way He is orchestrating this journey. The only words I have to describe it is just true AWE. I feel like I am in a "lazy river" pool and just laying back and being moved along by the current.....just a willing participant but I am certainly not steering the ship.  

We have signed release papers so that the younger brothers family can receive our contact information which the hope is that we can have a relationship with them and keep a relationship between the kids.  I will update as soon as we hear anything.  When we finally get to meet Judith and Kerby I would love to get to tell them that we have a relationship with the brothers family and that they are going to get to see Freddy again !  What an answer to pray that will be.

 God just continues to be faithful and continues to work in amazing ways !

Choose to make it a good day -- Be thankful for all that we are given and ask God to allow you to be His eyes throughout your day today ! 

2 more children....really?

When we made the decision to pursue and adoption from Haiti, this was not a decision that was taken lightly. We were not acting on a whim or emotions, but fully believe that we were responding to Gods calling, His asking of something of us, His placement of a desire within our hearts.  Within our home study you have to outline age ranges and the sex of the child or children you are comfortable with. We really felt we were most comfortable with a 0-3 year little girl.  Carrie, our social worker, very quietly and subtly encouraged us to consider a wider range so as to not limit ourselves. What she said made sense, but really we believed we were going to adopt a little girl.  I believe if you ask Carrie, she would say she always knew we were going to adopt more than one child. Carrie has had amazing discernment through this experience.

A few months later, a brother and sister set were brought into GLA after the mother had died that same day. Ryan and I read the stories and look at the children daily, but these two children, who we called Gwen and Woodley, absolutely struck a cord within our hearts.  We were smitten. We, not very aggressively, pursued the possibility of adopting these two children. The door never really opened and it never really closed either. We began to realize some of the benefits that a sibling set might have. If our children were being adopted and moved to a foreign land with foreign people, wouldn't we want them to have someone with them?  Wouldn't we want them together?  We now firmly believe that God used Gwen and Woodley (who were 2 and 3 years old by the way) as a way to open our hearts to what He really had in store for our family. We had come to the conclusion that we felt siblings were the right fit for our family, but we still felt that they would be babies or toddlers.

The orphanage finally began releasing what they call "waiting children" lists to the social workers at the agencies to see if any of the families would be a good match for these children. "Waiting children" tend to be the ones that are a little harder to match with families, such as older children.  We had received 2 or 3 little girls and boys that were around the age of 2 yrs. and while they were precious, they just didn't feel like the "right match" for our family.  We believed God would clearly tell us who those children were going to be.

Carrie sent us an email one day and said that she realized these children were our of our age range etc. but she just felt strongly that we should read about them and pray for them. She said she just thought we would like the opportunity to pray for them specifically separate from our adoption. We pray for many of the children at GLA specifically, knowing they are not the ones for our family but following their stories and feeling connected to them anyway.  It never occurred to me when I began reading their bio that we would even consider a referral for them...they were 9 and 10 years old, but we would sure pray for them.  Well, by the time I got to the bottom of their bio I was sobbing and my heart was feeling "something different and strong" and then I scrolled down to their picture and knew I was in trouble.  I forwarded the email to Ryan without any other messages from me, and he called about 5 minutes later and said "ummm Rori, we need to talk about these children.  There is something there."

My prayer was that if these were the children for us that God would release my desire for a younger child.  I was absolutely willing to let go of that if that was what God wanted. If the desire for a younger child was placed by God within me, then I prayed He would have me hold strong to that and know that Judith and Kerby were not the children for us.  After a few weeks of prayer and God working with my heart, I had complete peace and confidence that all along God had been preparing our hearts for Judith and Kerby...they were the children for us.  Ryan almost immediately felt this was the case and had come to this conclusion earlier than I had.  When we decided to move forward, there was a sense of peace that is indescribable within our family.  We have had numerous conversations with our 3 M's (Molli, Mason and Mark), shared real feelings, real concerns etc. and felt that we have given the kids a real, safe voice throughout this whole process. God is either calling our whole family or he is not. We have done our best in this area and we just pray that the kids have felt a safe place to share all their feelings and that they too feel this is the right thing for our family.

We believe that God knew if from the beginning He said we were going to adopt 2 pre-teenage children from Haiti, there would have been a good change we might have just shut Him down.  We believe He used Gwen and Woodly to till the soil of our hearts and prepare them for a sibling set. The soil of our hearts were then ready to accept, with excitement, an even further step of older children.  The desire for a younger child is really gone from my heart.  The ages of Judith and Kerby have the potential to be a great thing for our family.  The thought of changing diapers, naps, strollers, car seats etc. just does not sound appealing anymore and would really limit the stage that our family is in now. We love to camp and do activities that would be difficult with a younger child.

We believe with all that is in us, and have throughout his whole process, that God began this journey knowing who our child or children were!  The whole thing has been about Judith and Kerby from the beginning.......God intended them to be with us and we can't wait until they are home.  We have such a peace and contentment that 2 more is the right number. We are not believing or thinking that there are not challenges in 2 more, or that we will not have huge adjustments to make, or that hard times are not to come, but we do know that we can rest in the peace of knowing that God is with us in those and that He did intend for Judith and Kerby to become Hartzell's. During the challenging times, we can rest in that and that is enough !

Choose to make it a good day -- Be thankful for all that we are given and ask God to allow you to be His eyes throughout your day today !

January 2010.....the beginning

        I should start back a little farther than Jan. 2010 to really describe what we believe to be a few more puzzle pieces of our journey.  I love being a mom !  I was made to be a mom ! I have always believed that being a stay at home mom was such a blessing and I appreciated and valued that I was able to have the opportunity and still feed our family....I have never taken that blessing lightly.  In 2008 after what I will summarize as a lot of wrestling with God over the issue, I felt a strong pull to return to school and get my nurse practitioner degree.  I was a bit confused by such a strong pull, that again I believe was fully led by God's prompting, when I firmly believed in being fully home with my children as a mother. Long story short, I began school with the belief that I am going to use this Doctor of Nursing Practice/ FNP degree to minister to people through their health. I just assumed it would be about the "people in McMinnville".  Little did I know what God had in store.....I still don't know what God has in store for us, but I do know He has it figured out!

While in my policy class during my second year of my DNP program, a colleague of mine did a very powerful and moving presentation about the plight of Haitian women and children. The presentation specifically addressed the astounding maternal and infant mortality rates present within this third world country. I was incredibly moved and touched by what seemed to be unnecessary death and human suffering. I brought the presentation home with me to show Ryan. Ryan does not watch or read much of my school work, particularly not that of other students, but he too was so moved by what we were hearing.  This was the beginning of a search and learning experience into a country and its people that neither Ryan nor I knew much about. I began to read books about the customs and culture of Haiti and more about the plight of the Haitian people. I was completely immersed in learning about Haiti and in awe of the strength and resilience of its people.

         Four weeks later, a 7.6 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti with the epicenter near Port-au-Prince. The death and destruction was incomprehensible. Both Ryan and I immediately felt a pull and an up-close and personal empathy for what was occurring. I felt as though this had happened to people I knew and loved. While neither of us can recall how the topic was brought up, we both felt very strongly that God was calling us to follow His leading and begin the steps to pursue an adoption. We cannot remember the initial conversation or who brought it up, we just both knew!  The amazing part was that we both felt such certainty and strength in the calling. Ryan and I have never really talked about pursuing adoption and have felt our family was complete with the 3 children that we already had. We have always said to each other that if a child ever was put in front of us that needed a family, we would always open our home and our hearts to having another child, but have never felt called to actively pursue that path. Now was different; God was calling us and we had decisions to make regarding what to do with that calling.

         At about 10pm I sent and e-mail to Bethany Christian Services, a Christian adoption agency, with the full understanding that adoption agencies were being inundated with well-meaning people moved by these adorable children suffering and many of them without homes or families. I really did not expect a response and if there was going to be one, I knew it would take time. I really felt that I was fulfilling what God asked of us by taking the first step and “that was that”.  

       At 8:20am the next morning my phone rang and Carrie from Bethany Christian Services was calling me in response to my e-mail. While we were talking I said that I was actually really surprised to hear from her, let alone so soon. I said that I was sure she was receiving “tons” of inquiries into people wanting to adopt a child from Haiti. She told me that she had received “tons” of inquiries but had not returned any of the phone calls at that point except mine. I asked her why and she said there was just “something” telling her to contact me. I immediately paused and thought in my mind and heart, “ok Lord, here we go!”. Against the odds she returned our call and I felt an immediate connection to Carrie. She understood that this was a calling from God and a desire placed in our heart by Him. I discussed with her that this was truly not a “buy a bunny at Easter” type of event, but that we were truly serious and following the prompting of the Lord. Carrie has been and continues to be one of the biggest blessing throughout this process. God has interwoven her into this experience in only a way He can. God is using Carrie in an amazing way. 

       Our adoption application proceeded against all odds, some really strong odds, and we were approved by BCS and eventually by Dixie at the Haitian orphanage to adopt. Adoptions were closed in Haiti and the agency and the orphanage were not accepting ANY new applications, except ours.  God is bigger than all those obstacles and He is driving this ship !  So one year later, we are matched up with our children and anxiously waiting to get to bring them home.  How God worked with our hearts to know that Judith and Kerby were the children for us is another story for another blog.......

Many blessing to you !