FOREVER CHANGED

I am finally able to get on my blog and give you all an update.

We arrived safely in "Porter's" country Tuesday afternoon after a 21 hour travel day.  We had a driver that met us at the airport and took us to our apartment in the city.  It was a clean, warm place to crash.  Wednesday morning we had our appointment with the Department of Adoptions.

Our meeting didn't go quite as planned.  The leader of our facilitation team was with us during our appointment.  We were shown "Porter's" file and were told that he was actually living in a special needs care home and that he was paralyzed on the right side.  Curtis and I sat there with our eyes wide.  We didn't say a word, just listened.  "Porter's" prognosis was not fully given until then.  We were informed that it was best that we forgot about him and pick another child.  Curtis and I sat in disbelief that once again this adoption was taking another turn.  We understood that we were being informed what to do as we were not approved in our home study to care for a child with "Porter's" level of care.

We were given a handful of files and were told that we needed to pick out three children that we would be interested in.  My heart raced as this was not what we had prepared for.  I was overwhelmed with the thought of choosing a child so quickly.  We spend more time researching a car to buy or even a peice of furniture than we were being given to pick out a child to graft into our family.

Curtis held my hand and gave me the look of reassurance that this was going to be okay.  We chose three files and after the Department of Adoptions called to verify that they were still available for adoption, we were told that we now needed to narrow it down to just two boys.

We did just that and the DAP quickly started calling to get a hold of the orphange directors to see how the boys interacted with the other kids and any other important information we would need about their overall health and mental status.

While we watied to hear back, we walked accross the street to have lunch.  During that time they were able to hear back from one of the orphanages that the boy we were interested in was very kind, gentle, healthy, and on track developmentally.

We were excited and told our facilitator that we would like to go and visit him.  That next afternoon we picked up the paperwork that would allow us to visit the orphanage.  The next morning we were picked up at 6:15ish and driven to this boy's town.  More information coming...

We have one more prayer request: When we lost Porter, we lost his grant money as well. It had almost 5k in it. We counted on using / needed to use that money for our expenses while in country. We are now short on finances as our new boy did / does not have a starting grant.  The fundraising numbers have been updated (less the grant) and we are now $4,617.84 short of funds.  I have struggled with sharing this information. Asking for help again has not been top on my priority list. But this is the reality of it. My blog has been giving me fits, so I have been delayed in posting while out of the country.  Our grant account with Reece's Rainbow is still active, so if you could share our situation, that would be great. 

We feel your prayers. Thank you! ♥ Sara and Curtis