Day 2- Thursday- We Meet

Today started like most days we wake up, I worked out, The Man drinks coffee, and then we get ready for the day.

We ate breakfast, packed our lunch, said good-bye to the people that were staying here, and then we waited….. We waited…. We waited. We tried the wifi here and IT WORKED!!! So we were able to upload our blog from Day 1 and kinda check facebook. We really have a touch and go experience here with wifi… we are pretty much unreachable for 90% of the day….. Which really doesn’t matter too much during the day because we are busy, but at night it sure would be nice. One thing I miss….

ANYWAY, finally our ride arrived and we loaded into the vehicle and drove to the orphanage. Another interesting drive full of honks. Another fun observation is that people give thumbs up to say hi.

We arrived at the orphanage and The Man and I step out of the car and stand there waiting as our driver talks to another guy.

 A few minutes later he looks at us, smiles, and says “I thought you would just go on in” our driver says (our driver is also one of the main people in charge of adoptions for Chances for Children…)

“We’ve never been here, we don’t know where to go.” We both said.

“OK” he says and walks us into the orphanage. This is kinda the feeling we have gotten these past few days we’ve been here. We have no idea what we are doing, and no one here seems to want to give us too much information… Or they don’t know what information to give… and we don’t know what questions to ask. It’s been an interesting time… we are going with the flow the very best we know how…

Anyway we enter the orphanage and 3 kids run up and immediately want our attention and to be held. The man leads us to this side room and we wait for Benithy there. We wait for quite a while and as we wait we play with some other kids that are coming in and out of the room.

Finally our child is brought to us! And just unlike a fairy tale meeting… she is bawling, she does not want to be with us… The lady that brought her in plops her on my lap and walks off and we are left with our daughter in all her glory! J So we get out our picture book and we just sit and try and calm her. Eventually she stops crying (and I’m not using the word eventually lightly)… she settles into my arms a bit looser, and then passes out cold. Our first moments are literally crying, snuggling, and then sleeping…. Just like a baby I suppose!

We sat there for a while just letting her sleep… Just letting me sink her in… Just letting us BE with our daughter. She does the same small snore that The Bash does when he is fast asleep. Then another Chances for Children worker showed us all around the campus. We saw the rooms, the play rooms, the “TV room, the new building they are working on, their garden, their kitchen, their dr. office (medic center)… they have an amazing set up for these kids. Then we played! We played from about 1-5. We tried to really focus our attention and time with Benithy, but there are so many kids of all ages that want your attention. SO many yell out mama!! Papa!! And hold their arms up to you. I thought being a kindergarten teacher was a lot of touching…. Oh no… this was touch overload! I do believe that Benithy warmed up to us both quite a bit by the end of our time. We spent a lot of time just following her around as she ran room to room… By the time The Man and I loaded back into the truck to go home we were both over exhausted physically and mentally and emotionally. How are we going to expel this much energy and touching for the next 14 days we asked each other!!!

We may get to bring her back to the guest cottage the rest of our stay here. We aren’t sure yet. That should be an experience on its own, but a great way to get some more personal bonding time with her. Please pray and The Man and I adjust to so many things all at once.

 I wish I could show you a picture of our adorable, dimpled, sweet sweet girl, but we are told we cannot post pictures until she is legally ours! So, we will do our best at texting and showing you in person when we return. Until then… just picture the sweetest girl ever… because that is her!

Her name is pronounced: Ben-ee-tee

Day 1- Wednesday- Traveling

Today we started our day at 3 am. Luckily we have some great friends that volunteered to drop us off at the airport early in the morning. We left our house and traveled down to the airport, checked in, and waited for our first flight to Atlanta. The whole day seems weird from the start because of the crazy hour you wake up. Plus we have no Bash…. So the day started off in a bit of a haze.

We landed in Atlanta and got off and traveled our way to the terminal for our second flight to Haiti. It was a short walk, train ride, and short walk to get to the international terminal. I wasn’t sure what kind of crowd we would run into. What kind of plane we would be loading. But there actually was a large group of people traveling mostly missionary groups. To be honest I was surprised at some of the ages of kids that were loading up to go. Anyway, we freshened up, filled our water bottle up with clean water, and ate a meal bar (breakfast). It’s kind of funny because the terminal was super new looking. The bathrooms were AMAZINGLY nice. Everything was so clean and fresh and I kept thinking…. What a shock to our system we are about to step into. Shortly after we both freshened up it was time to load the plane. We boarded and got the sweet deal of sitting where the wings are, which means we had extra room for our feet! I called Bash knowing that the internet/wifi in Haiti would be sketchy and I honestly was not sure if/when I was going to be able to talk to him again. After a short exchange and a reminder of our love we hung up with him, put the phone on airplane mode, and we took off for Haiti. The plane ride to Haiti is only 2 hours and 40 minutes. We spent a lot of time reading, trying to cram some Creole in our brains, and I napped because… napping is amazing… and we were up at 3am! They came around with snacks and drinks…. I got my diet coke thinking….. well here is my last sweet soda of goodness for a long time! I sipped it and enjoyed every last drop. J The little pleasures in life.

We finally landed in Haiti and quickly felt the over 100 degree heat as we entered the airport. We walked through all the different stages and customs. Each time we walked to a new area workers were there just pointing in the direction we should go. We finally got our baggage (YES! It all arrived with us) and then we waited. We knew we had a rep from Chances for Children coming for us, we just had no idea what they looked like and we were not sure where exactly they would be. The whole time there are people asking to help you carry your bags, lift your bags, take you in a taxi…. Anything they can think of to help you (for a small price of course). We just kept saying no and waiting. I got a bit nervous thinking about what our plan B would be. Our phones do not work here, and we are at the mercy of wifi and Chances for Children for any help. Finally our rep comes and we walk down to the truck. Two men that I thought were WITH our rep were actually just there trying to make some cash. They quickly ripped my baggage from me and lifted it into the truck for me. I had no idea what was going on until they asked for a tip! J

OK! Now we are in the truck and we start driving. I am not a great writer and I cannot paint pictures with my words. I don’t think I can possibly sum up the scene we saw, but I will try. Before I do I want to preface this with the fact that this is not a dig at Haiti, nor is it a negative thing, these are just the observations and situations we experienced on our way to the guest house:

1-      We only saw 2 stop lights the whole time we were driving

2-      People are literally lining the streets selling items, walking, or carrying items places. There are tons of people out and they just walk through the streets without much regard to the fact that there is a crazy amount of traffic driving without much regard for them!

3-      LOTS of honking. Honking if you are annoyed, honking to say HEY I’m COMING AROUND THIS CORNER PLEASE DON’T HIT ME!, honking if someone is in your way, just random hoking to honk…

4-      A street will go from paved to ridiculously nonexistent in seconds.

5-      I have no idea how we got from point a to point b because there does not seem to be a rhyme or reason to how they are set up. I would not be able to find my way back even if you had a million dollars if I could. It was insane

6-      We saw goats and cows just eating stuff on the side of the road

7-      There is a lot poverty and things are still not rebuilt from the earthquake many years ago. I cannot even begin to describe this.

8-      Our truck broke down about 5 times on our way here. Which was a  bit nerve racking as well.

9-      The mountains here are gorgeous. We are actually up in the mountains right now. They are large and take your breath away

1-   Everyone is dressed up nicely! Everywhere I looked, and all the people I saw were wearing nice clothing. I felt under dressed in my leggings and t-shirt.

1-   As we moved up the mountains we noticed the weather got cooler. Right now we are sitting quite comfortably here in Haiti (never thought I would say that). It has cooled down for the night and there is a nice breeze that makes it quite pleasurable.

When we arrived to the guest house we were welcomed with a group that was here to work at Chances for Children and one mother of a boy from Chances for Children. Today is their last day here… they leave tomorrow morning. It was nice to be welcomed by someone that could speak English as American as that sounds…. We came in, put our stuff in our room and collapsed on the bed. We were just laying there and the others just popped their heads in and introduced themselves. Some of the nicest people in the world! We quickly warmed up to them (especially when they offered a beer for The Man and a glass of wine for me… J). We settled downstairs talking and soon it was dinner.

No wifi to post until tomorrow, but we are pooped at 9:00pm here. We have had a very interesting day, and look so forward to meeting our daughter! The butterflies are in our tummies and our anticipation is as high as ever. But, we will wait until tomorrow! J  

All God's People Say Amen!

Wonderful friends and family we cannot begin to describe our joy and love we feel from all your support this past week. Through all your givings we have 2 full suitcases full of items to donate to our child's orphanage and raised close to $4,000 in funds! This will pretty much cover our travel costs! We feel SO blessed and we also feel God's loving hands through you all! We have gotten a true view of a church family coming together to help those in need!

All we can do is sing:

You are not alone if you are lonely
When you're feeling afraid you're not the only
We are all the same in need of mercy
To be forgiven and be free
It's all you got to lean on
But thank God it's all you need

AND ALL THE PEOPLE SAID AMEN
AND ALL THE PEOPLE SAID AMEN
GIVE THANKS TO THE LORD FOR HIS LOVE NEVER ENDS
AND ALL THE PEOPLE SAID AMEN

If you're rich or poor, well it don't matter
We grow strong and our love is what we're after
We're all broken but we're all in this together
God knows it's summer and fall
And He so loved the world He sent His Son to save us all

Blessed all the poor spirits who are torn apart
Blessed all the persecuted and the pure in heart
Blessed all the people lonely for another start
For this is a kingdom
The kingdom of God 



We leave this Wednesday for Haiti and we will be there for 14 days! Please stay tuned for more updates!!!! 

We Have a Girl!

Hey everyone I wanted to write down this roller coaster ride we have been on for a week!

It all started last week while we were in Texas. We got a phone call from our adoption agency telling us that it was looking good for us to get our referral later that week! We would be matched with a little girl! Our agency also told us that we would probably be traveling to Haiti by the end of the month.

The rest of the week was spent:
Looking at Haiti plane tickets
Trying to plan a fundraiser
Trying to wait patiently for our referral to come in so we could learn more about our little girl

So Wednesday passed... and nothing.... Thursday came and we got an email saying that our referral was in, but just not in the hands of our agency. Friday came and we were told we'll be getting our referral on Monday. So Monday came and we sat impatiently waiting for any information about our girl. That day I got an email that said we will probably not get anything until Tuesday. AHHHH!!! This is kinda how the whole adoption process works! Why it's so hard not to get your hopes up, but so painful when things don't come like they are supposed to!

Anyway, our country rep sent an email Monday with the French version of our referral... Which doesn't do us any good except that there was a picture of our little girl!!!! So we finally got to SEE her!

Finally today we got our referral.

Meet Benithy
 She just turned 3 years old in June

Her beautiful big eyes and chubby little cheeks! Cannot wait to snuggle her in a week or so!

Right now she is at the Creche Chances for Children http://chances4children.org/ You can check out their site there. When we go to visit her we will bring with us a ton of needed items to donate to their orphanage. When we go on our bonding trip to see her we will get to stay in the guest house at her orphanage!


Here are our next steps coming up:

1. Fly to Haiti and stay there for 14 days. There we will bond with our child, fill out legal documents, and do some interviews. By the time we are finished she will legally be a White family member!
2. We will have to come back without her on this trip.
3. Then in about a year we will travel BACK to Haiti with The Bash to pick up our daughter. I don't know why we have to wait a year. I'm guessing it has a lot to do with the Haitian government and the way their country works. It's going to be SO hard to walk away from our daughter. As hard as it is going to be, we are going to try our VERY BEST to look at this as one step closer to bringing her home.... and not focus on the amount of time.... Try and look forward to tall the wonderful years we'll have together... and not all the times we have missed so far. God has provided us with what we have needed so far, I have no reason do doubt that He will provide for us here too!


Prayer Requests:
Safe Travels
Open the heart of Benithy to let us in!
Strength and Patience during our year wait between visits
For us to get to go FASTER than a year to go get her
Funds for all these events in the next few weeks
People in Haiti/ their community
Chances for Children and the work they do there
Our family


Thanks again for the overwhelming love and encouragement during these hard times of waiting and now during this crazy time! Whatever you have done whether it was give money, time, encouragement, let me ramble on and on about it to you, let me cry to you about it, prayed for us and our family, read these blogs, told a friend about it.... whatever you have done for us.... we cannot even begin to tell you how much it means to us. We are absolutely overwhelmed with your love! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! Again and again.... Our daughter has no idea how blessed she is going to be with this community she has around her!


-The Whites

It MAY be something.....

I juggled writing about my phone call yesterday to everyone or not... because... I have to preface this with what our country rep told us.... Don't get your hopes up... BUT.....

SO....

Don't get your hopes up... but

I got a phone call from our country rep with some MAYBE news.. I say maybe news because Haiti is not very helpful in knowing where or what exactly is going on with our paperwork over there. Not sure if we are close to getting matched or at the bottom of the pile. We don't know if they've even LOOKED at our dossier or not! There is a lot of random logistics in all of this... so I'm going to say it all in the simplest way I can...

The orphanage that we signed with (right before everything changed and you don't really sign with an orphanage anymore) is called Chances for Children. (look them up online they are awesome). Anyways within that orphanage they tentatively "matched" us with a GIRL at their orphanage. They wrote that in on our cover letter (submitted to their government with our dossier) as a suggestion for our family. Anyway, her dossier has started to move/ get processed!!!! Which COULD mean that things are moving closer to our referral stage/matching stage! I say could... because there is no real say as to what that means really until we get the letter/ phone call from them saying we have been matched, BUT it is encouraging none the less.

I realize it could mean nothing. I realize it could mean everything. More than anything... it's just nice to hear SOME news about our process at all. During these months of waiting sometimes you feel like it may never happen EVER!

So, without much speculation... we MAY get matched with a GIRL soon! (By soon.. I mean months... or something... who knows what soon means in this process???? not me!!!)  Amen!

The other bit of news is that the person in charge of placing/matching kids is going on vacation soon... so... we still may be awhile...

Thank you AGAIN and AGAIN to those who have continued to keep us all in your prayers. You may not hear a lot from us, and we may be plugging along day to day, but our hearts are still longing to bring our child home! So to all of our prayer warriors I just want you to know that it is working. It is helping us get through this time of waiting.. and will continue to carry us through the rest of this long process! I love you all! :)

Yep... we're still adopting... it's just taking awhile!

I recently ran a marathon. It was the best thing ever! The training took my mind off of things, gave me a goal I could work toward, and helped me COMPLETE something.  When we set off on this journey this was not a part of the plan, but as I was faced with another LONG wait I knew this would help me a ton... and it did!

Right now we are still waiting... it could be tomorrow that we get a call.. it could be another 6 months..... We have no idea. So we have taken on the mind set that we are going to live each day enjoying the blessings we have now, but ready to take on the new blessings whenever it comes. We have almost had to put our adoption to the side of our plate instead of having it sitting as the meat and potatoes of our plate. It was consuming my brain and life TOO much and causing some anxiety and pain! So we are still SUPER excited to bring another child into our home, but trying to not let it consume every minute of who we are.

Mind you once we find out who our child is we go to Haiti for about 2 weeks for our bonding trip, and then we have about another year wait until we get to bring our child home to us! Are we tired of waiting? YES! I must say that as I have traveled more down this road it has gotten easier. Not because waiting is awesome. Not because I've become more patient.... but really because all we can do is put our trust in God and know that He has that. We have no control. We have NO say... But it is always comforting know that the creator has us in His hands. There we shall sit... nestled in... :)

SO if you think I've dropped off the face to the universe I have not... IF you think that we forgot about you... we have not! We are just still in the same place as 6 months ago... Waiting! Thanks for waiting with us in prayer and kind thoughts.

Here is a good picture to explain the process right now:



Again thanks for all your love and support! We would not be as confident and as at peace with this process without you!

Strength Will Rise When You Wait Upon the Lord!

Psalm 27:14 ESV

Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord! 

Psalm 145:15 ESV 

The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. 

Psalm 130:5 ESV 

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; 

We continue to wait. We continue to trust the timing. We continue to believe that our Haitian child is worth every heart breaking moment without them now. We continue to pray for our child. We know that in due time our family will be united with our most special child. 

Our dossier is still in the process of being approved by the Haitian government. Right now Haiti is in a LOT of turmoil. There are a lot of protests going on, which makes it hard for some people to get to work! Our agency has told us that people's adoptions are still being processed. So things are still progressing and not at a complete stand still. Which is good! We are still looking at another 5-11 months for our dossier to be fully approved. Hopefully we will get matched during that time, or quickly after. 

Right now we are at the point that some of our documents will need to be renewed. So we'll be looking at all our documents that were submitted, and see what we need to do to renew them.  I guess that makes us seasoned adoptive parents.... in that we are on our second time through this process... without our child. It sounds like a lot of parents adopting from Haiti are to expected to renew their documents 2-3 times throughout the process....

Please continue to pray for our family. Pray for patience for us, but especially pray for all of those in Haiti right now. It is dangerous and unsettled there (even more so than normal). Thanks again for all your continued support! We feel it each and every day! :)