God Reveals His Plan for the Forresters

“For I know the plans I have for you, “declares the Lord,” plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” – Jeremiah 29:11

At 9:01 a.m. on March 11, 2011, just two days after learning our application had been approved by Colombia and a child was possibly waiting for us, I received an email from our agency.

Our social worker asked if Brian was back in town and if he and I could call her. The first thing that came to my mind was, “This is it. This is the call that we've waited so long for. The call that will change our lives forever. The call that we will not ever forget”.

I was at my office talking with a friend when I got the email. I started shaking and I showed it to her. She also knew the significance of the email.

"What are you going to do," she asked.

“I am going outside. I am going to my car to call Brian and the agency." I called Brian while walking out of the building. “Do you have a minute? We need to call our agency," I asked.

“Sure. I'll host the conference call," Brian said; knowing what "the call" meant.

Just moments before then, Brian had been in his co-worker's office talking about receiving the approval earlier in the week. He told her they would receive a call at some point. "It could be this week, or next. Who knows," he explained.

After receiving the call from me, Brian darted back to his co-worker's office and said, "This is it. Claudia wants us to call the agency right now."

"You better come back into my office as soon as that call is over and tell me everything," she said while grinning.

Brian darted back to his office, took a deep breath and called me. "Are you ready," he asked.

"Not really, but go for it." So many things were going through our hearts and minds. So many emotions. So many feelings.

Within moments, our social worker was on the other line. After a brief hello we wanted to get to the point. She mentioned again how just a few days ago she had called with the good news about our approval and how she had mentioned the possibility of a referral.

“Well, this call is to talk to you guys about this little boy that is waiting for you both in Colombia," she said.

She lost me at that point. I could not help myself. I broke down in tears of joy. In the background I could hear Brian saying, “Wow. Wow. Wow."

I was not able to make any more comments at this point. I was overflowing with joy about what I was hearing. I could not wait for her to give us more information. She shared every single possible piece of information about our son, yes our son, that she had available.

From the first instance we heard his name, we knew he was ours. He is our baby boy and our first child!!

Right after we hung up, we received an email with his picture. The first picture of our baby boy. There he was staring back at us on our computer monitors. He was the most precious baby ever.

I immediately called Brian back.

"Did you see him," I asked. He said not yet, but a second later he said, "He is precious. He is our son."

God's plan was staring at us for the first time with a face and name. On this Friday morning, we became a family of 5 (including our two happy doggies).

Once more, we were witnesses of God’s beautiful creation. He was giving us one of His children.

“I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him” – 1 Samuel 1:27

Good News to Share

On March 8, 2011 at 2:16 p.m. my cell phone rang while I was at the office.

It was from Children's Hope International, our adoption agency in St. Louis, MO., and I got a little scared. I didn't want to answer the call. This was one of those moments in life that you have been anxiously waiting to arrive. When it is staring at you in the form of a call on your cell phone's i.d. waiting for you to answer, you question how prepared you are for the inevitable next moments.

When I answered, our social worker Nichole greeted. me. "I have some good news." Our dossier was approved by Colombia, she said. The dossier is essentially our entire lives on paper. Medical records. Tax returns. Photos of our family and house. Referral letters from friends. Fingerprints and background checks. Mini-biographies. Notarized psychological reports. And several other items that would take their own blog post to include.

After all these months of paperwork and notaries, Colombia accepted our dossier without any additional requests. Yeahhhhhhhhhhh! :  )

Of course, for us what seems like such a long and slow process is actually incredibly fast by comparison to the process for non-Colombian families. Since I am from Colombia, the government treats us as a Colombian family and the waiting period is shorter.

Different types of emotions ran through my mind. I was crying but at the same time I was happy to hear the good news. We were finally on Colombia's official waiting list to receive a child.

"How do you feel," Nichole asked.

"I'm really happy to hear this news," I replied. "This is really exciting."

"Well, I may have some other good news for you," she said. "It looks like Colombia may already have something waiting for you."

I said, "What do you mean?"

"It looks like they may already have a baby for you guys," Nichole said.

"What?" I exclaimed, and at that point I was in shock.

"If this is true, then you would be the first couple to get the approval and the referral at the same time," Nichole said.

I was crying and wanted to get a lot more details about the baby but she didn't have any additional news to share.

"You need to get your feet back down to earth because you have a lot of paper work that needs to be filled out," she said, before explaining some of the next steps. I could only think about the fact Brian was traveling in Atlanta and wasn't able to share this moment with me in person.

She asked me when Brian would return. "You better keep your phone nearby because I can call you at any time with some more information."

To be continued....

Overwhelmed

It took a few minutes for the conversation to be absorbed, but as it continued an overwhelming sensation began creeping into my mind.

It was a Wednesday evening at church during dinner. Claudia was working and I had the opportunity to stop by church for food, fellowship and class. Several friends were sitting with us. Two expecting mothers. One new mother. And three husbands.

The expecting mothers were talking about where and when they had registered for baby clothes, furniture, accessories and bottles. They debated about the pros and cons between different style bottles. They expressed surprise at how expensive baby monitors were and their different must-have features. They chatted about what they looked for in car seats. Do you get one that has the cradle you leave in the car?

I chimed in occasionally, but for the most part just listened. And then it hit me.

"We've not even begun to think about those things yet," I told the group. "We've been so focused on medical history, tax returns, notaries and apostilles (certifying the notary), photo albums, and biographies. We haven't even begun to talk about those other things."

"Don't worry," one of the mothers-to-be consoled. "You'll have plenty of time."

I explained how the car seat, for instance, really hit me. I mean, yeah, they are important. So important we'll need one while we're in Colombia. I explained that taxi cab drivers are efficient and cost effective on the streets of Colombia, but they are NOT safe to hold a baby in your arms while riding.

"Believe me, the taxi cab drivers won't care if we have a car seat or not," I explained. Mental pictures took me back to a couple of years ago when we drove in a cab that zoomed and zagged, braked, honked at crossing pedestrians, punched the accelerator, zagged again and suddenly stopped. The drive turned around, hand on the front passenger head rest, and apologized for taking so long to get to our destination.

The take away from that meal was that as adoptive parents, we have two processes to experience. There's the paper adoption process, as its some times called when you're compiling all the necessary components for your dossier; and then there is the baby registry, preparing the baby's room and other things.

As adoptive parents, we have to remember patience during the paper process and slow down a little bit to enjoy the fact that there are a lot of fun things about expecting a baby - and debating car seats and monitors and when is the best time to register and where are certainly a few of them.