We are still here!!

Who said life was boring??  Since my last post our life at the Lopez Family has been in fast forward and slow motion at the same time... does it make sense? 
I know those of you who are passing through a similar situation of have done it already might understand me better.  This is C-R-A-Z-Y , but somehow I'm enjoying it...  knowing that this will allow us to be with our daughter and be her parents forever (under God's will) is a feeling hard to describe.
Our son prays for her sister every night; asking God to give her "sweet and chocolate dreams" (his words!) so since children have a more open line with God, I just say AMEN!

A very short post this time, my excuse, English is not my first language! Anyway  We are still here!!!

Blessings to everyone!!!

Our family has grown!!

Introducing to you... Aisha Mekdes Lopez

Thank you Lord for our daughter!!!

                                                   

Six days...

Getting a little closer...

Waiting for court date!!!

Thank you Lord for them:

Our son Adiel, who thanks God has always been relatively healthy, wasn’t feeling too good today. After church, we had to stop at work to pick up some medicine for him and while I was doing a quick organizing there, the following conversation happened:

Him: Daddy…?

Me: Yes son?

Him: Can you give me a hug? Because I’m still sick.

Well, it didn’t take me a second to drop what I was doing and to have him on my lap giving him a strong and long hug.

I should mention, he shows his love to us every day, nevertheless, he is not the cuddly type, so as much as I dislike seeing him sick, I enjoy those moments when he requires from us something like “just a hug”.

(We still got to take a couple of pictures by the river)

Now, back to Ethiopia… well, we still are waiting for the court date. We should know about it this week, praying for it!

Hopefully we’ll have more news soon, have a blessed week!!!

Adoption update

Time for a little update. Actually more like a little explanation for those outside the adoption world. Some friend or family members have asked me, when is she coming? Do you know her? How old is she? And many other similar questions. Sometimes my answers might have sound kind of evasive but, the truth is that for a long time nobody knew the answer, including me, and even now I don’t have some of those answers… so I’ll try to explain:


Most international adoption take from 9 months to 4 years, yes, a few take less time and some have taken more than that. The factors that create that range include:

• Country where the adoption is coming from.

• Gender and age of the child.

• New laws and regulations for international adoption.

• Time needed to obtain, notarize and certify all paperwork.

• Agency being used.

• And many others, but these mentioned give a good idea.

Our Story in a few words,

My wonderful wife and I made the decision to adopt a little girl from Ethiopia by the end of 2008 (in some countries you can’t choose the gender), in early December we sent the first application to our agency “Children’s Hope International”

After four long months (actually it was quick, is common to take longer than that) of collecting all our paperwork, the big pile of documents, called “dossier”, is sent to our agency and we are placed in a waiting list on April 13, 2009. During this time, all we know about our child is that is a girl, no name, no age, no DOB, not even aware is she has been born.

From there the main thing left, besides keeping up with immigration paperwork, is WAIT and WAIT and WAIT. The wait in our case was supposed to be between 6 and 13 months. We waited 9 months!! No complains. During all this time no new information is produced, nothing happens except getting closer; and the long answer to the “do you know anything new?” question is: “no”

And then… the most expected phone call for the last many months happens! And we are told that we have a referral, which means God finally tells the agency who is going to be our daughter and all the basic information is revealed; now, besides gender we know age, DOB, place of birth and we can see her face in a picture. Se bring them on, we can answer some questions now, not all though! [We are here at this time]

Still doesn’t mean we can hop on a plane and go to get our girl. Our girl has been chosen but the court system in Ethiopia has to make it legal. That means another wait of six to ten weeks. Once we pass court, the adoption is legal and she is officially our daughter.

Here we can plan our trip to leave in 3 or 4 weeks, stay a week or so in Ethiopia and return home with our daughter and start a new phase in our lives. Our son (from The Philippines) will likely come with us on this trip.

I hope this explain to a point the adoption process, not as simple as you can see!!!

Blessings for everyone!!!

A lot closer!!!

Well, if you haven't read it STOP here and read the previous post before you continue....

OK now that you have read it; when I said  "could be two months or two days" I was hoping it would be closer to the two days mark, so I guess being four days off is not bad at all... because today, 6 days after that post, we have received "the call" YES, YES, YES!!! We have a referral now, yes we know now who God wants to be our daughter and we say a big THANK YOU LORD!!   We'll give more details soon, all I can say now is that she is a beautiful girl and we are very very happy.

Are we there yet??

Why is it so hard sometimes? We know there is a time and a season for everything under heaven. But knowing doesn’t make it much easier… at least not for most of us mere humans.


Waiting for that call, you know “The Call”... could be in two months… could be in two days. All what we can do, need to do and should do is wait and pray.

I was reminded of the many blessings I have as an individual and we as a family and for such I give thanks to our Lord Jesus. I will rest in Him for He knows the right time; not always or better said, only in a few cases “His time” will coincide with “my time” and that’s fine because ALWAYS His time will be immeasurably better than my time.