It has been about a month since we received our exit letter which transitions us out of the Haitian side of things and after a few small steps, into the American side of the adoption. This exit letter was imperative on moving closer to bringing our sweet daughter home and finally being able to share her name and picture with all of you that have walked with us through this journey. We still aren't at that point yet, but we are getting closer. Keep those prayers coming.
We get bi-monthly updates on our sweet girl and she is stunning and is growing into a beautiful young lady. It breaks my heart to see her growing up apart from us and we are relentlessly praying that she will be home with us by this Christmas. In February she will turn 11! We started this process right after she turned 8. I still struggle with wrapping my mind around how this can possibly be. We are trusting and believing that the Lord will bring our daughter home by Christmas, even when it appears impossible.
Claire has been growing more and more excited to bring her sister home as well. The other night I was tucking her into bed, and our big dog Jack-Jack was in her bed too and it was quite crowded with all three of us in bed and she told me we are going to have to teach Jack-Jack to get out of this bed so there is room for sister soon. Apparently Claire is planning that they will be sleeping in the same bed together when she gets home. In everything we do Claire is commenting on how her sister will be included when she comes home. She is very excited to have a sister.
As I believe we are nearing homecoming I have also been praying much more intentionally about preparing our daughters heart for our family and the HUGE transition she is going to have to make. She consistently tells us she is very excited and wants to come home and Chances for Children does an amazing job preparing the kids for the transition, however, it is still a transition that I don't think any of us could fathom making. New culture, new surroundings, new friends, new family, new school, new rules, new environment, new everything.....when I start to list it all out I feel overwhelmed for her. We are praying that the Lord will cover her and protect her through this transition period.
I also have been thinking a lot of her birth family and what they mean to me and how we are truly connected. Ed and I firmly believe that our daughter's story is exactly that, her story, and when she comes home she will not bring one physical thing with her, the only thing she will have that is hers is her story, so we will not take that away from her and don't feel it is right to tell her story, so you won't hear anything from us on that. However, we are aware that when we bring our daughter home we MAY be able to meet some of her birth relatives. In Haiti so many families are forced to make hard decisions out of love for their children and such a huge portion of the population regularly face loss that we can't imagine. With that being said, we have felt very called to cover our daughter's relatives in prayer, as we know ALL of our hope can only be in the Lord. This is one area, if you felt led, we would love to have join us in prayer and have a very tangible way for our daughters relatives to know that they are covered in prayer by you.
I had the following quilt made which will be a gift to our daughters relatives (which we may or may not get to meet, but are sure we can get it to them). I pray that this would provide them encouragement and let them know they have angels in America covering them in prayer. On it is has a block that says "For He will order His angels to protect you wherever you go" and also has scripture from Psalm on it. But my favorite part is the angel wings. On each wing there are ties, and it is my hope to tie a ribbon for each of the prayers prayed over both our daughter and her birth relatives to those ties......So we ask you to join us in prayer, and if you feel led, you can send us a ribbon representing your prayer, which we will tie to the blanket on the angel wing. If you are part of a community/prayer group, and would like to share in this opportunity with your group, I would love for your group to take the blanket and prayer over as a group and add your ties. Send me an email at klisst@prodigy.net if you need our info to either send us your prayer ribbons or if you would like to have the prayer blanket for you to pray over and add your tie. I would love to see many prayer ties on behalf of our daughter and her birth relatives!
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| Prayer Quilt which will be given to our daughters birth family after the adoption is completed |
