One door closed, another opened...

One Door Closed...

February-March 2010...We were strongly encouraged and told the probability was high that our girls would be able to come to us on humanitarian parole. Although we were not officially matched until after the earthquake, there was mounting hope that pre-earthquake orphans who now had home study approved families ready to foster-to-adopt them in the U.S. would also be granted parole through the H.R. 4603: Haitian Orphan Placement Effort Act (HOPE Act). This bill was introduced to "require the Secretary of Homeland Security to expand the humanitarian parole policy announced on January 18, 2010, to children legally confirmed as orphans eligible for intercountry adoption by the Government of Haiti prior to the earthquake on January 12, 2010, and for other purposes." Our girls fit into this category, and were anxiously waiting for their release under this bill. They watched 11 of their friends leave their orphanage on humanitarian parole. Everyone thought they were going home. We had 21 co-sponsors for the Hope Act and were waiting on a senator to sign it, when on April 14, 2010 Haiti suddenly requested that humanitarian parole efforts come to an immediate end. This was only three days before my flight left for Haiti April 17th to meet the girls for the first time. We had even raised money for their passports in hopes that we could secure them while I was there. This was a time of great sorrow for all the families matched with 47 of the children from HCRM. There was much that no one understood or that could be explained. It was however a precious time of crying out to God on behalf of these children that we had already grown to love as our own and had prepared to bring home. There was little time to consider what was next as I packed and prepared to leave for Haiti. We were blessed to receive donations for my flight, and many supplies donated for the orphanage which I was able to take with me. We truly believed that God had worked all the details out for me to go, and that no matter how things looked, He was in control of the situation. We believed we should move forward in faith and that God would not forsake us in the process He began. So at 6am on April 17th, I was on a plane bound for Haiti with 10 others that believed the same. 

Another Opened...

Shortly after humanitarian parole surprisingly closed on April 14th, adoptions surprisingly re-opened. One of our fears in adopting through the humanitarian parole route is that we may not ever be able to officially adopt our girls, or that there was a remote possibility that they could be asked to return to Haiti after being in our home for years. We were now free to adopt them through traditional international adoption. 
One of the reasons we had been unable to pursue international adoption in the past was the cost. Humanitarian parole offered us the possibility of an international adoption that was almost too good to be true with a cost of only $500 per child (plus home study fees and other paperwork fees in the future). The Lord knew that perhaps if we had not walked down that road, we would not have been open to an international adoption at this time because of the cost. He knew that humanitarian parole would close before we would be able to get our girls out, yet we most likely would never have pursued them (or found out about them) otherwise. And so because of this we are forever grateful that God saw fit to lead us to these precious girls through the hope of humanitarian parole, and that He also saw fit to open the door to adopting them according to His will through traditional adoption. Though the monetary costs are much much greater, and there is no longer a strong assurance that they will come to our home in the very near future, we have seen God's mighty hand prevail throughout this entire process. We are still unsure of many things, but are choosing to simply trust the One that knows the beginning from the end.