I’ve never been good at living in the present and not getting wrapped up in “what’s coming next.”  In high school, I couldn’t wait for graduation and the new adventure of college.  Once in college, I fell in love with a boy and couldn’t wait for the day that I could marry him.  Once we were married, I longed for the day that I could be a mom.  Now that I’m a mom, I can’t wait for the day to have another little Pigford!  Focusing on the future is fun and exciting, but the biggest downside is that I miss out on a lot of what is right in front of me.  I spend so much time and energy wanting what’s next, that I don’t get to enjoy the stage that I so longed for a few years ago.  To add to it, Josh and I have never lived in the same home for more than 2 1/2 years at a time, and I’m not sure why we always get the itch for something different.

I’m smack-dab in the middle of my mind and emotions being CONSUMED by what is to come for our family, specifically in regards to our adoption.  What will the child look like?  How old will he/she be?  Where will we live in Colombia for the 7-8 weeks?  How will we all adjust?  When will God add to our family next? When can I get a mini-van?? (don’t judge, I’m excited for that day to come!)

When I really should be thinking more about, have I stared into Savannah’s eyes today and just stopped what I was doing to sit on the floor to play with her?  What are some ministry opportunities right in our neighborhood?  How can I love my husband better today?  What are ways that God can be glorified in my life right now?

From the beginning of this process, we have been completely open to the idea of adopting more than once.  With that possible reality, I will have to learn to live in the present, or it could be years and years of this “looking to the future” mindset.

Last night we got back from a two-day training at Gladney.  It is required and we are so glad that it was, because we learned so much and met over 12 other families that are adopting from Colombia!  I’ve added links in the sidebar of other families with Gladney that are adopting from Colombia.

We learned a lot about parenting tactics, particularly based around Dr. Karyn Purvis’ book The Connected Child.  We had to read that book over a year ago when we had our first home study.  Good stuff and I’m actually planning to read it again soon and use the Created to Connect workbook that goes along with it.

Gladney currently works with three private orphanages in Colombia.  Two are in Bogota and one in Cali.  The directors of the two orphanages in Bogota were in town for Gladney’s 125th Celebration. We had the amazing opportunity to meet them on Tuesday night at a reception and presentation.  Our case worker said that this type of thing never happens!  These directors never get to meet prospective adoptive families before hand, so we were honored to have the chance to meet them.  The presentation of the director that we heard was great and sounds like a home that really cares for their children and pregnant mothers.  I’m being very vague because I’m not sure how much info we can give on this just yet, seeing that our dossier will probably be going to this home in Bogota!  So that means if all goes as planned, we will be staying in Bogota for 7-8 weeks after we receive our referral.  Very exciting!

It was a great week, but we’re exhausted (mainly from the driving) and are catching up on life today.  Washing clothes, getting groceries and cooking has taken up my day so far!

We weren’t very good about taking pictures, so this is all that you get, crazy car picture and food

We drove over 20 hours round trip!

Our first taste of Colombian food and it was wonderful!

It’s been a tough ten weeks around here.  I had high hopes of updating our home study in a month and sending off paperwork to USCIS rather quickly.  Ohhhh, haven’t I learned anything by now? As soon as you set up expectations, they won’t be what you are thinking!  We are beyond excited that the FINAL PIECE of paper came in today that will wrap up our homestudy.  It still has to be reviewed by Gladney, but we don’t have to wait on anymore paperwork for this step of the process.  I have all of our I800-A paperwork filled out and ready to be sent to our agency in Texas.

I’ve actually been pretty discouraged lately and just weary.  I am so thankful for our family’s faith in God because that is literally all we can hang on to right now.  This whole process has been the most emotional thing I have ever experienced.  The toughest is looking back on this past year and the reality that we are in the exact same place today that we were last year.  All of that paperwork and stress last year for nothing! I know God had a plan and a reason for us going through a process that went nowhere, but it’s still confusing to us.  The only thing we can do is to rest in God’s sovereignty and choose contentment with where He has us right now in life.

I’m hoping that my next blog post can be about how we have sent off our I-800A paperwork to CIS.  We’ve heard that they are processing paperwork in 30-45 days, so please be praying for a quick process!

Four weeks ago today we started the paperwork for Colombia. This process feels so much different in comparison to our paperwork with Honduras this time last year.

Last year we had no idea what we were doing. We were just treading water as we were on this huge learning curve of adoption lingo, steps in the process and the details of paperwork.

This go-around feels a lot less stressful because we kind of know what we are doing (paper-wise), but it has an air of urgency more so than last year. I just want to push through this phase in the process to the real part of waiting. See, with Honduras, we did tons of detailed paperwork and never received the satisfaction of being approved or put on a wait list, nothing that seemed like progress or a “reward” for our hard work.

I don’t know if that makes sense, but this process just feels different. We are still faithfully following where God leads and trying not to become impatient with the timeline of the process and the reality that things are (and have always been) completely out of our control!

Well, we are knee-deep in paperwork and it’s going well. We feel like old pros at this, haha not really but we are redoing many of the exact same things that we were doing this time last year.

Home study report has been written up and is waiting for different people to review it and also waiting on some paperwork to come in before the home study can be finalized. It’s all good and it’s all out of our control, so there is no need to stress about it…right!?!?

As we take major turn in our adoption journey, we’re also happy to announce we’ve finished fundraising!

The generosity of so many family, friends and even complete strangers has been such a blessing to us and helped raise thousands of dollars to help bring our child home. It’s amazing to see how God provides.

Here are some of the ways many of you helped make our adoption possible:

• 77 pound cakes
• Dozens of hair clips
• Four garage sales
• Stained glass raffle

In addition to that, so many of you sacrificially gave both your time and money to make this calling a reality.

Thank you.

It’s been 15 months since we officially started the adoption process and nearly two years since we felt God calling us to be an adoptive family.

Today, we’re starting over.

Since March 2011 we’ve been working towards adopting from Honduras. We started the process as part of a “pilot program” with our agency. We knew going in to it that Honduras had not processed very many adoptions, but the word was that they were getting their stuff together and that IHNFA (Honduran Institute of Childhood and Family) had a renewed focus on finding homes for orphans.

As with any adoption program in any country (including the U.S.), things rarely go as planned. IHNFA went on strike, higher-ups were fired, there were investigations into the misuse of funds and adoptions were put on hold. All of this trickled down to us in the form of our dossier sitting in Honduras for over six months without making any real progress.

IHNFA has hired a new director and again is saying they’ll start processing adoptions again with their renewed focus, but for us we had to draw the line somewhere. We know adoption is an exercise in extreme patience, but for us the time came to make a change.

We have started the paperwork to switch programs to Colombia.

The downside: For all practical purposes, we have to start over. Some of our paperwork will transfer and a lot of our fees will as well (since we’re staying with the same agency). But because our dossier sat in Honduras for so long, much of the forms we completed (such as medical and police clearance letters) have started expiring. If our dossier sat in Honduras much longer, we’d have to start re-submitting paper work for them too. Colombia is part of the Hague Convention (which helps standardize and enforce certain adoption protocols…a good thing), while Honduras is not. So a lot of our paperwork has to be redone to “Hague standards.”

The upside: Colombia has had an incredibly well organized, consistent track record of adoption for many years and processes thousands of adoptions each year. There is much less unknown. We only have to be in-country once (instead of having to leave our child for 3-5 months in Honduras after meeting her).

Realistically, even if Honduras does start swiftly processing adoptions, we’ll most likely start our Colombia paper work and be home with our child by the same time.

Along with the change in programs, we’re also changing (or rather “expanding”) what age/gender/race we’d like to adopt. Colombia’s greatest need right now for their orphans is families to adopt Afro-Colombian children (under 3 years). And because we already have a girl in our family, they will most likely place us with a boy! Definitely a change from how we started our adoption journey!

So many of you have been praying for us about this change and it’s been our prayer that God would give us direction and a peace about what to do. And we feel He has done both.

We’ve got a lot of legwork in front of us in the coming months, but we look forward to this new chapter in our adoption story.

New Year.  New possibilities.  We are excited to see how God will continue to work and move through the hearts of families who will be called to adopt this year.  We had given ourselves a cut-off date with Honduras of the end of January if progress hadn’t been made, and here we are at the end of January with progress, but not necessarily peace.

Well, last week we were told that a new director was hired at IHNFA and he will hopefully be processing dossiers and assigning wait list numbers in February. We pray that this will happen and children will be placed with their forever families in the coming year.

We keep going back to the thought of this other program.  We’ve been told we are the type of family they are looking for and that they are desperately looking for families because they have children available right now.  We would have to start from scratch with all of the paperwork, we would lose some of the money that we’ve already paid for the Honduras program, plus have to pay additional fees because the other program is more expensive.

We’re at a crossroads of trying to decide whether to continue the gamble in one country that isn’t as predictable or start the whole thing over and transfer to a more stable program.  Pray for us, as we hope to make a decision soon.

Our heart is that God will be glorified and that He will find us faithful to His perfect plan.

I’ve been putting off this post because its a subject I’d rather sit down with you over coffee and chat about, because its complicated and I’m not good at writing out my feelings. So, remember when we told you about the Director of IHNFA and Secretary General getting into some trouble and getting fired a couple months ago? Well, that’s not all resolved. Last week we got an email from our agency explaining that the ongoing investigation will delay dossier approvals and referrals until the new Secretary General and Director are appointed in January.

That’s not what we wanted to hear…our dossier was near the end of the approval process with just one more new document in the works. So when January comes, how many more delays should we expect? With each delay, it puts us farther and farther from bringing our sweet daughter home.

And to complicate things, we received an email from our agency (sent to lots of families) yesterday about another program that would be a good fit for us…what do you do with that?! We don’t want to ping-pong from promising program to promising program. But when do you draw the line? Pray for wisdom for us please.

Side note: We’ve been so happy with the communication that Gladney has provided. They seem to be very careful not to feed into fears and not to over promise anything that they don’t know for sure. This is a pilot program and they are learning as they go, just like the adoptive families. It’s hard, but we’ve chosen to trust that our agency knows how to handle things and not to freak out when we hear every little rumor from the Yahoo Group message board.

Overall I would say that I’m a positive, upbeat kind of gal.  I don’t like being around negative people and I usually try to find the silver lining.  Not to say that I’m not realistic, but I try not to get down about things.

So all that to say, we’ve been thrown some news lately that wasn’t so fun.  We were notified by our agency that Savannah needed blood, urine and fecal tests.  Not devastating, because it definitely could have been worse news, but just not fun for our sweet little two year old.

We had the tests done yesterday and decided to go the “least invasive” route that our agency suggested.  It went fine, but just still trying not to play the What If?? game.

I really am trying to stay positive, but its easy to get down about all of the unknowns in this process.  We know for sure that this is the path that God is leading us down, but I’m getting weary……