thankful, amazed and blessed!!!

It's amazing how God uses his people to care for each other in such specific ways. Henry, Meili, Willem and I have been enfolded by our friends and family throughout this adoption process and it's totally amazing. It started long ago with things like dear friends encouraging us that we could follow God's call to adopt again even without the certainty of knowing where the money would come from. We've had friends and family who bought shirts and wear them to support us. People have been praying for us and for our little baby boy throughout the whole process. Friends bought Christmas ornaments to support us. A photographer friend donated a beautiful bird print with a beautiful promise of God's written on it. Other friends bought copies of that picture to support us. Friends at church are helping us plan a hoe down dance and fundraiser and we have friends attending and offering to donate for our silent auction. Other forms of encouragement and financial support have been showing up in our mailbox, on facebook, in email and in my hands at school - from people we know and from people we've never met! It's overwhelming and we are SO grateful!

Our I800 form was provisionally approved yesterday by US Immigration. Next, it goes for final approval and then will be sent on to Hong Kong. This takes about 2 weeks. Then we're in for about a 10 week wait for Hong Kong High Court Approval. These are the final steps before we travel to bring baby Raymond home. It's moving along. I can't wait to share this beautiful community of friends and family with Raymond. He is loved by more people than he will ever know.  Thank you friends and family for being God's hands and showing his heart to us. We would not be here without you.
Liz

Amazing!

Today I just want to say how blessed we are to know so many incredible people. Thank you all for your gifts of love, support and prayers!

Photography fundraiser

This is from a good friend Jennifer Raff:

"Dear friends of ours, the Kingma family who we met in China while we were adopting Natalie, are now adopting a special needs little guy from Hong Kong. Many thousands of dollars are still needed before they can travel, hopefully this spring. Adoption is of course near and dear to my heart, having adopted a special needs child ourselves. I am offering my sparrow print for sale through the month of January to benefit the Kingma family adoption fund to bring little Raymond home. This 8x10 mounted print is $25 (please add $3 for shipping). Please comment below or message me to order. © Fly Away Home Photography"

Accepted!!!

We've been accepted by the Hong Kong government to adopt a precious little one-year-old boy!!!!! We'd like to introduce: Raymond Garett WingLok Kingma!

No information on travel yet. We're working on immigration paperwork and will have to be patient as things get put in place for travel. We're over the moon with excitement and can't wait to hold this little guy.

Finally... the next thing

It's felt like a long few months of waiting since we sent our paperwork to Hong Kong at the end of August. Today we finally got an email from them asking some follow-up questions about our home and family. This is a normal part of the process and it means that they are actually working on our case right now. We wrote our responses right away and sent them off to our case worker, hoping to get things back to Hong Kong before the Thanksgiving holiday.

Speaking of Thanksgiving... I'd just like to mention how thankful I am for all of the people who have been supporting us through this adoption. Our families have been wonderful. Our church has been so supportive. Our friends are excited for us. And I am blessed with SO many supportive people in the Christian school community where I work. Many teachers, staff and even families at my school have purchased t-shirts (T-Shirts) to support us! When I see them wearing the shirts to school it's such a great reminder of the Christian community and support we have there. There are others who support us by buying our chicken eggs which is so great! Well-timed notes and emails of encouragement always seems to find me at the right time. And recently, we've been overwhelmed with financial gifts and reminders of all of the people lifting us up in prayer as we move into the next step of the process. Thank you. It's humbling to be reminded over and over that God holds us and this adoption in his hands and that you are all there with us along the way. Thanks for being God's hands, and eyes, and ears to us! We are so blessed!

Coffee!!!

Just Love Coffee will donate $5 to our adoption for each bag of coffee purchased. This is fair-trade coffee. Check it out by clicking HERE!

Dossier to Hong Kong

It's been 25 days since our dossier went to Hong Kong. We're getting some initial questions from International Social Services of Hong Kong which means they are looking everything over. That's really exciting for us. We're also waiting on several grant applications to be checked and so we need time for those to go through the approval process. There are several other grant application that we're working on right now. In the meantime, I'd like to share an article we wrote for our October church newsletter.

An Invisible Thread

By Liz & Henry Kingma

There’s an old Chinese proverb that says, “An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet regardless of time, place or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle but will never break.”  Our family is connected by many red threads, woven together carefully by God and joined together to create a family.

Henry and I have always shared a strong sense of calling to be adoptive parents. After we had been married for seven years, we began the process to adopt a child with special needs from China. A year later, we met and brought home our daughter Meili. She was a little bundle of energy and joy! A short time later, we began visiting First UMC. Two months later, Meili had the first surgery to repair her cleft lip and palate. We were overwhelmed with the support we received from First Church. Pastors Gary and Jennie both came and spent time with us at the hospital, praying over Meili before her surgery. We also received support in the form of visitors, cards, and meals provided over the next week while Meili was home recovering. The people at First made us feel like family.

            Two years later, we began the process to adopt another child from China. The following year, we welcomed Willem into our family. He has overcome many developmental obstacles and endured many surgeries and continues to grow and thrive! Meili was delighted to be a big sister and proved to be a very good one for Willem!

Now, we thought that we were done with adoption. We had completed two adoptions, had accumulated a second mortgage on our home and had lots of debt. However, this past winter, Henry and I felt a strong sense of calling to begin the adoption process again. This time the calling was harder for us to comprehend. Financially, we had exhausted all of our resources and we didn’t know how we could make it happen again. However, we were encouraged by friends and family who reminded us that God does not call us to do more than we can handle and that when we trust God to provide, we allow him to work miracles. We also received support from the adoptive community at First Church.  It was because of all the support that in February, we began the process to adopt again, this time a child with special needs from Hong Kong. 

            Meili explains our family’s call to adoption this way, “I think that we’re doing it partly to help some people in need and it’s kind of fun to adopt someone. It’s a good fit for us because all of the children in our family are adopted. A family that has people who are adopted looks all different. It’s a variety and I like that!”

            Adoption is part of our family’s response to the gift of salvation we have received from God. Our adoption into God’s family compels us to look at the world around us and to find ways to live out our gratitude. Jesus spent his entire ministry reaching out to those on the margins, including orphans. It is estimated today that there are over 150 million orphans worldwide! So how can you make a difference when there are so many? You do it like Jesus often did, one person at a time.

Adoption Fundraiser

Shirts for Sale!!! One of our adoption fundraisers is up and running. We have a store set up at Adoption Bug - part of the Steven Curtis Chapman adoption website. We get about 45% of the sale on each T-Shirt sold! Support our adoption by purchasing a shirt and spread awareness of adoption by wearing it! Thank you!!!

Click here to see the different T-Shirt options: http://www.adoptionbug.com/invisiblethread/

Dossier

Our dossier is complete, translation and processing fees are paid, and it's all in the mail to Hong Kong. Next step - referral!!!!!!!

Fingerprinting approval

So I dropped our dossier off at Bethany today and while I was there I mentioned that we were still waiting on our fingerprinting approval. One of our case workers suggested that I call USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) to see what was up. The guy who answered the phone said that he had just approved our application today and that the form was in the mail. That's great news! Once it actually arrives, our paperwork will go to Hong Kong. Then we're on to the next stage of waiting.

Waiting

I love how adoptive mother Jen Hatmaker (of jenhatmaker.com) describes this stage of adoption. While there are things to do: paperwork to gather, forms to get notarized, and fingerprinting appointments, it is also BORING! Here's what she had to say:


Pre-Stage: Waiting for Your Kiddo
I just want to touch on this stage, as it bears virtually no resemblance to every single phase that follows. This is the hungry, manic process of paperwork, dossiers, referrals, court dates, in-country travel, Embassy appointments, and deferred hope. Maybe 5% of my adoption friends sailed through this stage. For the other 95% of us, expect delays, frustrations, snags, unforeseen interruptions, bottlenecks, slow-downs, obstructions, and an obliterated “timeline.” (Dear People Who Give Us Timelines, please stop doing that.)

Here is the upside: This is the stage you realize God can put a vicious fight in you for a kid without your blood coursing through his veins. Those early doubts about loving a child without the helpful instincts of biology are put to rest. Of course, you don’t know this kid yet, but you love him in your heart, in your bones. You’ll fight like hell to get to him. You can’t think of anything else. You are obsessed. You dream about him like you did when you were pregnant. You realize that when God said He sets the lonely in families, He meant it, and He doesn’t just transform the “lonely” but also the “families.” He changes us for one another. God can create a family across countries, beyond genetics, through impossible circumstances, and past reason.

Fingerprinting!

Yes! Our fingerprinting appointment letter has arrived. Wednesday morning we will get fingerprinted for approval from the Department of Homeland Security to adopt a child from another country. Other than a few things we need to get notarized, this approval is the final piece we need for our dossier of papers that will go overseas.

Our plan right now is to work with Hong Kong. Like China, they have many waiting children there. The process is very similar to what we are familiar with from China but there are a few differences like travel time and some of the paperwork. 

I'm glad to be moving to the next step.

Next steps

Last week we sent off our I800A form (with lots of money) to the Department of Homeland Security. Basically this form pre-approves us to bring a child who has been declared an orphan back to the U.S. once the child has been adopted. As part of the process, we also have to be fingerprinted and checked. I find this interesting because we've been fingerprinted for our last two adoptions and don't expect that our fingerprints have changed a whole lot. But, that's how things go. This I800A form is pretty much the last thing we need for our dossier which is the huge packet of papers that we send over to the country for their review and approval and then, for a referral to adopt a child. 

While we wait for the I800A to be processed, we begin the daunting task of applying for grants, loans, and doing fundraising to help us bring our child home. This is going to be hard for us because neither of us like asking for help and we especially don't like asking for money. With the adoption of our last two children, we were able to do things on our own to find the money to cover all of the expenses. That is not the case this time. We are moving forward with a huge step of faith that God will help us figure out this part out. We feel such a calling to bring another child home and have been affirmed in this decision over and over. Moving forward without the funding in place has definitely been a challenge for me because I don't have control of it and need to have a lot of trust. 

Pease pray for this new child who will someday join our home. I am confident that God will use this time to make all of us ready to come together to as a family. Someday. In God's time.

Home Study and Service Plan

Our home study and service plan are done! YES!!! Next we've got to continue work on our dossier (huge packet of papers that get sent to the country) and getting fingerprinted and approved by the US government. I'm getting good at filling out these immigration forms so this should be a snap!

In other news, we are now the proud owners of 16 little chickens! They are so fun to watch! On Sunday they completely obliterated a head of lettuce that I put in their coop. So far we know that they also love mealworms, bugs and garlic mustard.

home studying

This part of the adoption process is boring. Lots of forms and reports. Getting letters of clearance. Trying to get documents from Ontario. Renewing passports. This all takes time and seems endless sometimes. Our current work is to get our home study meetings done so that our case worker can write up a big report on us. Tomorrow we have our third meeting with her and then one more. It will be nice to wrap this up. Many places that offer grants to help cover the cost of adoption require applicants to have a completed home study. That's what we'll be working on next.

Spring break and home study

We're one blood test away from being done with that round of paperwork. Next week we begin meeting with our case worker so she can update our home study. We'll have to meet four times for an hour each time. Meanwhile, we continue working on the online training requirements. It's hard to have any idea of timeframe at the point since we're really still in the early stage of this process.

In other news, it's spring break!!!

Otis

We had to say goodbye to our dog Otis last week. He was about 15 years old and his body was just not holding up anymore. He was a great dog - like a living, snuggly teddy bear. He always was up for a good tummy rub and was unbelievably gentle with our kids even when they were not very gentle with him. Rest in peace little buddy.

Forms, forms, forms,

Over the past week we've been working on filling out forms and gathering paperwork. This is a time-consuming part of the home study process. We have questions to answer about our childhoods, our parents, our marriage, our parenting style, what we argue about etc. We have to give all kinds of specific financial information. We have to take drug tests, get fingerprinted, get police clearance letters, doctor physicals, health insurance information, get copies of birth certificates, passports, etc. It's a daunting task and we have to remember that it's all about making sure we are the right family for a little boy or girl who needs one. The best we can do is pray for this little person who we don't even know yet and remember that God holds him or her in His hands.

Formal Application Approved

Our formal application was approved by Bethany Christian Services this week which was one of our first paper chase steps. Next we have to get our home study updated and start working on getting some money stuff in order.

Also, we were interviewed for a local program who was doing a segment on special needs adoption. Click HERE if you'd like to watch. Thank you for all of your support!

A new journey...

It's been about a year since I put anything on here but I think we'll be posting a bit more regularly. First of all because I found an iPad app which means I can work on this without sitting right at my computer. Second, and more importantly, we're beginning the journey to go back to China to bring another child home. We turned our formal application in to Bethany Christian Services and once they've looked it over and approved it, we will begin the long paperwork part of this journey. The first step will be to get our home study updated.

In other news, we added a new dog to our family this weekend. We've named her Sweetie which is turning out to be about the most perfect thing we could have named her.