I am in complete awe of how God just keeps showing off in really big ways. I don't know that I have ever been a part of a God story like this one. I have heard about them, but I have never been smack dab in the middle of one. It has been a week since our world completely changed and I just wanted to share all the many ways God has shown off.
When we got the call last Saturday about a baby in the hospital who needed a forever family, we didn't even have an approved, finalized home study. We knew what we needed to get the completed home study, and we started praying that God would step in and make all the pieces fall into place. The main item needed to complete our home study was a recommendation letter from our family counselor. We were unsure if our counselor had time in her schedule at the beginning of the week to fit us in and we also weren't 100% sure she would be able to write the recommendation that quickly (we were like 99% sure, but hey anything could happen). But God stepped in and on Tuesday, we met with our counselor during her lunch hour and she already had the letter ready to go.
After our meeting on Tuesday, we took the kids to the mall for lunch and so I could email a copy of the letter to our case worker so she can finish up our home study. I had a momentary freak out that the letter wouldn't be enough so I sat there and just prayed over and over again, "please let it be enough." After lunch, we actually ran into our case worker. It was just so crazy. She came over and we chatted for a few minutes and she assured us that the letter was more than sufficient. We were also able to give her the original letter for our file. It was a small thing, but I could just feel God in the moment. I remember walking out and saying to Aaron, "if that wasn't a God thing, then I don't know what is."
The next morning, we got a call from our case worker and the case worker for our baby asking us if we wanted to go and meet our baby. I was not expecting to be able to meet our baby just 4 days after getting a call about her. Our case worker went out of her way to get our home study finalized and notarized and she even hand delivered it to me before we left for the hospital. When we got to the hospital, we were able to go and meet our precious baby girl and she is just perfect. We were also able to sign the acceptance agreement, which I didn't think we would get to do yet. I thought that we would have to be approved by the birth parents, but God was even in that and these amazingly brave parents trusted the case worker to find the perfect family.
We did find out that the birth parents still had to sign some paperwork with the lawyers and the case worker was going to be working on scheduling a time next week with the birth parents. Then Aaron got a call on Thursday, while I was on my way back to the hospital, and the birth parents actually met with the lawyers Thursday night and signed all the paperwork they needed to sign. God just keeps orchestrating this to be a quick process, and we are so thankful.
God has even been in the small things. A document had to be sent to the state to run a criminal background check on Aaron and me, and even though we overnighted it to them, we were thinking we may have left off the date on one of the pages and that the form would be rejected. It would not have been the end of the world, but we would have had to re-submit the form. Then on Friday, the case worker called and said the state had already run the search and that the results were in the mail.
Another seemingly small thing God had is hand in was the fact that we actually went to the aquarium last Saturday instead of this Saturday. We had been gifted a trip to the aquarium at Christmas, and we had friends from church who were going this Saturday and originally we had planned to tag along. But then Sophia was invited to a birthday party on the same Saturday, so we decided to go a week earlier. I didn't even think about that timing until yesterday as I was packing up to leave to go to the hospital. God knew weeks ago (heck, God knew before the beginning of time the precise moment that we would get the call about our baby girl) and orchestrated it that Sophia would be invited to a birthday party, causing us to change plans, which allowed me to be free to go spend the night at the hospital with our baby.
We also raised over $2200 in ONE WEEK!! This is enough to cover the acceptance agreement fee and we are well on our way to having the money to cover the inter-state compact fee! God has been so good to us up until this point and I am trusting that he will continue to be good and that we will get the money to cover the upfront fees, and the larger program fee that is due at placement.
Last night I was able to spend the night at the hospital with Eliana and she is doing so well. She was alert more than I've seen her so far (she was REALLY alert from 3:45 AM to about 5 AM) and she has been taking all of her bottles. She had stopped taking her bottle last week and there was some concern that she may need to have a feeding tube put in her stomach. Then this morning, during rounds, the doctors said that since she had been eating so well the last few days, that they were no longer concerned with pushing her to eat a certain amount at each feeding, and that instead, she could determine how much she wants to eat. She has more than doubled in weight since birth and when the doctor listened to her heart, she said everything sounded good.
God is just so very good! Continue to pray for Eliana to improve and also pray that we can get her heart surgery scheduled - Eliana has two holes in her heart that the doctors want to close up before they release her from the hospital. Pray for my momma heart as it is very hard to leave my baby at the hospital. Pray for Elias and Sophia, they are so excited to meet their baby sister, but they are not allowed at the hospital because it is flu season. It is also hard for them to have momma gone multiple days a week. Pray that timing will continue to fall into place - our current prayer is that Eliana's release from the hospital will correspond with her official placement with us and that she will be able to go home to our house. And as always, continue to pray for the financing. We have submitted an application for a possible matching grant and we are praying that the application will be expedited for approval.
Here is picture of the teddy bears that the hospital gave us, one for each kid, so that the big kids can feel connected to Eliana while she is in the hospital.
When we got the call last Saturday about a baby in the hospital who needed a forever family, we didn't even have an approved, finalized home study. We knew what we needed to get the completed home study, and we started praying that God would step in and make all the pieces fall into place. The main item needed to complete our home study was a recommendation letter from our family counselor. We were unsure if our counselor had time in her schedule at the beginning of the week to fit us in and we also weren't 100% sure she would be able to write the recommendation that quickly (we were like 99% sure, but hey anything could happen). But God stepped in and on Tuesday, we met with our counselor during her lunch hour and she already had the letter ready to go.
After our meeting on Tuesday, we took the kids to the mall for lunch and so I could email a copy of the letter to our case worker so she can finish up our home study. I had a momentary freak out that the letter wouldn't be enough so I sat there and just prayed over and over again, "please let it be enough." After lunch, we actually ran into our case worker. It was just so crazy. She came over and we chatted for a few minutes and she assured us that the letter was more than sufficient. We were also able to give her the original letter for our file. It was a small thing, but I could just feel God in the moment. I remember walking out and saying to Aaron, "if that wasn't a God thing, then I don't know what is."
The next morning, we got a call from our case worker and the case worker for our baby asking us if we wanted to go and meet our baby. I was not expecting to be able to meet our baby just 4 days after getting a call about her. Our case worker went out of her way to get our home study finalized and notarized and she even hand delivered it to me before we left for the hospital. When we got to the hospital, we were able to go and meet our precious baby girl and she is just perfect. We were also able to sign the acceptance agreement, which I didn't think we would get to do yet. I thought that we would have to be approved by the birth parents, but God was even in that and these amazingly brave parents trusted the case worker to find the perfect family.
We did find out that the birth parents still had to sign some paperwork with the lawyers and the case worker was going to be working on scheduling a time next week with the birth parents. Then Aaron got a call on Thursday, while I was on my way back to the hospital, and the birth parents actually met with the lawyers Thursday night and signed all the paperwork they needed to sign. God just keeps orchestrating this to be a quick process, and we are so thankful.
God has even been in the small things. A document had to be sent to the state to run a criminal background check on Aaron and me, and even though we overnighted it to them, we were thinking we may have left off the date on one of the pages and that the form would be rejected. It would not have been the end of the world, but we would have had to re-submit the form. Then on Friday, the case worker called and said the state had already run the search and that the results were in the mail.
Another seemingly small thing God had is hand in was the fact that we actually went to the aquarium last Saturday instead of this Saturday. We had been gifted a trip to the aquarium at Christmas, and we had friends from church who were going this Saturday and originally we had planned to tag along. But then Sophia was invited to a birthday party on the same Saturday, so we decided to go a week earlier. I didn't even think about that timing until yesterday as I was packing up to leave to go to the hospital. God knew weeks ago (heck, God knew before the beginning of time the precise moment that we would get the call about our baby girl) and orchestrated it that Sophia would be invited to a birthday party, causing us to change plans, which allowed me to be free to go spend the night at the hospital with our baby.
We also raised over $2200 in ONE WEEK!! This is enough to cover the acceptance agreement fee and we are well on our way to having the money to cover the inter-state compact fee! God has been so good to us up until this point and I am trusting that he will continue to be good and that we will get the money to cover the upfront fees, and the larger program fee that is due at placement.
Last night I was able to spend the night at the hospital with Eliana and she is doing so well. She was alert more than I've seen her so far (she was REALLY alert from 3:45 AM to about 5 AM) and she has been taking all of her bottles. She had stopped taking her bottle last week and there was some concern that she may need to have a feeding tube put in her stomach. Then this morning, during rounds, the doctors said that since she had been eating so well the last few days, that they were no longer concerned with pushing her to eat a certain amount at each feeding, and that instead, she could determine how much she wants to eat. She has more than doubled in weight since birth and when the doctor listened to her heart, she said everything sounded good.
God is just so very good! Continue to pray for Eliana to improve and also pray that we can get her heart surgery scheduled - Eliana has two holes in her heart that the doctors want to close up before they release her from the hospital. Pray for my momma heart as it is very hard to leave my baby at the hospital. Pray for Elias and Sophia, they are so excited to meet their baby sister, but they are not allowed at the hospital because it is flu season. It is also hard for them to have momma gone multiple days a week. Pray that timing will continue to fall into place - our current prayer is that Eliana's release from the hospital will correspond with her official placement with us and that she will be able to go home to our house. And as always, continue to pray for the financing. We have submitted an application for a possible matching grant and we are praying that the application will be expedited for approval.
Here is picture of the teddy bears that the hospital gave us, one for each kid, so that the big kids can feel connected to Eliana while she is in the hospital.
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