Meeting Miss A

There are no words to express the feelings and emotions behind what God is and has been doing....

Are family had a safe and good trip down to Ecuador.... we expected to settle in on Monday and be off to meet Miss A on Tuesday, but surprise, surprise...we are in Ecuador! :) (I am trying to explain what that means to my family...but they don't quite grasp it yet!) So after a couple hours asleep we were awakened to the news that we were going to meet some officials and get the process going. Within two or three hours we were standing in a circle waiting to meet our dream come true! In bounced the cutest little girl with Dorthy's ruby slippers on with a bouquet of roses for her mami. It was with great emotion and tears that everyone was rewarded with a big hug from our baby girl. 

Our Happy Family! Praising God and reveling in the moment of our incredible joy!

New sisters!

Enjoying Hopes piano playing!

Enjoying the attention of mami and her new doll.

We definatly enjoyed our time with her and I think she felt the same! It seemed so surreal that the little girl we prayed for and hoped for was finally with us!

After we dropped off miss A for the day it was time to get mom and dad some Ecuadorian experiences and going grocery shopping seemed the perfect thing since we really needed to eat. Brianna remembered the appropriate Spanish words for the taxi and mom and dad did the shopping! It was with much joy and anticipation that we all collapsed into our beds!

It all seems to good to be true but we know that God has truly done a million miracles and we are truly here meeting the girl that God has been preparing us for!

Please pray for us....

Life as we know it is really about to change forever!
       
            We are so excited...and right now I don't think any of us are nervous or having 2nd thoughts. We are pretty well ready to take flight and embrace what God has for our family. We are in awe when we see where we are today, because we have covered a lot of ground in the last 17 months and we have seen God move some pretty impossible mountains. I hope and pray that for the rest of our lives not one of us will ever doubt that God is the God of the impossible and there is nothing that is to hard for Him!

This is the Lord's doing, it is marvelous in our eyes.

Psalm 118:23

              We are so thankful for all of you that have so prayed for us, encouraged us, and given so generously to help us in our endeavor to bring this little girl into our home. This is not finished yet, we are just stepping into the next stage of the journey, but it is a very critical one...and it brings us to the final stage of bringing her officially home. We have heard some exciting news from Ecuador and it makes us that much more exciting to meet our new "baby" sister.

              However as you can well imagine meeting your new family at the age of nine cannot be the easiest things, so please pray for and continue in prayer for our beautiful Miss A! She is an inspiration to us all and has already become such a part of our family. We are trusting God that she will come to know that. Please pray that she will bond with us, and us with her.

                We know what we have entrusted to God and we have seen how He has provided greatly! Please pray for a quick and speedy legal process in Ecuador, safety traveling and wisdom and understanding through the whole process.

              Also pray that God would use this experience greatly in each of our lives, that it would used for the glory of Christ in our individual lives and as a family. Pray that the relationships that we establish there, though they may be fleeting, pray that they would have an eternal impact.

             And in all these things pray that God will be glorified, pray that the Gospel will be lifted up, and Jesus Christ will be praised.

We have been assigned!!!

With great rejoicing, anticipation and thankfulness we announce that our family has been officially assigned to adopt Miss A! The road is not over yet, but we are yet one step closer to bringing this little girl into our lives.

I speak for us all when we say we are so excited to make this little girl part of our family, but I think through this long, heartbreaking process God has taught us to simply see the joy in the journey..... Our crowing joy won't be the day we all meet her and hold her, nor the day she shares our last name, not even the day she come's home..... but we are trusting God that one day we will look back and be able to see how God slowly and carefully took the life of a little girl and redeemed it through the love of a family that He had been preparing for her.

So today we simply say thank you God for this journey and path you have brought us on, because you have done so much in our live and we know that you are not done yet.......

So please continue to pray with us and for us as we start making plans to be in Ecuador, as the details are worked out and as this little girl will soon be introduced to our family through pictures and videos. These may all seem like more little details in this whole process but they are HUGE and we pray that God will be in each one.

It is both scary and exhilarating as we keep moving forward on this journey, from buying clothes and things for Miss A, answering the questions our small nephews, looking forward to what is ahead and enjoying the days that we have left before our family grows.

I'm going to steal from my own facebook post here....

I can not wait to hold this little girl again and call her sister! Its so exciting to see God working and we are so excited to see what God has in store for her and our family. She will soon become the 9th and youngest Velie child, the 1st adopted sibling and our family will become multi-racial. Praise the Lord!

Adoption Journey

We would like to thank everyone who has prayed and supported us along the way...this has been an incredible and like changing journey for our family and its far from over yet! This is our way of saying Thank you and Please continue to pray and support us as God continues to make the impossible, Possible!

Please feel free to share and pass this one...

Choice or Calling??

I use to think that Adoption was a choice that a family made....

But I have learned that Adoption is a calling....

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"Adopting in God's mind was not Plan B. He predestined us for adoption before the creation of the world. Plan A was not lots of children who never sin and never need to be redeemed. Plan A was creation, fall, redemption, adoption so that the full range of God's glory and mercy and grace could be known by His adopted children. Adoption was not second best. Its was planned from the beginning." John Piper

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Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy. Psalm 82:3

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. James 1:27

There are an estimated 143 million orphans in the developing world.

It's a gross understatement to say there are more children than adoptive families. Statistics from the US State Department show that in 2009 there were a total of less than 13,000 international adoptions completed in the US.

The numbers are crushing:

*15 million children have lost both mother and father.

*Tens of millions more are fatherless.

In the US alone 514,000 children live in our foster care system, and approximately 115,000 of them are waiting to be adopted right now.

*There are 18 million street children in India alone.

But a single statistics matters more than any other:

--It only takes one caring individual to make a lifelong difference for an orphan

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What can I say? What can you do? I can't rescue all the children in the world! I can't fix all the social and legal problems. I can't get all the children adopted into loving and caring family's, I can't even get them all into loving and caring orphanages! I use to think of adopting as a choice, a family might chose to do this. if they can't have children, if they have the money and want to help an orphan, or if they simply want to help a help out an orphan. But when I stood in a room full of orphans, when I heard a girl with autism ask, where is my mom? When I seen children ask for a family, when I was surrounded by children that were full of behavioural issues and trapped with no way out....adoption and orphans took on a whole new meaning.....

Does it make sense to adopt a 9th child? Does it make sense to adopt a child that is blind or deaf? Does it make sense to adopt a child that has severe special needs? Does it make sense to spend countless hours, waiting, praying, and fundraising? Does it make sense to bring a foreign child across language, cultural and physical differences? Does it make sense to go through the pain, the adjustments, and the heartaches that adoption costs?

No, no, no, I think it sounds absurd, I think it sounds like a lot of work, I think it sounds like we should all just forget about it....

But wait...does it make sense that countless children are waiting for families? Does it make sense that just because they have a physical or mental handicap they shouldn't enjoy a family life? Does it make sense that we shouldn't because we have a large family....when they have no one? Does it make sense that we should give up because we can't afford it, when God has promised to provide, watch over, care for and protect these children that are so precious to Him?

Can not God provide a way?

For my family we never would have embarked on this journey if it hadn't come as a calling....if it hadn't required faith....if we hadn't stopped to say, "Your will be done, dear Lord". So God is moving mountains and we have the privilege of watching, participating and seeing what God will do.

A Gift for "Miss A"

Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift. 2 Corinthians 9:15

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. James 1:17

This morning "Miss A" was very sad wondering when her family is going to come for her. She doesn't know what it is like to have a family, she has been living at For His Children since she was very little. But she is still longing, waiting and hoping.....

This afternoon I was able to give her a gift, she doesn't get many gifts so it was very special for her! The psychologist told her that I really love her and I am going to be leaving soon so I wanted to give her a surprise! So she tried to wait patiently for her surprise...

After some visiting and chatting I gave her the present and she pulled it all out! She kept asking, is this for me too? This is all mine? It's just for me? I don't know if she has ever gotten a present from an outside person in her life. They always get birthday presents from the orphanage....but this was different.

She was so excited and thankful! She just kept saying, gracias, gracias, muchas gracias tia Brianna!

We had to figure out what to do with everything!

She loved the blanket!

As far as she knows, she just received love and attention from a nice senorita,  but I know so much more! It's so hard to not say God willing, your family is coming! Do you want to be my sister? You have a family that is thinking about you and praying for you everyday! You have a family that has cried for you and is so excited to meet you! You have become part of our lives and you don't even know it yet...

She was thankful so she drew my a picture of her and I.... can you tell which is me? I think the hair gives it away.... :)

Today when I went to see her she showed me her new blanket...and told me it is very warm! She dragged her pictures and bible around all day! I don't think I have ever seen a gift so appreciated!

Well my time with her is winding down...I head for home next week! I'm so thankful that I met this sweet little girl, and for every moment I have enjoyed with her... now I look forward to when I get to see her again!

This afternoon we prayed together....her in Spanish and me in English, these are such sweet times!

This little girl has truly been a life changing gift from God, and I know she has only began to teach me what me and my family will learn through her precious life, and this wonderful journey that God has placed us on.....

A special treat with "Miss A"

I have been trying to talk to the Psychologist at For His Children for about a week now..but we haven't ran into each other at the right time....but this morning she came into talk to me while I was working.....It was a wonderful little chat and left me full of joy and tears of happiness! (literally I cried when I left) She encouraged me to form a closer relationship with "miss A" and invited me to spend time with the two on them in the afternoon. So I could spend more one on one time with "miss A" and make it more personal. Of course their is a major langage barrier between us, which makes it hard, but we will have to overcome is sometime, so might as well work on it while we have the opportunity! 

We headed to Condado Shopping, the local mall...

They do this to introduce her to the world outside of the orphanage...

So she gets use to traffic, people and all the wonders of the outside world! She was very chatty on the way, Andrea the Psycologist knows some English so she helped out...

But when we walked into the mall, "miss A" just looked and watched! She was a little nervous, but she enjoyed looking around. We went to a book store and she just stood in amazement  It took her awhile before she would actually look at any books. Andrea was really great about giving us space and encouraged us to talk to each other even if we didn't understand what the other one was saying.

Then we walked around a clothing store and a shoe store, explaining to her what high heels are, apparently she thought someone had something sticking out of the bottom of their shoes when they came with heels on...

We went through a toy store too, but again, she just looked in wonder....

Then we went for ice cream...chocolate ice cream...does it get much better than this? She enjoyed her ice cream but I think she needs a little practise on licking it off the cone...

It was so special!

So after we got back to the orphanage, we had to stop and say hi, to Senior Lama... 

She wanted to take a picture of him too!

She was so excited to tell the tias about her time out...

I was very excited too! :) I'm so thankful that I met this little girl and for every moment we have shared....because I know....this is only the beginning....

This Girl

She has changed my life, and made me fall in love with her in 3 short months...
She has changed my families life, they will never be the same, and they have not even met her yet.

Its definitely one of my favorite times of the day when I go and see her...
She is always busy, and always smiling....

She loves to braid hair, dance, sing, and get into mischief.....

 I love her hair! It just matches her personality....

I love watching her, being with her, talking to her and getting to know her....

I am so honored to know this amazing little girl! I can't wait for my family to meet her, and for the day they get to tell this little girl that she does have a family! The family she has been waiting and praying for....Can it be? Will we really be hers? Will she really be ours? God says, Nothings is impossible with those who believe....

Little miss "A"

This is the little girl my family and I have come to love!

So many people ask us why? Why would you adopt? Why would you go through all the trouble?

The truth is.....

We don't really know why, but God has laid it on our hearts.....

Here is a little girl, and we are a family.

So why not?

She needs us, and God has appointed that we need her!

It will be a long journey of faith, that won't end the day we bring her home, in some ways that will only be the very beginning. It won't be easy, our whole family will have to give of themselves to make this little girl part of our family. But it is a calling from God, we are embracing.

I will go back home in one month, but a part of my heart will be staying with this little girl. She doesn't know that I will be her sister, she doesn't know that she has a family waiting for her. She only knows that she is an orphan, and she is still praying for her family.

She only knows that I am a volunteer at the orphanage. But my heart bursts because I know so much more!

She teaches me Spanish, and I teach her English. The Lord know how much both of us to need to learn it!

If there ever was a doubt in my heart that she was to be my sister, it would have all diminished with this hug and kiss. But I am so blessed, my family doesn't have the opportunity to know her, before she becomes one of us. But they pray and wait for the day, when this little girl after over 8 years of waiting finally meets her family.....and to her surprise will recognize one of her sisters.

This is a huge calling that God knows we can't do on our own! But we know that God is capable of doing this. So we ask you to join us in praying for this little girl as she waits, our family as we work on the adoption, and pray that God would provide miraculously the funds to bring our little miss "A"   home!