Photo updates

Due to various circumstances, the photos are later, but they're here. I didn't get any update on Islande. (Received them later: June update: Islande
Height: 48in; Clothes size: small girl 7-10; Favorite food: sandwich; Favorite color: orange and blue. She is doing well in her manner and attitude)



A friend who returned from Haiti yesterday e-mailed:
Yesterday your daughter was very sad asking when you would come to see her. I told her you would come soon. She said she really missed you.

I wasn't planning on this trip, but I am really glad I am going, especially now.

My airfare is booked. My appointment to sign my I-600 at the USCIS office in Haiti has been made. I am frantically trying to get the "certificate of good communal living" through all its steps to get it down to Haiti (notarization -- done; authentication at the Secretary of State in Denver -- tomorrow; off to Haitian Consulate in Chicago for legalization -- tomorrow). The director said she'll have it translated in Haiti.

We are entering our ninth month in IBESR. (I know I said that before, but I miscounted.) Please pray that we are released as soon as they receive the certificate. There are several families in the same stage we are, with our dossiers waiting on the director's desk. Pray us out.

Rapper Wyclef Jean working to develop Haiti

By Joseph Guyler Delva
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - When Wyclef Jean went to Haiti recently, he had in tow the television cameras you might expect of a big-time rapper and producer.

But he also was accompanied by a pool of buttoned-down business types, including the likes of Canadian entrepreneur Belinda Stronach and other potential foreign investors.

The Haitian-born Jean, who rose to fame with the Fugees hip-hop group and became a homeland hero with his efforts to bring education and peace to the impoverished Caribbean nation, has set his sights on serious economic change.

The Grammy-winning musician said the poorest country in the Americas, roiled by food riots in April, needs foreign investment and help with sustainable development but not charity that could cause Haiti to become even more dependent.

"I understand that there is a food crisis that needs to be addressed urgently, but at the same time donors need to inject funds in projects likely to bring sustainable results," he told Reuters in an interview at the end of a five-day visit last week.

Haiti, struggling to establish a stable government after a long history of political upheaval since a slave revolt threw off French rule two centuries ago, endured its latest turmoil when skyrocketing food prices triggered the ouster of the government nearly three months ago.

Jean, 35, said the most important contribution the international community could make to Haiti is to invest in agriculture, road projects and economic infrastructure.

"Charity will never solve Haiti's problems," he said. "Haitians want jobs, they want to develop their agriculture to produce food, not to everlastingly receive food assistance."

Jean, who enjoys enormous respect in Haiti and was appointed last year by President Rene Preval to serve as a roving ambassador, was followed last week by a team from the U.S. TV news program "60 Minutes" for a show about the artist and his humanitarian work.

FAMOUS FUGEE

Born in the Haitian village of Croix-des-Bouquets, Jean moved with his family to New York when he was 9 years old. The Fugees, the group he formed with Lauryn Hill and Pras Michel, recorded the 1996 Grammy-winning album "The Score," which sold 17 million copies worldwide.

In 2005 Jean started a foundation called Yele Haiti to provide access to education, professional training, job and entrepreneurial opportunities and other social programs.

In May he launched an initiative to raise $48 million to expand food distribution and provide assistance to farmers.

Jean has called for an end to the kidnappings-for-ransom that have plagued Haiti in recent years and urged Haitians and foreign partners to create a safer environment for investment.

"To solve the economic crisis, we need investments and to have investments we need security," Jean said. "To have security we have to start addressing the social problems in the most vulnerable and underprivileged neighborhoods."

Jean has distributed food in Cite Soleil, the largest slum, and corn and millet seeds to farmers in his home village. Many of Haiti's 9 million people live on less than $2 a day.

UTOPIAN DREAM

He called on Haitians to unite behind social change. "Social and economic change will remain a utopian dream if we remain divided," Jean said.

Haiti's fractious politics has been on display in recent weeks as Preval tries to replace Jacques Edouard Alexis, the prime minister fired by Parliament after the food riots.

Lawmakers have rejected his first two nominees. On Monday, Preval designated a third, economist Michele Pierre-Louis, who faces an unpredictable ratification process.

Responding to speculation he harbors ambitions to run for president in 2010 elections, Jean said he is not interested.

"When you are trying to do something positive, people think you want to run for some position," he said. "But I can assure them I don't want and I am not going to run for president."
Jean said he would consider it a greater achievement to reach his goals and dreams for Haiti than to become president.

"In the end, I am a rap star and I don't see myself behind a desk sitting as president. I want to be out there using my contacts to help my country and do what I can do best."

Islande

A family that is in Haiti right now took a lot of photos of the kids and snapped a great picture of our sweet Islande. Thanks, Derek and Kayla!!!!




Mama's coming to visit soon.

Adoption Update

UPDATE: I heard Saturday night that IBESR is STILL requiring the "Certificate of Good Communal Living" from us. So I have to hurry and get it written, notarized, translated, OK'd at the Haitian consulate in Chicago, and down to Haiti. Grrrrrrrrr.

I don't have any new pictures to post yet. We're supposed to receive updates the middle of the month, but with the stormy weather in Haiti and teams that are there, there have been delays. But rest assured that I will post when I get them!

My social worker called last night with good news.

Before I get to that, I need to explain a situation that had been brewing for a couple weeks. I received a call a few weeks ago from my social worker that Haiti was requiring a "Certificate of Communal Living" from us -- basically wanting to know how long Mark and I had known each other. The reasoning was because we had not been married five years. They requested this letter from us back in January. It was sent and accepted by IBESR back then. Well, they were wanting it again, even though we hit our five-year anniversary in March.

For His Glory's director is currently in Haiti and had a meeting with the attorney that week, so we were hoping they could get things straightened out without us having to have an "authority" write said letter, having the letter translated, and then having to pay bucks to FedEx it to Port-au-Prince.

Fast forward to last night, social worker Natalie called and said IBESR is NOT requiring the certificate from us. Woohoo!!

Also, she said that our dossier is at the fourth and final signature stage in IBESR.

Please pray that we are released this month!!!! There are several families waiting, and we've been in about nine months (which seems to be the wait).

In addition, we are strongly being encouraged to travel to Haiti during set dates soon to sign our I-600 (to classify an orphan as an immediate relative) at the USCIS office in Port-au-Prince. We were told that we can sign it stateside, but it most likely will add five or more months to the process.

Prayer requests:

• That we are released from IBESR so we go into Parquet (one wait to another)
• That finances come through for the trip
• There are no further delays
• That we can bring the girls home by Christmas (of this year!!!! -- I know it's a longshot, but I can hope!)

The Princess' Birthday (and the Long-Awaited Comforter)

The invitation. Made with the help of Mark's mom, Carol, who has all the fun scrapbooking stuff to do things like this.






Princess Charis -- cleaned and coiffed for her party (of course the curls were gone by the time the party started)






The cake was supposed to be a castle. Don't worry, I'll get better. Mark's mom is paying for me to attend a Wilton cake decorating class (and I am SO excited -- I've been wanting to take the classes for a long time). I already have most of the kit (bought it years ago to play with) and Carol is going to give me some of the stuff she has.


The princess and her court at the party.



Carol and I started on this comforter for Charis in March 2007. Carol says it's my first quilt, since I designed it (and cut out the pieces), but she did all the sewing!



Here's the bed skirt. The valances are the same material with tab tops. The purple butterflies are on the tab tops where they connect to the valance. I put those up about a year ago.


Carol is going to put together two more for Islande and Katiana. One of the other comforters is half finished.


A couple weeks ago, some friends gave us a set of wooden bunkbeds. So we measured to see how to make the skirt and comforter work with those.

Happy Birthday, Charis!

My little June Bug celebrated her 4th birthday yesterday! I can't believe how grown up she's getting! These are some of the portraits we had taken at Target last week.

I'll post party photos soon.

VBS

I'm finishing up my second week of volunteering with my church's Vacation Bible School. We're doing Group's Power Lab, and it's been a blast. They even brought in a chemistry professor to do some experiments -- including using a flame to explode a hydrogen-filled balloon. Another of my favorite experiments the professor did was to combine chemicals that caused an oscillating reaction -- the chemicals would change from gold to blue, gold to blue, etc.

Charis is in the preschool group, called the "Squeaky Beakers." She's been learning the songs and hand motions. It's so cute! She brought a neighbor girl this week. Unfortunately, they aren't in the same class.

I've been a crew leader with the elementary kids. I had 7 kids last week and 6 this week, ranging in age from 5 to 11. My junior crew leader and I take the kids to all of the stations throughout the day -- worship, crafts & missions, games, snack, Bible blast and Faith Fusion Finale.

A very athletic friend of mine volunteered with the worship team (although she's not in the above picture). They "perform" for the elementary kids three times a day, and probably two times with the "Squeaky Beakers" -- we're all together for the last one. She said she lost four pounds last week. Maybe I'll volunteer for the worship team next year!

Today the leaders gave the kids the opportunity to accept Christ. I had one girl go forward today and two last week.

We ministered to 955 kids; about 250 made first-time decisions for Christ.

VBS ROCKS!!!!

Update: Our babysitter, Amy (who Charis calls "Mamie"), just called to say that when the VBS team prayed with the preschoolers today, Charis prayed with Amy to ask Jesus into her heart!

Of course I'm elated to hear that, but also knowing my daughter, I don't think she really understands what she was doing. I tried to talk to her about it this evening and she was distracted by her stuffed animal, her teeth, whatever.

Have any of you experienced something like this?

Katiana

One year ago on June 6, Katiana was brought to the orphanage to stay. She had been on the "waiting" list. The photo was taken by a friend that day. We were at the hotel that afternoon. Charis was running a fever, and we wanted to spend some time with Islande.

The next day, we were leaving Haiti. We had an hour at the orphanage to say good-bye and to meet Katiana. The poor little thing looked so scared. Her birth mom was there, too (we didn't realize that at the time). Katiana didn't want much to do with us at first (I don't blame her).

We committed to Katiana a couple weeks after our trip.


Jodie with Charis, Islande, Katiana (standing) and another baby brought into the orphanage that day.

Although Katsi has taken some time warming up to me on my two subsequent trips, she is such a happy girl who loves to smile and laugh. She's growing up so fast.


Katiana in March 2008.

One Year Ago ...

One year ago, Mark, Charis and I were in the middle of our first trip to Haiti. Until this point, God had not made it clear who He wanted for our family.

But on June 4, standing in the front yard of the orphanage, God spoke to my heart about Islande. He said, "No matter who else you want, Islande is yours."

This picture was taken about the time God gave this sweet girl to us.

Saying Good-bye to a Really Busy Month

May was an extremely busy month (I didn't realize how much until I wrote it all down!).

You saw the ear "pursing" Mother's Day weekend and we went to the zoo, but then that week I was deeply involved in putting together a comedy night fund-raiser for my Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) group--which went much better than anticipated. The next week was our last MOPS meeting.

And we had three birthday parties we attended--

one at Focus on the Family's Adventures in Odyssey area ...

another at Pump It Up where they have rooms of inflatable slides, bounce houses and obstacle courses ...

and another at Aerials Gymnastics (yesterday) ...

(This was a really cool three-person swing that would go really high! Charis also played on trampolines, on an inflatable slide and swung across a foam pit on a zip line -- I didn't know how she'd do with that, but she LOVED it!)

Charis also finished this semester of gymnastics at the Little Gym. For the summer she's going to switch gears and try a class that's half dance (tap/ballet) and half gymnastics. We'll see how that goes.

We also had a ton of play dates at the park, at Mr. Biggs, at My Gym ... it's been a blast.

We spent Memorial Day weekend down in Albuquerque visiting Mark's family. It was a nice trip. It's great that we're able to go down more often now that Mark has his own business.

So, today we all spent all day at the church setting up for Vacation Bible School. This is Charis' first year to participate and I'm SO EXCITED! I'll be volunteering, too. It runs one week, but we offer two sessions, and I'll be working both. We're expecting more than 800 kids over the two weeks! Amazing! So stay tuned, because I'm sure I'll have pictures from that (even if it's of the two of us passed out on the floor!).

Still Waiting

You don't know how badly I wanted to scream, "WE'RE OUT!" But, again, I cannot.

We received our monthly update this morning.

Hi Mark and Jodie,

Your dossier is still in IBESR. The good news is that 3 dossiers have been released. I know timing can be challenging. It all has purpose … for you and for your children. And knowing that, with great confidence we can say “rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, REJOICE!” Philippians 4:4 May the joy of the Lord be yours this coming month!

I know of one family adopting twins and another adopting a boy who were released from pit #1. They entered IBESR about a month before we did, so hopefully we'll be hearing some good news in the next month. Our general update (on the yahoo group) says 6 dossiers were released from IBESR, 6 from Parquet, 3 from MOI, and 4 kids went home this month. I rejoice with my friends who are celebrating!!

Please pray for my attitude. I've been in a real funk all month -- with the adoption, the cyclone, earthquakes, tornadoes, the death of Maria Chapman, and a few other things. I have been having really discouraging dreams. It's really hard to start off the day like that.