Welcome to the our new blog designed specifically to keep you informed about our adoption process with Ooley! If you haven't been keeping up, you can check out Amber's blog at http://www.skepticaltrust.blogspot.com/ for all the previous blogs. Since we can't copy and paste them from there to here. But here's a little mini run down of what brought us to where we are today.
We went to Haiti and worked with Mission of Hope which is a great organization that you should look into! While there we visited another local orphanage and encountered a little boy approximately 18months old named Ooley. He wasn't in good health and we helped get him to a clinic for treatment. In our short time with this child, we discovered that he is our son. There's no explaining that feeling, it's a knowing more than just a feeling. With little to no interaction with him since he slept most of the time, we didn't and still don't know many details about him. But when God bonds hearts together, we know that He has does so for a reason.
We are now in the process of adopting Ooley. It has not been a fast or easy process, we've had little help gathering information and been told by many organizations that they can't help us. So here we are, knowing our son is in Haiti and trying to figure out how to get him here. We are still contacting numerous organizations and believing that one will help us soon. Ooley is in a place that cannot adopt so the first step is getting the lady who runs that place to release her rights and let us move him elsewhere. Along with that, we must find his parents or a relative to sign over their rights as well. Then we will be able to move to the next step in the adoption process.
Haiti has some requirements in their adoption laws that we don't meet. One of them being that at least one of the adopting parents must be 35 years or older. We are both about to turn 3o. Another is that we must be married a minimum of 10 years, but we will hit our 10 year in March of 2011 so that shouldn't be too hard to get cleared. For us to be able to adopt being under 35, we must get a Presidential waiver from the President of Haiti. There is a new president coming into office in October and we are believing for him to make choices that will give us favor in our adoption!
We must travel back to Haiti to be able to meet with the right people to get Ooley moved to another place. Flights are not cheap, running about $800 round trip for one person. So we have opened the "Amber and Daniel Johnson Adoption Fund" and donations can be made at all Communication Federal Credit Union locations. We have been putting money into that fund as we can afford and have been blessed to have some friends and family make some contributions as well.
We are planning a dinner and live auction fundraiser event to be held the evening of November 11th, 2010 at Crossroads Church. We are looking for items for our auction as well as local or individual business vendors to set up that night and donate a portion of their sales. We will be needing help to prepare for the event and clean up after it as well and will be putting together groups of people who are interested.
If you are interested in helping in any way or have some contacts for donations, or contacts that could help our adoption process, please email Amber at amber@salonendeavor.com and we'll be in touch soon!
Thanks for your support through our process! Please continue to pray that God will open doors and grant us favor with all right people. And please pray for Ooley to be healthy and safe!
We love you all so much!
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