Prayers Needed for January 17th

Dear friends, family, and prayer warriors...this post is for you!

Please be praying tomorrow, Tuesday, January 17th for our orphanage director, Rachel, the other 700+ Haitian orphanage directors, and the new director of IBESR (Haitian Social Services) as they meet to discuss the issues with Haitian adoptions! This is a HUGE opportunity for God's pro-adoption heart to be heard through these directors as they make their plees with the new director to make changes in the adoption processes. Specifically, I have heard issues will be addressed such as lowering the age requirement to adopt from Haiti, as well as trying to somehow shorten the length of the process. Shortening the process would save the orphanage directors and the adopting families money (because these children wouldn't be under their care for so long and because the steps of each part of the process cost so much money) and would obviously get the children into solid family homes sooner. This would get each of these precious orphans into those forever families waiting for them currently as well as encourage others to adopt through Haiti! Obviously, these would be WONDERFUL outcomes from a meeting such as this and could TOTALLY affect our adoption process with Nora!

From what I have heard, this new director has had at least one meeting with the orphanage directors before, but because there were so many there and she had so many things she wanted to tell them, the orphanage directors were not given much of a chance to speak for themselves. This second meeting taking place tomorrow is specifically for them to be able to stand up and verbally share with her their thoughts, concerns, and questions. This meeting has the potential to break through the LONG timeline of this process and therefore we are praying for God's mighty Spirit to be filling that room tomorrow on behalf of every little orphan waiting for a home as well as on behalf of these orphanage directors who clearly have a heart to see these orphans find their forever families.

Please pray for the new director to be open and convicted and convinced that God's design for adoption needs to be implemented in a much more manageable way in Haiti. She has been heard saying she is not necessarily against adoption, but she sees it as a last resort, which has not been encouraging to hear. We are simply praying for her eyes, ears, and heart to be open to the plees of these directors and the children they represent.

Ultimately we are praying that no matter what happens in this meeting, God would be honored, these orphaned children would be placed as a priority, and all of the discussion would be directed towards positive change. Our hope is that the positive change would result in our own adoption of Nora to be a speedier process than what it is looking like as of now.

Thank you so much for your prayers tomorrow and for all your prayers in general for our adoption. We appreciate them so very much and know they are what will get us through the long days of waiting to hear something--anything--from the Haiti end!

Blessings to all and thank you again for praying!