Our Referral Anniversary

Have I ever told you the story of our referral? It's really an amazing story and one that proves even more that we were meant to be the parents of these two little angels!

When we started this process, we requested a referral (i.e., to be matched with) one infant of either gender. Over the next few weeks, though, I kept wondering about sibling groups...do they get split up because most people only want infants and usually only adopt one child. Louie and I are both very close to our siblings. Anyone that knows me at all knows how much I love and how proud I am of my little brother. My life has been enriched by him in countless ways. So, I asked Louie whether he would consider siblings, thinking that he would definitely say "no." But, he surprised me and was wholeheartedly onboard. Our agency began to look for siblings...an infant and an older sibling under the age of four. If they found them, they would give us our referral early (before all of our approvals were complete) because it was a special case.

Months passed and they didn't find them. At that point, we had completed all of our paperwork and were only waiting on our CIS (immigration) approval. If the agency hadn't found siblings by the time we received our final approval, we would go ahead and accept the referral of one infant.

Then, on Wednesday, April 19th, we received our CIS approval for the adoption of one or two children. Since we knew our agency hadn't found a sibling group, we were expecting to be matched in the next few days with one little baby. But, as luck would have it, our agency coordinator was out of the country and would not be able to give us our referral until the next week. Well, everyone knows how patient I am, so it won't surprise you that I called the adoption agency at 8:01 a.m. on Monday morning to talk about our referral. Turns out that our coordinator got food poisoning in El Salvador and wouldn't be in until Tuesday. Ugh. I was so anxious to be matched with a baby that I didn't care that she was sick...just get in here and give us our referral!

The next day rolled around and I emailed our coordinator first thing to say...sorry you were sick, now let's talk about our baby! Well, when she responded at 10:25 a.m., she had a surprise for me. While she was out sick on Monday, the agency received a referral of two siblings, Catalina and Carlos,...and I wasn't able to read much more before I started screaming and crying. I called Louie and couldn't get the words out fast enough...they found siblings. As I was reading him the rest of the email, I realized that there were photos. I opened the following picture and my heart and life were changed forever.



All of that happened six months ago today. If any of the events leading up to that day hadn't happened just so, we wouldn't have been matched with these two perfect, little people. If we hadn't gotten our CIS approval when we did (on baby Gus's birthday!)...if our coordinator hadn't been out of the country...if she hadn't gotten sick, we wouldn't have found our babies. But, it happened just the way it was supposed to and we believe that God orchestrated it all according to His perfect plan.

Sorry that this has become such a long posting, but I hope that you appreciated the story. We are reminded today that we should wait on God's timing because He does not make mistakes. Our children will come home just when they should.