First, our apologies for the length of time between our last blog post and now. Jodie had sinus surgery the beginning of December. The holiday season no matter how hard we try seems to get too busy.

We were also walking through the end stage of life for our first rescue dog who we had 13 years as he had cancer. The same day he (Wrigley) died, we had a new rescue puppy arrive from Texas. Grieving the loss of one dog and trying to help a fearful rescue puppy was not only time consuming but emotionally draining. Then in March we added another rescue puppy to our family (Bear). He arrived just before our state instituted the “stay at home” ordinance due to Covid-19.

This brings us to where we are now in April where most of the United States is in a period of shut down due to a worldwide pandemic. Is this having an effect on our adoption process? The simple answer is yes.

Everything in the United States is moving at a slower pace which is affecting the different government offices we are working with on our adoption. Haiti likewise has not been spared from the pandemic and it is having an effect on the work that can be done there.

However, we are still pursuing our adoption from Haiti. When we started the process to adopt from Haiti we envisioned hardships like wondering how God would provide financially? How long would we wait? A worldwide pandemic wasn’t on our radar. But God knew what hurdles were ahead for us on this journey, and we continue to trust that He will make a way.

We have a few specific prayer requests:

1. We are in the midst of a home study update and are missing some out of state clearances. We sent the clearance requests well before the shut downs happened, but are assuming when most people went to remote work those forms went to the wayside. We are waiting on clearances from MO and IL (since one and/or both of us have lived in those states previously). Thankfully, we heard from people at both respective offices via email this week and are hoping the clearances will come back soon. Pray they reach our Ohio caseworker ASAP.

2. With the clearances being MIA we will miss our deadline that our home study update needed to be sent to USCIS. It sounds like lots of grace is being given right now as this pandemic has affected everything. Please pray our update is finalized quickly and USCIS accepts it without any issues.

3. Please continue to pray with us that we are matched soon. With everything going on with Haiti this past year + it slowed down the matching process. We don’t know how much time will be added onto the process due to a worldwide pandemic either, but we do know that God knows and has a plan.

4. We have not wanted to do any fundraising right now as many people are without work and we want to be considerate of that. We will probably not do any new fundraisers until we are officially matched. However, we will be updating everyone soon on where we are at with the puzzle fundraiser we started a year ago. It is almost done!

Once we are matched we will have some fees due soon after. Our last big expense was our home study update which is roughly half the amount of the original home study. We are hoping and praying to have our child home before the next update is due. Pray that God continues to provide the means for our adoption.

Thank you for continuing to ask for updates and how we are doing during this process.

We hope you all are staying safe and well during this crazy time.

The pictures are of our rescue pups, Simba and Bear because who doesn’t need some puppy cuteness right now? 😃