Yes there are back to back travel groups!! There are about nine families in this travel group and several of them have blogs so I wanted to try and put this on here for any of you wanted to follow along.
http://jabrannon.blogspot.com
http://sharps2rwanda.blogspot.com
http://www.growingalittlebranch.com
http://grace-embrace.blogspot.com
http://thebowersparable.blogspot.com
There you go have fun following a long and praying for all of them
By the way we are at 8 month of waitting
Thanks
Jill Bruno
#125
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
DTR 7 months
DTR 7 Months
At the end of March we will have had our dossier in Rwanda for 7 months now!! That is kind of exciting to me because it means we are getting closer now. There has been a lot going on in the Rwandan adoption program recently. Today in fact, six families from AWAA are traveling together in a group to Rwanda. They will be there about three weeks while they get their kids!! This is so excited to think that 6 families will see their children they have been waiting for ( many in this group have been waiting over 2 years since the time they were accepted into the Rwandan adoption program) and 6 or more children will be with their forever family for the first time!! Two of the families have blogs that you can follow along if you are interested.
http://www.plannedlongago.blogspot.com/
http://www.addingasmith.blogspot.com/
We are all praying for these six families that the Lord straighten out the path in front of them and all their appointments and meeting will go very well. We are also praying for all the kids left at home while their parents leave for three weeks, this can be hard on some of the little kids left at home.
There also were two families who adopted independently from Rwanda, and they had two blogs with great video and pictures. I love to look at these because it gives a glips into what it looks like in Rwanda, and at Home of Hope.
http://lotstolearnbutmoretolove.blogspot.com/
http://theschulzfam.blogspot.com/
News on our adoption is that some of our paperwork has expired, but we are not in too much of a hurry to update it, because it will expire again next year. So we are going to wait a little bit then update it. This is a little hard for me, because I don’t like have overdue, or outdated, or late anything. But our fear is that if we update it now and say this Dec we get our referral, and then travel in the next two months after that, it will be March again and our paperwork will be outdated and we will be getting to travel all at the same time. So we are hopeing that waiting a little bit to update will work in our advantage in the future, We will see.
Thank you for all your prayers and support,
Jill B
At the end of March we will have had our dossier in Rwanda for 7 months now!! That is kind of exciting to me because it means we are getting closer now. There has been a lot going on in the Rwandan adoption program recently. Today in fact, six families from AWAA are traveling together in a group to Rwanda. They will be there about three weeks while they get their kids!! This is so excited to think that 6 families will see their children they have been waiting for ( many in this group have been waiting over 2 years since the time they were accepted into the Rwandan adoption program) and 6 or more children will be with their forever family for the first time!! Two of the families have blogs that you can follow along if you are interested.
http://www.plannedlongago.blogspot.com/
http://www.addingasmith.blogspot.com/
We are all praying for these six families that the Lord straighten out the path in front of them and all their appointments and meeting will go very well. We are also praying for all the kids left at home while their parents leave for three weeks, this can be hard on some of the little kids left at home.
There also were two families who adopted independently from Rwanda, and they had two blogs with great video and pictures. I love to look at these because it gives a glips into what it looks like in Rwanda, and at Home of Hope.
http://lotstolearnbutmoretolove.blogspot.com/
http://theschulzfam.blogspot.com/
News on our adoption is that some of our paperwork has expired, but we are not in too much of a hurry to update it, because it will expire again next year. So we are going to wait a little bit then update it. This is a little hard for me, because I don’t like have overdue, or outdated, or late anything. But our fear is that if we update it now and say this Dec we get our referral, and then travel in the next two months after that, it will be March again and our paperwork will be outdated and we will be getting to travel all at the same time. So we are hopeing that waiting a little bit to update will work in our advantage in the future, We will see.
Thank you for all your prayers and support,
Jill B
Friday, February 4, 2011
DTR 5 Months
DTR 5 Months on Jan 30th
Well January started off with a big bang!! In the adoption world there was a lot going on, there were 20 or more approvals that were given to families. An approval is a letter from Rwandan Gov’t saying your family can adopted from this country. Two months after receiving your approval letter you should get your referral. A referral is a picture of your child and their medical information. So you can see why approvals are very exciting, especially when you have been waiting for one for 18months!! So like I said January started out very exciting with 20 or more families receiving approval letters. Not all of these families were with AWAA, some of these people are with other adoption agencies in European countries, others are adopting independently, but there were quite a few with our agency. This was all very exciting, and brought hopes of us maybe receiving a approval letter sometime this summer!!
Now for the past couple of weeks we have had no word from Rwanda. No Approval letters, no referrals, not much going on. This is typical those of the adoption process. It reminds me of being at the airport were you are always in a hurry just to wait, and wait, and wait.
We are at the point in our adoption were we need to update our home study. This is something we had done a year ago with a social worker through the state. So I have some more paperwork to get started on. I also have had the opportunity to talk about our adoption at church for different groups of people and that has been nice. Also it is neat to hear people from church asking about our adoption and they too are getting excited for us to bring home our other kidoos. One benefit of having a long wait is all the people that are getting excited for us, and it is neat to see God at work all around us.
Thank you all again for your prayers and support, we are in this together.
Jill
Well January started off with a big bang!! In the adoption world there was a lot going on, there were 20 or more approvals that were given to families. An approval is a letter from Rwandan Gov’t saying your family can adopted from this country. Two months after receiving your approval letter you should get your referral. A referral is a picture of your child and their medical information. So you can see why approvals are very exciting, especially when you have been waiting for one for 18months!! So like I said January started out very exciting with 20 or more families receiving approval letters. Not all of these families were with AWAA, some of these people are with other adoption agencies in European countries, others are adopting independently, but there were quite a few with our agency. This was all very exciting, and brought hopes of us maybe receiving a approval letter sometime this summer!!
Now for the past couple of weeks we have had no word from Rwanda. No Approval letters, no referrals, not much going on. This is typical those of the adoption process. It reminds me of being at the airport were you are always in a hurry just to wait, and wait, and wait.
We are at the point in our adoption were we need to update our home study. This is something we had done a year ago with a social worker through the state. So I have some more paperwork to get started on. I also have had the opportunity to talk about our adoption at church for different groups of people and that has been nice. Also it is neat to hear people from church asking about our adoption and they too are getting excited for us to bring home our other kidoos. One benefit of having a long wait is all the people that are getting excited for us, and it is neat to see God at work all around us.
Thank you all again for your prayers and support, we are in this together.
Jill
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
DTR 4 months
On December 30th we were DTR (dossier in Rwanda) 4 months. Things are moving right along well. Not much has happened directly with our adoption, but that is to be expected. We are hoping a praying that by Christmas 2011 that we will be home with all of our kids. There are roughly 100 people in front of us waiting to adopt. I did have the opportunity to share with a group of ladies about what God has taught me so far during this adoption process. This was very exciting!! And in the process I was able to share the gospel too!!
Even though there is not much with our adoption that has been happening there is a lot of excitement with the Rwandan adoption program. Over the past month we have found out that the ministry has hired a couple more people to help process the dossiers. This in turn has lead to five families receiving a letter from the ministry called a non-objection or approval letter. What this means is that these five families have been given permission from the Ministry to adopt from Rwanda. After a family receives this letter then their information is passes on to the orphanage where the nuns who choose a child or children for that family. Then the nuns write a letter or recommendation to the ministry about the child and this is approved by the ministry and then send on to the families in a letter called a referral. I know this is all very confusing to someone who is not in the middle of it all, but to families that are adopting each one of these steps is so exciting and more importantly one step closer to seeing their children!! So we praise God and thank Him for answering our prayers.
Hope you all had a good Christmas and New Years, and thanks for following along with our adoption journey.
Jill
Even though there is not much with our adoption that has been happening there is a lot of excitement with the Rwandan adoption program. Over the past month we have found out that the ministry has hired a couple more people to help process the dossiers. This in turn has lead to five families receiving a letter from the ministry called a non-objection or approval letter. What this means is that these five families have been given permission from the Ministry to adopt from Rwanda. After a family receives this letter then their information is passes on to the orphanage where the nuns who choose a child or children for that family. Then the nuns write a letter or recommendation to the ministry about the child and this is approved by the ministry and then send on to the families in a letter called a referral. I know this is all very confusing to someone who is not in the middle of it all, but to families that are adopting each one of these steps is so exciting and more importantly one step closer to seeing their children!! So we praise God and thank Him for answering our prayers.
Hope you all had a good Christmas and New Years, and thanks for following along with our adoption journey.
Jill
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Month two
Well it has been two months now that our dossier is in Rwanda. This month we did receive a number that was assigned to the dossier. We are #125 and what that means is that there are 125 other people in line ahead of us waiting for there children too. This also means that some people like #4 have been waiting a very long time. So it looks like another year or more of waiting for us.
When I was getting close to the end of all the paper chasing part of this adoption, I thought when I get done with this, then I will take a break from all this adoption stuff and go back to life as normal. Well quite the opposite has happened. I have felt lead to become more apart of the adoption group and find more ways to help, and more ways to get involved. The biggest way I have gotten involved is with prayer. I feel this adoption process is one of the biggest spiritual battles that I have ever been apart off (and being a pastors wife I have seen a few battles in my time). All I can say is that Satan has a firm grip on those orphans and does not want to let them go. So I have spent a lot of time praying for those ahead of me in the wait and have seen God so some amazing things. But the big thing to pray for is those ahead of us would get the referrals of their children especially dossier numbers 1-10!! I also have been praying for what else the Lord wants me to do for the orphans in Rwanda??
When I was getting close to the end of all the paper chasing part of this adoption, I thought when I get done with this, then I will take a break from all this adoption stuff and go back to life as normal. Well quite the opposite has happened. I have felt lead to become more apart of the adoption group and find more ways to help, and more ways to get involved. The biggest way I have gotten involved is with prayer. I feel this adoption process is one of the biggest spiritual battles that I have ever been apart off (and being a pastors wife I have seen a few battles in my time). All I can say is that Satan has a firm grip on those orphans and does not want to let them go. So I have spent a lot of time praying for those ahead of me in the wait and have seen God so some amazing things. But the big thing to pray for is those ahead of us would get the referrals of their children especially dossier numbers 1-10!! I also have been praying for what else the Lord wants me to do for the orphans in Rwanda??
Saturday, October 2, 2010
1 month
One month down and an infinite number more to go. Our dosser has been in Rwanda one month now, and that is so little compared to others who are adopting from Rwanda. There are some exciting things that have happened this past month in the ministries office. We have found out that they have a special room set up with all the dossiers in it. They have assigned numbers to all the dossiers that have come in before June 2010 and that is about 78 or so. They also have been going through many of the earlier numbered dossiers and looking very closely at them checking dates and signatures and looking for missing paperwork. So a few family's have been chasing down papers for there dossiers and sending them to the ministries office. We are hoping that this will lead to a group of referrals being given out in the very near future.
We also received some good news this month. A couple of months ago we had applied to an organization called "Show Hope" for some money to help fund our adoption. Well we found out this month that they have decided to give us $2,000!!! The Lord is Good, All The Time!! What "Show Hope" does is they are the go between adoptive family's and people who want to help orphans financially. This will be a great blessing as we push toward saving $10,000. We will need about $5,000 to accept our referral, and about $5,000-7,000 to travel. If I remember to break it down into smaller sized it is not quite so overwhelming.
One other thing I received this month from "Show Hope" was a little devotional about adopting. It was very inspirational and encouraging, and I learned a lot. One things was reminded of is that we are all orphans and God adopted us into his family, and what we are doing by adopting others into our family, is not something heroic, but just what God has done for us. And that is what God calls us to do to others what I have done for you. There were also many encouraging words from other adoptive parents, and what one mom said was, "I smile when considering how many times I complained about the wait, and I always thing to myself, "I would have waited on you forever"." This frays has reminded me that I will wait forever for these kids, because they are so worth the wait.
Well this next month I will be praying hard for the ministry office in Rwanda to hand out 8 referrals this month. I am also going to do a big push for the sale of coffee from our storefront. So if you need some more coffee just click on the "Just love Coffee" link and you can order some. At the end of the month I will get a check from $5.00 for each bag of coffee that I sell.
Hope you have a great October, with all the leaves falling and cool crisp air, and lets work together to take care of God's orphans and widows.
Thanks
Jill
We also received some good news this month. A couple of months ago we had applied to an organization called "Show Hope" for some money to help fund our adoption. Well we found out this month that they have decided to give us $2,000!!! The Lord is Good, All The Time!! What "Show Hope" does is they are the go between adoptive family's and people who want to help orphans financially. This will be a great blessing as we push toward saving $10,000. We will need about $5,000 to accept our referral, and about $5,000-7,000 to travel. If I remember to break it down into smaller sized it is not quite so overwhelming.
One other thing I received this month from "Show Hope" was a little devotional about adopting. It was very inspirational and encouraging, and I learned a lot. One things was reminded of is that we are all orphans and God adopted us into his family, and what we are doing by adopting others into our family, is not something heroic, but just what God has done for us. And that is what God calls us to do to others what I have done for you. There were also many encouraging words from other adoptive parents, and what one mom said was, "I smile when considering how many times I complained about the wait, and I always thing to myself, "I would have waited on you forever"." This frays has reminded me that I will wait forever for these kids, because they are so worth the wait.
Well this next month I will be praying hard for the ministry office in Rwanda to hand out 8 referrals this month. I am also going to do a big push for the sale of coffee from our storefront. So if you need some more coffee just click on the "Just love Coffee" link and you can order some. At the end of the month I will get a check from $5.00 for each bag of coffee that I sell.
Hope you have a great October, with all the leaves falling and cool crisp air, and lets work together to take care of God's orphans and widows.
Thanks
Jill
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