The Mayor Came Out!!

Ok... so, we've been waiting since December for the Mayor (Mayor/Judge... I guess the title is interchangable... :)??? to come out to see Christéla in the orphanage so that her abandonment process can start. We've been very discouraged because eight months have gone by with no sign of him - and our adoption of her can't start until she is officially declared abandoned. Well.... HE CAME OUT!!!! Apparently, he came out about two weeks ago! THANK YOU JESUS!

We don't know exactly what this means as far as timeline to complete the abandonment and get into IBESR. Does it take a few months??? Does it take a year??? We don't know... but, AT LEAST THIS IS ONE STEP IN IT COMPLETED! Our agency representative is going to be talking to the orphanage director soon, and will let us know how the rest of this process works. (She has worked though abandonments before, but in a different area of Haiti - and it may work a little differently there...)

Here are a few pictures we've received of our girls that were taken this summer. The top four are Christéla. One with Marla, another little girl from the orphanage that is being adopted by a family at our church. The other three are with a girl that was on a missions trip to the orphanage this summer that Christéla really took to. The bottom five are Aliyah. You can see her in the turquoise shirt in the toddler room. In one she is showing us her tummy... in two of them she is getting onto her nanny's lap, one is the room where the toddlers eat (she is in the very far right back corner) and the last one is the update picture we got from the orphanage this month.