Newsletter GLA

Dear Dixie, Stephanie, the staff at GLA and FLASH,

I am writing this letter to thank you all for Carmelina – a wonderful perfect match for our family and just before our permit ran out.

I had personally given up hoping for a match. Miriam (at the agency Flash in The Netherlands) and I exchanged emails in January as I asked about a possible extension of our permit. Miriam responded that an extension was not possible without a match. I understood and left the matter there. Of course you cannot produce children out of thin air and we had kept up with the adoption process challenges in Haiti through the newsletters so knew the situation was getting more difficult.

So I was not looking forward to my 46th birthday - which was just 6 days away - when all doors for adoptions would be closed just because of my age. (The Netherlands has a rule that once you reach 46 years old, you can no longer adopt a child.) Then we received the life-changing phone call from Miriam. It was just after 6:00pm and I had come in from work and was peeling potatoes. My husband, Cees, was not in yet and our son Chistiaan was playing piano in the background, so it was hard to hear. When Miriam said who she was, I froze. Flash has never called us before.

Miriam very kindly did not keep me in suspense and told me right away that they had a match for us. I could not believe it. I don’t know what I said – I was speechless. I was so surprised, shocked in fact. I was totally not expecting it. The only thing I could think was that it was now too late to get our permit extended – the Ministry of Justice would never do this in 6 days. But then Miriam said it was already extended. Until 2011!!! I could not believe my ears. It was already extended. Whoopeee….

She then said we could plan a meeting – I thought we’d have to do it right away as we’d have to agree before my birthday, but that was not necessary either. You guys had this all figured out already – including all our names on the permit!

Then she said she could tell me a little bit more about the child. Of course I wanted to know, but I did not think we were allowed to know over the phone, so I didn’t like to ask. It is a little girl she said…my heart jumped. Just what we wanted! And she is nearly 3. Nearly 3, I repeated, wow, nearly 3, how wonderful, nearly 3, how cute.

I got off the phone. I ran downstairs jumping and laughing. My son was watching TV (of course once I was on the phone he took the chance to stop playing piano!). I hugged and kissed him and laughed and jumped around. He laughed at me and kept asking me what was up. But he doesn’t know about the adoption so I just said it was really good news and that I’d tell him soon (and of course he soon forgot)….

So we scheduled the meeting as soon as we could – Cees, my husband, was able to change his schedule on Thursday so we could go that week…

Then we “met” Carmelina, what a lovely name. Well, actually I had seen her in the GLA newsletter from March 2009, since her picture was in there and she was the only “nearly” 3 year old who was a new arrival. I had thought, well it just might be her. And it was!!! What a beautiful little girl, what lovely big brown eyes. How healthy she looks! But how sad for her to be separated from her mother. It must have been very very hard for her mother to give her up. An act of love.

When Miriam asked us at the end of sharing with us all the information on Carmelina, “can I tell Dixie it’s a yes”, I looked at Cees, expecting he’d want to discuss it, and he just said very simply “yes”. I was surprised and very pleased (of course it was yes for me J.).

We feel it is a blessing.

So thank you to all of you who made such an effort in such little time on our behalf. We feel like Carmelina is a very good match for our family and we hope we are worthy of her. We do not know what it is like in Haiti, but we can imagine that her arriving on your doorstep on January 9th and then all the tests and evaluations and paperwork that needs to be done, followed by the proposal on Feb 20th was a heroic efforts on GLA’s part. That followed by Flash moving quickly to ensure the Dutch side was in order, also not a given by any means.

We recognize that the road ahead is still a long one and anything can happen in the meantime. But we have hope now. Thank you for giving us that and thank you for the care you are giving to Carmelina and the support you are giving to us.

Kind regards,

Angela, Cees and Christiaan