After seven and a half years, we are finally within a few weeks of completing our adoption and bringing our twins home from Haiti! Before life gets crazy, I wanted to write down some of the process we have been through... mostly so we don't forget how the Lord has so clearly led us and provided for us (and I know He will continue to do so!) So here is the story of how we made Marvel and Marvens a part of our family...and some of the "God-winks" along the way.
Adoption has always been part of a tentative "plan" for our family. Even when we were dating, Ben and I thought we would probably like to adopt someday. My brother had adopted from China, and I knew a few families who had adopted from my home church in Maryland... I always felt like "why wouldn't I?" Ben said he had heard someone speak at Campus Crusade when he was in college and they said that every Christian family should at least pray about whether they were called to adopt. This had resounded with him, and he also felt like that was something he could see the Lord leading him to do someday. We had always figured we would adopt domestically from the states, and probably through a foster-to-adopt situation because of how expensive any other option was.
I had just started to look into fostering and adoption in 2011 when I found out we were pregnant with Abby. Then in 2012, we realized we were going to be planting a church, so it got put on the back-burner again. We decided we would wait until we were settled in our new home and new church plant before looking further into the process. We moved to South Carolina at the very end of 2013.
Friday, February 27 - Monday, March 2: Trip to Haiti
We met Mike and Sharon Jette in the summer of 2014. In January 2015, we started weekly Sunday gatherings. Mike and Sharon had been planning to go to Haiti for a weekend in February with a group from a Presbyterian organization, and they invited Ben to go with them. Ben didn't feel like he could leave for a weekend so soon after starting Sunday gatherings, so he suggested they take me instead. Lindsey Bucher came too. So we went with the bigger group for the weekend to visit and learn all about Haiti Outreach Ministries (HOM) in Port Au Prince, Haiti. While there, adoption truly did not even cross my mind that I remember. It just wasn't even on my radar at that point. Although we saw horrible poverty that weekend, we did not visit orphanages. We visited the schools and churches that HOM had founded, and we learned about the work that they were doing.
The first night in Haiti, Pastor Leon (the host for our trip who had founded HOM) shared with us that God has a sense of humor. He calls people into things that they don't see in themselves. (This is how he felt about his own role in Haiti.) I immediately thought of the story of Gideon in the Bible, when Gideon was hiding in the wine press from his enemies, and an angel of the Lord came to him and said, "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior." I was asked to lead a short devotional for the group the next day, and so it was this passage that kept coming to mind. I read through the story of Gideon in Judges 6:1-16, and the Lord spoke to me through this passage all weekend in powerful ways. God does not call the most qualified or the most obvious candidate for his work. Outside of time, he could see that Gideon, who was the underdog in every way, really was a mighty warrior because that was who the Lord had called him to be. God calls out in people - or in nations - the things that aren't as though they were - and in that very fact, they are empowered to become what God called them. In the story of Gideon, Israel is horribly impoverished - partially because of their own sin and corruption, and partially because of the oppression of other nations - and in their poverty, they turned back to the Lord. And the Lord raised up an underdog (Gideon) to save his people. The parallels I saw between Israel and Haiti were obvious... they were both incredibly impoverished and in desperate need of saving. IF the people of Haiti would cry out to God in their need, why wouldn't He delight in using this unlikely underdog for his glory? What if revival in the entire western hemisphere actually came from its poorest nation?
I was so glad I had visited Haiti for the extended weekend, but I also couldn't wait to get home and sleep in my own bed and drink water I knew was safe. I'm not the best world traveler by any means. We flew home late in the day on Monday, March 2, and I got to my house and climbed into bed in the early hours of the morning on Tuesday.
Tuesday, March 3
Abby, who had just turned 3 in January and was a mama's girl, had really missed me while I was away in Haiti for the weekend. Tuesday morning, after Ben was already at work and Abby had just woken up, I was sitting in a rocking chair in her room, cuddling with her and feeling very tired from the short night's sleep. I thought how strange it was that I had just been in a totally foreign land and culture only about 12 hours earlier. I literally thought in my mind the words, "I wonder if I will ever go back."
What I heard next was not an audible voice, but it was so clear, it might as well have been. In my mind I heard the sentence, "Yes, to get your children." It felt like a 2x4 had just hit me in my gut and I could barely breath. I felt stunned, and I began to shake. Was that actually the voice of the Lord? Did I actually just hear that? It felt like a wave came over me of confirmation, and I KNEW I wasn't imagining things... I HAD heard it, and that sentence had been placed in my head. It's hard to explain that moment, or the moments right after it. I felt like I inwardly shook myself off as though I was trying to "come to my senses", and the first thought I had was, "It's going to be too much money." (Honestly, Ben and I had never even considered international adoption because financially, there was just no logical way to do it on our income.) I had barely finished that thought when I sensed another clear "word from the Lord." Again, it's hard to explain, but it felt like He almost chuckled and shrugged a shoulder and said, "It's just money." As though money is ever a hindrance for Him. Once again, I felt like I needed to check myself... was I SERIOUSLY hearing this? In the span of about 5 minutes, I KNEW that to ignore what I was hearing and feeling would be disobedience, and I needed to tell Ben what I had experienced. It really felt like those minutes in the rocking chair in Abby's room were "holy ground" moments.
Those were the only two things that felt spoken directly from the Lord. "Yes, to get your children." and "It's just money." My SECOND thought (after "It's going to be too much money") was "Did I just hear CHILDREN? As in plural??" No answer there besides a feeling of knowing I heard what I heard. (And God said what He said.) We had talked about adopting ONE child domestically before, but never more than one. I mean, I think we would have considered adopting one child, and then a couple years later, if that was going well, adopting another. But never would I have been okay before adopting more than one child at a time. I already had an 8 year old, 5 year old, and 3 year old. I couldn't imagine adding on two more kids at once. I was very practical in that sense. But I knew I had heard "children," not "child."
When Ben came home for lunch, (he was working at Fast Signs just a couple miles away), I told him, "So.... I think we're going to have babies. And I think they are going to be Haitian." I laughed as I said this, but quickly told him what I had experienced that morning, and his immediate response was, "I'm in. Let's do it."
Obviously, even what feels like a "clear" word from the Lord needs to be tested. We shared with friends and family the next evening what we were thinking, and we prayed a lot for clarity and assurance...but I think Ben and I both felt pretty quickly that it would be disobedience if we didn't at least pursue the next step and begin the adoption process.
On Thursday, March 5, I wrote in my journal: "Jesus, you have overwhelmed me, but I want to obey. It feels like a clear call you gave me Tuesday morning that we should adopt from Haiti, but it is so impractical. We don't have nearly enough money, and I don't even know how we will fit five children in this house. Or how we will pay for dental care and doctor visits or CC for them all. It makes no sense. But I feel like to not pursue adoption in Haiti would be to disobey you. And you have certainly turned my heart in that direction. I WANT two Haitian children, whereas before Tuesday morning, even while I was IN Haiti, I felt pretty closed to it. Lord, give me faith. Help me in my unbelief. If this is the calling you have on our lives, you will provide. Help us to step out of the boat with confidence. We're doing something that makes no sense and you've got to come through for us."
I went on to write: "'Gideon built an altar to the Lord there and called it 'The Lord is Peace.' ...'The Lord said to Gideon, "You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, 'My own strength has saved me.'" Thank you, God that you don't prefer the "practical route." You thrive in the impractical. God of Peace, give me peace in this journey. I love you."
Beginning the process
Ben and I are very "practical" and "logical" people. We both like numbers, and we like the spreadsheets to balance. When I looked up the average cost of adopting two kids from Haiti, I saw that it would take 3-5 years to complete an adoption there (wrong! - more like 7-8 years) , and the cost would be about $55,000. That was more money than we made in a year! Obviously, the finances were a huge concern to us, but we knew we would have to trust God to do something we couldn't see yet in order to provide.
The second week of March, we went to Florida to visit my parents/for a vacation. My brother Kenton and his family (and Dennis and his family) were going to overlap with us for a few days, and we were excited to tell everyone that we were going to start the adoption process. I planned to do some research and decide on an adoption agency to go with while we were in Florida. Kenton and Holly had already adopted two kids from China, and a couple years earlier, Kenton had told me that he thought they were done adopting, but that he hoped to use the farm to help support others adopting. I wasn't banking on anything, but I did have the thought in mind that maybe God would lead them to help us with some of the initial costs of our adoption. We knew we would have to pay between $14,000-20,000 within the first year or two. I think we had maybe $14,000 total in savings... we had been able to save about $10,000 our last year in Ohio when Ben got a pay raise for taking on the role of lead pastor for part of the year. But that was ALL we had, with no other resources, and the little bit we were able to save in addition on our monthly budget was pretty miniscule.
A few things happened on that trip... first, before Kenton and Holly arrived, my Mom told me that Kenton's family was starting the adoption process to adopt a little boy in China. Obviously, I was so excited for this, but I also made a mental note that they obviously wouldn't be in a place to help out with our adoption. Second, on our drive down to Florida, our friends the Reeves called us to let us know they would be moving out of the house they were renting from us. That meant we would no longer make any money on the house in Ohio until we found another renter. I was reminded of the story of Gideon (again) where God tells him he has too many soldiers and he needed to decrease the men even further. Third, I decided on using Carolina Adoption Services for our agency. It wasn't a Christian adoption agency, BUT I got the sense the woman I talked to was a Christian (I found out later many of the workers there were Christians), and it was smaller, meaning we might have better one-on-one communication. The woman I talked to was named Angela Jackson, (she oversaw the Haiti program), and it wasn't until much later when we were well into the adoption process that I realized something... my OB/GYN in Springfield was also named Angela Jackson, and she had delivered all three of my babies. Here I had ANOTHER Angela Jackson who was helping us bring home the rest of our children!
Pictures from the trip to Florida. Seeing Abby this little makes me realize how long this adoption process has really been!
When we returned from Florida, Ben stopped working at Fast Signs and started working part-time at Carroll Financial, with Mike Jette as his boss. That job in itself was such a blessing from the Lord and a story in itself. Ben was making the same pay as he had at Fast Signs, BUT Mike was paying for him to take all the classes and tests he needed to become a Certified Financial Planner, and there was the potential for financial growth.
Ben's first day at Carroll Financial:
"God Winks"
God used the adoption process to reinforce again and again to us that our security and provision is not in our bank account, but in the Lord. There were so many moments God used...
1) The weekend after I got back from Haiti and we had just told our friends we were going to adopt, I was telling God it would be nice to have a family locally who was experienced in international adoption. That Sunday morning, Jason and Danielle Thompson walked in the doors of church for the first time, with all 7 kids in tow, two of which were adopted from Ethiopia! They would become really great friends and "resources" for us, along with several other families God brought to our church and homeschool group.
2) At the Vineyard conference in Ohio that July, someone introduced us to David and Laurie Bateman, the pastors of the Vineyard Church in Charleston (a house church!) who had adopted from Haiti a few years prior. Just after a brief introduction, Laurie paused and looked at me and said, "God always pays His bills." Those words hit me hard, like they were straight from the Holy Spirit. I would cling to those words for years.
3) I began applying for grants left and right. We received a $2,500 matching grant from LifeSong right away, and we had someone immediately say they would give the $2,500 to be matched. So there was $5,000 right there!
4) We did a crazy big garage sale, and it felt like people from our church and all over gave items. We raised over $2,000 from the garage sale. Someone else handed me a check for $1,000 to help with the adoption.
Our gigantic garage sale:
5) We worked so hard (and paid so much money!) all year to finally complete everything for our dossier to mail to our adoption agency on January 19, 2016. I knew I had to pay an additional $14,000 along with it. We had $7,000 left in our savings account. I had been praying for the last couple of months for another $7,000, but we had no idea where that would come from. One day in November, Ben walked in with the mail, and was like, "Here is your $7,000!" Show Hope had promised us a $7,000 grant! Upon closer inspection, though, we would not be able to use the grant until right before we brought our children home.... so we wouldn't have it for submitting with the dossier. Still, I knew that the amount Show Hope had promised us was no mistake... God was telling me again he would answer my prayers. The DAY BEFORE we had to submit the money, we still did not have an additional $7,000 to send. When I prayed that morning, I felt like the Lord said, "I promised I would always give you your daily bread, right? I will give you enough for each day, and it's not tomorrow yet." That afternoon, I got a call from our adoption agency. They told me that the figures they had given me were based off of adopting two kids, but since we wouldn't know for sure if we were getting two kids or only one kid until we received our referral, I only had to pay $7,000 with our dossier, not $14,000. The remaining $7,000 could be paid if we later got a referral for two kids. So we had exactly what we needed!
Mailing off the dossier on January 19, 2016:
6) MUSHROOMS - I can't remember if this happened before or after we submitted our dossier, but one day, Ben was sitting at the kitchen table working on our budget while I made dinner. We were talking about how we could possibly save for the adoption and what else we might need to adjust in our budget. I realized as I was cooking that although the recipe did not call for mushrooms, I usually liked to add mushrooms in, but because they weren't on the ingredient list, I probably had not bought any at the store. I couldn't remember buying any, but I decided to check anyway. I remember the fridge was unusually empty as I looked in it; I had just cleaned out old leftovers and hadn't gone shopping again, so I could easily look everywhere in the fridge. I rummaged around, but didn't find any, so resigned to making the recipe without the mushrooms. THEN, just at the time when I would have added them to the recipe, I opened the fridge again to get something else, and there was a pack of mushrooms, front and center on the middle shelf. I was like, "Oh wow, how did I miss those?!" I began to cut them up, but decided maybe I should go light on them and save a few incase I needed them for omelets or something else. When I opened the fridge to put the few mushrooms back in, there was ANOTHER pack of mushrooms just off to the right side of the middle shelf. I was like, "No way! Now I have MORE than I need!" So I added all the mushrooms I wanted to the recipe and kept cooking. That's when it occurred to me that God had just given me a visual picture of his provision as we were talking about our budget and paying for the adoption. One of two things happened: 1) Either God miraculously put those mushrooms in my fridge or 2) I had bought them, forgot about them, and then He blinded my eyes to them until JUST when I needed them. Either way, I felt like God was AGAIN telling me he would provide - just when we needed it - and more than enough.
Ben said that soon after we started the adoption process, as he was wrestling with the cost of it and just feeling frustrated by how much it would take, God reminded him that we had just bought a house for $95,000 a few months before that. He felt like, "If I can take out a loan to spend almost $100,000 on a house without batting an eye, how much more can I joyfully pay half of that to save the lives of two kids!"
Both Hands - March 19, 2016
Another HUGE blessing was the Both Hands fundraiser we did. (Here is a link to what Both Hands is: https://bothhands.org/about/) We had totally emptied our savings to send in the money due with our dossier, but we knew we would need another $28,000 or so to send in when we got a referral. Both Hands ended up being the main solution to that! In a nutshell, we had a team of people spend a day working on a widow's home in order to raise funds for our adoption. (A hand for the widow; a hand for the orphan: James 1:27.) Both Hands as an organization was amazing and so organized! I poured a ton of time and effort into this project, getting all the supplies we needed donated and planning out the projects. We connected with a widow named Ms. Nat through a pastor at Park Baptist (the church where CC meets.) Because she had dementia, the kids and I would often go visit her after lunch on CC days so she could see us and be a little familiar with us before we brought a crew in to redo so much of her house. Through Both Hands, we ended up raising $26,772!!!! Initially, it was closer to $22,000, but over the course of a few years, a few more people gave to it - some one-time and some monthly. (Here is our Both Hands page and a video about our project: https://bothhands.org/ganson-236/)
One of our Wednesday afternoon visits to see Ms. Nat:
1) In raising money for our adoption, I first encountered the idea some people have that you shouldn't raise money for adoptions! Basically, if you want to expand your family, you should pay for it yourself and not ask others to help. I guess I had always thought of adoption as "taking care of the orphan" as commanded in the Bible, and if you can't adopt yourself, you can always support those who are. I didn't see our adoption so much as us wanting to expand our family, but rather to obey a calling, one we had no way of paying for ourselves WITHOUT the help of the body of Christ. Anyway, we asked our friends (those on the team of people working on the house) to send out support letters to all THEIR friends and family to sponsor them in their day of work. (And we ourselves sent out a ton of letters.) And all that sponsorship would go toward our adoption. We had some friends who said they would help on the house, but wouldn't send out support letters to help raise money for the adoption. It was a very humbling experience to so openly ask others for money... and to ask others to give up a huge chunk of time to help with the project itself. At times, I really struggled, knowing that a few people didn't agree with what we were doing, and I wondered if I was asking too much. Then one night, I was at a friend's house for a time of prayer, and a man I had never met before and who knew nothing about us or the adoption or anything else said that while praying, he had a picture of me handing out roses. I don't remember exactly how he worded it, but it was something along the lines of "You feel like you're handing out something heavy, but you're actually handing out roses." The Lord used those words to remind me that I am offering others a BLESSING to be able to participate in our adoption process and the Both Hands project. I was giving them a way to carry out the biblical command of helping the orphan and the widow.
2) The day of the project - May 19, 2016 - was really beautiful! The afternoon before the project, the rain forecast was like 75% chance of rain all day... I had actually starting calling some of the main "construction" people on our team to see if they would still be available for our rain date if we moved it. But when we realized we would lose a ton of people, we decided to just pray for no rain. A few of us went over to the house the afternoon before and did some prep work outside, including painting the front porch. That ended up being a huge blessing because otherwise, we would not have been able to get everything done the next day! When I woke up on May 19, the rain forecast had started to drop significantly and kept getting pushed back... even though we heard a little thunder, we didn't see a single drop all day! Here is what I posted on Facebook at the end of the day: "In true God-like fashion, even though the forecast looked worse and worse by the minute yesterday... we did not see even a DROP as we worked on our Both Hands project today. The rain that was supposed to start at 6 am and last all day never came! We got EVERYTHING done, Ms. Nat (the widow whose house we worked on) kept crying with gratitude, and I'm pretty sure we have the most amazing group of friends in the world. Thanks for praying... it worked!!!" Ben missed the whole first part of the day because he found out the brakes on his car were having issues, so he had to take the car into the garage.
Working on painting the trim and the porch the afternoon before the project...
3) One of the very cool side effects of the Both Hands project was how it brought our church (and other outside friends) together. Working all together with a common cause was just really uniting, and it felt like it left a "glow" over all of us for a while afterward.
This is a picture of every volunteer that day, except Robby Moody (who had run to the store...) Mike Zieber made the sign so we could have this picture for our kids....
Here is a link to more pictures of the project on my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=janelle.benderganson&set=a.10154077720218156
4) Even the process leading up to the project was really encouraging. We did an "envelope stuffing" party at our friend Chris and Megan Lee's house. Everyone who could make it brought their addresses, and we provided the stamps, envelopes, and printed fundraising letters. We spent the evening addressing/stuffing envelopes and eating dinner together. It was a really fun evening! We ended up sending out over 1,000 support letters! One of the other cool God-winks we received that night... between paying for the stamps, envelopes, and printing the support letters, we had just spent about $1,000 out of our pocket. At the envelope stuffing party, a couple came up to us and said, "We felt like the Lord asked us to give this to you." In the envelope was almost exactly the amount of money we had just spent on all those items!
Before the Referral
We thought the whole adoption process would take 3-5 years, but Haiti's adoptions were CRAWLING along so slowly... they had joined the Hague Convention not long before we started the process, and while ultimately a lot of that was for good reason (to keep kids from being trafficked), it also overloaded their system with red tape. They just didn't have the infrastructure, people, or technology to do everything they needed to do, so it bottle-necked everything.
We had requested 2 kids ages 5 and under at the time of referral (so they would hopefully be 6 or under when they would come home), and by Haitian law, they had to be siblings if they were being adopted at the same time. Abby was 3 when we started the process, so we figured she would be maybe 7 when our kids came home, which would leave a little age gap between her and a 6 year old. Our dossier actually said we would take ONE or two kids, even though we really wanted two because the way it was explained to us, if we asked for two kids we would almost certainly get two. But if we could only get one for some reason, we thought we would just adopt again.
Every night before bed, we would pray for the "Haiti kids." After a while, when Abby was probably 5, she finally asked one night, "Wait, what are Haiti kids?" We laughed, realizing she had never known a time we weren't talking about "Haiti kids." We explained to her that these were kids from Haiti who don't have a family who can take care of them, so we could be their family. She got very concerned very fast, and did not like the idea of more kids living with us. So for a couple days, she prayed, "Dear Jesus, please give the Haiti kids another family." Eventually, she was bothered by the fact that she really DID feel bad for kids who didn't have a home, so she suggested we just buy a house for them to live in by themselves, so they didn't have to live in our house. Fortunately, as she got older (within a year I'd say), she warmed up to the idea, and eventually really WANTED to have kids added to our family. But thank goodness we didn't have the option of bringing kids home in that window of time when Abby was so against it!
Caleb was 5 when we started the process, and he was super confident we would get all the money we needed for the adoption. I found him digging holes in the yard several times because he was planning to find buried treasure for the Haiti kids. He also asked for a metal detector for Christmas for that very reason. :)
When we sent our dossier to Haiti, it entered into IBESR, the social services agency in Haiti in charge of matching potential adoptive families with kids. We ended up being in IBESR for five and a half years before we received our referral in December 2020. There were a couple of "close calls" though. In July, 2019, we got a call from our adoption agency when we were driving to the Vineyard Conference in Ohio. She said that they knew there was a file for 2 little brothers in Haiti we were being considered for - a 5 year old and a 3 year old. (Ben had been saying for a while that he thought it would be two boys - he had had a dream about it. :)) While there was a certain level of excitement to that fact, I also felt something more like panic. We had had a rough few years financially that had depleted much of the savings we had managed to build up. Our house on Northern Ave. in Ohio had lost both of its renters in the same month. One of those renters hadn't paid for the last couple months she lived there. We had a really hard time filling one side of the house, and in the process, found lots of things that needed fixing, including almost all new plumbing. We had sunk over $10,000 into the house, and although we had the money from Both Hands that we could use to pay most of what would be needed if we accepted a referral, we still would not have enough savings to pay the huge chunk due. We knew we could probably ask my parents to borrow what we needed and then pay them back... but even after paying the amount due when we accepted the referral, we would very soon after that have to pay for a two week "bonding trip" to Haiti, plus start buying all we would need for two more kids. And two BOYS were kind of the worst case scenario for our little house... it would mean putting four boys in one room somehow. Ironically, soon after the call from the adoption agency, while we still had several hours to go to get to our destination in Ohio, the air conditioner in our old yucky van died. It seemed fitting! (Also crazy enough, about an hour from Ohio, it suddenly began to work again with no explanation. Just in time!) A month or two after that, we learned that the file for the two boys had been matched with someone else instead, and honestly, that felt more like a relief than not.
A year later in August 2020 we got word that there was the potential of another match. This time we were given more information (although I'm honestly not sure if we were supposed to be given as much info as we got!) This time, it was for only one little boy named Kinsley. The attorney said he knew his file was ready, and he wondered if we were given the opportunity to be matched with him, if we would be willing to take just one child. We were so confused why we would not be given two children if we were willing to take them, but the attorney said that there were so few files being processed because orphanages (creches as they are called in Haiti) couldn't afford to pay for the legal process to get the files ready for kids. And TWO kids like we had requested would have been even more expensive for them to create files for. Plus, COVID-19 was still going strong, and nothing was moving fast. Again, my first response to the thought of being matched was a feeling of anxiety. We prayed about it and told the attorney that we would be open to accepting his file if we were matched with it, BUT that if there was any chance of getting two children within the next couple of months, we would prefer to hold out longer. I don't know if this actually has anything to do with it, but the referral we finally did get 4 months later was for twins from the same orphanage as Kinsley. I wonder if our response somehow highlighted the twins from the same creche as being good candidates for us. I have no idea! I do know that in late November, when we were told ONCE AGAIN that we were being considered for another file (this time no other information was given), I immediately had a sense of peace rush over me. (It felt very much like the day Ben had told me he thought we were supposed to church plant... the immediate rush of peace was absolutely not something that would have come from my own flesh. It was only given by God.) That sense of peace told me, "The other two times weren't right, but THIS time, I think it's the Lord."
The REFERRAL - Friday, December 18
Thursday evening, December 17, I had written our Christmas letter, but had not posted it to Facebook yet. In it, I said that we might be getting a referral, but that I would believe when it actually happened! The next morning, IT HAPPENED!
I was on my way to Planet Fitness to exercise that morning when I got a call from our adoption agency. At first, Angela just chatted with me a little bit and asked a couple questions, so I thought she was just calling to check in and make sure we were on top of whatever home study updates we needed to be doing at the time. And then she said, "Well, I'm guessing Ben is at work, right?" I said, "Yes." And she said, "Because I'm so happy to tell you we have your referral, and I'd like to conference call him in on the conversation!" I texted Ben really quickly to say "We got our referral!!! Angela is about to call... ANSWER YOUR PHONE when she does." Ben said he had been praying with Mike Jette (like they normally do in the morning), so Mike left Ben is his office so he could have some privacy. (But he could hear me shrieking on the phone through the wall during the conversation anyhow.) 😆 Angela told us that we had a referral for two boys, twins, who were 18 months old. I could NOT believe we had gotten such young kids. I was BEYOND thrilled and just couldn't stop laughing and shrieking! I don't know if Ben was laughing at me or at the news! Angela said that we had the record in their agency for the longest wait to get a referral, but also they had never in their agency seen a referral for two kids so young! She told us their names - Marvel (I laughed again - my boys would love that because of the Marvel comics/Avengers!) and Marvens (to which I thought, "oh boy, are we going to have to change that name?" 😆) She told us their birthdate and the fact that they had been in the orphanage since they were two months old. She gave us what other details she knew about their health and story, and I was scribbling all the info down on an envelope in our van in the parking lot at Planet Fitness. Ben sent me a text with their pictures. (Angela had emailed us documents and pictures, so Ben just texted me the photos.) The boys were the cutest little things I had ever seen!
We were never actually told for sure which boy is which in these pictures...
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After the Referral....
Finances
Just like the mushrooms that showed up in my fridge JUST when I needed them (and then MORE than enough), God did some crazy financial things in our lives right before we got our referral, and then between the time of the referral and when the boys could come home.
First, Ben was able to start working full time (40 hours a week) at Carroll Financial in January of 2020 which gave us some more income. And then that spring, Mike Jette laid out a tentative plan with Ben to start the transition for him to retire. It meant Ben taking on more responsibility/steering the ship, but also increasing his pay rate.
In April 2020, we decided it might be a good idea for me to step down from directing at CC. It took up SO MUCH of my time and energy and really wasn't feasible to keep doing that plus bring home kids. With Ben working more at Carroll, he was stepping down in hours a little at church, but the Carroll income made up for that. I was able to come on as an "administrator" for the church for about the same pay but with much less stress. Stepping down when I did made it so that I had a whole year (ended up being TWO years actually) of helping Julie, the new director, step into her role. I was still able to teach the Essentials class at CC for one more year which I loved.
When COVID-19 shut the whole world down in 2020 (and continued to shut Haiti down in 2021), we were told that we wouldn't be required (or even allowed) to do a 2-week bonding trip like would normally be required. While I hated not getting to go meet the boys while they were still so little, I knew the bonding trip really wouldn't help THEM... they were so young that by the time we would be able to bring them home, they wouldn't really remember us. In fact, it would be more like someone coming into their lives and spending a ton of time with them for a couple weeks only to abandon them again. So, we did a Zoom call instead to "meet" them. Not that they paid a lick of attention to us! I mean, they weren't even two yet! Zoom actually became so popular -and necessary - during Covid that we continued to do periodic Zoom calls with the boys so we could see them develop and they could hopefully see our faces and hear our voices just a little. And not having to spend thousands of dollars on the trip was also a big plus! (More on all the Zoom calls below...)
Not long into COVID, the government gave everyone a "stimulus check." I couldn't believe the government just sent EVERYONE money because a pandemic had made it hard for some people to work! I think that first one was $3,000. It ended up being the first of 3 stimulus checks that gave us around $10,000, PLUS at some point, the government starting paying monthly amounts to families per kid. (I think it was like $150 or $200/kid.) In February 2021, those stimulus checks, along with our tax return, enabled us to buy a minivan that WORKED and we actually loved. Now we had room for five kids in the vehicle AND they all had working seatbelts! 😆
In April of 2021, we started thinking maybe we should look for another house that had a fourth bedroom. Initially, we did not think we would be able to afford anything else, BUT then we started seeing how high houses near our neighborhood were selling for. We had paid $93,775 for our house back at the end of 2014. We had made quite a few improvements, but nothing bigger than laying hardwood flooring and replacing carpet. About a year before, at the beginning of 2020, our house would have appraised for about $125,000. But when we had a realtor friend look at our house in April 2021, he said we didn't have to do ANY improvements, and he would list it for $230,000 and let it bid up from there. So then we felt pretty confident that if we walked away with that much profit that we could put toward another house, it was doable. AMAZINGLY (in the craziest of markets), we got the first house we put an offer in on, and it was one of eleven offers! (I wrote about it in this blog post: April 2021)
Basically, the beginning of 2021 was crazy... we bought a van AND got a house and found ourselves for the first time in years looking positive financially.
But, just like the mushrooms, there was even more that we could have never anticipated: In the fall of 2021, Carroll Financial announced a merger with Wealth Enhancement Group... in the same way that a little fish "merges" with a big fish. 😅 Mike had sold his "book" (clients) to Chris and Larry Carroll about a year before that, but through this merger, Chris was going to make a lot of money off of Mike's clients. So, he promised Ben and Mike a huge bonus when the company actually sold. They officially merged December of 2021, a year after we received that referral, and the bonus Ben got was for $60,000... more than the total cost of our adoption all together, and more than our yearly income for the first 17 years of marriage! 😳😳😳
FURTHERMORE, through this merger, Mike decided he didn't have it in him to learn all the "new systems and procedures" required by WEG, so he decided to partially-retire and really swap incomes with Ben starting January 2022.
With all this change, we decided that I could start stepping down from doing administration at the church to really free me up for when the twins came home. We had higher expenses now (a bigger mortgage and obviously a lot more in taxes and health insurance - we had always had Medicaid/government subsidized insurance before), BUT our savings looked great. Ben figured if we sold the Northern Ave. house in Ohio (which we had just put a new roof on), losing the income from that, AND lost my church administrator income AND increased insurance when Micah started driving and had a car, our cash flow would break pretty even. Ironically, just when we passed off my administrative church income to Carrie Zieber, Ben's revenue at work surpassed a "critical mass" that got him another $9,000 raise.... almost exactly what I was giving up! Selling Northern Ave. in June 2022 was also a blessing. Even though we lost the monthly income it gave us, we were able to walk away with about $43,000 profit, a MUCH better amount than we had anticipated getting 2 years prior when we first started thinking about selling it.
Names and the rest of the process
One of the things we had to decide on was whether we were going to keep the twins' names or not. We joked about changing Marvens' name to "Thor" so we could stick with the Marvel comic theme. :) We knew their names would be very unique in America, and Marvens would forever telling people his name is NOT Marvin. However, as we wrestled with what to do, Ben especially felt the conviction that we were taking everything else away from them - their language, their culture, the only home they had ever known - so we could at least continue to call them by the names they identified with. (Ironically, we are not 100% THEY even know their own individual names since it seems they are always together and maybe answer to both names. We had always been told that Marvel was the one with the "big" belly button - which we quickly realized from the first video call that they mean a very herniated belly button - but during later Zoom calls we realized that their main nanny was calling the one with the herniated belly button Marvens! We asked her about it, and she said, "That's what I've always called them, but I could be wrong!")
Anyway, we decided to leave their legal names as Marvel and Marvens. We thought perhaps nicknames might end up emerging at some point, or they may decide to go by their middle names... but either way, they would legally remain Marvel and Marvens Ganson. We prayed about the middle names we wanted to give them. We didn't have any boys' names we just REALLY wanted to use, but mostly, I wanted their middle names to have a special meaning. All our biological kids had middle names that linked them with family members.... Micah Benjamin (after Ben, obviously), Caleb Wesley (after Grandpa Wes), and Abigail Renee (which is my middle name.) I originally thought James would be a good middle name because that is Ben's middle name. However, when I looked up the meaning of it, it's a form of Jacob, meaning usurper/deceiver/someone who overthrows. And with TWINS, I didn't really want one of them to have a derivative of "Jacob" as their middle name.... there's bad biblical context there. 😆
As I read through the paperwork we had on the twins, I saw that their birth Mom's Dad had passed away when she was twelve, and his name had been Emmanuel. Something about that name jumped out at me, and I thought it would be really cool if one of the boys' middle names could honor their biological grandfather. PLUS, Emmanuel means, "God with us" which was a phrase I kept sensing over and over for the boys. I had bought a sign that said, "God is with me always" and hung it right outside their bedroom door at our house. I also remembered how the Lord spoke to me through the story of Gideon when I was in Haiti, and I LOVE when the angel appeared to Gideon and said, "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior!" Finally, one night, I had a dream that I was signing the boys' names on a piece of paper, and I wrote "Marvel Gideon" and Marvens Emmanuel." That was when we decided those were the names we would go with. It seems the theme of their lives will be "God is with them!" Even cooler, MONTHS after we decided that, I was thinking about their birth mom and wondered what her name meant. I looked it up - it's fairly common in Haiti, but rare everywhere else - and wouldn't you know it? It means "God with us!"
Side note, while the story of Gideon in the Bible and the theme of "the Lord being with you" was the emphasis I was looking for with the name Gideon, I eventually looked up the actual meaning of the name... the first meaning I saw was "Great Destroyer." 😳 Oh boy! Judging from the way Marvel likes to throw things during our Zoom calls, that might not be inaccurate!
The Timeline
Like I said, originally it was supposed to take 3-5 years to complete an adoption in Haiti. But here is the actual timeline we followed:
March 16, 2015 - Submitted our application to Carolina Adoption Services
March 9, 2016 - Dossier officially submitted into IBESR in Haiti
May 19, 2016 - Both Hands project
May 22, 2019 - Twins are born!! (Then brought to the orphanage at the 2 months of age, treated for acute bronchitis)
December 18, 2020 - We got referral for the twins!
January 30, 2021 and February 13, 2021 - Zoom calls with the twins that took the place of the "bonding trip"
Feb 10, 2021 - Our I-800 submitted to USCIS (USA immigration)
April 6, 2021 - Zoom interview with IBESR
April 15, 2021 - I-800 Approval to adopt twins
April 26, 2021 - Visa Appointment
April 27, 2021 - Article 5 issued
end of June, 2021 - Paperwork exited IBESR; entered "court"
July 7, 2021 - President of Haiti (President Moise) assassinated; riots increase; gangs gradually take over control of gas, food supplies, and many spots in Port Au Prince; our court process takes a whole year 😩
June 22, 2022 - Received our Adoption Decree! We exited court and the boys officially have the last name "Ganson". That same week, gangs took over a couple of the main courts in Port Au Prince. Our paperwork then entered "MOI", although I'm sure of an exact date or even which steps exactly constitute "MOI." 🤷
July 22, 2022 - Twins had their medicals taken for VISAs.
August 19, 2022 - We found out that our lawyer in Haiti had picked up our papers from MOI this week and delivered them to the Department of Immigration and Emmigration (DIE) since MOI couldn't "safely transfer the papers." We are told the passports should be ready by the following Friday, August 26, and that it would only take about 3 days to get their Visas after that, and we could get the boys maybe as soon as the first week of September. Passports were not ready yet on the 26th when he went to get them, so I'm writing this on August 27, hoping passports get done this week!
September 17, 2022 update:
On Friday, September 9th, the twins' passports were ready! That morning, we had a water pipe break in the garage, and Ben said, "You know what this means, right? The twins are getting their passports!" (Our friends, the Thompsons, told us that the closer they got to bringing their kids home from Ethiopia, the more things broke at their house.) Sure enough, around 4:30 that afternoon, the plumber had just explained to us that all the pipes in our house were defective (pipes that everyone used when they were building houses about 20 years ago, but come to find out that around 20 years in, all the pipes deteriorate and get pin holes in them.) He gave us a quote of $20,000- $25,000 to replace all the pipes, and as I was walking in from the garage, Carolina Adoption Services called my phone. They said Abel, our lawyer, had picked up the passports, and on Monday, he would take the passports to the US Embassy. They estimated just a few days to get the visas and exit letter, and she said that we would probably be ready to buy plane tickets by the end of the week.
However, that Monday, riots escalated in Port Au Prince. The Prime Minister announced that the government would no longer subsidize gas prices, doubling the price of gas overnight, and so the rioting got so much worse. Abel couldn't get to the US Embassy all week because the streets were barricaded. The Spain and France Embassies closed down totally; as far as I know the US Embassy did not close yet. Here is an article about it all:https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article265754361.html?fbclid=IwAR1V7B_ihlmrAwaoR_F4iJimI_j5loRf3AQLTJcSo-tJpK3vAjfXkEzYF_U
So we hope things will simmer down this week and he can get the visas and exit letter! A tropical storm is supposed to pass near Haiti on Monday, so maybe that will help.
Thursday, September 29 - Abel finally gets through to the US Embassy to drop off the passports and fees!
Friday, September 30 - Visas are issued and Abel picks them up!
Wednesday, October 5 - Abel drops off paperwork at IBESR (He tried Monday and Tuesday, but IBESR was closed Monday and no one was there to process his request on Tuesday.)
Thursday, October 6 - EXIT LETTER ISSUED and Abel picks it up - we are DONE! Lots of quick buying plane tickets/changing plane tickets/hiring a security team, etc.
Monday, October 10 - Ben and I fly to Fort Lauderdale, Florida in the afternoon
Tuesday, October 11 - GOTCHA DAY! We fly to Haiti and bring the twins home! For more on this, see the blog post for October 2022.
Zoom calls and pictures
Until the boys exited court and were "officially" ours, we couldn't post pictures on this blog (or elsewhere) that could be easily accessed. So here are many of the pictures we accumulated in the year and a half since we received our referral, plus some info we gleaned during Zoom calls...
In place of the "bonding trip", we had to do two Zoom calls with the boys. The first one took place on Saturday, January 30th, and the second one was two weeks later on February 13th. They had them just sit in chairs almost the whole time for the first call and the connection was horrible. The translator was not very good with technology and was just using his phone with earbuds, so we realized months later that the boys could never see or hear us on these calls and were mostly scared of the translator shoving the phone in their faces. Not ideal. They said the twins (who were 19 months at the time) had just started taking their first steps and would walk around their cribs.
On that first "bonding trip" call, I have written down that Marvens has a "bumpy belly button" and Marvel has a "flat belly button." Later we found out that according to our lawyers and whatever paperwork they had, it's actually Marvel with the herniated belly button. We were told the boys can say "papa" and "Karlinda" (the name of a young girl who plays with them at the creche.) They said the food they mostly eat is cornmeal, porridge, and rice. They told us they each weigh about 19 pounds and had 14 teeth. 😅 The creche is small with 10 workers. The twins ALWAYS had something in their mouths - fingers, toys, etc.
Our set-up for the Zoom calls:
Our lawyer sent us these photos in January. He said they were taken on December 19th:
Pictures and videos from the translator after our Zoom call in February. ALWAYS having something in their mouths! Pretty sure Marvel (with the herniated belly button) is in the blue shirt and Marvens is in the yellow:
The nanny gave them some blocks and they spent most of the time throwing the blocks and running after them. Every time they threw a block, they would flap their hands in excitement. It was so cute to watch! This is also when we also realized that Marvel (in the blue) is right-handed, and Marvens (in the orange) is left-handed. That's called "mirror twins." They definitely had a lot of energy!
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