OUR JOURNEY TO NOAH! | CONGO ADOPTION STORY

hey guys welcome back so today's video we are finally doing Noah's adoption story guys have been asking for this for a while since we kind of have shared Rosie's adoption story with you guys since she came home while we were making YouTube videos but we did adopt two other children previous to us ever making videos on YouTube so we thought it would be kind of fun to share with you guys a little bit about each of their adoption stories as well and maybe some pictures and a little bit of video and stuff we have from you know however many years ago when they were adopted so today's video is about Noah and he was nine months old when he came home we adopted him in 2012 I'm going to kind of go back to the beginning of the adoption process and then kind of carry you guys through till now and hopefully somewhere over here you're going to see some pictures along the way the first thing I do want to say is that the details of our children's stories how they came to need a second family just really specific things about their particular stories their adoptions things like that we will not be sharing we believe that those are their details to share if they ever feel like they want to it's their story so we're just kind of sharing our end of the story as the adoptive parents how we came to adopt these children and how we came to adopt Noah specifically and all of his specific details are things that we're going to leave out for his privacy and respecting so yeah out of respect for Noah we will not be sharing super specific details basically in 2011 at the time we had our two girls that we have that are our biological children Kennedy and Shelby and we just kind of felt like our family was not complete and so you know we have been talking about adoption for a long time we talked about adoption from I think the time we were dating even I had brought it up but we talked about it early on in our marriage and everything but it was never a serious conversation it was just kind of more of a passing like one of those days we want to adopt like yeah we would totally want to do that and so this time we had to girls we had just purchased our first home this home that we live in now and we felt like we were in a place where we really wanted to seriously talk about adoption Shelby was three years old at the time and we kind of knew we didn't want like a super huge age gap between our kids all that stuff and we just really felt that the Lord was leading us to Africa and so initially we thought maybe we would adopt from Ethiopia but you know we just God made it very clear that the doors were closing in Ethiopia for us and that was not where we were meant to adopt from and so we kind of started learning about Congo and I will be totally honest I knew almost nothing about Congo or DRC the Democratic Republic of Congo I knew almost nothing about that country when we began the adoption process but as I began to research I just number one I fell in love with the country but number two I really my heart was just broken for everything that the Congolese people have endured and everything that they've been through and it's leaving and then they're still going through today and it's leaving so many children without parent so we just knew that that was where we wanted to adopt from at that time so we began the paperwork in 2011 that carried us you know getting all of that stuff done I think we finally got our dossier which is your big stack of paperwork we finally got our dossier ready and sent to Africa sent to the Congo in December the dates are a little dates are a little foggy for me now but it was sometime in December that we finally got everything sent over and just so you know that just like a lot of people when we first started the adoption process we said we want to adopt a little girl zero to two and we want her to be you know totally healthy you know that which is kind of where our heads were at which is totally fine we found out in December that that the waitlist was going to be a little longer than we had dissipated and we were kind of you know like bummed out thinking you know they're basically saying it could be a year or more get a referral specifically for young girls because let's just be honest that's what most people are looking for I don't know what it is about us as humans and people that make us think that that's the safest choice kind of a thing but it's just where a lot of people's minds naturally go all that to say in January we got a phone call from our agency and it's well-known in the adoption world that if your agency calls you when you're a waiting parent it's about a child like they email you whatever they don't call you unless it's about a child so when your phone rings and you see that agency's number you like repeat your pants you're just so excited so they called me in January and I thought they just told us it was going to be a year so I like ran out on the front porch and I answered the phone and a caseworker called and said you know Angela I know you guys are on the wait list um you know you're three or four people down on the wait list for a little girl she said but this little boy and he's two months old and he needs a family and basically like all the people on the list ahead of us said no because they wanted little girls and I didn't see a picture of him I did nothing I called my husband and I said we're gonna have a little boy and he was like okay you know I mean we talked if obviously we talked about it then like force him into it but we talked about it and we both totally agreed that like God was bringing us this child and we were not going to say no just because he had different mechanics downstairs so our world just completely shifted at that point of like okay now we're going to be adopting a little boy and so we were waiting for his official referral they have to pull together their file and get all their medical stuff done and all of that stuff and we expected that it would be quick it was not quick 42 because I was counting days later I finally got the phone call from our agency saying okay we have his file are you ready to see his picture and I mean all this time I hadn't seen a picture of him and this was in March and I so I called my husband and I said because I wanted us to see it together you know so I called my husband I said you get your booty in the car and you get home from work right now and so he you know finished up everything at work jumped in the car and I need to tell you that that like 35 40 minutes between what I called him and what he came home and I'm just sitting there at the computer like knowing that this email that contains the first photo I'm ever gonna see if my son is like right there and I can't look at it yet oh don't be crazy um but yeah so my husband came in and we just both jumped on the computer and opened it up and saw this photo of Noah for the first time and we were both just both like so in love we're like oh my gosh she's so cute um and you know it was definitely a quick reality check too because you can see in the background of a lot of the photos the conditions that he's living in are not good so after you know the initial just like joyous period mommy bear mode came out and I was like doing every single thing that I could to get this child home as soon as possible the adoption process at that time was kind of one of those that it just depended on who your attorney was and who you got if you've ever been to Africa you know about African time and kind of how that works so it was like I was just praying for the Lord to put our paperwork in the hands of the right people so that Noah could come home as quickly as possible because I will not lie I spent so many sleepless nights worried that he was one mosquito bite away from malaria and dying or it was so so hard for me to know that he was just you know helpless over there and unfortunately the orphanage that he was in was not a good one and he was not being well cared for so I'm not going to go into too much detail about that other than to say that I was very worried about him and so by the time spring came around we passed through court and got through all of that part of the process and then we just needed his passport in his US visa but our agency um who I would absolutely never recommend to anyone they were terrible I knew more about the adoption process than did I had to call them and be like we need to be doing this have you done this because I knew parents who had gone through the process already so it was just not a good situation so finally in July I just said that that I can't do this anymore I'm getting on a plane I'm going to get my son I will finish the process there so my mom and I and this is you guys ask a lot about how come my husband didn't travel with me to pick up my kids because Noah specific situation I didn't know how long I was going to be gone for I got on a plane to go get my son out of there I didn't know how long I was going to have to be there and we couldn't both leave our other two children for an indefinite amount of time so it just has worked out better for my mother to go with me and and my husband to stay home and you know continue to work and take care of our other children so that when we brought Noah home he could take time off work then and we could all be together oh I hopped on a plane got to Congo and you know we we stayed it I procure like a Catholic Catholic procure it with the grounds were beautiful the staff was amazing I still am in contact with many of them today via Facebook and stuff I absolutely love them I would love to go back and see them again but anyways I digress so we got there on a Monday on Tuesday they took us to his orphanage and I didn't find out until I got there that they weren't going to let me take him that day which was ridiculous we had already passed court it was it was sort of a political ploy through different people it was a manipulation tactic long story short so I went to his orphanage that day to meet him but I didn't get to take him with me that day and I will admit that was a Tuesday they didn't end up bringing him to me until Friday I believe so those few days in between were some of the hardest days of my life knowing that he was so close to me yet I couldn't have him it was so so frustrating but we went on Tuesday I got to meet him I will admit it was incredibly overwhelming to be in his orphanage sorry the lighting is changing a lot in here right now it was incredibly overwhelming to be in his orphanage see the conditions that he was living in there were over 100 children there and not more than just a couple of adults caring for them at adult women it was not good conditions at all so it was very hard to then leave him there that day but they did finally bring him to me on Friday and the person our rep from our agency just happened to be in Congo at that time working on the program stuff so she went and picked him up from the orphanage and brought him to me at the procure where we were staying hopefully I should be able to insert a video clip of that I do have a video of kind of the moment that I met Noah where is he Oh he'd be up front where you going I don't know the bar are you going here they are there they are Oh rise from crime three oh sorry no snuggly baby bless his heart he was sleeping he had fallen asleep on the car ride over and he was sleeping when she handed him to me but woke up when I got him upstairs into my room and he was so happy he just smiled and smiled and smiled and I remember that that our agency director told me that the orphanage had told her that after I left on Tuesday that he basically just cried and cried and cried after I left I don't know if that's true or not but he was definitely happy to see me on Friday and we gave him his first bath and you know if you've ever adopted a child especially a child out of an orphanage or situation like that there's something that is so incredibly special to me about that first bath it's it's like it's washing away the status that they they come to you at the status of being an orphan and this just kind of negative connotation that comes with that and they're you're washing that away and now they're a son they're loved son their brother or a daughter or it's just so special to me that first bath and cleaning and washing away all of that negative stuff and wrapping them up in a towel and snuggling them and now they are forever loved with a family and a moment to call their own and a daddy to call their own and it's just so so special anyways so we ended up like I said I went to Congo to get him knowing that I still needed to finish a lot of the process so now we had in and we just kind of hit the ground running with paperwork and trying to get everything finished up to get his visa approval so he could get this little stamp in his passport and come back over to the United States with me that process ended up taking a little bit longer than we anticipated so I was in Congo for about a month and a lot of things happened there's a whole story to that I always joke around that one of these days I'm going to write a book because y'all would not you just wouldn't even believe the things that happened when we were in Africa but I'm not going to go into all that right now finally on August 17th I believe we got on a plane and left the Congo which I was definitely sad to leave his birth country and we had made so many friends there but I was so ready to get him home to meet his daddy and his siblings and it was just so excited to get home so we arrived at the airport that it was a Thursday I believe we arised arrived at the airport that Thursday night our plane ended up being delayed a little bit but we had this huge you know Welcome Party and I'm actually going to include down below in the description box we had my friend Kristen beining who is a retired now photographer she was a wedding photographer amazing she came and took photos for us and she put together this whole slideshow so I'm going to put that down in the description below so you can go see all of the pictures from his airport homecoming and then also my friend Kristen Timmerman made a video which was we didn't even know she was doing and it was absolutely beautiful and she put that together for us so there's also a video and I'm going to link that down below too so you can go see the pictures and the video from his airport homecoming these things are so so special to us and we are so grateful for them Noah absolutely loves to watch his airport homecoming video he loves to see the first time his daddy held him he loves to see the first time his Papa held him because he loves my dad his papa so it's just it's just just such special memories to have and we're so grateful for those but yeah so he came home in August and then I mean then life started and here we are we had three kids and the girls absolutely fell in love with him they could not get enough of him they just wanted to play with him all of the time he was very he's always always has been very strong he started walking around the time he was about 10 months old you can see in some pictures and stuff when we were in Congo he was trying to walk but he just wasn't strong enough because he was malnourished but once he got home in the first month of being home he popped eight teeth eight teeth and began walking come here buddy you're supposed to be napping I'm telling them your adoption story you're supposed to be napping do you want to you want to sit with me to finish telling the story okay okay um yeah so he began walking and around like ten months old and then from there just running and he ended up having um one thing we noticed in the photos was that his eyes looked really droopy but one specifically okay can you look right into the camera so they can see close your mouth and then look right into the camera so he ended up having surgery it kick because he has something called ptosis which is just kind of a the muscles there or just kind of weird ish of having surgery on his eye we did that in 2013 we wanted to allow him to be home for he was home for a little over a year at that point we wanted to make sure that he was really bonded and well attached to us before but I threw something semi traumatic like a surgery and because it wasn't urgent right so anyway so he had that surgery to repair his ptosis in the end of 2013 he did really well with that he recovered pretty well it was definitely rough but he recovered pretty well and ever since then he has just been a happy um high energy very high energy little boy he definitely taught me a lot I think that as a mom of just girls who were pretty calm um I kind of felt like I had this like parenting thing down you know and I would know it came home with all of his just like wild and loud and you know I kind of realized like oh goodness like maybe I don't know what I'm doing absolutely could not imagine our family without him in it we are so so thankful that the Lord chose us to be his parents one thing that I really want to stress as we talk a lot about adoption here on our Channel and things like that is that we have a very deep understanding and respect for the fact that in order for me to be the mother of Noah and Jonah and Rosie someone else some other mother had to experience loss and so that's never lost on us and we are always in remembrance of them and and grateful for the sacrifices that they made I've said before adoption is a beautiful thing but it is born from loss so it is one of those things that we know that in a perfect world all three of these children would be with their birth mothers but this isn't a perfect world and so we are more than happy and more than grateful to be the ones who can step into that gap and bridge that for them so that they have a loving family and a mommy and a daddy and sisters and brothers and for as much as we hear people say to us they're so lucky to have you he's so lucky that you adopted him or you know the same thing about Rosie we want you to know that from the bottom of our hearts 110 percent we believe that we are the lucky ones we have been blessed by these children being a part of our family we are we truly are the lucky ones and we are just forever grateful to be a part of their stories and to be a part of their lives and so we love y'all's positive comments and your positive feedback but just please know that we definitely do not consider our selves like saviors we jumped and it saved them or rescued them or any of that stuff our lives have been more fulfilled and have been given a deeper purpose and meaning because of them and because of their lives so we are absolutely the lucky ones and we just want to make sure that that was clear our feelings on that alright guys so there you go that is kind of Noah's adoption story like I said don't forget to click down below in the description box and check out the pictures and the video that I posted down there so you can see Noah's kind of Airport homecoming and thank you guys so much for being here thank you for taking the time to watch this video be sure to give it a thumbs up if you liked it and be sure to scribe subscribe to our channel if you want to see more

Channel: This Gathered Nest

Views: 877,208

Rating: 4.9483142 out of 5

Keywords: emotional, adoption, story, noah, congo, africa, adoption story, woman, journey to noah, congolese adoption, international adoption, large family, adopted family, noah patrick, wash away, orphan

Id: GWhmxmkPuEE

Length: 20min 53sec (1253 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 17 2016