ALL THE UPDATES!!

Well, we are on day 12 of quarantine. We have literally not left our apartment/ patio in 12 days- and the day before that we were stuck on a plane and in a hotel. So it is easy to say we are eager to leave the front door Sunday 😊

Our days have consisted of Matthew and I trying to keep our kids engaged in virtual school/homeschool on two different schedules and tag teaming Jovi in the middle of that. Making meals, doing laundry, and managing to work all our jobs (we have six between the two of us). Today we were able to order some playdoh which was a game changer for Jovi 😊 We have realized how much we relied on getting things quickly. We survive on quick trips to Target, HEB, or Amazon. Well, Amazon is not in Colombia, neither are stores that are one stop shops. We have had to learn a lot about the delivery service. If you know Jovi, you know she always has her snacks, but Colombia does not have apple sauce for kids (that is baby food haha), or her granola bars, or veggie straws, or her yoghurt. Not to worry though, Jovi is doing great and anyone who sees her loves her. She has captured the heart of all the hotel staff who eagerly wait to say hi and bye to her 😊

Today, we had an emotional call about Mili. We learned more details as to why and how her mother gave her up and it was heart breaking. I am so thankful to be able to have this information to share with her one day but it was hard to listen to and hard to imagine. I have already started praying for her heart as she will be eager to learn and I will be eager to share.

Some things we have loved is our sunshine lunches on the patio, windows and doors open all day with zero bugs, kids in bed when the sun goes down 615-630pm!, and the time we get to spend in the same room focused on each other. We are so thankful for the kids’ school and some of the rhythms they have created for our family.

We officially get Mili on Monday and we can’t wait!! We will have Tuesday to rest as a whole family, but then we hit the road. Wednesday and Thursday are full of appointments and then we move to La Mesa (2 hours away in the middle of no where-haha) for family court. We will spend about a week and a half there in a hotel (basically doing quarantine again) as we have virtual court meetings and approvals. Then we will move to a city north of Bogota called Chia where we will finish the process of visa, passports, and embassy appointments.

There is still a long road ahead of us, but we are so eager for Monday! As you may have noticed I have used the word “eager” quite a bit in this post and it has honestly been an important word for us this entire adoption process. Since we submitted our very first document we have eagerly waited to be matched with a child. We are so excited to welcome Miliana, whose name literally means “eager”, into our life next week and we hope you will celebrate with us in thought Sept 21 at 1pm.

Prayer Requests: Sometimes my eagerness in this whole process has led to some anxiety. While I am soooo eager for all the things, they also cause me a lot of stress. In thinking about getting Mili, the transition into our family, travel, housing, food, the cost of everything, and balancing the kids’ school and our jobs, sometimes I forget to trust in the Lord’s goodness for today. I was sweetly reminded today by a parent of one of my students that his mercies are new tomorrow. Please pray that all of those above things would go smoothly but ultimately pray that our family would trust in the fact that his love his steadfast and that his mercies are new every morning.

We are travelling!!!!!!

I know it has been awhile since my last post. 2 months ago Colombia said that they were keeping the country closed and that they were not going to allow adoptive families on humanitarian flights. It was devastating, hard, and a struggle. We continued to be patient trusting the Lord and his goodness in it. Praise God that he does not waiver…that he is always good.

We distracted ourselves with a road trip to Oklahoma, Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina, back to Michigan, Tennessee, and then home 😊 It was long and it was some great quality time. We got home and around August 5^th (I started work) and I have lost track of all time. It has been a blur. At one point. Colombia said they would open on Sept 1 and our agency told us to book flights. We did, they were cancelled, we booked another one, it was cancelled. It seemed like they were cancelling because the President was going to delay the opening again. We started to settle for maybe October and kept praying that the Lord would remember us, establish the work of our hands, and that we would witness him be glorified (our church’s summer in the Psalms series has been sooooo good!).

One day, like I said I have lost all track of what happened these August days, Colombia announced that they would ALLOW families to travel on humanitarian flights!!!!! AMAZING! However this jump started another mountain of paperwork. Each individual family has to contact their local Colombian consulate and secure their own visa.

This was hard. I called. I emailed. Got a response. 😊 Had more questions and emailed them back. Matthew filled out the application. We filled it out incorrectly (one per person in the fam not one app for the whole fam…all applications are in Spanish and are for Colombian residents so you can imagine us finagling through them. Submit applications for each member of the family…kids are denied. They do not want kids travelling but Matthew and I can’t imagine travelling without them (at this point in time they are informing us it could be 8+ weeks and we won’t have a flight back). We call and they tell us to write a petition. We petition. It gets approved. I think all of this happened in about a week but it just seems like this crazy blur.*

Finally we have Visas! It seems like such a hard task but the next…getting a flight. Colombia and our agency told us we would probably not get a flight until October because it is too difficult to find 5 seats on a plane. OK…it seemed like such a victory to just be sucker punched. However, we kept praying and so many were praying with us. Then I am sitting in Target on a random day with the kids and I get a call saying we have a flight for you leaving Miami September 5!!!!!* We will be contacting you with details soon. I literally just sat and cried in the middle of the kids section with Aivlynn and Wells looking at me like I was crazy lol I called Matthew and he probably thought I was in a car accident or something because I could barely talk. It seemed so surreal and we still did not believe it until we got the official flight information yesterday!!!

WE ARE LEAVING SEPT 5!!!! I can’t believe it! That is in like 3 days!!!!

Our itinerary:

Sept 4- Leave Waco for Miami spend the night

Sept 5- Leave Miami for Bogota…9pm and arrive at 1 am

– Start a 2 week quarantine

Sept 21 (probably)- United with Mili!!!!!!

After that we are on whatever timetable Bogota Family court creates. It could be 4 weeks or it could be 8 weeks…

NEEDS:

Finances: If you can, please donate to our adoption fund through our church (click here). They are giving us every penny of your donation if you select Bixler Adoption fund as the from the drop down menu. We are needing about $15,000 for this trip. Between flights, rent, food, taxis/rental cars, and other/unexpected expenses for 2 months it is going to add up quickly.

Prayer: Specific ways you can pray-

1. That we would get on our flights without issue
2. That our entire family would survive the overnight flight (our kids do not fly well at night)
3. That our accommodations would be supportive of our family of 6
   1. Matthew and I will still be working all the jobs 😉
   2. The kids will be homeschooling/livestreaming into their school
   3. We will be relatively on lockdown for most of the trip- it will be essential for us to find parks etc
4. That we would be able to meet and spend a lot of time with Mili’s foster family while there. This is very important to us because we want to maintain this relationship and we really love them ❤
5. Praise him for all he has done so far!!!!

*There are some very exciting details to this that I will be able share when we get back from Colombia but just know that the Lord is answering prayers!!

Apathy is defined as not showing/feeling interest, enthusiasm, or care. I’ll be honest- this feels like my default most days. Like I am existing, but I am just going through motions…waiting. I have a lack of motivation for most things and this isn’t the first time I have experienced this. Within the first 4 months of Wellesley’s pregnancy doctors had told me that Wellesley had died and I was having a miscarriage on three different occasions, that he was showing signs of cystic fibrosis and I needed to be tested, which led to a possible diagnosis of down syndrome, and I needed to be tested. Of course all of the tests were inconclusive and there was nothing more to do but wait for all the unknowns to become known. It was December and I was sitting across from a dear friend and mentor of our family, Andrew Schwartz, and I said something along the lines of “I just don’t care anymore. God is going to do what he is going to do and I am just waiting for everything to happen. I can’t do anything to change anything so why care? I’ll just trust whatever happens to me is his plan…” I can’t remember his exact words but he basically called me out 🙂 An apathetic response to struggle results in isolation, hopelessness, and passivity but when we fight for sanctification and joy it draws us into community with Jesus who renews a steadfast spirit within us and guards our hearts. Friends, I am fighting and praying for a steadfast spirit! 

 

We have some news! Our agency has scheduled appointments for us to meet with the Group Home in Bogota on September 2 and we will be able to meet and start our life with Milie September 3rd. This is very TENTATIVE. It could get pushed back a week, a month, three months…BUT the Bixler family bought plane tickets for September 1!

 

You might be asking-Amanda…how did you not lead with this?? Why is there not a whole post dedicated to this exciting news? Well, before Covid, I imagined the moment we booked these plane tickets as a joyous occasion. We had talked about getting a babysitter, going out to eat, celebrating, and planning all of our moments in Colombia. However, under these circumstances that is just not the case. There are so many unknowns. Will we actually be able to fly September 1st? Will we be there 2 weeks or 10? How will I plan for my new job when I have no idea how long I will be gone? How will the kids complete school? What if we get stuck there?  How will we pay for this? Where will we stay? Will we have to quarantine?? It might be tempting to think who cares…you are getting your daughter (at least that is what someone said to me). But see, I am burned out, I am tired, the plans have changed so many times, and there is a grieving process every time it does.  Most days these questions strip me of a lot of excitement BUT I am praying and fighting knowing that I do not have hope in the answers to any of these questions but in the truth that God is sovereign over this and he is building our family. 

Some Praises!

We have had a great family time traveling together,  seeing friends, family, and mentors.

Miliana has received another clean bill of health despite some earlier concerns- She is 7 months today!

The foster family is still as amazing as ever and I can’t imagine a better place for her 🙂

Thank you so much for your continued prayers. 

I’ll be honest. I started to get my hopes up a little yesterday. I started to think really practically. We know that ICBF (the Colombian Institute for Family Welfare) has a high number of cases right now because similar to America- Covid has caused a lot of kiddos to enter the system. Therefore, to me of course, they have a problem with an identifiable solution. Get the kiddos home that have been matched via humanitarian flights so that it frees up space in the group homes and within foster families for more children.

Well, it is official. ICBF  has said there will be NO exceptions to the international flight ban. Families with matches will not be able to travel until September at the earliest.

This is not edited and you are getting me pretty raw and I apologize if I seem dramatic but I want to be real about this process. I don’t just want to look back and only remember the joy after the grief but I want to remember how God met me in the grief. When I first read the email I cried, showed Matthew, cried some more and then forced myself to suppress my feelings because I had work to do (grading). I see people, especially men, able to do this all the time. Just put their feelings into a box and save it for a later conversation so I tried. I had work to do so I did as much as I could then decided to make some homemade ice cream thinking it would relax me and be something yummy. I started throwing pots and pans around and mumbling under my breath and Matthew just helped me in the kitchen and waited patiently. I got really angry/upset and started crying and he held me. There just really wasn’t any words ya know? We are both devastated. I think I said something about not getting to see her learn to crawl or laugh. We pulled ourselves together finished the ice cream and went upstairs to bed. I tossed and turned most of the night.

In the morning, I tried praying but kinda gave up after a couple of minutes of no thoughts coming to my head and I was starting to tear up again and I didn’t have time for that. Dropped the kids off at school and got in the car just in time to ball my eyes out again before heading home. I got home and was just feeling so guilty. Guilty for not praying very much in the last 12 hours, for my anger, for my doubt, for my grief. Guilty that we have so much to be thankful for- our four healthy kiddos, jobs, a foster family that we are building a great relationship with and that is taking such good care of Millie but I am still just angry/sad. Usually naming thing I am thankful for helps me to refocus but it just didn’t.  After a little bit of stalling, I opened my Bible to where I left off the day before. Samuel meets Saul and tells him that he will be King> he also reminds the people that it was wrong for them to ask for a King. I took some notes prayed and thanked God for his sovereignty and how he cares for his people but still just felt empty, guilty, and disconnected.

I was just flipping pages in my Bible, not reading words, and I honestly don’t know how long that lasted However I was gently reminded that through the hardship of my pregnancies I had always clung to the story of Jesus and the father in Mark chapter 9. Jesus says “All things are possible for one who believes.” Immediately, the Father of the child cries out “I believe; help my unbelief.” And the boy is healed. In 2012 on the side of these verses I wrote: “Don’t be afraid or angry with doubt; God honors the fight.”

Then I saw a post someone had made of an old Village Church sermon series in Romans 8 and I decided to read through it a couple of times.  “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear but you have received the Spirit of adoption. …The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God…fellow heirs with Christ provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” I think I read that about three times and could not believe the comfort I received. I no longer felt ashamed to approach the throne in frustration and in doubt because the Spirit bears witness that I am a child of God. Am I still upset? Yes. Am I still grieving all the missed moments with my daughter? Yes. Her first crawl, her first babbles, her first foods. Yes, Yes, and Yes.  Am I crying while writing this? Most definitely. Yet simultaneously, I am reminded of and believe the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness. –Lamentation 3:22-24

Well, this week was not the easiest in our adoption process. As many of you know, we should have travelled to meet and bring our daughter home in late April/ early May. That got pushed back to early June when the President put the country on international lockdown through May 31st. However, last Tuesday (May 19) Mili’s foster family text us and asked if we were free to chat with them.

“We wanted you to hear it from us, so that we could assure you and answer any questions you may have. The president has just extended the lockdown through August 31st** but we want you to know that we love Mili so much and that we are going to take the best care of her whether you come here tomorrow or months from now.” -Mili’s foster dad

How could a few sentences be so bitter yet so sweet all at once. It was such a blow, like a rug being ripped from under me and yet there was peace knowing she is with them. 

I am currently reading through the Bible in historical order and the Lord intervened that morning because my quiet time was focused on the story of Hannah and Samuel. I am very familiar with this story, and it is one that is dear to me, but I had never applied the lessons God taught me from it to our adoption process. I was reminded that God can give me patience. I can grieve, and be broken, but ultimately I submit those things to the Lord and I can be patient. If you know me, you know I am a doer. I get things done and I love to make things happen. But I can’t do anything to get my daughter. I can’t fly to get her, I can’t change the laws, I can’t sign paperwork,  I can’t drive (trust me I checked- I drive 57 hours and I make it to the middle of the Amazon and then all paths stop lol). All I can do is be patient and allow God to be faithful. It will be God who cares for her and protects her. It is God who will unite our family and it is God who will sustain our family. 

Even though I read that in the morning, the call still shook me and I have ebbed and flowed back and forth all week constantly praying to be brought back to that place of patience and trust. This morning my quiet time was again in Samuel, however Samuel is now a prophet and judge over Israel and with the Philistines subdued “Samuel took a stone and set it up…and called it Ebenezer; for he said, “Till now the Lord has helped us.”

What a powerful statement “Till now the Lord has helped us” and I know that is help is not ceasing. We do not know when we will be able to get Mili and many things are unclear but we are trusting in the Lord because he is faithful.

Here I raise my Ebenezer
Here there by Thy great help I’ve come
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure
Safely to arrive at home
Jesus sought me when a stranger
Wandering from the fold of God
He, to rescue me from danger
Interposed His precious blood – Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

Prayer Requests:

1. That there would be a miracle and we could go before August 31 (which also happens to be when our paperwork expires). 
2. For Mili’s foster family to know God 
3. For God to sustain the foster family (taking care of two babies who are a month apart and working can be difficult- especially when you are not allowed to leave the house!)
4. For our family to continue to be patient and trusting
5. That God would use this extra time to provide the finances needed to complete the adoption and travel to Colombia. 

** We don’t know all the reasons behind the President’s very strict rules but some of the reasons we have been provided with are mainly due to them still recovering from decades of civil war and so they do not have a robust hospital system and it can become easily overwhelmed

Hi friends!

So as you know, the world is a little upside down right now but the Bixlers are still adopting :).

Our daughter: She is beautiful! She is about 6 months old and we get updates roughly every week with pictures and some information. Unfortunately, we are not able to share pictures publicly (Colombian child protection laws) until we have legally adopted her (however, if you live in Waco and want to stop me on the street I can show you one ;)).  Back in December/January (before she was assigned to us) she suffered from a really bad case of RSV which left her a little weak and under weight but guys, in the last month she has put on so much weight and is so healthy 🙂

One update I can share about her is her name eek! Some time this year we will be welcoming home Miliana Bixler. Our kids, friends, and family have already started calling her Millie and Milliebug which we absolutely love. Her name means eager and for sure we are eager for her! Every time I pray for her, her caretakers, and the country, I have this deep feeling in the pit of my stomach that I can only describe as eagerness, maybe a little anxiety ;), but mostly eagerness. 

A second update, that we just got tonight, is that Miliana is moving into a foster home! This is very exciting because she will be moved out of a group home and into a family setting with foster parents that are very eager to skype with us and keep us connected to our daughter. 🙂 What a blessing! This week (hopefully tomorrow) will be the first time we get to see her live!

Adoption finalization: Colombia is under extremely strict quarantine measures right now. They have ban/grounded all flights, men and women are only allowed out of the house on separate days (men on odd, women on even), you must be wearing a mask and it must be an essential errand. That being the case, we can’t get to our sweet Miliana. Our paper work is sitting on a desk in the embassy in Bogota waiting for a court date to be assigned. As soon as we get that court date (when these protective measures have been lifted), we will be buying plane tickets to get her. I am not going to sugar coat it. I often have tough days thinking about how disconnected from her I am, and how I have no control of when or how we will get to her. However, I am encouraged by the amount of times God has showed himself faithful when his people waited for him eagerly in the Bible, in my own life, and in that of my friends. Our God is sovereign in his timing and I can feel sorrow over our separation but I can find joy in the fact that our God is both ultimate and intimate. He is in control of the entire world (including the virus) while simultaneously comforting and providing peace to two insignificant parents separated from their child. The reality of our God brings me joy.

Finances Update: We currently need to raise $36,000, and with some gracious donors we have been given $8,500. As you can see we still have a long way to go but we are trusting the Lord during this time to provide not only finances for us but to see this adoption be finalized as we continue to take steps in eager obedience to his word. If you would like to help support us or know someone who would, our church has kindly set up an account that you can give to, and all proceeds go to our adoption fund.

https://gracewaco.churchcenter.com/giving  (use the drop down menu to select Bixler adoption fund)

 

We are soooooo excited to be matched 🙂 We have a daughter and every time I think about it I am filled with joy. The kids are excited, we are excited, I love talking about her and soon we should be able to set up facetime calls with her. Our family has been approved by immigration and now we are in step 2 of the immigration process. In this step, we submit ALL the paperwork about our daughter to immigration so they can confirm she is truly an orphan and that this is not a human trafficking operation (this is done by everyone who desires to adopt internationally). We should be able to send everything early next week and then wait for them to approve us (about 4 weeks). After that the embassies talk to one another and we start making travel plans 🙂

Prayer Requests:

1. Please pray for our paperwork to go through quickly and smoothly
2. Please pray that the Lord would provide financial support through his people.
3. Please pray specifically for me (Amanda) to grown in patience. I am really struggling with having a daughter I can’t physically be with and I just want to go get her right now.** While this is understandable, it is effecting me pretty drastically. Because I have to exert so much patience on waiting for the paperwork to be approved/the day I meet our daughter, I have very little for anyone or anything else. I realize that the past few weeks I have tried to conjure this patience from within myself rather than asking for the Spirit to fill me with it. My love for her should not bring about impatience but patience (1st Cor 13, Gal 5). Thank you!

** I want you to know that our daughter is being well cared for and loved. Part of our cost pays for doctor visits and a personal social worker in this waiting period. I am not concerned about her safety I just want to start our life together. 🙂

So… I know I have not written for awhile. I actually had a blog post titled “Still Waiting” in queue for over a month now. It can basically be summed up in that we had to resubmit some paperwork with immigration before it expired (the I800A for those of you familiar) so we rushed around doing that at the end of January but still no word on whether or not we have been renewed.

HOWEVER, Monday night was a big night! I came downstairs after working on a couple of things and noticed I had a missed call from our adoption agency and I immediately knew something was up because they never call (they try to reserve that for the big moment)!

We called her back – Matthew and I stood in the kitchen anxiously waiting for her to pick up. She said “Hey guys I have some news for you but I know you are going to be shocked…so prepare yourself ;)” Matthew and I did the classic, eyes meet and get a little bigger. “You have been matched with a precious little girl!” – Matthew and my eyes met again, “Oh, ok, wow, ok tell me about it…” Was all I could get out.

For those of you who may not know, Matthew and I asked for a little boy aged roughly  3 years old. In Colombia, you are asked what your preference is and you must give one because it helps them be more efficient in categorizing and assigning families. It is extremely rare that they would ever give you what you have not referenced because your file would not be available for them to look at (hence the categorizing aspect). Our adoption coordinator was so gracious with our shock and asked how we were feeling and about our initial responses. Don’t get me wrong, we didn’t adopt because we had to have a boy but it would be similar to be pregnant, knowing it was a boy for two years, and then being handed a girl in the delivery room. Utter shock but then literally, with each minute that passed, we got more excited and more excited! I would be lying if I said I don’t sometimes have a moment of grieving what I thought would be that mother-son relationship but then the ideas about my little girl come rushing in! And that is not the end of the surprises!!!

I will provide another update soon as I get more clarification on information I can share. Maybe soon I can even share a picture! All I can say is the Lord is so so gracious and so so good. He knew what we needed and his plan is so much greater than our own. We have been running around like mad people this week and he has made himself evident in small and big details!

What happens now??? So remember that paperwork I said was about to expire… well we are still waiting for that to get approved (don’t worry we are calling on Tuesday to check in on it). We are resubmitting our medical exams, employment records, and FBI background checks (all have to be valid within 6 months of travel and of course they all expire this month). Once our current paperwork is renewed we will have to send immigration the I800 which is permission to bring this specific child to the U.S. as an immediate relative (because our daughter is an immigrant this all gets processed through immigration). Once that is approved, which takes weeks, we have a few more steps with the Colombian government court dates etc. Basically, we are looking at travelling in the next 4 months… hopefully.

How can you help/bless our family?

Please be praying for our paperwork to move quickly. As you can imagine we are dying to travel…

Also, please pray for our finances and if you feel led to give it would be a blessing. We have accepted the child assignment therefore we owe $20,000 (not including travel expenses or lost wages during and after we travel.) On the page labeled Prayer and Giving there are specific prayer requests as well as a break down of what we owe (provided by our agencies website) and a link for donating toward these expenses. This link was set up by our church and by selecting “Bixler Adoption Fund” on the drop down menu we will receive every penny that you choose to bless us with. I have added the link to the page as well as the link to our fund.

Prayer and Giving Page https://bixleradoption.family.blog/prayer-and-giving/

Website to Give https://gracewaco.churchcenter.com/giving