Haiti Adoption

My wife, Nicole, and I have six wonderful children - two of them adopted from Haiti. We started the adoption process long before the earthquake of 2010, but the earthquake literaly shook up the process, allowing us to bring home our children shortly after the earthquake. Here is the story of the incredible miracles that took place. I've changed the names to protect those involved (and because no one gets offended that I forgot their name or spelled it wrong).

We had a miscarriage in 2005 and longed to adopt a child from that year - eventually my wife and I settled on Haiti as we were living in Italy with the Navy and felt the Lord leading us to adopt from Haiti. We chose a young girl and her little brother to be part of our family. My wife and I were able to visit them on two different occasions, once just the two of us went and once my sister and our children all came with us. It was during this second visit that my sister happened to sit next to a missionary's wife on the plane and called us to let us know that we should look him up. So we did and found he, Bob, worked with Missionary Aviation Fellowship right here in Port-au-Prince.

I was in the Congo (Kisingani) checking out of my hotel when I happened to see the news about a horrible earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. I called Nicole and told her about the tragedy and as I was heading back to Italy. Nicole called everyone she knew in Haiti and though she didn't hear from Haiti, she did get ahold of her good friend Megan from college who now lived in Miami, Florida. Megan was able to find her a flight on a charter plane that was going into Port-au-Prince in 3 days. Our neighbors offered to watch our two oldest boys. I had to go back to the Congo and Nicole bought tickets to take our youngest daughter, Bella to Florida. My mother offered to help and flew to Florida and watch Bella.

We still hadn't heard anything from Haiti, but trying to stop Nicole from trying to bring our children out would have been like stopping a mother whose child is about to run in front of a speeding car. So she flew with Bella to Miami and met up with her friend Megan and my mother. They were finally able to make a call into Haiti and found out that the orphanage had collapsed, but the children were okay, but living and sleeping outside.

The charter flight had since tripled their price (supply and demand) and Nicole was unable to buy the ticket. Megan, however, learned about a medical team flight, using the Hendricks Racing Team's (not a name change) that "happened" to have one extra seat available. So she took it. Nicole's cousin, Tabitha lived somewhere down in Florida, but Nicole didn't know where, but was able to connect with her as well, finding out that she lived half way between Miami and the airfield where the plane was to take off from. So Nicole spent the night at Tabitha's, catching up and able to leave early in the morning to make the flight.

There was another earthquake, however, and so the flight was delayed until they received confirmation that the airfield was secure enough. They then flew out and landed in Port-au-Prince. The door opens and who should be standing there, but Bob - whose jaw is wide open as he reconnects with Nicole and arranges for transportation to the American Embassy.

Nicole didn't have a cell phone with her, so all of her communication was in person or in prayer. She was able to make it to the Embassy even among the thousands dead and buildings collapsed and chaos everywhere. But the staff at the Embassy told her she would have to wait until the next day to conduct business, so she curled up in the waiting room and spent the night there.

In the morning she presented all her documents and the ICE team took the chidren's photos and what information Nicole had about the location of the orphanage and within one hour the ICE team was brought Both Candice and Charlie were tired and worn from eight days of wearing the same clothes, limited water/food and sleeping outside, not to mention having to mentaly deal with the thousands of dead bodies around them. Nicole had her paperwork in order as usual and Candice and Charlie were processed through in minutes that had taken us months to trudge through. Nicole and the children then waited for transportation to be able to get them to America. A dear old lady pulled Nicole aside and told her not to get on the van going to the airport.