Though I am usually the voice of this blog, Todd wrote the update below. 

Again, thank you for all your comments, emails and support.  We love that you are in this with us!

(P.S. Just a reminder, our matching grant ends December 24th.  We are still a ways away from where we need to be financially.  If you are interested in giving to The Rescue of Jaline, instructions are on the right side of the blog.)

~ Samantha and the rest of the Hendos

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Sunday:

Hello friends, I’d like to give you an update on the Rescue of Jaline and share a bit of my heart with you today.  We are thrilled that our Dossier has finally made it to our lawyer in Port-au-Prince.  We have been blessed to have our lawyer, Jean Maudrel, working diligently on the Haitian side to move the process forward.  He has submitted our Dossier to the Haitian government, and now we pray and wait.  We are told that it typically takes at least 12 months to process an adoption, once the paperwork is submitted to the Haitian government.  We have been told by an agency that has processed numerous adoptions that the fastest they have EVER seen paperwork move through the Haitian government is 6 months.  However, that was for a family that had no children and that was the best ever.  We ask for your continued prayers that doors will open in a miraculous way and Jaline’s paperwork will flow through the Haitian government in an unexplainable way and the Lord will bring her home to us soon.  We also hope to have her moved, in the next couple days, to a much better orphanage, which will provide the nutrition, medical attention, and love that she needs until she can come home. Of course, that didn’t happen without negotiation with the current orphanage director to release Jaline.  I never knew how difficult and expensive it would be to help one of the Lord’s precious children…

Now, I would like to share an excerpt with you from a journal I am keeping for Jaline.  This is written to her, but I thought it would be appropriate to share with our friends, during this Christmas season.  

Sunday, December 5^th:  “My Precious Jaline, it is 18 days to Christmas and today it really clicked for the first time.  Getting through Christmas is going to be difficult without you in our house. Never have I wanted anything more for Christmas.  I need nothing.  We are so blessed.  We have everything we need. I'm caught between wanting you to experience the joy of Christmas and not wanting you to be tainted by the Christmas we all know. I want you to be blessed by the gifts of friends and family but I don't want your Christmas to be clouded by the materialism that has screwed up the real meaning of Christmas.  We spend so much time on so many things that have no significance and we fail to reflect upon what's truly important and all the things we have to be thankful for. We get so busy buying stuff that our friends and family don't really need and then we tend to pause for a few short moments to reflect upon the birth of our Lord and Savior.  We should be focused on the majesty of our Lord’s birth and the sacrifices He made for us, but it’s often so difficult as we rush around in a world of stuff and find it difficult to meditate upon Christ’s birth.  What if this world of plenty turned their Christmas’s upside down and gave their gifts to help the least of these in this world?  What if we all sacrificed lavishing gifts upon ourselves and shared our resources with your friends who are struggling to survive in Haiti?  What if instead we used our money to send a child to school, so they could learn and be guaranteed at least one meal a day, and created hope and opportunity for “the least of these”?  What if we were all willing to break the trend, break the norm, and refuse to buy into this materialism anymore?  What if?  I think of how precious your innocence is towards all this right now, and I pray that you will never lose the appreciation for what’s truly important! By the way, we cut down our Christmas tree today and decorated the tree tonight.  I love that tradition with our family, but I needed to hide my sadness today.  I wanted so badly for you to experience cutting down the tree with the family and hanging ornaments.  I wanted to pick you up so you could hang ornaments on the top of the tree.  We listen to Christmas songs and hang out as a family, but I needed to leave the room and turn off songs because I couldn’t listen to the words knowing where you are and knowing that you may not be home for a long time.  This Christmas will be especially difficult because as a family, we are incomplete.  How many songs will tear me apart?  How many times will I think about how our family isn’t whole until you come home? 

O Lord, protect our precious Jaline.”