A Journey of Faith: Part 4

I am sorry that this blog has been a long time coming.  It is difficult to write.  In telling you that the pain is still so real and still so fresh, you can come to the conclusion yourself that we haven't found our happy ending.  Not yet.

I have faith that it is still there.  Don't misread that to mean that I have faith that Eva Faith will be our forever daughter and in our home.  What I have faith in is that God has a plan and a purpose in all of this and that He can and will give our family a peace in all of this.  I have faith that there is redemption in this journey.  I will continue to pray each day for that.  I hope and pray that you can do the same for whatever pain may be in your life as well and that you can find the healing that you need through the faith in His promises.

Back to the story.......

I left off that we were anxiously waiting what was next with Eva Faith.  Waiting for any answers that might come our way in this spiderweb of sticky Ugandan guardianship.  We continued waiting for weeks without answers.  In the meantime we continued to pick Eva Faith up in the mornings and took her back in the evenings.  Careful to be aware of Joseph's feelings and make sure that he was not with us for either of those trips if it could be helped. 

We still didn't say anything to the kids.  What could we really say at this point?

Fast forward to the week before Thanksgiving..... the home had a few meetings with the mother (still didn't know what was going on as far as a legal case, but hoping she was not in trouble) and she had repeatedly said that she wasn't prepared to care for her daughter when she gave her up almost a year prior and she still wasn't prepared to care for her now.  She wanted her daughter to be adopted, but did request that she might know her.  Jason and I were open to this idea, especially since we were planning on raising our kids right here in Uganda.  We wouldn't be gaining guardianship and leaving the country so that was a big possibility and also important to us.  After all, we did change her name to Eva Faith to honor her birth mother who made the hard decision to give her birth when she so easily could have ended the pregnancy and made the decision to abandon her in a safe place when the side of some back road or a pit latrine is sadly the choice of many.  Especially those who fear prosecution later.  We were thankful for the role she had played in her daughter's life and were willing to do what we could to continue it on some level.

Back to Thanksgiving.... On the Wednesday, the week before Thanksgiving, we received the call from the home that we had been hoping for.  Papers were to be signed that Friday which would prevent any future problems with our case.  Because of that, the home felt comfortable fulfilling the care orders that had been signed in September and releasing Eva Faith to our full time care.  They said that she should be home with us that Saturday or Monday at the latest.  I was ecstatic!  Could this really be happening?  Could we be any more grateful for our Thanksgiving?

As you can tell, things didn't go as planned.  That Friday morning I received a call from the director of the orphanage, asking for Jason.  Jason was asked to come to his office right away, without me. (if any of you know me well, you know there wasn't a chance that was happening!).  So we both went right away.  We knew it was bad news.  Otherwise, why just Jason?

The director stalled for what seemed like an eternity before finally acknowledging why we were all there.  I can't really go into details, not yet at least, as to how that meeting was.  I am still so heartbroken and angry and I don't think what I would say would be too kind.  Bottom line to it all was that the mother had to consult a long lost family member, head of the clan, in order to get approval for the adoption and he refused.  We have heard that he is highly against US adoptions.  He said that the mother (who had run away over 2yrs prior) was to come home immediately, with her daughter, and he would make sure that they were taken care of.

Our journey with Eva Faith came to a slamming door in about a 10min conversation.  We were told to get the kids and say our goodbyes.  That day.  So that is what we did.  I captured some of those moments on film.  I think for me I needed to in order to remember it all.  To try to take it all in, what was happening.  To capture one more moment of the kids with their sister.  It all didn't make sense.  She was supposed to be coming home the next day.  We were supposed to be a complete family.

Why was God taking another daughter, another daughter named Faith, from us again?

There is still more to share, but I will leave you with these goodbyes for now.......

Everett has the biggest heart of anyone I know.  I worry that it means he hurts even more.

So much of my pain is in all the memories to come of these two sisters that won't happen.

They wouldn't let go of each other.

The director didn't want me to come because he said that I cared about the child and it would be too hard to hear.  Did he somehow think this Daddy cared any less?

 

 

 

The absolute best big brother in the world.

Pierce and Joseph were both with us that day too, but thankful that their little hearts are too young to understand most of what is going on.  

A Journey of Faith: Part 3

Over the summer we all shared many memories together and were learning to be a family.  The courting process was going very smoothly.  We did realize that we weren't going to be able to complete the guardianship process in time for us all to travel together so our plans for furlough were put on hold indefinitely.  That was a hard reality to face, as we were all eager to get back to TX and see our family and friends that we had been away from for almost two years.  But growing the family we had here in Uganda and taking care of the guardianship process was what needed to come first.

The anniversary gift of all the kids!

It was exciting to be able to share with some friends when a mission group from our home church was able to come and visit and serve with Healing Faith.  A great friend of ours was even able to take family pictures for us (at the bottom of page, thank you Rachel!).  When Pierce was born in 2010 we had a photo taken of the kids lying head to head.  It is actually the photo that I desperately need to update to the right of the page, as my avatar for this blog.  I recreated that pose with all the kids to give to Jason for our anniversary in October.

In September Everett was given the best birthday present he could imagine.  Foster care orders were finally signed which meant that Eva Faith and Joseph could come home with us permanently.  No more taking them back at the end of the day.  But things didn't go exactly as we expected.  For reasons we didn't quite understand, they were only releasing Joseph to us and not Eva Faith.  We were confused, disappointed and sad, but prayerfully moving forward and trusting in the home and what they were saying, which at that time was that we would have her in a few days.  We were all still able to celebrate both Everett's and Eva Faith's birthdays together before we had to take Eva Faith back.

In asking more about the care orders and why Eva Faith wasn't home with us, we were told that there had been some glitch in the process.  There was some paper of abandonment that needed to be signed by the person that brought Eva Faith to the home originally and they were having issues tracking this person down.  They said that they weren't following the care orders because they wanted to spare our feelings if something were to go a different way than we expected.  This was the first time that worry began to creep into our minds.  And it was quite impossible to think that any feelings would be spared by this point.  We were a family.  It might not be on paper yet, but it was already solid in all of our hearts.

We started asking many questions again, but unfortunately getting very few answers.  Then, out of the blue, we were told that in the process of tracking the one lady down they had actually uncovered Eva Faith's birth mother.  She had been living this entire time in a city less than 2hrs away.  She was easily discovered just by a visit to the police station in which Eva Faith was abandoned.  We were speechless.  We felt naive that we trusted too much.  We felt foolish that we hadn't hired our own private investigator before agreeing to move forward in the process and most of all we felt completely scared to death about what this meant for our daughter that had been part of our family for the past six months.

Note: I have edited this part of the story, and deleted some of this post, in order to make the story public for everyone.  It was a hard decision to make because I want the whole truth of our story to be there.  For learning for others, and because truth needs to be told.  But I also realize that the pain is still too fresh to determine if I am bringing too much of that hurt into the truth and leading the story only on our pain and on our feelings.  Please bare with us.

Again there were more questions than there were answers.  We kept being told to wait it out, we should have her home with us by the end of October.  We had no idea how or what that meant.  We didn't know if her birth mother was going to jail, we didn't know if her birth mother wanted her daughter back, we didn't know anything other than our hearts were breaking and it felt like our family was slowly falling apart.

Sweet Sisters!

Love this boy!

Love her so much!

Full of blessings!

The girls.

The whole family!

The boys.

The kids new very little at this point and we wanted to keep it that way until we actually had answers for the questions we knew they would have.

A Journey of Faith: Part 2

Breaking the news to the kids was an incredible moment.  We sat them all down in the living room and asked how they would feel if they were to have a new brother and sister through adoption.  Everett immediately asked if it could please, please be Joseph.

Karson just had a huge grin on his face, Pierce was pretty clueless and Hadlee just had this 'I'm not too sure about this' look on her face.  Rewind a moment to when we first moved to Uganda.  Hadlee was 3.5yrs old and every time someone asked her about the move she answered that we were going to Uganda to get her a baby sister.  We had never mentioned anything about adoption or more kids, but she had it in her heart that she was coming here to get a baby sister.  As we were unboarding the plane in Entebbe, she paused, looked around and asked "Where is she?  Where is my sister?"

Since that time up unto this moment we hadn't really heard much about a sister anymore.  I was expecting her to be so excited about the prospect of a sister though so seeing her speechless really worried me.  I asked her "Hadlee do you want a sister?".  She said "No, I am fine.".  I was shocked and really didn't know what to say.  It just wasn't what I was expecting at all.  Then I asked how she would feel about a BABY sister and I wish I had been able to capture the look on film.  Her face lit up with the biggest smile and she asked "Can I go get my baby today?".  From that moment on her baby sister was about all she talked about.  She knew and loved Joseph too, but there was no separating her from her baby.  In fact, my mom was visiting with us during all of this and she used to have to ask Hadlee for permission to hold Eva Faith.  Hadlee timed everyone and promptly let us know when our time was up.  She, like all of us, were in love.

Let me back up for a moment and fill you in on her name.  As I mentioned, her name was Faith.  Some of you may know, but for those that don't, Jason and I had a daughter named Faith that was born in 2003.  She passed away shortly after her birth.  All the kids know about their big sister Faith and we knew it would be confusing for them to have another sister named Faith.  As we were looking through her file we saw that her birth mother's name was Eva.  I wanted our daughter to have a part of her history with her so we named her Eva Faith. The home also didn't know the exact day of Eva Faith's birthday, but knew she was born in September.  The same month that our daughter Faith was born in.  Jason and I couldn't help but be reminded of our daughter.  It was for her that our ministry was named and it was because of her that our faith in Christ was renewed and we started truly following His will for our lives.  Our renewed faith is what brought us healing through such a hard time in our lives.  We couldn't help but think that God puposely brought us to this little girl.

We immediately started courting the kids which meant that since we lived here in Uganda, we were able to go pick them up from the orphanage in the mornings and return them by dinner or bedtime.  We did this regularly, 3-4x a week.  We were quickly learning to be a family of 8.  It was so difficult to return the kids at the end of the day, anxiously awaiting our foster care orders so we would no longer have to.  Joseph handled going back ok.  With his condition, he seemed to thrive on routine so as long as we were able to make a new routine and stick with it, he seemed to do fine.

At first Eva Faith seemed unaffected one way or the other.  If anything I felt almost like a babysitter for her for the first few weeks, seeing that she would light up when it was time to take her back.  This was so difficult.  The hardest part was one day when I took her back a bit early there was a team visiting the orphanage.  As I walked in one of the team members said "Oh yay!  Another one to hold!" and reached out her hands for Eva Faith.  Everything in me screamed, this isn't just another one to hold, this is my daughter.  But I had no choice but to leave her.  We didn't have the custody orders in place yet.

It didn't take long for both children to form a bond with all of us.  I no longer felt like a babysitter and realized how much Eva Faith responded to me, to my voice.  She was aware if I entered a room and looked around for me when she heard my voice.

On Mother's Day we were able to dedicate both children in church.  My mom was able to be there.  Everything felt so complete and we were just patiently waiting for the process, gathering paperwork and falling in love in the meantime.

The whole family on Mother's Day after the dedication, with my mom.

The girls on Mother's Day!

The boys!

A great friend of ours sent all the kids Aggie gear for football season.

A Journey of Faith: Part 1

I know I have left many with so many questions lately regarding what is going on in our lives that has been so difficult.  I haven't really been able to bring myself to blog since May because the biggest thing going on in our lives, we weren't able to talk about.  No pictures, no facebook posts.  It was so hard not to share the exciting news in our lives.  We were on a journey to adoption of two children.  I want to share that story now, our journey of faith.......

The story began for us in the spring of this year.  When Jason and I moved here we weren't actively looking at the possibility of adoption, but we weren't closing the door to it.  If God led us in that direction we were willing to seek His will.  Our lives had so much change in it that we knew at first that the timing wasn't right and we truly didn't feel God leading us in that direction.  When you constantly see so many kids in need of homes and you have that desire in your heart for more children, it isn't easy saying no.  But we waited.  We developed a relationship with a local orphanage, helping with their village ministry.  We visited the children with our own children at least once a week.  Our kids absolutely loved that time and quickly got to know all the children well.

Fast forward a year and we started to see a relationship develop between our kids and one 3yr old boy imparticular.  The kids sought him out immediately to get one of his huge hugs.  This little boy had a brain condition and if he did not find a forever family soon we were told that he would be relocated to a long term care facility.  We were first told that in June of 2012 and had been fervently praying for a family for him.  This was during the season that we knew God hadn't called us to adoption yet.  Months passed and he still didn't have a family even after intense searching on the orphanage's part.  Seeing our kids with him and facing our own growing feelings towards him, Jason and I started discussing and praying if we were meant to be that forever family that we had been praying about.

The boys playing with Joseph at the home.

These two have had a special friendship from the start!

Jason with his new son!

In seeking the Lord we knew that He was telling us that YES, now we were ready and Joseph was to be our son.  We spoke with the orphanage and shared our feelings with them and they were thrilled.  They asked us to consider adopting another child at the same time.  Jason and I were prepared for this because we knew their policy and knew they preferred this.  We told them that we were open to praying about this and open to the directors knowledge on families and placement.  They knew our family well at that time and also knew Joseph.

What we weren't expecting was the call that we received asking us to consider being the parents of a 7month old girl.  For some reason, both Jason and I had it in our minds that it would be a little girl that was at least 2yrs old.  We had said goodbye to MANY years in the baby stages of life and it was crazy to think about being back there.  Jason and I were able to get away for a time of prayer and sought the council of some great friends.  We asked the difficult questions to the home such as....
"How did the girl come to be at the home?"
"Has everything been done to find her biological family?"
"Is there a chance of someone entering the picture wanting her back at a later time?"
After being assured that the child was completely abandoned and there was no hope of being back with her bio family, and after much prayer together, we decided to move forward on adopting both children.

Hadlee meeting her baby sister for the first time!

Hadlee never let go after that first meeting!

Even though we had been visiting the home so often, we didn't know what little girl this might be.  We hadn't met her yet and didn't even know her name when we said yes.  We called and were told her name was Faith.

We were all in love and our family felt so complete!

I will never forget the moment she was placed in my arms and I was told, "Meet your new daughter".

The Ultimate Sacrifice

I absolutely love the Christmas season!  We thought we would be back in Texas for this one, spending time with dear friends and family.  For different reasons that wasn't possible this year.  I thought facing that fact, especially as all the facebook posts poured in of others with family, Christmas

traditions being upheld, the look and feel of Christmas all around in pictures (not in Uganda!), would make me feel really sad.  I just knew there was a huge pity party in my future.

But it didn't happen.  God was so faithful to remind me of the ultimate sacrifice which made my life not worth pitying, but praising Him.  There was one before us that was the true missionary, sacrificing it all.

"He gave up his place with God and made himself nothing.  He was born to be a man and became like a servant."  Phillipians 2:7

That is true sacrifice.  That is the reason for this Christmas season.  Jesus left a place with God to come to earth.  This earth.  To be ridiculed, beaten, laughed at.....every day of his life.... all from the people he came here for.  I can't imagine that level of sacrifice.  That level of homesickness and longing to be back with God.

So, instead of being sad or disappointed in what we didn't have, I chose to focus on all the miracles and gifts all around us.  I am choosing everyday to try to give more of me for Him, in some small resemblance (very small) of the gift and sacrifice that was already made for me.

I hope you and your family had an incredible time this Christmas.  Cherishing the things that are the true gifts in our lives.  And if you found yourself alone physically, I hope you felt His love and arms wrapped tightly around you.  I hope that you allow Him to fill that loneliness when others can't.

Merry Christmas!

Making new traditions with new additions to the family

Tom & Apio

It's a Dog's Life!

We had a bit of a surprise left for us outside our gate a couple of days ago....... a box of puppies.

They look like German Shepherd, or at least half German.  4 of them, which made our kids think that each one was specifically placed there just for them.  They immediately each claimed one as their own, named them and started bonding before Jason and I even knew what had happened to us.

What is a mom to do?  Taking a puppy away would be heartbreaking to any kid, but to ours, it would have been extra heartbreak on top of an already very emotional month for them.

So we still have them and it looks like it is too late to turn back now.  The puppies can't be older than 3 weeks and I honestly didn't think they would even survive the night.  Each kid has been taking care of their puppy, bathing it, feeding it and is responsible for their puppy if it goes potty.

 

Here is the trouble..... we already have 6 dogs.  4 are for security purposes, one is a pet dachshund and the other is another stray that just hasn't found a home yet (but hopefully will very soon).  WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO WITH 10 DOGS??

Luckily we may have a possibility.  We recently started a team house for visiting teams, interns, adopting families and other missionaries visiting the Jinja area.  That house has a large lot and will need security dogs at it as well.  We had already planned on sending two of ours there and Jason was nervous about only having 2 here, so I may have come up with a solution.  We'll have our current 2 Germans train up these pups for security.  Once they are big enough the 2 can go to the team house and the kids' 4 can guard here.  Maybe this will work?  You're right, we are just crazy.

His Peace through Pain.

Here are some of the pictures that I wish I could have shared earlier.  This is our family in July of this year.  I am getting closer to being able to share the whole story, but just not quite there yet.  Thank you for your continued prayers.
~The Segner Family