The journey begins--June 7, 2007

Dear Friends and Family~

As this may catch some of you by surprise, we are excited to announce that we will be expanding our family. No, Traci is not pregnant! Instead, we have decided to seek an international adoption. Adoption has been something we have thought about for a very long time, and it's something we have always wanted to do if/when the time was right. With much praying, discussion and investigation, this was a perfect fit for us. We could go into the MANY stories and incidences where international adoption kept being brought into our lives, and we finally decided we needed to acknowledge God's will. As we also got to know a family, whose Colombian-adopted son was in Luke's 1st grade class, we knew this was what we wanted to do. We are so grateful for their time and question-answer sessions! They will have a place in our hearts forever because of their candidness and willingness to spend time with us to explore our options of Colombian adoption. (Shawn and Cindy--you're not off the hook yet!! Still many more questions to come we're sure!)

To sum up a very long process in a concise manner, we will be taking the next 3-4 months filling out mounds of paperwork, getting background checks, doctor's clearances, etc. (This takes a large amount of time which is why we are resorting to an e-mail versus individual phone calls to each and every person!) We will also have two home studies among other things. After this process is complete, we will officially go on the "waiting" list. At this time, we are unsure of what the wait may be. We have been told as long as 18 months but will learn more at a meeting next Thursday.

We have decided to ask for two children who will be siblings. It is our understanding that the wait for two children is often as long as waiting for one which is 12-18 months. We will not specify gender (however, we are praying for at least one girl!) as we will be accepting whatever comes our way. They will range in age from 0-7 years old, but Luke will stay the oldest. Most Colombian children have either been neglected, abandoned or their parents have died. We have already started our prayers for our future children, because, potentially, they could be getting removed from their homes at this time and placed into foster care. They will obviously come to us as Spanish-speaking children (OE Spanish teachers, help!) with little to nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Once we are assigned our children, we believe we will have 2-4 weeks to get things set, then we will fly to Bogota, Colombia. From there we will go to our children's city. We think we will be united with our children within the second day of arriving in Colombia. We have been told that Traci will stay there for four weeks as we will have to wait for our children's visas to be processed. And the plan is that Matt and Luke will be there with her for the first two weeks. We have heard from a variety of people that this can sometimes be reduced to a total of three weeks. Every situation is different depending upon which city our children will come from.

We are beyond excited. It's tough to curb that excitement knowing that it is a LONG process ahead of us, but when you can see how excited Luke gets about being an older brother, it definitely makes it worth the wait! Of course we have some anxious times ahead--how will two more children move into our small house? Once we learn their ages/sizes, how will we have time to go out and get them all of the essentials of clothing, etc.? How will Luke do in a foreign country that may not appeal to his palette? How will we get away from work/school/family for that amount of time without it being incredibly disruptive to others? How will we transition our kids into an English-speaking country? The questions go on and on. We try to remind ourselves not to worry about all of this as we are confident that with much prayer, God will take care of us. We would not set out on this venture if we did not believe we were meant for it. One question people want to or have asked is how will we deal with having children who don't "look" like us. To answer, it's just not important to us--never has been, never will be. We have seen many other families seamlessly grow together regardless of background, ethnicity, looks, etc. Our mission is to enlarge our family by gratefully accepting these beautiful gifts that God will deliver to us.

We are going to stop here, because as you can imagine, we could write about this for many more pages. We just wanted to share this information with each of you and ask for your daily prayers as we begin our journey. We will keep you updated. Our hope is to get a website where we can update progress every so often. We'll let you know.

Those who want to know more, please do not hesitate to call us. We look forward to what's ahead and pray for patience. Have a wonderful day!

Matt, Traci and Luke
(and hopefully soon-to-be two other Jensens!)