The Wilsons' Family Page
FAMILY NEWS
Smiley Sabrina
"Brina" is now a over two years old. She is a joy to each one of us as she is all smiles almost 100% of the time. Although she can be quite shy and often sticks close to Mommy, we are beginning to see a mischievous, strong-willed side of her as well. Her favorite pastimes include looking at books (all the time!), playing in the kiddie pool, playing babies or Barbies, singing, dancing, or coloring. She is good at playing alone or with Kayla. She copies anything she sees Kayla do- even putting something up her nose! Ugh! She adores Nicole, and I'm pretty sure it's mutual. Brina is talking a lot more now- primarily in Spanish, but some in English. She understands both perfectly and can count to 10 in English as well as sing half of her ABC's! She loves to chatter in her own language as well. My favorite quote of hers lately is, "One-two-three-fork!"
Cute Kayla
Miss Kayla is now 4yrs old and ready to take on the world! She can already add and knows all of her letters, big and small and is beginning to learn to memorize words. She hasn't caught on to sounding them out yet, but will soon! She just started pre-kinder in the Bolivian system which starts in February. She enjoys her class and is always enthusiastic about what they did in class that day. She loves art and dancing in "spinny" dresses. She is a bundle of energy and always has our friends cracking up. She's a quite entertaining little kid. She's still a handful at bedtime, but that is improving, praise the Lord! She also made a very big step this December when she invited Jesus to be Lord of her life. She likes to tell others now that, "Jesus is in my heart!" Please pray that we will effectively train her as parents in her faith and help nurture that love for the Lord.
Princess Nicole
Nicole is not only the princess of the family, but she will soon be the "Seņorita" of the family. She is growing so fast and turning into a quite beautiful young lady! She is also developing really well in school. Where she used to hate reading, she now reads two Box Car Children novels per week. I think she's determined to read the entire series! So far since she started in October, she's gotten through over 30 books! She does still let things intimidate her, but on the whole, she is going beyond that. She does still struggle with fear, but is slowly learning to overcome that as well. Nicole is fairly tall for her age and does quite well in track and field events that involve jumping, as well as gymnastics. Speaking of her age- her 10th birthday was February 23!! Scary stuff! That also means that she's now lived with us longer than with her birth mom. Though she misses her mom occasionally, she is really well-adjusted and often tell us how glad she is to be a part of our family. Nicole has a very tender heart, and she often wants to earn money so she can help others with special needs, like she did for the Christmas gifts for the girls at Casa de Alegria. She worked hard from September-December earning money to get them each nice gifts that were probably close to $20 each! She is such a gift to us and we look forward to having the adoption officially done and being able to legally call her our daughter.
You can read more about Nicole and how she came to live with us by going to Background.
Wilson Family Birthdays:
Monte: June 9th, 1971
Andrea: July 22, 1977
Nicole: February 23, 2000
Kayla: August 17, 2005
Sabrina: October 30, 2007
Wedding Anniversary- April 14, 2001
The Adoption Process in Bolivia
Please join with us in prayer over the entire adoption process:
THE PROCESS
We have submitted all the documents including our proof of national residency and our previous Custody of Nicole along with all of the social work and psychological reports that have been done. We have been required to undergo a medical exam to assure the judge that we are healthy and fit to be parents. We have just completed the paperwork showing that Nicole's father and other relatives have abandoned her or chosen not to adopt her. With that, we have finally completed all of the pre-requisites to the adoption, and we can submit all of this paperwork to the judge in order to begin the official adoption process. Then we wait until the judge tells us which hoop to jump through and when. We may at some point present witnesses that we are doing a good job of parenting Nicole. We'll also likely have to undergo more psych and social visits as well. Once the adoption is approved it can still take up to two months to get the paperwork from the judge’s office as they’re not too organized. There may be other steps as well that we’re not aware of, but will learn as we go. After we are finally given the paperwork for the adoption, we’ll need to get a new Bolivian birth certificate that says Nicole Joy Wilson and her Bolivian passport and then a visa for Nicole from the US government and file some other paperwork with them as well.
TIME FRAME
It's really hard to know how long the process could take. Technically it shouldn't take much longer (in theory). Legally each process has a number of days it should take- like the adoption should take 30 working days legally, but that took some friends 7 months and others 5 months. Here in Bolivia everything seems to take longer than expected, and the judges take long vacations in July and December. It will also all depend on whether we encounter very many obstacles along the way. We've been told at this point we could still expect one more year! Please pray for a miracle that we can be done with the adoption and have the necessary paperwork to return to the US in June of 2010! We'd like for Nicole to have some time to adjust to living in the US before she would start school in August.
FUTURE
Until the adoption is complete, we do not intend to return to the US as we feel it’s urgent to get this done and important to stick together as a family. Praise the Lord we have a wonderful home here and a great support team in our church.
We do hope to spend at least 1 year in the US on furlough. We need some time to readjust to the States and look forward to getting reconnected to everyone. Our girls will also need to get used to living in the US. Please pray especially for that for Nicole.
Honestly, we at this point, we don't feel the Lord calling us back to serve more in Bolivia- or at least not in our current ministries. So we are praying that the Lord would lead us to just the right position- hopefully working at a church that's really committed to the Word and to evangelism. Monte is specifically looking at Executive Pastor and Missions Pastor positions as well as Adult or College Ministry. If you have any suggestions for us, please let us know. Thanks!
Please pray for this entire process as we’d love to take a furlough and visit you all and we’d love for you to meet our entire family, too!
For more information regarding the Wilson Family, our background, and how we got involved in our current ministry in Bolivia, please click Background.