6 months

Conleigh has been home six months. Hard to believe. Very much like that saying "the days are long but the years are fast." Half a year...gone.



When she came home, it was such a crazy time. We literally were not expecting her homecoming to be forthcoming. We spent a lot of time trying not to get too excited until she was actually on a plane, leaving Haiti.



There were a lot of people behind the scenes working to help us and those we knew in Haiti who might need help, including Kenson and Conleigh's orphanage. For weeks, there was a lot of confusion over what might happen to the children in both orphanages. Kenson's orphanage was in Port Au Prince and there were real concerns about their safety and their ability to get food and water. I contacted as many people as I knew who had Haitian connections. And I was pleasantly surprised when multiple people on the ground in Haiti contacted me back, all offering to do their best to help, all doing so in the middle of a disaster where it would have been really easy for them to be too busy to help. A friend of a friend stopped by multiple times with water. Will White, with Mission Aviation Fellowship, helped to find people who might be able to evacuate the kids to the Embassy and also worked to make sure the kids had the basics. I even got an email from a captian on a US Coast Guard Ship; he was offering medical aide.



With Conleigh's orphanage, one of the biggest unknowns was the future of the orphanage. The US had quickly jumped up and the rumblings of some type of parole had already started. Because of this, one of the thoughts was that perhaps the entire orphanage might be able to be paroled to the US. This meant coming up with a plan that could be presented to the US government to see if they would allow the entire orphanage to leave. Multiple places stepped up to the plate and agreed to put themselves out there despite the situation being very murky. My aunt and uncle who own an unused school offered the orphanage the school. Another unused school in Central Nebraska was offered up. Cookson Hills Children Home in Kansas, Oklahoma offered its facilities as well as its power as a child placing agency. In the end, paroling an entire orphanage was not an option but it is still amazing to see several places step out in faith, believing that if God relocated the orphanage, that He would work out the details.



Our representative, Adrian Smith, and our Senator, Mike Johans, were excellent listeners who worked with us and shared any information they had regarding what was happening to help children join their families in the U.S.. When we took off on Monday, we had a pretty good idea that Conleigh would be coming home but we were not 100% certain of when it would be. The group, which supports Conleigh's orphanage offered us lodging at a reduced rate which made our decision to fly to Florida much easier to make.



Upon our arrival in Orlando, we rented a car from Budget car rentals. On Monday evening, we had actually just arrived at our lodging which was an hour north of Orlando when we received a call that the kids might be on a plane flying into Miami that night. Miami was about 4 hours south of where we were. So we hopped back in the car, driving south, until we got another call telling us that the kids were not on a plane but that they were probably flying into Miami on Tuesday. We ended up staying about halfway in between Orlando and Miami and then driving into Miami Tuesday afternoon. The plane didn't land until after supper and by the time the kids were all processed, it was too late to pick them up so we had to wait until Wednesday morning to get Conleigh. We then dropped the rental car off at the Miami Airport on Thursday, right before we headed back home. Budget intially told us that we would have to pay an additional fee because the car was picked up in Orlando but being returned in Miami. When we explained our situation, they waived the fee.

When we arrived home, we entered a house that had been left quickly. But I returned home to empty laundry hampers and clean towels. We did not have a bed for Conleigh and several people from our church made sure a bed was in her room by time we got home. Kenson was gone, having spent an entire week with my parents. Our life was blessed by many other people who wanted to make sure Conleigh's homecoming was as easy as it could be.

I hope as you read the stories of what life was like at our house 6 months ago that you stop and smile as you consider God's faithfulness and the ways in which many people allowed themselves to be used by God, even if they didn't knowingly work from under the umbrella of serving God.