Guatemala "stuff"

Hi Everybody!! Guess Who I Am??!!

For those who don't already know, I am Benjamin's little brother. Don't worry, I'm small now, but I will grow, although I hear that Benjamin is very excited about my arrival! Anyway, here is an update as to the progress on ME, as well as some other Guatemala-related stuff.



First, Mommy and Daddy have given me a name: Michael Blair Emanuel Pitts. Literally translated, it means "Of the Lord", "through the plain" "God with Us" "in the hollow".


PAPERWORK
Second, we have all of our paperwork in now. They are processing his DNA right now, and once they ascertain that he is biologically the child of the woman who gave him up for adoption, then we will move into Family Court in Guatemala, and Steve and I will be free to fly to Guatemala to meet him.


We are getting ready to send his first package (such TINY baby stuff!) to him. I only wish we could see him in his Christmas outfits...but hopefully next year we will make up for it! :)




LEGAL STUFF
As far as all the legal stuff goes, our knowledge at this point is that they moved the date to April 30, 2008 in terms of the cutoff date before we would have to be grandfathered in. We ask for your continued prayers as we strive to bring Michael home before April 30, 2008.





CHRISTMAS TRADITIONS
Speaking of Christmas, we are starting a new tradition this year in honor of our two boys, Benjamin and Michael. While Benjamin and Michael will have great Christmases this year, there are many Guatemalan families who will not even have food for Christmas dinner. It breaks my heart to know that so many of these amazing, loving, giving people will have nothing to give their kids.



If your budget allows, please go to http://www.mayanfamilies.com/ and donate $30 to give a Guatemalan family a traditional Guatemalan Christmas dinner. Here's more information for you to consider as I am reminded yet again how incredibly blessed I am...and that ALL of us are God's children. Anyway--here is the information we received that will hopefully help you understand their plight and will help you in your decision to help if you can:



Here is the rest of the information on the project:

This year we again would like to offer you the opportunity to sponsor one or more Guatemalan families with a CHRISTMAS TAMALE FOOD BASKET. We have many families, mostly single, abandoned & widowed mothers, who simply cannot afford to provide the traditional Christmas celebration meal for their family.

A tamale is a traditional indigenous food consisting of steam-cooked corn meal dough with or without a filling. Tamales can be filled with meats and sliced chillis or any preparation according to taste. The tamale is generally wrapped in a corn husk or plantain leaves before cooking, and during Christmas holidays, tamales of rice flour are a special treat for Guatemalans. The preparation time of this type of tamal is long, due to the amount of time required to cook down and thicken the rice flour base.

One food basket costs US$30 and will provide a Christmas Tamale celebration meal for a hungry and needy family of 12 or more.The food for the Christmas basket will include: A bottle of oil and 15 lbs of rice to make the tamales and a loaf of bread with which they eat the tamales at midnight 5lbs of meat 1lb of coffee a block of drinking chocolate (a traditional drink taken at midnight) raisins for the tamales, grapes, tomatos, apples and sugar leaves to wrap the tamales, cloves, pepper, sesame and pumpkin seeds. These are the requirements to make the midnight Christmas meal of Tamale.

The plastic basket that holds all the food will also have many uses in the home such stacking and washing dishes, holding food or going to the market. We started this project last year because it was brought to my attention that two children that we sponsor to go to school had been very miserable. These two children from San Jorge had no food in the house on Christmas Eve, they were crying because they would not have the traditional Christmas tamales to eat at midnight along with the drinking chocolate. At midnight they went from house to house hoping someone would give them a tamale.

It made me wonder how many other families could also not afford to celebrate Christmas, once we started looking into it, we realized there were a lot of families who would not be able to afford to buy the ingredients for their Christmas meal. So this year once again we are hoping to give out as many baskets as we can. Last year we were fortunate enough to buy, make up and distribute 215 baskets. We are happy to say that we already have 60 baskets sponsored for this year. However, we would like nothing more than to send out more baskets than in 2006.

For now, that's all we have. Please continue to pray with us.

Steve, Julie, Benjamin, Michael, Molly, and Sammy Pitts

IT'S A BOY!!!

Welcome the newest member of our family--"Baby" (Emanuel) Pitts!

He was born on 10/29/2007 (this last Monday) in Guatemala. We don't have many more details than that, but we can tell you that we are excited, as is Benjamin!

We have spent the year trying to decide if this was God's direction for us, and in July we were given a very strong GREEN light through the kindness of several people. As we have continued in obedience, God has smoothed the pathways to bring Him home. When we chose disobedience (what are we doing???!! the country is closing off ALL adoptions!!), God reminded us that ALL things are possible when you serve Him, and that and we were given a portion of these verses:

James 1:4-6: "Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding ault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt..."

We were reminded very recently that we have repeatedly asked for wisdom, and we have very graciously received it. So much like when we decided to move forward with Benjamin, within 48 hours of making a decision, we received this picture.

We have not given him a name yet--his given name is Emanuel, which means "God With Us", so we have decided to keep that as part of his name. We are trying to give him a name as soon as possible so that we can call him something other than "Baby"!

Benjamin is very excited about his baby brother (although he had wanted a sister), and has been telling people all about him (as much as we know, which at this point is not much).

We are told by the agency that we should be able to bring him home sometime in May of next year, if not sooner. All will depend on the Guatemalan/US adoption controversy and what that will entail. If we are not grandfathered into the clause, then we will not be able to adopt this baby. We don't believe that to be true, and all legislation is pointing toward grandfathering us so that our adoption would not be stopped in January 2008. (For information on this, please go to www.jcics.gov)

We also realize this will catch many of you off-guard...but you may not be too surprised when you think about the journey Steve and I have been on since the beginning. We have lived a life that we would never have imagined since the day we met 8++ years ago! God has big plans for this little boy, much as He does for Benjamin, and we are just the people that God has chosen to raise this boy to be the man God needs to use for His glory.

We appreciate your continued prayers for our little one...as well as for our older one! Benjamin will be 3 in January, but he acts like he's 5!! Very smart and very fun to be with.

We are truly blessed...

Steve, Julie, Benjamin, (Baby), Molly, and Sammy Pitts