Missing my Babies!

So, it's been 3 weeks and I'm ready to spill the beans. It's not been easy...it was just as I imagined it to be but 100 times harder! Now I know what I'm missing so it doesn't make it any easier to wait.
I have to confess something to all of you...I did not do what I promised God I would. I promised I would praise him in the storm even if things didn't go my way. I failed to do that. I have been spending the last 3 weeks feeling sorry for myself and not praising God. I came back from Liberia upset with God as if he'd let me down. I am slowly coming out behind this black cloud and learning how to praise God even when I don't feel like it.
I was taken back to the beginning of this whole journey where I was reminded that I need to long more for the Savior than my children, and I am a far cry from that right now! I have not been longing for the Savior the way I long for my children.
There hasn't been a day that goes by that I don't cry for my children, but I'm reminded that in James God tells us that "the testing of your faith develops perserverence. Perseverence must finish it's work in you so you can be mature and complete not lacking anything." I can't wait till I'm complete and this can all be over with! :)
We were able to visit the babies 3 times while we were there. The first time they cried. Onah alot more than Marie. She's my laid back little girl! Every time Onah would see a Liberian he would cry. Marie just loved to snuggle and suck her thumb!
We let them listen to a message from their big brother Colten that they couldn't really hear cause Onah was crying too hard :) and gave them their photo books which they loved to chew on.
Marie ended up falling asleep and Onah was holding her hand! It was the most precious thing ever! To think that they now have each other where before they didn't that's pretty cool to think about...at least to me.
The first visit was only a couple of hours but the next time we were able to go back we were dropped off and left there for the entire evening! They didn't cry when we came into their room and picked them up and they were very curious about Matt's facial hair! We even got Onah on video watching the boys play soccer! Here he is telling them to kick it...(ignore the high pitched excited momma's voice on the camera...and you'll have to stop the music at the bottom to hear it.)

It was so neat to see them giggle and jabber. We got some video footage of them as well that Colten loves to watch. That night we were able to feed them bottles and put them to bed. They fell asleep in our arms...well Marie did...Onah stayed up with his daddy watching a movie with all the other kids.
The final day was hard. We knew by this time it was evident that we weren't taking our children home. We got to the AFAA house at about 8:30 and planned on spending most of the day with them till our plane had to leave. Oretha had called and said she didn't get a meeting with Eva Morgan but she did get a meeting with the minister of Social Welfare, glorified name for case worker. We left the house and went to meet her and basically got blown off. She didn't have time to talk and stood in the hallway telling us there was nothing she could do. She told us there was a baby dying and wouldn't make it home but he wasn't going anywhere...just like that...no emotions about dying children...I wanted to blow up right there and ask if they had no compassion, but I didn't. I kept quiet and let my husband do all the talking...which he was great at. We basically wanted to let her know that she could still do case studies through the ban that way when it opens up things would move much faster, but she was not willing. We told her we understood about all the corruption but thought it was unfair that good agencies like AFAA were being lumped into all the corruption. I don't think she understood us cause she didn't really respond to that.
She did tell us that what s holding up the ban is that basically two parties are arguing over how long adoptive families should have to stay in Liberia when getting their children. One party says 3 months (which is crazy thinking that we could leave our families and jobs for that amount of time and expect to come back and have a means to support our families) the other party sees that as rediculous and says 10 days is long enough. She said once that's settled the ban will be lifted and it should be soon, but in Liberia who knows how long soon is???
We met with Bob Z. a liberian governor on Sunday. We gave him all of our information from our agency and he said he would see if there was anything he could do to help us but not to get our hopes up. In Liberia you are looked at as corrupt if you go in and try to go over officials heads to get things done. It will appear that we paid him to do this and he's making money off our situation, so he wasn't going to make any promises. He agreed that it wasn't fair for AFAA to be lumped in with all the corruption.
We were able to go back for about 45 minutes and spend a little more time with the babies before we had to say goodbye. When it was time to say goodbye I couldn't let go of them. It was the longest goodbye ever. I couldn't stop kissing them...I hope they remember me. I laid them down in their beds for the last time and gave them one last long kiss before walking out the door not being able to control the tears.
So we left the country without our babies and hope to return soon! Keep praying and until then enjoy the pictures that we have for now and the video of my sweet baby boy!
Since back we found that Oretha had called Cheryl very upset because she felt like she had let us down. She said that Oretha knew we weren't happy when we left, mainly because I was crying, and asked Cheryl to tell her she was deeply sorry. I know she loves my babies and I know she wants them home with us, I pray God delivers them soon!