The Home Stretch

Let us introduce you to our wonderful sons, Emmanuel and Felo Simenstad! Emmanuel and Felo are our legal children, and we are trying very hard to get them out of Haiti and to bring them home to Minnesota. Let me tell you their story…. 

We are Vince and Denise Simenstad. We live in central Minnesota, and we have four beautiful daughters. During a mission trip to an orphanage in Haiti in 2010, I (Denise) met two little boys--Felo, who was then three years old, and Emmanuel, who was two. I fell in love with those two little boys. When I returned home I told Vince about them. After a month of prayer we both felt led to move forward in the process of adopting these children into our family. We started the adoption process and went to Haitian court to seek custody of the boys in May of 2011.  
 
The Haitian legal system is a laboriously slow and costly machine. We were now creating documents, both birth and death certificates, for people who had never existed on paper. The process ground forward, but we persisted in prayer and would not give up hope that we would bring our sons home. Between 2011 and 2015 we made multiple trips to Haiti, to bring our daughters to meet their brothers and to navigate the court system. In the fall of 2015 the adoption process was finally complete in the Haitian courts--the boys are now legally Emmanuel and Felo Simenstad. But then a change on the US side of the adoption process required a change in almost every legal document we had worked so hard to obtain.
 
A change in one key phrase in the US requirements for adoption almost derailed 100 adoptions for parents like us. Over five years and $40,000 into the adoption process, Felo and Emmanuel are caught in legal limbo. 
 
I'm glad we live by faith and not by sight. I'm glad we didn't know how much struggle, time, and heartache it would take to steam through the Haitian court system a second time. We are almost there. We hired a new lawyer, God providentially provided for half of her legal fees, and now we have a final push to get our sons home.
 
We have so much hope that the next trip to Haiti this spring will be to bring the boys home. We have seen God provide money and help over and over as we have plowed through multiple courts, each requiring hundreds of dollars in fees. The total legal fees will be $9200.00.  
 
We are ready to provide a happy and safe home to raise our sons. We just need to get them here.  Our lawyer has successfully navigated the new legal process and has gotten 10 adopted children home to the US in the last few months, and she is hopeful to have Felo and Emmanuel home by this spring. That means that we need to raise $16,000.00 in legal, travel and medical expenses in the next six weeks.
 
Medical and travel expenses will be about $6,500.00. The exhausting legal process and the multiple trips over the last five-and-a-half years have emptied our bank account. We are now asking for your help in the final push to bring our boys home.  
 
Please PRAY and pray some more; we are so close. We want to thank the many friends and family that have helped to get this far.  We give all praise and thanks to God for providing over and over again and for giving us the perseverance to continue this long, long process. With each new challenge, He has given us exactly what we have needed at just the right time.  We trust Him to do it again, and we thank you for sharing this journey with us and joining us to watch how God will bring it to completion.  
 
To Him be the glory!   
 
Vince and Denise, Cora, Gina, Lacey, Tori, Felo and Emmanuel Simenstad

James 1:27  Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.