One Less Adoption Video

I love the lyrics of this song!

(Turn the music off at the bottom of this page.)

A sibling group comes home.

Dreams

Had a dream today that Dan was back in the "Adoption Boat." Yes, he 'fell out.' To be honest, we had only.. maybe a couple people give us rosey pictures of their transition period. Almost everyone told us that it was excruciatingly hard, often for many months on end, or even a year. The children in Africa are suffering. *To be fair.. we have our hands full with Hunter a lot of the time and he's not good with change. This is a concern!* They come home with severe food issues and traumatic backgrounds a lot of the time. We want to do something for them, and I will continue to pray for them and look for a way to do just that. Until then we pray and learn about the country, the children, and organizations there that are helping. I found a great organization looking for volunteers but you have to commit to a 3 week stay. I can't do that right now with my kids and I can't bring my kids with me due to the lack of adequate health care. (Caleb is an asthmatic.)

We still have yet to recieve our initial sponsorship package on Efrata. I hope we recieve it soon as her birthday is coming up in less than 2 months. I would like to be able to help her pay for something special to celebrate. (I hear that many children buy a sheep or a goat with thier birthday money. What a different world it is over there. It's all about survival.)

Law Changes in Ethiopia

There has been a big change in the adoption process for Ethiopia.

"Beginning April 9, 2010, adoptive families will be required to attend their court date in Ethiopia. Up until now, we were able to have an agency staff member represent us in court. All the adoptive family had to do was wait for the news to come that they passed. What this means for us is an EXTRA trip to Ethiopia. We will need to travel there twice." (Taken from another blog, but I've seen many posts about this in the last 24 hours.)

I think this is one to sit and watch because I KNOW that "court" doesn't always (or OFTEN) pass on the first try in Ethiopia. It will get rescheduled a few weeks or month later. Sometimes many times.

This means we WOULD have to travel at least twice. (HUGE cost issue.) It could me we would be traveling numerous times. Right now I'm actually glad that we didn't send our formal application in 'yet.' I would like to sit back and watch the process to be sure that people aren't having to travel numerous times to pass court first.

I'm going to look more seriously into child sponsorship for now. I feel the NEED to do something.
(Anyone out there in internet land know of a good child sponsorship program? Specifically for Africa, and preferably an agency that I can send letters and small gifts to the children.)

Good luck to everyone in the middle of the process. I know that this is a HUGE burden financially for many of you.

"What to do?"

This would be so much easier if we both were 100% certain on our desires for our family. I think we are both still "sitting on the fence." My heart longs for a little girl with beautiful black curls. It really, honestly does. The children are so beautiful and in a short amount of time I've fallen in love with the country of Africa. But I'm also content with my perfect little family of four. And the money, goodness.. the money.. it costs so much to adopt! We have money, but we would have to take out a loan for a while. We can just dish over $17,000 to $20,000+ in such a short period of time. (We could potentially have everything legal & completed by the end of the year if we started today.)

I wish there was more of a 'waiting children' program for Ethiopia. I feel like it would be easier to see their sweat little faces, to pray about a specific child, and to make the next step if we knew who we were doing it for.

So if this doesn't happen, what's next? What is God asking of us? It seems very unclear right now.

Things to prayerfully consider

1.) "Fake it till you make it" aka The transition (sometimes can be very hard.)

Read the raw emotions of this mom who just came home with her little guy. It's painful & real. These children have been taken from everything they know, their country, language, food, surroundings, friends, foster family or nannies at the orphanage. They are in pain, often sick, and they are acting out. Combine caring for this little person, who wants nothing to do with you and cannot be comforted, with shear exhaustion. (And I thought the infant stage was hard with my biological kids!)
** Should we continue our adoption journey, I will be asking, or maybe begging, our family for lots of help those first weeks.
Here's another story of the beginning: here
And one more here.

2.) RAD (Reactive attachment disorder)

The agency did say that children under 5 do not typically have long term attachment problems and can be helped greatly with therapy if they do have problems. However it is still something to be aware of, to learn, and to prepare for.

3.) The Child's Age

Our children are 11 & 6. They will be 12 & 7 a year from now. If we took in an infant there will be a huge age gap. Do we want to "start over?" Emotionally I think that an infant would be easier. (Bonding.. etc.) But we are talking more like a preschool aged child (age 3?)

4.) Traveling to another country

This was a concern in the beginning. I now think that travelling to Ethiopia would be an wonderful experience!

5.) Daycare:

Would my family be willing to help us out with daycare for longer than what they expected. My youngest will be in school full time in September.

Still waiting for a "sign." An open door that begs for us to walk through. A nudge (or a push) in the right direction.

For now, we wait. We talk. We think. We pray. And we feel closer to our friends who have adopted. We feel like we understand the process in greater depth than ever before.

Our initial agency meeting

First, I want to thank my sister for watching Hunter today while I (we) attended this meeting. Hunter was sick over the weekend and we had the meeting scheduled during the time he would have been in school. How sweet she is in allowing my little man to come stay with her during my non-exsistant dental appointment! Love ya Robyn! :) (I haven't shared any of this with my family yet.)

The meeting with Sally went well. Talked a lot & I learned a little. I felt fairly well educated going in, but we needed to know that we, in fact, had a good understanding of the process.

We have more talking, thinking, and praying to do on the subject before we continue. If we decide to start the process today, we could be a family of 5 within a year or so.

Three year old girl from Ethiopia

Link to a family's journey to adopt thier 3 year old daughter from Ethiopia.

(click heading for link)


Here is another story about a 3 year old girl from Ethiopia.
http://afamilyoften.blogspot.com/search/label/toddler%20adoption

(I hope it's ok that I linked blogs here!)

Adoption

I've hinted & prodded Dan about adoption for years, but our conversation turned more serious after the Haiti earthquake on January 13th, 2010. Our hearts were heavy knowing hundreds of thousand people had died and the orphan crisis was only going to grow. People were starving and we only wished we could take a child into our home & give him or her a good long life.

After digging into the International Adoption world we learned that we were too young, by Haitian standards, to adopt their children. The requirements were 10 years of marriage (check!), and a minimum age of 35 (un-check.) This, although discouraging, did not make us give up this journey entirely. We learned of many other children in 3rd world countries that needed a home. 143 Million children (in the world) to be precise.

143 Million orphans?!!
Michigan has a population of 10 million.
The U.S. has a population of 300 Million. That's half our countries population!

I dove into the international adoption world online. I have learned a lot about Ethiopia, the children, the adoption process, and we have made this country a possible journey to adopting a child.

This is our adoption blog. I hope to fill it with our journey. We ask God to throw the door wide open when we are on the right path, and to shut it tight when we should not walk through.

- Julie