Adoption

I'm sure that by now you know we are adopting. Chris and I have always wanted to adopt and when the adoption of Roth and Dera fell threw, we decided that when we were ready, we would pursue an international adoption of a girl under the age of two. As Chris was finishing up his nursing degree, we decided it was time to pursue adoption. After a lot of research and prayer, we finally settled on adopting from Ethiopia. We picked a great agency, a fantastic social worker and got working on all the loads of paperwork in May, 2009. Our homestudy was completed in just a handful of weeks and we were put on the waiting list with our Agency in August, 2009. Shortly after getting on the waiting list for an Ethiopian girl under the age of two, our agency added several months to the wait time, making it more like 2 - 2 1/2 years before we would get our little girl home. In February of this year, Chris and I went to El Salvador for a mission trip and our interest in pursuing a position in foreign missions was renewed, so we decided it would be best to speed up this adoption if at all possible and we began researching agencies that were working a bit faster than ours. We finally settled on Holt, International, which oddly enough was the agency my parents attempted to use to adopt internationally before finding out about me! Anyway, we started the paperwork to switch agencies in February and were added to their waiting list on April 2. On April 6, I got one of the most amazing phone calls of my life. They had a little girl for us. I hardly remember all that was said, but shortly after that, I was emailed her information and the most beautiful photo. She is just a few days shy of 5 months old and while we didn't think we would get a child this young, we could not be more in love. Unfortunately, we are not able to post her photo here until she's legally ours, but hopefully that won't be too long--less than 6 months.

While waiting to hold her and see her is tough, it is a bit easier knowing who she is and that she will be ours. Right now, we're waiting to find out if we'll have to travel to Ethiopia once or twice--we'll know early May. Of course, we're hoping for once since it is a rather expensive trip, but God will provide if we need to go twice.

I'll keep this blog updated with new adoption news as we receive it. The next big piece of information will be that our documents have made it to Ethiopia. Then, we wait for a court date and then a travel date. Of course, there are a few smaller steps in between that could throw everything off, but we're hopeful that this will all go smoothly and quickly.