So begins our journey to Ethiopia! I know we have surprised many of you with our news regarding the decision to adopt from Ethiopia. Adoption is a subject that has come up in the past at our house but has been put to bed quickly without much discussion. In the past it was more of a fleeing thought. Like most other things that have come our way in the past we felt that we were hit quickly and furiously with the idea of adopting from Ethiopia just in the past couple of months. So if you know Wade and I very well, you know that we pray and move pretty quickly if God gives us the green light. We feel that he has given us the green light by his small whisperings recently regarding adoption.
This past year we have followed a family in our small group through a lenghty adoption with upsets. In March they finally came home with their precious little girl from Guatamala. This Spring I met a mom at the rec. center who was preparing to leave for Ethiopia with her husband to adopt two children. In April Faith did a missions week in Denver and attached quickly to a little girl in a Salvation Army daycare that was African American. Faith wanted to bring her home. In June our family took a class at church titled "Red Card" about children at risk around the world. Blake had been telling us that he plans to adopt someday. He wondered if we would ever consider it. He met the children that I mentioned above from Ethiopia. He kept saying how cute they were and how he would like a sister or brother like them. I love looking back now as to how God was planting the seeds and lining up these events that we were not even aware of. When you ask Bryce about it he just lifts his hands and says, "I don't know, but I would like a brother to play with because Blake is mean!" (smile)
So we have begun the journey. We have applied to a Home Study group in Colorado and we have applied to an International Adoption agency in Minnesota. We have been burying ourselves in paperwork for the past 6 weeks, getting fingerprinted, background checks done in CO and IA, etc. We have met with our social worker twice and she is getting ready to write up our homestudy report. We are learing a lot of new terms like "dossier" which is the file that we are currently compiling paperwork for. This file of paperwork is very official with original birth certificates, police reports, physical exams, and many other documents that need to be notarized and signed by the Sec. of State. This packet when finished will get forwarded to the Ethiopian Embassy. We are getting familiar with the whole process but are still very confused about the official paperwork that needs to be done to make this all happen.
I decided to start our blog now since we already would like to have you begin praying for us. We are in the final steps of meeting with the social worker and as I said she is getting ready to write up our report to be sent to the International Adoption Agency that I will refer a lot to. They are called Children's Home Society and Family Services (CHSFS). My hang-up with adopting from Ethiopia is that I am concerned about a black child living alone in our white family, white community, and predominately white school. Wade and I have prayed about this a lot. We have decided to apply for adopting TWO children. I know this is a very big decision!! We are feeling like this is the right one, but as we are getting into the process more CHSFS has told us that adopting two children may make our wait for a referral even longer. The referral could take up to 12 months from when we turn in our dosier packet which is a ways off yet. Once we accept a referral of children we wait about 4 months to travel to get the children. CHSFS does not split up siblings so it is a waiting game to get a referral that matches our request. Deep down we would love to adopt twins around 3-4 years with one being a female. Now we can't be that specific with the adoption agency. They tell us that the wait would be even longer. They are recommending us to put down two young children ages 0-5, either gender. We just need prayer that God's hand would be in this. We would really prefer to not go back to the "baby stage" since Bryce is already 6 years old. We would like the process to go smoothly and quickly and for their to not be a large age gap in our family. Please pray for us if you have a chance.
I also wanted to share why we decided on Ethiopia. We have many personal reasons that seemed to be promptings from God and there really wasn't a question as to where we would adopt from. It was more like the idea of Ethiopia was first and then adoption was next. Then we researched Ethiopia and found that it required only one trip for a week from Wade and I to travel there to pick up the children. Other countries might require multiple trips there, stays for multiple weeks, and even sometimes residence. Obviously, this doesn't work because of Wade's job and 3 little things named Faith, Blake, and Bryce. So that also made Ethiopia realistic for us. We also found out that only certain countries have partnerships with the U.S. regaring adoption and Ethiopia seems to work relatively well with the U.S. I am also reading a book called There Is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Greene. It is an eye-opening book about the history of Ethiopia and the staggering numbers of poverty, orphans, and AIDS victims in Ethiopia. Here are a couple of statistics to share with you.
1 in 14 women dies during childbirth in Ethiopia.
1 in 10 children dies before their first birthday in Ethiopia.
Half of the kids in Ethiopia never attend school.
In Africa as of 2006 13 million children have been orphaned by AIDS.
12 million of these children are in Sub-Sahara Africa (25% of those live in Nigerian and Ethiopia)
44% of Ethiopia is under 15 years------That is staggering to me.
These are just a few statistics to share. Wade and I do not look at the yearning to adopt as a charity case. We are so excited to expand our family and share ourselves with a couple of children across the world that have had their world turned upside down. My heart just grieves over their losses. One night recently after tucking my kids into bed I had tears in my eyes. It occurred to me that there are orphans all over the world each day that have no one to tuck them in at night and to say I love you! This sadness and hopelessness devastates me. In the book that I am reading their are photos and a true story about a 4 year girl old that watched both parents die and then she had to care for her 2 year old sister. She and her sister were finally found, left at a compound for an African women to care for them. At the compound she was cared for by this African women that had opened her home to orphans. When this little girl, Mekeda, arrived 30 other orphans were also living in the women's home to be cared for by just this widow. I could go on, but that story gives us an idea of the tragedy that is occurring around the world.
So anyway I know this will be my longest blog and I am sorry to be so wordy. Our excitement is mounting daily already and as I said I am already feeling the pains of adoption and the waiting game that it will be. Thank you for your support and prayers.
I will add updates as they happen. You can follow our blog at
www.5plus2makes7.blogspot.comShonda
