Starting on our Adoption Journey

My husband and I are just starting on our adoption journey. This is something that we have both felt led by God to do--before we even met, God had placed in each of our hearts the desire to build a family through adoption. We have been in prayer over this for a while. We believe that while growing up, God was preparing both of us for this journey. My husband comes from a large family--5 kids, but his dad has a huge heart for children. After his 5 children became adults, he fostered children from the foster care system demonstrating selfless love in nurturing and taking care of children who were not biologically his own, but whom he could not have loved any more if they had been biologically his. My own parents always took in pregnant unwed girls who had been kicked out by their parents and always gave the girls a job, love and a home for the children. I think we lost count of the number of children who my parents have unofficially fostered! My parents have always demonstrated Christ's love in action and I can attribute a large part of my love and great compassion for orphans to them.

We have a biological son who is four years old, and to answer the questions we often get when we tell people of our plans to adopt: yes we can conceive and carry a child, and no, we are not adopting because I do not like being pregnant! Actually I loved being pregnant. We are adopting because we want be obedient to the call the Lord has placed in our hearts.

We are looking at both International Adoption and Adoption from the Foster Care system. For international adoption, we are looking at Africa and specifically Ethiopia--I guess the country chose us! All the other African countries that had allowed international adoptions seem to have closed that door. At first we had planned on adopting from Kenya, but after researching adoptions in Kenya, we learned that Kenya requires an initial 3 month stay to foster the child before the adoption process can begin. The whole process requires a 9-12 months in country stay and there is no guarantee that you will end up adopting a child even after that length of time in Kenya!! I am sure everyone who knows me, knows why our first choice was Kenya! We then looked at Sierra Leone, Ghana, Liberia, Uganda and Zambia, but all these countries either have closed the doors to international adoptions or their programs are too new (Uganda) that there is too much risk of the adoption process not going through.

Please join us on our exciting journey--a journey with many unknowns and pitfalls. This blog will chronicle our adoption adventure--we will share our joys and trials and we hope through it that the body of Christ will heed God's call to take care of the orphans and widows. We pray that as we go through this journey, God's manifest greatness will be evident and that He will receive all the honor, praise and adoration.

for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified (Romans 2:13, NASB).