My friend Sharon and I have been chatting a bit the past couple of days. She and Tim are adopting from Ethiopa. They will be adopting 2 for sure. We both realized that it takes a while to get where you are going in adopting. You can read about her experience
here.
But here is ours:
When Brent and I started all this it was 2008. We were getting ready to leave seminary and staying with some friend for a couple of weeks. They were also considering adopting. An adoption camp from the Ukraine was passing through the church we attended. We also found out that Brent's mentor and his wife were starting to adopt from Nepal. It's so neat how God puts you on the same road with other people, even before you know that you are going on that road! Brent finally told me that during his time with God he was really being impressed upon to start adopting. I was just waiting on him to tell me. I had been praying for a few weeks about it myself. But I did not want to tell Brent and then have him just agree with me. It needed to come from the Lord.
We arrive here in August and I called the pregnancy center that I volunteered at for some months years ago to ask if they knew of any adoption agencies. I only knew of one and their office was in Texas.
They pointed us to Lifeline. We made an appointment to meet with a domestic social worker and an international social worker, just see what all this adoption stuff was about. :) I can't really remember anything about the meeting. I guess I knew this was where we were going and we just had to figure out a place. At the time Lifeline only worked with about 5 countries. We weren't old enough for China, the Ukraine wasn't for us, Guatemala is closed, so there were just 2 left. Should we go with a different agency with more countries? I asked Brent if he could adopt from anywhere in the world where would it be? His answer: Brazil. Brent has been to several South American countries and Mexico several times. So we landed in Peru. It was the only South American country that had a contract with Lifeline.
We finally mailed in our application in May of 2009. A social worker called me the next day and we talked about a few things on the application. A few weeks later talking with the social worker for Peru, we thought there were some red flags and maybe we should consider a different route.
Enter the domestic portion of our adoption.
We began our home study meetings in August of 2009 with Renee. We loved our domestic social worker, she is a fabulous social worker. But Peru would not leave us alone. October came and we were headed to Lifeline for the last meeting for the home study. We made it through the last of the normal home study meeting and took break. Next we were to begin discussing the information that was just for domestic adoptions. After the break, we took a deep breath and told our social worker that we really needed to switch back to Peru. Whewww! That was actually more nerve-wracking than you would think! But you must understand, we felt very wishy-washy. We had just switched from Peru to domestic and now we were changing back? What was going on with us! But our social worker was incredibly understanding. She even told us that through-out our whole home study with her, she thought there was just something not quite right.
Enter the Peru home study. We pretty much did our entire home study again, only this time with our Peru social worker! We worked with her from October 2009 to March 2010. Unfortuantely, we did not really click very well with her nor the director of the program. We usually left very discouraged from the meetings with them. So we made the decision to switch agency and we have a new placing agency. We instantly fit with them! It was great. They helped make the switch and getting documents sent over very easy and understood what was going on. They have also had a Peru program for 23 years! They helped us with our dossier documents.
After all the switching around our dossier finally made it to Peru in August 2010! A few weeks later an email came to our inbox with the information of 4 siblings needing a home. I sent the email to Brent as a joke asking him if he wanted 4 kids. He took me seriously! So we pondered and talked and emailed our agency telling them yes, we would take them. Our agency was very excited. I thought they would tell us we were crazy, but they went to work, emailing the lawyer in Peru and getting information.
But we discovered that we were too young. In Peru, you must be 18 years older than the oldest child you adopt. In our case, we would have only been 16 years older than the oldest child. We were totally okay with this information and went on about our business.
Fast forward to November 2010, another email hits my inbox. This time Peru is telling us that if we still wanted to adopt these 4 kids we could. WHAT!?!?! This is crazy! Wow! So for some weeks, we thought and prayed and thought and prayed and discussed this idea with our parents and some other families who adopted 4 or 5 siblings at one time. We made the decision to go ahead. Our letter of intent was submitted on December 1. That same night we received a phone call from someone saying they wanted to make a donation to our adoption fund. Another person set up a page with information for our friends to give to our fund as well. We thought, "surely this is the Lord blessing this decision! We are headed in the right direction."
With updating the home study for 4 kids, we also had to have a new psych evaluation (i think to make sure we really weren't crazy! haha!) We drove down on December 15 to meet with the psychologist. The meeting went well. She asked for pictures when we got the kids and we walked across the hall to our agency where they told us an email was sent to them from Peru that morning saying our letter of intent was rejected and we could not have the kids. I really didn't understand was she meant when she told us. I thought okay, so we just submit it again. Then she said it again and I realized - "oh, we can't have them at all. Okay. Well now what?"
Too be continued........
