Over the Next Month…..

we continued to pray, research and pray some more. There are 143,000,000 orphans in the world, how do you choose the country they come from? For various reasons we did choose to adopt internationally. My exposure to international adoptions was from either Asian or South American countries, so that is what I was drawn to.
We began researching the various adoption agencies and the countries in which they had programs; Asian, European, African, South American, etc. Many countries were crossed of the list pretty quickly due to some of the following reasons: the time required to stay in country (some 5-8 weeks), wait time for referral, siblings not being available, and some of them being legally closed to adoptions. I will be honest and say choosing a country was stressful for me.


On Nov 22, which happened to be National Adoption Day, God made everything clear. That evening we had friends over for dinner. These are the friends God used to put adoption back on our radar. I will call them C (her) and M (him). We talked about their adoption journey and where we were in the deciding process. We shared thoughts, concerns, hopes, and information. As I sat there I was thinking about the children that are to be ours, and then I started getting REALLY excited. I saw the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. I wanted to jump up and down for joy and yell out that I knew where God wanted us to adopt from, but I waited to share it with Ken after our friends left. Although, I will say, I was dying to tell them. See, they too are adopting siblings and in the same age range we are wanting. When I thought about our children and their children I thought how awesome it would be for the children to have someone besides their siblings to look like, sound like, and have the same heritage. I learned, when we were able to talk later, that Ken was thinking the same thing. It was clear to both of us that we were to adopt from Ghana, West Africa.


Such a peace and joy came over us. It was days before I could stop smiling. Also, it was so fun to tell our friends that we were going to be adopting from the same country. They have been such a support and encouragement to us. We are excited to be on this journey together. Thanks guys!