We are adopting from Ethiopia!!I know, crazy huh? So, we have been talking and praying and deciding for a while now. Last week we sent off our info to an agency in Texas, and now the process begins.
About the process: The first few months we will be gathering paperwork, getting fingerprinted, having a home study done, getting things notarized, and tons of other really exciting and fun stuff (I mean, getting things notarized is thrilling to watch live). After all the paper work is done and the George W decides we are legit, we get put on a waiting list. That is when the real fun begins...sitting, waiting, sitting, waiting, waiting some more. The wait can be anywhere from 3-8 months. Once the good Lord brings us a match, our paperwork (along with the Baby D's) will go through the Ethiopian court system. Once the nice people in the Ministry of Women's Affairs (MOWA) in Ethiopia decides we are the right folks for the job, the baby is legally ours and we will fly to Ethiopia, meet our son, and bring him home to meet you all! We will be requesting a little infant boy, ideally under 6 months old. Or twins...only the Lord knows what is in store for us!
A few questions you might have...with answers!
Can't you have a baby of your own?Any child we adopt will be our own. As far as we know, we are fully able to have biological children, and we plan to one day. But for us, our first choice to start a family is through adoption.
Why not adopt domestically (from the U.S.)? Why Ethiopia?There are certainly many children in the U.S. who are in need of loving homes, and we would encourage anyone who feels called to adopt domestically to go for it. But there are also many children in other countries that are in need too. We have felt called to Africa because we believe that is where our child is.
Ethiopia has been hit particularly hard by famine and AIDS in the last few decades. There are an estimated 3-5 million orphans in Ethiopia. People, that is the population of our great state. Eleven percent of Ethiopia's children are orphans. For us, Ethiopia was a great match because the process is relatively fast, there are young children looking for homes, and only one short trip is required. Plus, the systems in place are fair, legal, and regulated. The children are all tested for various things, including HIV/AIDS, prior to adoption.
Won't it be difficult for a child to be raised by parents of a different race?We are well aware of the difficulties in trans racial adoption. In fact, in order to be approved for adoption, we have to do some fairly extensive reading and take classes about raising children in a trans racial family. We know we don't have the answers, but we are doing our best to raise our awareness and prepare our family for the unique challenges we will face. We plan to be connected to similar families, and keep our child's birth culture in our lives. And did you know that Corvallis has a
sister city in Ethiopia? Pretty cool that our little town offers a connection to our child's birth country!
Okay, this has turned out to be a long and scattered post. I am sure that I will think of many more things and better descriptions of all this, but I wanted to get some info out to all our fans! I want to leave you with a quote from a fantastic book (check it out from the library!) called
There is no me Without You:"Adoption is not the answer to HIV/AIDS in Africa. Adoption rescues few. Adoption illuminates by example: these few once-loved children--who lost their parents to preventable diseases--have been offered a second chance at family life in foreign countries; like young ambassadors, they instruct us. From them, we gain impressions about what their age-mates must be like, the ones living and dying by the millions, without parents, in the cities and villages of Africa. For every orphan turning up in a northern hemisphere household, ten thousand African children remain behind alone."We love you guys. Thanks for going on this journey with us!
