Still waiting

I apologize that we haven’t posted for a while.  So many people have been asking if there’s been any progress with our adoption.  I’m afraid there’s really not much new to report.  We’re still waiting for a referral, and we think it’ll still be several more months.  Our agency gave 6 referrals in November.  And 5 in December.  However, there have been none in January to this point.  We think we’re around 20-30^th in the queue to receive a referral (to receive a referral just means that a family is “matched” with their child…you get a photo, birth date, basic health statistics, etc).  So, we’re getting relatively close.  We are hopeful that we might receive a referral late spring or early summer (the first of June will mark one year since we turned in our dossier and officially became a “waiting family”).  I assure you, you won’t miss the announcement.  It’ll be a BIG deal to finally have an image of the little one that God has for our family.

In the mean time, we’ve enjoyed meeting with several other families who are also in the process of adopting children.  We’ve had the pleasure of meeting with a few couples who are early in the process.  We’ve enjoyed hearing the stories of their adoption journeys, and in a few cases, we’ve even been able to act as a resource, answering questions and sharing our experiences a bit.  And, we’ve had a couple chances to speak and meet with other families who are ahead of us on the adoption path…families who have their kids home or who have already traveled to Ethiopia to meet their children for the first time and who are awaiting clearance to return to bring them home. 

What a treasure it is to be surrounded by so many others who are walking similar roads.

Merry Christmas 2011

We had a lovely Christmas celebration and were glad to have some special time here at home, as well as visiting with our extended families.  We’re hopeful that this is the last Christmas that an empty stocking hook adorns our mantle.

In the meantime, this little sewing project will help pass the time J

A Good Day

Last Saturday, we had the opportunity to be involved in a massive service project at our church. 

 We had been hoping for months to partner with Numana, an international hunger relief organization, to host a meal-packing event at our church, with the food to be directed to a refugee camp in Kenya.  We thought we could pull off a 25,000 meal event, and we were so excited to play a part (even a small one) in providing emergency help to people involved in the dire drought and famine situation in eastern Africa. 

 However, our church staff encouraged (as they always do) that if Heartland was going to do this event, we were going to aim to do it really well.  They set a goal to package 100,000 meals (which would take about 600 volunteers and $30,000).  In order to accomplish this feat, we would be forced to wait until after the first of the year…we didn’t have an extra $30K in the 2011 budget.  We were excited by the prospect of being able to make a greater impact but were simultaneously heart-broken at having to wait (it is estimated that 2,000 people per day are dying of starvation in the Horn of Africa). 

 Then, God moved.

 A generous family from our church, approached our pastor about making an anonymous end-of-year gift of…you guessed it…$30,000.  They knew nothing about our hopeful intentions for this Numana event.  Our pastor prayed with this couple and offered some options about ways they might invest this gift.

 So, we got the call a couple days before Thanksgiving.  Our pastor said, “We’re gonna to do the Numana event.  We want to pack 100,000 meals, and we want to pack them on December 17.” (That was three weeks away and happened to be the weekend before Christmas). 

 With such short notice, during the busiest time of the year, we were hopeful that we could scrape together the 600 volunteers we would need to package 100,000 meals.  Suffice it to say, God had other plans for this event. 

 When the dust settled, 1,100 people had signed up to volunteer.  People from our church were inviting their neighbors, Cub Scout packs, and basketball teams to be involved.  People who had never been to a church before were planning to come help pack meals.  What a fantastic outreach opportunity and a way for our church to exhibit the true heart of Christmas. 

 We had not anticipated this “problem,” and we really didn’t want to turn people away who wanted to serve.  Logistics were reworked, more money showed up, and arrangements were made for extra food to package. 

 Bottom line, 141,288 meals are heading for the Horn of Africa.  It was a good day.

The atrium of our church full of workstations

 The boys with Grandpa and Mema

 Sarah visiting with friends who came to serve

 Ryan doing some "heavy" lifting

 Fun with hairnets

I hope they don’t eat seaweed

Good news.  Our adoption agency matched several more waiting families with their children in the last couple weeks, and we were able to remove more links from our paperchain.  There are currently 33 links on our chain (which we think roughly corresponds with the number of families who are waiting in front of us to be matched with their Ethiopian little ones).  So, we’re getting there.  We’re hopeful for a referral (that just means getting matched with our child) this coming summer, with travel to follow later in the year.

In the meantime….Ryan and I went to an Ethiopian restaurant several weeks ago for date night.  On the way to the babysitter’s house, we mentioned to the kids that Daddy & Mommy were going to eat Ethiopian food for dinner.  Our four year-old said, “Wow, Efiopia is going to take a long time.”  He clearly thought that we were going straight to the source of the Ethiopian cuisine.  Ryan explained that the restaurant was here in town and that they just serve the kinds of food that people traditionally eat in Ethiopia.  Just to see what they would say, we asked, “What kinds of food do you think people eat in Ethiopia?”  Our six year-old answered, “I hope they don’t eat seaweed.”

Well, they don’t eat seaweed so much as they eat a lot of “stew-type” dishes.  Ethiopian food generally consists of spicy vegetable and meat dishes, usually in one of two forms: wat, a thick stew, or tibs, a mixed, sautéed sort of dish.  The food is served along with injera, a large sourdough flatbread.  Ethiopians eat with their hands, using small pieces of injera to pick up bites of entrées and side dishes.  So, our dinner at the restaurant was served family-style and eaten without utensils (though they had them on hand in case we weren’t up to the challenge), but rather using the flat, soft bread to scoop.  We were both pleasantly surprised by how tasty the food was (some of it quite spicy), and I would assess that we were both able to feed ourselves about as well as the average Ethiopian 3 year-old. 

http://www.bluenilekc.com/

Let It Rain

After a four month “drought,” our agency was able to give two waiting families the news that they’ve been longing to hear.  Two referrals were given this week (which means two families were “matched” with their children).  These families received some basic stats, health information, and a photo of their children for the first time.

We are happily rejoicing with these families (who have been waiting far longer than we have), and we are hopeful that this marks the beginning of more referrals being granted.  For now, we’re delighted to be able to take a couple links off of our paper chain!!!

Speechless

We haven’t really broached the subject of adoption costs in our blog to this point.  Adoption is expensive.  The “prohibitive” cost is the most common reason people give for not pursuing adoption.  While adoption through the US foster care system is less expensive (usually less than $5000), domestic newborn adoptions average $ 25,000-$35,000, and international adoptions run $25,000-$40,000.

We have been a single-income family for over six years now.  Ryan is a tremendous provider and financial manager for our family, but we simply do not have $28,000 lying around.  We entered our adoption journey with an aggressive savings plan that would allow us to cover the cost of the adoption without going into debt.  However, our “plan” did not include our three year-old’s emergency appendectomy and week-long hospital stay in March. 

So we found ourselves, once again, practicing humility, submission, and faith by trusting in a plan that we did not expect, but one that we believed was higher and more complete than our own.  We applied for a couple adoption grants, and in July, we were awarded a matching grant by a non-profit Christian adoption foundation.  The foundation would allow our friends and family to make tax-deductible donations toward our adoption expenses, which would be matched by the foundation (up to the amount of the grant for which they approved us).  Any money donated beyond the maximum match amount wouldn’t be matched, but would still go directly toward our adoption expenses.

Money can be a delicate issue, and initially, we had reservations about inviting our friends and family to participate in a matching grant.  Why should we ask others to help underwrite our crazy ideas, we thought?  If God asked us to do this, then surely He will provide the finances for us to do it, right?  (As it turned out, He would provide the finances…just not how we expected).  From the start of the adoption journey, we have experienced God conforming our “plans” to His agenda, His timeline, and His Will.  He has certainly used the adoption journey to, among other things, build our humility and chip away at our self-reliance.  So, we decided to make “the ask.”   

With a tough economy, a limited timeframe to collect donations (the adoption foundation accepted donations on behalf of our adoption during August and September), and the simple fact that there are many causes and recipients worthy of people’s support and generosity, we had no idea what to expect.  We were hopeful that we would reach 100% of the match amount.  If our friends and family hit that mark, those donations plus the match money from the grant foundation would cover the medical expenses we had unexpectedly incurred this spring.  

Well, very simply, we were stunned speechless by the outpouring of support.  The foundation provided weekly updates on donations received:

·         After the FIRST WEEK, we were at 100% of the match amount.  Let me say that again, we met the foundation’s full matching amount in a week! 

·         After the SECOND WEEK, the amount raised had been TRIPLED. 

·         BY THE END of the donation period, and by God’s grace, our friends and family completely smashed our very most optimistic hopes for the results of the grant. We were blessed to raise four times what we had hoped.    

So, our community of friends and family has just completely removed what was probably the greatest challenge for us in this adoption process (who knows, if you all keep this up, maybe we’ll adopt 3 or 4 more!! ).  A few months ago, we thought we still had about $20,000 in adoption expenses ahead of us.  That amount is now probably just a few thousand dollars.  You have no idea the weight of the burden that has been lifted off our backs.  We are so tremendously thankful.

If God commands His people to be compassionately involved in caring for the fatherless, and we believe that He clearly and repeatedly does, we are surrounded by a community of people who is getting it done.  Through their generosity, they are helping put an orphan into a family.  They’ve made a financial investment into something that they will be able to see and touch (and maybe even babysit sometimes J ); they’ve invested in something that will grow and mature before their  very eyes.  We pray that the return on this investment will be rich and rewarding for us all.

Sarah

Ugh.

I had never participated in a conference call before (in my line of work, I find it equally effective to stand in the most-central location in my house and holler state in a calm but very-audible voice whatever information I wish to convey to the masses who may be in various locations about the premises).  However, I have now experienced the refined, mature practice of “the conference call”. 

Children’s Hope International had an unprecedented conference call this past week (several calls, actually, to accommodate the 200 families currently at different stages in the process of adopting children from Ethiopia).  The agency wanted to address growing concerns and questions regarding the delays in the Ethiopian adoption process.  The good news is that the agency staff does NOT believe that Ethiopia will likely be “closing” itself to international adoptions anytime soon.  The bad news is that this adoption is going to take longer than we had planned.  We now expect that our adoption is going to take about 6-12 months longer than we were initially told.  It’s not the agency’s fault.  It’s not our fault.  It’s not the Ethiopian government’s fault.  It’s not the orphanage’s fault.  It’s just the nature of international adoptions.  Ugh. 

To answer the questions in your head...yes, we’re still going to do this.  We’re in too far to turn back now (not that we would want to anyway).  No, we’re not looking into any other countries.  It currently takes about 5 years to adopt healthy child from China and four years from Columbia.  Even if our Ethiopian adoption takes twice as long as initially predicted, it’s still a shorter process than many other countries.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve been having an ever-so-slight pity party periodically over the past month…because why???  Because this is taking longer than I anticipated?  Good-grief!!  Get over yourself, Sarah.  Shame on you!!  When I start to feel whiny, I just think about families who have already been waiting for 11 months (we’ve been waiting 4 months) for that referral that just won’t come, families who know that the next referral given will be their child.  I think about couples for whom adoption is their hope for starting a family, couples who don’t have the luxury of three sweet maniacs to pleasantly distract them from the tiresome waiting.  I think of families who have already received referrals, families who have a picture of their child hanging on their fridge and who are waiting and waiting for the “go-ahead” to fly to Ethiopia to meet their child and appear in court.  I think of families who have already appeared in Ethiopian court and have held their precious little one in their arms and would give anything to have their visa interview appointment scheduled by the US Embassy in Ethiopia, so they can bring their child home.  Ugh.

And that’s just one side of the equation.  Here’s the part that’s even more heart-breaking… I think of the children in Ethiopia who will have to spend more time in orphanages rather than in families (the reality is that we now won’t likely have the chance to throw our daughter a party on her first birthday because she won’t be home with us).  I think of the children in Ethiopia who, because of these delays in the process, won’t be adopted at all (you see, once a child is older than four or five years, the odds of their being adopted drop significantly).  I think of children for whom there will not even be space at an orphanage because others are spending more time in the orphanage rather than coming home promptly to their families.  Ugh.

But, this has been God’s deal from the start, not ours.  Mostly, we’ve been tagging along like a couple of dopes, trying not to get in the way.  So, I guess it seems only fitting to do this on His timing, not ours.  He’s proved Himself capable thus far…leading us to the country of Ethiopia, guiding us through the mountainous and tedious paperwork process, providing a way for this single-income family to manage the costs of the adoption, etc.  So, we will continue to rely on Him, who began a good work in our hearts over 2 years ago, to carry it on to completion whenever He sees fit. (Philippians 1:6)

Sarah