A Little History....to catch you up.

A Seed is Planted
Some time ago as I was listening to the K-LOVE radio station I heard the story of Lysa Terkeurst from Proverbs 31 Ministries and how she adopted two boys from Africa. The story touched my heart and I thought about it often. At the same time I was dealing with a classroom of kindergarten children who were very needy. Every day I would hear stories about having no heat, rats biting their toes while they slept, and having no running water. I spent most of my time that year providing for my student's basic needs and fitting their educational needs in wherever I could. All I wanted was to take them home and give them everything they needed. I knew I could not change all of their lives....but I could change the life of one child. I googled Proverbs 31 Ministries and saw this story that was on the Oprah show some years ago. http://lysaterkeurst.blogspot.com/2007/07/oprah-show.html
Needless to say I was touched. I wiped away the tears and decided to talk to my husband.

Breaking the idea
I've told many people that it was my husbands job to talk me out of this...and he didn't do his job. As a matter of fact, when I brought up international adoption his exact words were, "Ya, know, I've been thinking about that too." I was floored! He mentioned our friends and neighbors who have adopted from China, India, and Guatemala and the joy that adoption brought to their families. He also said he always wished we had more children together (We are a blended family, one his, one mine, and one ours). I guess God was working on both my husband and myself at the same time and we didn't even know it.

Research & Development (part one)
I spent countless hours researching agencies and countries and each country's requirements and time lines. We knew we wanted to adopt an older child (those kindergarten kids were always in my heart) and I believed that we needed to adopt from a Spanish speaking country so that my daughter could help translate. God had other plans (he often does). The closer we got to deciding on a country and an agency the sicker I became. My daughter also seemed to want nothing to do with adoption at this point and we really wanted everyone on board in order to proceed. I ended up having a rough bout of Diverticulitis and convinced myself and and my family that there is no way we could adopt. I could not be sick like this and care for a 3 to 6 year old child who doesn't speak English. I began to come up with a hundred reasons why we just couldn't adopt and finally convinced the rest of my family to just drop it.

Research & Development (part two)
.....6 months later, after school one day, as if out of the blue, for no apparent reason, I got online and went to HOLT International's waiting child list (Our friends the Corron's have adopted from here three times). I went straight to the Africa section (funny, we were looking in Columbia before this) and saw the profile of a 4 year old boy. He sounded absolutely perfect for our family. I began to tear up and called my friend Michell to look at his picture to see what he looked like (she had a password and we didn't at that time). She emailed back that he was so cute, but it didn't matter to me, I had already filled out the online application and was just waiting for Benji to get home to hit the send button. As soon as he got home I read the profile to him and he said to go for it. SEND!!!
We shared the profile with our children and they were very excited...yes even Kara (who wanted nothing to do with this before). OK God, I see the timing is right now. (September 2008)

Heart Break
Well, timing may have been right, but the child we picked out was not the one God picked out for us. We spent days and days filling out paperwork, talking to social workers and reading about adopting "older" children and having a "transracial" family and finally found out that another family was matched with our "perfect" boy because they were farther along in their paperwork (we had not even started our dossier or home study). The heart break was devastating. I don't know the pain of a miscarriage, but think this must have been close to it. We received an email from Stephanie from HOLT asking if we would like to be transferred to the traditional Ethiopia Program and at that point I couldn't even answer her, my heart was so broken. After a few days, Benji said he felt the "perfect" little boy was a tool to get us back into this and that our truly PERFECT child was out their waiting for us. I emailed Stephanie and got the ball rolling.

More to follow......