Adoption - but from where? through whom?

So we decided to obey God and adopt internationally. We thought that was a hard decision. Little did we know we had just started the decision making process.

The first two questions for us are what country and what agency to use? The agency question will be another post.

There are so many countries in the world and almost as many organizations facilitating international adoptions. Each country has its own set of requirements. Some are expected - you can't be a convicted felon, you have to have a job, etc. Some were surprising - your BMI must be under a certain number, you have to be at least a certain age, but not older than another. One country even requires a psychological exam. In addition to that, some countries have infants available for adoption and others only have older children or children with special needs. Some countries allow you to choose the gender of the child while others do not. The length of time in the country to complete the adoption varies greatly from 3-4 days to having to establish residency and live in country for months. And, of course, the cost varies by country.

We originally thought that we would adopt a little girl from China. The media coverage of the one child policy and how it devalued girls makes it natural to have a desire to adopt there due to the perceived need. In looking into the process in China we learned that the wait time for healthy infants is significantly longer (5-8 years) than we want to wait. The time for special needs is shorter but we don't feel equipped or called to that right now.

We also were recently introduced to the country of Uganda. Doug has a guy in his men's Bible study group from Uganda and we recently met Amy Washington. You may have heard of the book Kisses from Katie and the story of a 18 year old girl who moved to Uganda and ended up adopting 13 young girls. Amy's story is very similar. After graduating from UGA she went on a short term mission trip to Uganda to care for orphans. While there she felt God calling her to address the cause behind the high number of orphans. She started a maternity home to care for pregnant young girls, taking care of them and teaching them how to be mothers. She does this while teaching them how God loves them. She gave a very moving presentation to our Sunday School class. For more of her story, check out Kupendwa Ministries. Kupendwa means "to be loved" in Swahili.

We thought, how cool would it be to have a connection to the country we adopt from? Somewhere that we can return to when the kids are older to teach them about the nation and about our journey of faith. Well, as of right now, Uganda is not a realistic option for us. The average time in country to complete an adoption in Uganda is 4-6 weeks. It could be longer.

Researching Uganda opened our hearts and eyes to Ethiopia, another country with a great number of orphans, but adoption requirements that we should be able to meet.

We really feel as though God has been pulling us towards Ethiopia during the last weeks. We have decided as much as we can but realize that we have to be flexible, especially given that the governments of these African nations are often changing. The adoption difficulties are fluid and we may start down one path only to have that country close and have to switch to another country that is opening up.

One thing we feel pretty strongly is a pull towards Africa. This certainly means our family would be very noticeably interracial. That has been a concern for us. We are worried about how it affects the child. In fact, the difficulties of a black child in a white family is actually a highly debated topic in groups all across the board. Some studies advocate that a child is better off with a family that shares the same skin color because the parents can better understand the circumstances the child will face. Our feeling is that that is a great plan, but when the other option is an orphanage with no parents at all how could that possibly be better? We've talked to a lot of people about this issue, many of whom have children that don't look like them. The best answer we've gotten is to view those visible differences as an opportunity to tell people our story and about the love of God.

We think that works out pretty well since showing God's love is the purpose behind this whole idea anyway.