We decided to start a blog on our adoption process, because we realized that we were not reaching some people with our progress and repeating ourselves with others. This way we decided to put any changes and updates into our blog and then people can stay updated when they are interested. Don't worry you can still ask us how things are going, we love to talk about the adoption progress and the excitement we feel about adding a daughter and sister to our family.
So let's start from the beginning. Why adoption? I (Allison), being adopted myself have always felt that adoption was something that I wanted to do. Brian and I discussed it, even before we got married and felt it would be a great way to add to our family. Once God gave us two wonderful little boys, we decided that we wanted to experience what it would be like to have a daughter as well. Not wanting to get pregnant again (plus we know God would grant us another beautiful boy, not that there would be anything wrong with that), we decided to do what we had always discussed doing and that was to adopt.
We probably would have started this process a lot earlier, had Pfizer not shut down in Holland and Brian not lived out of state for six months. Once Brian landed a job again back home with Mead Johnson, we decided to begin thinking and praying about adoption. We went to Mexico in October of last year and decided to wait until after that to really start pursuing it. In November we went to an informational meeting given by Bethany Christian Services in Holland. They discussed both domestic and international adoptions. At this time we had no idea which direction we wanted to go. The only thing we knew for sure was that we wanted a girl. After this meeting, we made an appointment to meet with a social worker at the Bethany offices. We went in and spoke with a domestic adoption coordinator. The one thing that she said that really struck us was that by us already having biological children, we would be taking a child away from someone that possibly cannot have children. This made us think about why we were doing this. We wanted to provide a home to a child who really needed one. She asked us if we would consider a child of a different race. We said, "yes". As that time she brought in a international adoption specialist. We spoke to both of them about the possibilities of an African American child or a black child from another country. We went home from that meeting with a lot of things to think and pray about.
We prayed and prayed about it and finally decided to go international and after looking at all the countries, we felt God was really calling us to Haiti. Looking at all of the different countries, something always came up that deterred us from choosing that country, some were cost, length of stay in country or length of time for us to get our child. But the one that really spoke to us, and that helped us make our decision was the story we heard of a baby dying in his mother's arms. You see Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere and many of the people there are malnourished and are poverty stricken. This mother was taking her child to the orphanage, because she had no money to feed him. The orphanage was full and could not take the child. As the mother was talking to the orphanage workers, the child died in her arms. This story stayed with us and we felt that it was God calling us to adopt in Haiti.
God didn't make it easy on us though. Shortly after we made this decision and began our application process, Haiti made a few changes. One of the officials down in Haiti changed positions and the new official decided to go by the books. One of their rules is to not let families that already have biological children adopt. Our social worker told us to start thinking about another country. We did and agonized for a long time, because we truly felt that this was where God was calling us. In the end we decided to wait to see if this Haitian official would realize the amount of children that needed homes and would relax the rules again. Once we decided to wait, God answered us quickly and a few days later Haiti opened back up. Yeah!!!
From there it has been full steam ahead. After our application (which is very large and very personal), we went into the home study process. This involved a series of interviews with our social worker (also very personal), one involving a visit to our home to meet the kids. Once this was done, our social worker wrote up our home study and it was ready for the next two steps. One was the immigration paperwork and the other was the gathering of the dossier. They involved blood work, doctor's visits, psychologist visits, visits to the police station, pictures taken, etc. We also had to wait on certified copies of our birth certificates and marriage certificate. Everything all came together on the same day a few weeks ago and I ran around like mad getting it all off. We mailed off our immigration paperwork and on the same day I got the dossier certified by the state, so that it could be sent to the translator to be translated into French (Haiti's official language). This involved going to Grand Rapids and going to the State Seal office, Kinko's, and the Grand Rapids Bethany office. This was all done on a Friday and the translator had it back to us on the following Monday. On Monday we gathered everything and sent overnight to the Haitian Consulate in Chicago to be certified. They got it back to us by Friday of that same week and I was off again. I gathered everything for the dossier, brought it to Kinko's and had it copied seven times (that was fun!). I then drove to Grand Rapids again, dropped everything off at the Bethany office and made it home for Brison's bus with two minutes to spare! The Bethany office looked it over and the dossier was got off to Haiti. They received it on Monday of this week and now our wait officially begins. Whew! We thought these steps would have taken a lot longer.
The paperwork will first go to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Haiti where everything is legalized, this takes about 4-6 weeks. We also begin to await our referral, which should take 2-4 months, this is when we find out who our daughter is going to be. The whole process takes about 12-16 months, so we are hoping to have our daughter home by Summer of 2008.
Today I just got our fingerprinting appointment for immigration, which is part of the paperwork that eventually has to go down to Haiti.
We ask that you pray for us and continue to do so throughout this whole process. God has been faithful and a lot faster through these steps then I could have ever imagined. Now comes the hard part, the wait! The paperwork made me feel in control, now I have to rely on others to do the work for us. This is where God wants us to lean on Him and He will deliver us our child in His timing and not ours (which is always best!). We will continue to post, as things happen. When the paperwork goes from one place to the next, they keep us continually posted, so we know what stage we are at. I hope to post pictures when I have them, hopefully I will be able to do that. If not here, then on email. Thanks for reading and praying for us! If you want to check out the orphanage from where we are adopting from, please go to God's Littlest Angels website at
http://gla-missions.org/index.htmLove,
Allison
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