What We've Really Been Up To

For the last several years, Brandon and I have been talking about adoption.  It was always something we assumed we would do "someday", we just always pictured our family with biological children and adopted children.  "Someday" always seemed way more convenient than "now".  For the last year or two, we have heard God yelling at us a bit louder about the whole adopting thing, but we have ignored it because we are not independently wealthy and have no idea how to pay for it.  The money thing has been a big mental block that I have had trouble seeing around.  

When Brandon got back from Thailand, we decided it was go time.  Time to poop or get off the potty.  Let's quit talking about it and perhaps actually do something about it.  Take the first step and see what God does with our willingness.  Our first instinct was that we wanted to adopt from Thailand.  So Brandon got in touch with some of our missionaries who have previously adopted from Thailand, and got the name of an agency, Holt International, that deals with Thai adoptions.  We filled out a lengthy application, and paid a chunk of change as an application fee, only to learn that they are not accepting any new applications for Thailand at this time.  

Excuse me, what?

But we applied!  

They were, however, accepting applications for their Ethiopian adoption program, which is similar in cost to their Thailand program.  While still overwhelmingly expensive to us, much cheaper than many of the other countries.  So, apparently, we may be adopting a child from Ethiopia in the next several years.  We are prepared for a very long, expensive, unpredictable journey that may or may not result in us actually bringing a child home.  

We are praying that God closes doors that need to be closed, and opens the ones that need to be opened, and shows us exactly what He wants us to do.  We are praying that the money for the adoption is there when it needs to be there, and I am excited to see how God will make that happen, because in my mind that is our biggest obstacle.  (I have a funny story about the word "obstacle" for another time).  We are also praying that God reveal to us "Why Ethiopia", because I have a feeling that the answer is something other than "Because it's cheaper".

We are very, very early in this entire process.  We will be sending in a family picture (which our babysitter will take for us tonight because our last family picture was Christmas of 2006) and our tax returns later this week, and then wait further instruction from the very helpful people at Holt.

Maybe we won't send a new family picture.  Maybe we'll just send this one.  Brandon in his "long hair" phase, me in my "overly blonde" phase, and Aidan in his bald phase.  Don't we look like a normal family?  Doesn't Aidan look thrilled to be in his mother's arms?  Dane's not choking Brandon that hard.  

What do you mean our future child might be better off taking his/her chances in Ethiopia?