"The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps." Proverbs 16:3
If you have been following our adoption from the beginning, you know that we wanted to do a domestic adoption. Not that we were opposed to international-in fact, from the beginning we said would love to do that someday. We really wanted an infant and we still do. It is pretty much impossible to get a newborn into your home with an international adoption. We also thought it would be less expensive to do a domestic adoption. But were our reasons for wanting a newborn from the United States selfish or selfless? This conviction, along with some other factors, are what God has used to change our direction to Ethiopia.
We wanted a newborn so that we could have it in our home from the very first days of life. That would help us to bond, right? We want the child to be in our home from the youngest days for training and disciplining. It is much harder to train a one year old than if you start from the beginning. But don't one year old children need homes too? Adoption is not going to be easy so why fool ourselves to thinking it is? Adopting a child that is a little older will have its challenges. No matter where the child is from, there will be challenges. There are challenges when the child comes from your womb, aren't there? But I'm pretty certain the Lord didn't promise things to be easy and we cannot ignore His call and His leading us to the other side of the world. He commands us to deny ourselves and take up our cross to follow Him.
We may still get a young child, but it is not likely. We have sent in our application to an agency in Utah and we indicated that we would like an infant 0-6 months. So this means that when the baby is referred to us, he or she will be this age. However, from the time of referral to the time the baby comes to live in our home could be another 3-4 months, and this is why the age will be increased. But maybe the Lord will grant us a very speedy process of a newborn. We do not know what He has in store for us!
So where do we go from here? We are waiting to hear back from the agency for acceptance. Once we are, Lord willing, accepted to their program, we will receive a dossier packet to be completed. We did have our home study done but that was for a domestic adoption, so now it needs to be updated and changed. We have a meeting with our social worker this Saturday. This doesn't put us back at all because we are still waiting for our fingerprint clearances.
On our application we indicated that we would be open to either a boy or a girl. The woman on the phone told us that girls are in higher demand so if we do not have a preference we may not have to wait as long for a boy. She said that we would be #32 on the list (this was last week). This means that we are #32 of all families they are working with. This agency does not break down the categories any further than that. So, for example, we could be #32 on the list but truly be #5 for a 0-6 month old child. So we will just have to be ready at any time! I will post more about the agency we chose and why we chose Ethiopia soon.
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