Why Ethiopia?? You may be wondering why we chose Ethiopia over other countries or domestic adoption. We have known that adoption has been on our hearts for a few years. We just didn't know if it would ever happen. We knew international adoption was really expensive, but our heart has always been in foreign countries with orphaned children.
We originally got our foster license hoping we would be able to adopt our nephews, but that didn't happen. The state of Indiana would license us to adopt our nephews, but not other children. They don't let you foster other children if you have 5 or more in your home. We have been licensed for 2-3 years and have only had one placement for one day. That was only because they couldn't find anyone in the middle of the night to take a newborn baby. They took her the next afternoon and moved her. We have never had another placement. So adopting a infant from the foster care system will never happen for our family.
As far as trying to adopt an infant straight from a birth parent domestically is very unlikely. It is very doubtful that they would choose a large family. There are so many families out there who are waiting to adopt a baby locally, that we figured we would leave the US to them.
There are a lot of countries that adopt children out to the US. There are not very many countries that we can adopt from though. There are only a few countries that will adopt out infants and that allow families with more than 4 children to adopt. We have 2 friends who have adopted from Africa, we have another friend who will be starting the process soon and another friend who is adopting from Europe. I started looking up information about these different countries that we could adopt from. The different things I was reading and watching on the internet basically all had the same statistics. With 150 million orphans in the world, 48 million of those orphans live in Africa, 5
million of those children live in Ethiopia (half the size of
Texas). Half of those children will never attend school and 88% will never attend secondary school. 1 in 10 children die before their first birthday. The average income is under $1 a day. After reading all those statistics (everything I researched, they kept coming up everywhere)and watching gotcha videos from Ethiopia, I knew that was the country we would adopt from. I prayed about it and talked to Chris and then we both prayed about it. We talked to some friends and they prayed about it for us too. We know this is where God is leading us to adopt from. This is my favorite gotcha day video that I saw!! I bet you can't watch it and not cry your eyes out. This is the video I was watching when Logan came up to me, looked at the tears going down my face and sat down to watch it with me. I read all the statistics out loud and he saw all the babies and told me we need to go get one of those babies! In my mind, I was thinking, I couldn't agree more!
We have been feeling led in another direction recently by God. It's not the first time we have felt called by God in this decision. But this time we are listening and trying to accept this calling from Him. After much prayer, we have made the decision to move forward in adoption. We have been thinking about this on and off for the last seven years. We just tried to ignore the calling in the past due to finances. When you are called for something great, God doesn't stop calling you. He's there waiting for you to respond to His will. Our children are very excited to add another child to our family and think it is wonderful that we can do that through adoption.
It is amazing watching people around us with their children that they have adopted or listening to others going through the process of their adoptions. It touches my heart to help orphaned children in the world. A lot of you may know that we have been licensed foster parents for the last 2-3 years. We aren't able to adopt here locally because we have six children. We have decided to adopt internationally. We have chose a country that we want to adopt from and we are still checking out different agencies. We do have a favorite agency so far, but we want to check a few more out just to be sure. The country we have decided on is Ethiopia. I have been reading lots of blogs and watching many videos of others experience's going over there to pick up their children. One word, Love. God is love. John 14:18 says, I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
So, for the next 6 months or so, we are going to continue to pray and
try to cut down our debt as we start this new chapter in our life. We
ask that you pray with us in obeying God's will for His Kingdom.
We are all moved into our new house now!!! Thank you so much for everyone who helped make this happen!! We love it! Our family has grown so much over the last 8 years and the other house was way too small for our growing family. We have so much more space in our new house. The kids and dogs are adjusting well. This house is insulated really well. You can barely hear the kids throughout the house. I managed to get the house pretty much unpacked in a matter of 2-3 days. I didn't realize how much stuff we have. We managed to fill a 26 ft truck up a couple of times and we still have some stuff in our old house that we need to pick up.
It was a rough first week in our new house. Our lawn mower broke, washer machine broke, and transmission went out in our van. So far, we have managed to fix our van. Thank goodness for warranties. We also have a warranty on our lawn mower, so hopefully that will be fixed in the next couple of weeks. Our poor washer machine has no warranty, boo. So, it's not fixed yet!
We had a lot of friends over for Memorial Day!! There was about 45 people that came! Luckily we have a large back yard and home now to entertain this many people. We love having friends over for BBQ's. We are hoping this summer to have our youth group from church over for a BBQ.
