A friend of mine recently tried to figure out our adoption journey story from piecing together the various blogs here and informed me that there are too many gaps, making it hard to figure out the whole story.  True enough.

In fact, after he said it, I remembered that when I lost all my data a few months ago and then went to put all the old blogs back, I decided not to put in a particular blog which was pretty key to the whole story!  I had forgotten I did this, but the reason was that that particular blog was about raising funds for the baby and since God has so thoroughly provided for that need, I decided to leave that one out.  Actually it was mostly because it was long and I’m lazy.

Anyway, to make a long story short (too late!), I have decided that today’s blog will be like one of those Lost episodes which goes back and recaps from the beginning for the sake of those new viewers.  Even for those of us who’ve been here from the beginning it should be a good time to reflect upon the story itself and see God’s hand throughout.

My wife and I got married in August of 1989.  In our engagement period, just a few months prior, we had been having a discussion about kids--how many did we want, names we were considering, things like that.  IN the course of the discussion one of us mentioned (I forget which one) that we thought it would be good to adopt at some point and the other one agreed.  As we discussed it became apparent that God was laying down a vision for us.  Without making it some sort of rule or necessity, we discussed the possibility of having five homegrown kids and then adopting one more.  That was the beginning.

Five years ago we had our fifth child and began to explore the adoption issue more significantly.  Rather than deciding now that we had “enough children”  or as one unthinking waiter commented, “too many children,” we found that the discussed adoption idea had stuck with us, that we believed more firmly than ever that this was God’s plan and not merely our own.  We knew adoption could be expensive and we knew that raising another child could be expensive.  It was a particularly lean time for us financially, so we just waited and watched.  Twice we considered the possibility of adopting the child of a young unmarried mother we knew and once got so far as proposing it to the young mother.  But this was not God’s plan and this door never opened. 

Slowly by around 2005, God began to impress upon us that international adoption was the plan for us.  I remember literally laughing as the idea began to form because international adoptions are the most expensive.  The more we looked at the idea the less humanly possible it seemed.  Costs ranged from 25 thousand (at the low end) to 80 thousand, for such adoptions.  We had no savings, and were living paycheck to paycheck at the time.  In fact, our finances were slowly improving from where they had been, we were at this time living debt free with the exception of our house, but it was clear that if International adoption were the plan, God was going to have to clearly provide.  It simply wasn’t possible at this time.

We began to look into the specifics of international adoption.  China was out of the question as we had “too many kids” to qualify.  I’ve long been a believer in following the flow of God’s leading in our lives:  that God has a plot and a plan and that the connections in our life are not random but are often part of this plan, so I began to ask myself where did this flow indicate God might have us specifically adopt.

I was born in Sierra Leone (don’t worry, we’re not going all the way back there in our story!) and I wondered if this weren’t some of the connection for us.  I was only there for less than a year and of course had no recollection, nor real connection to Sierra Leone, other than having been born there and seeing slideshows of our time there.  Nonetheless, it was not because I thought I knew anything about Sierra Leone, but because of my belief in no coincidence, the belief that God knows and predestines the time and place of every person’s birth.  So we began to look into Sierra Leone.  It turned out, at the time, that only a few adoption agencies were adopting from Sierra Leone and that the need there was great (about a quarter of all infants do not live past the age of 2).  It seemed very possible this was God’s plan for our adoption.   It also turned out that African adoptions were less expensive than many other international adoptions.  At this time, though, the financial side of it still looked frankly laughable.  There was just no way afford this.

Pondering these things in my mind I went to worship practice.  After more than 16 years of leading worship, I wasn’t actually the worship leader anymore at this time.  I had felt from God that it was time to narrow my ministry activity to leave myself more time to focus upon teaching in its various forms (publicly, counseling and writing-- a blog about that some other day!) I had multiplied myself into two people and they were doing the leading of the team and the worship.  One of these two has appeared in my blogs as Halliesmama or more recently just Jen.  Since she comments under the secret name Jen, that’s the one we’ll use here.  (The other one is Maestro Cool, but more on him another time. He’s probably worthy of a fascinating friend friday.)  Anyway, I was just sitting out in the chairs watching the practice, seeing how things were going, when Jen came out during a break to chat with me.

She sat down next to me and explained that she had told very few people yet, but she wanted my prayers because they were considering an international adoption from China!  We had never discussed adoption with her in any form.  She didn’t know of our plans and up till now I had never known of hers.  I smiled and said, that actually we were considering the same thing only from Sierra Leone.  Clearly she and I were both encouraged by this “chance” encounter which seemed to confirm our separate visions. 

The more we looked into Sierra Leone, the more troubling it got however.  There were some problems with corruption and questions of baby trafficking.  We decided to trust God and press on, trusting Him to open and close doors as needed.

He closed the door.  About the time we were beginning to look into agencies who adopt from Sierra Leone, all adoptions from Sierra Leone stopped.  All previous adoptions were being investigated and no agency could adopt through Sierra Leone at the present. 

By this time, God had sort of married our hearts to an African adoption and so we began to look at where else in Africa, God might have us adopt.  Liberia and Ethiopia were two countries with fairly stable adoption programs. 

My contact with Jen had resulted in our two families getting together and talking a bit about adoption which had lead to the idea of finding other families in our church who were considering adoption and beginning an encouragement and information sharing group for adoptive parents and families at a variety of stages.  We put out the word and found one other couple who were doing an infant adoption domestically directly from a mother as we had thought about doing, and one couple who were adopting domestically through the foster system.  Amazing that these were friends we had known for years but we had not known that we all shared some common vision.  Even more amazing is the timing.  It appears that we had all thought about it, but only just begun to seriously work on it.  Since that time three of the four families involved have completed or nearly completed their adoptions, meaning the new kids are in the house.  We, ironically, are the ones still waiting.  Others who have already adopted have joined our group as well, and new prospective parents too.

During this time, as we were trying to decide what country to consider, my wife was feeling a little stressed about adding to our, by today’s standards, already large family.  But something miraculous happened.  I’ll let her tell it.  

I was feeling a little doubtful about adding to our already large family. During this time, C2, one of the ladies from our adoption support group, stopped me walking into church on Sunday morning and handed me a Good Housekeeping article called, “Coming to America” written by Melissa Fay Greene about a brother and sister in Ethiopia who’s parents had died.  They had been adopted by a couple in America. As I turned the page and my eyes fell onto two of the most beautiful Ethiopian children. I knew then, that this would be our country, our children would come, and they would come from Ethiopia. I went home and found another article by Ms. Greene Hope Lives Here which was actually a prequel to the article I was given. I was riveted; reading it only served to further my conviction that God wanted us to adopt from Ethiopia.

I was moved by my wife’s response and further intrigued and encouraged the more I found out about Ethiopia’s rich Judeo/Christian heritage and history.  The need in Ethiopia is great as it is in much of Africa, but there is a strong sense of family and the kinds of things leading parents to place their kids for adoption are less often abandonment, and more often extreme poverty and disease.

So having settled on Ethiopia, we began to explore the agencies who were working through Ethiopia.  We had long considered Christian World Adoption because of their connection with Shoahannah’s Hope.  Steven Curtis Chapman is a big favorite of mine in the Christian music world and this is a foundation he started to provide grants for adoptions.  Well, it turned out that CWA had only recently started it’s Ethiopian project.  They were trying to get people interested by offering discount pricing!  In order to receive this lower rate, though one had to apply and commit to CWA in the next few months.  We prayed about the wisdom of joining up with an agency who had no Ethiopian experience, no matter the price, but felt God lead us here. Their general experience and credibility in the adoption world was one factor that lead us to them, Shoahannah’s hope, the lower expense, and ultimately a few good conversations we had with our caseworker have all contributed to the sense that God has lead us to work with them.

So we gathered up the couple hundred dollars needed for the application fee, which was a stretch even at that amount, and put our money where our faith was stepping onto the Adoption Journey.

CWA contacted us with further information including a break down of the expenses.  I didn’t laugh this time.  In fact, now that we were on the road, I had a real confidence this was going to happen.  Not that this confidence never wavered a little, but for the most part from that point on I was prepared and expecting to just watch how God would work.  Our next big expense was the first round of paperwork and half our agency fees--over 1500 dollars.  This came in in the form of our tax return of that year.  After putting forth this money and finding ourselves definitely committed to the process (some of our friends thought we should be committed, but I don’t think that’s what they meant.) we had a surprise gift of many thousands from some friends of ours (Known to regular visitors to this site as Seymour and Seymour’s spouse.) who had come into some unexpected money themselves.  They knew we were adopting, but didn’t know just how important this money was at the time.  It kept us moving through this process very well.  They provided another sizeable gift at another crucial moment for us towards the end of the process.

When you do a home study they ask you how many kids you want to adopt.  All the recommendations say to express that you want two, if there is any chance you will want two. This is because the home study has to determine you have enough space and such for two kids.  If you don’t get a home study for two then if you are referred siblings and you decide you want two after all, you have to get a separate home study done.  We discussed it and decided that we were open to siblings, so as not to separate them if such a pair came available.  So at our homestudy we said two, but at that time we really meant one!

Too make a long story short (too late) my wife woke up one day months after our home study and informed me that she was feeling strongly that God might just be leading us to request two children.  This meant an extra 5 thousand dollars when we didn’t even have the first five thousand and potentially double the paperwork so of course I said, I agree.  Truthfully we prayed about it, discussed it with the family and decided that we did indeed want two kids--to help their transition and because we believe God lead us there.

Finally our mounds of paperwork was all done, but we still needed the largest chunk of money yet to complete our process.  We needed in the neighborhood of 10 K to send in with our final paperwork, plus travel expenses.  We prayed and worked and saved and waited and for a time things seemed a little stalled.  I felt God leading us to use our talents and work as a family to creatively raise the money.  We did everything from Bake sales to ebay business.  I even mentioned it on our blog and got mixed reactions.  Some felt it was wrong to have bake sales to “purchase kids.”  or to solicit money from the internet (which isn’t what we were doing.) and so we renewed our prayers and searches for what God’s plan in this was.  We applied for grants (including with Shaohannah’s Hope).  One grant came back saying that we were not poor enough.  I felt like writing them and telling them that some of our friends and acquaintances frankly  felt we were too poor to be having another kid!  Other grants we just didn’t hear back from.  Money is a funny thing in our culture and adoption is regarded with mixed reactions and I discovered a range of reactions from people, some heartening, some disappointing during this time.

Many months went by without a word from Shaohannah’s hope.  We knew that Shaohannah’s Hope had limited money and lots of requests.  Some of our friends had warned us not to hope to much in that and we knew it was a long shot.  Still, we had come to CWA partly because of their connection with SH, and it just seemed we ought to try.  They had said we’d hear from them by September and now it was October.   Finally in late October we got a note from them saying they were delayed in getting to grant decisions and that they needed more information.  They sent us new forms which we dutifully filled out and sent back.  They promised to get back to us in in November at the latest.

Normally our church has a benefit concert every  year, organized largely by Maestro Cool which collects money for a local charity.  It just so happened that this year there was not such event planned because Maestro Cool was too busy.  AS I was praying one morning, God impressed on me that I was to fill that slot by having an adoption benefit concert.

I love to sing and I loved the idea in one sense, but I was frankly reluctant because of the mixed reactions I had already gotten to any sort of fund raising for the adoption.  This looked to be a big event and I was fearful of the response we might get.  Also, I thought of myself as a pretty good songwriter and performer at one time, but over the years, I’m  increasingly less sure of that opinion.  Finally I was concerned about personal conflict.  Anytime I do anything personal it is also a representation of the church. Nonetheless I continued to pray and it just seemed God was telling me that I needed to be willing to do my part here and that this concert would be my step of faith.  There were many people with whom we had not shared about the adoption itself, again because of mixed reactions and impressions.  This concert would certainly be opening the door to all that.  I finally concluded that God was leading us to do this as a family enterprise and that this concert was part of the plan.

I spoke with the elders and they were also concerned about the question of personal conflict of interest.  So it was decided not to have it as a church event, but the church staff were gracious enough to let us use the facilities (just as we do for many other outside events.)  My hands were tied in promotion though, since almost no matter how I promoted it it could lead to that conflict of interest as a pastor of the church.  So, I turned it over to some very good friends of ours who took our vision to their heart, California Girl and Blue Man groove.  They invited all their friends in their christmas letter and organized the entire event in an incredible fashion.  C2 got into the act.  I also pulled together a band I’d once had called One Hope.  Interestingly the lead guitarist of that former group had been out of contact with me for several years and had only just returned to the church and so he was lo and behold  available for this event.  We’ll call him Prodigal.  Jen brought her not insignificant song-writing and performing skills to the event, as did Maestro Cool, which is awesome considering he was too busy for his own concert!  Also joining us were flipper and foof.  Integrity mom, hula girl and Aloha surfer Dad joined us as well.  Blue Man groove and Flipper joined us with their primo Blues Brothers impersonations. 

But the hIghlight as far as I was concerned was the fact that my whole family was involved in the concert.  I wrote a song which all of us, even Shorty, sang together.  Then Number one son and Joe Cool sang a duet together.  Sweet-lee and sweet-an-lo each sang duets with Papa.  Mama and Papa sang many songs that I wrote and that we used to sing together.  It was really thrilling to have my whole family there with me in this endeavor.    This whole process has been a true family ministry and I am as happy about that as I am about anything.

The attendance was outstanding and it was a great celebration and we had a really good time.  We charged nothing for the concert but did invite them to donate to CWA or to the family directly if they felt lead by God.  I was hoping for 1500 or so.  When the money was all in we made just over 6000 dollars!  It was an incredible testimony to God’s grace and to the love of the saints.  I’ve always known that when it comes to generosity of spirit and wallet, the early church in Acts 2 has very little on us!  Seriously it was amazing and meant we almost had enough to send in our final paperwork.  In fact, we were just about 3 thousand short.

The concert was December 10 of 06.  We still hadn’t heard back yet from Shaohannah’s hope.  Three days after the concert, we received a letter from them.  They were giving us a grant for 3 thousand dollars!  In less than a week God had provided all that we needed for the next step.  I could hardly have asked for a greater confirmation that the concert had indeed been a step of faith for which God was waiting.  Interestingly there have been other steps of faith along the way, ways that we have stepped out in declaration of God’s promises to us in our vision.  I won’t catalog them all here, but suffice it to say that God has been faithful as He always is.

So, we sent in our final paperwork requesting siblings: boy and girl, both under the age of 2.  We didn’t insist on siblings however. 

The first referral we got was for two sibling girls.  We prayed about it as a family but decided that this was not what we had been hearing from God all along, so we turned it down. It was an agonizing decision in many ways.  It’s probably hard to convey how hard it is to turn anyone down!  Joe Cool was adamant (“That’s not J and L.”)  Number one son was characteristically compassionate (“but who will take them if we don’t?”)  Sweetanlo and Sweetlee, along with mom and dad felt the pain of turning it down but agreed that this was not where God was leading. Shorty was not sure what the big deal was, confident that our babies would come soon enough.

Then just a few short weeks later we received another referral, this time for a boy who was just a bit over two and a girl who was just a little under two and a girl who was 8 months old!  Yep, I can count too, that’s three kids!  We prayed about it but decided God had asked us to adopt two not three, so we agreed to look at medical info and pictures and videos for all three and decide between the two girls.  None of them were related to each other and none of them were even in the same orphanage so they didn’t even know each other.

Last week we received the information.  It was much more sparse than we had hoped.  No heights, weights, very little information, but the videos were priceless.  We took the whole thing to a pediatrician specializing in international adoption as our pediatrician (of whom we are very very fond) was in Switzerland at the time!  This other pediatrician turns out to be a jewel as well and was able to conclude things form the little information which were encouraging to us.  She pointed out that attachment issues which can often come for toddlers (the two year olds) were less likely because they had both been with their moms till very recently and not institutionalized for long periods.  Anyway, too make a long story short (everyone together now--Too Late!) we decided to twin the two almost two year olds.  If you never seen the word twin as a verb, it just means what you would guess: to treat and raise them as twins, probably with the same birth date (even though they are a few months apart.) 

Right after deciding this we received an email with a lot more information:  the information we had been expecting the first go round--height, weight, and so on.  That would be today.  We forwarded the information to our pediatrician friend.

Today we faxed off our acceptance of the girl and the boy and though I am not allowed to give any details, I will say that they are very very cute and so will fit quite well in our very cute family!  Ok, truly I will tell you that now we know there names I am modifying their secret identity names on my blog.  They will henceforth be Lem Lem (ok, that’s the same) for the girl, and King Bear (for the boy.)

When it’s official, Lord willing, I will tell you what their real names mean in Ethiopian because it’s pretty cool.

Ok, that’s the recap and the decision.  Now that you’re caught up, we’ll keep you updated.

Oh, we discovered today that our June date was wrong.  The paperwork we were worried about lasts for 18 months, not 12, so we actually had 6 more months all along!  The courts in Ethiopia close for August, so we are definitely hoping to be done by then anyway. I’m going to leave the June deadline up on the countdown clock because it seems to be where we are headed anyway,and is very possibly from the Lord,  but I have changed the count up clock now to reflect the time from faxing our acceptance to completion of court date.

Any questions feel free to email.  Any encouragements feel free to post a comment.  Prayers are always appreciated.  The next step is to move the kids to a foster situation in Ethiopia (together, as siblings)  and to get a second round of medical tests.  When that’s done, barring any surprises and Lord willing, they will begin to work for a court date to make the adoption official.  At that point they are ours.  When that’s done, they will set an embassy date and that’s when we will travel to Ethiopia to pick them up.