Skip to main content

Prayerful consideration

Thought I'd write today asking for your prayers. 

Due to the lengthy time schedule of Ethiopian adoption, we were asked if we also wanted to see Waiting Children lists from other countries. We said yes, and signed up for the monthly updates. The first one showed up in our email account from the Philippines and I fell in love with a little 4-year-old boy. This is why - in his little two paragraph bio, not only did they list a brief summary of his medical conditions, but they made it very well known that he responds to, and very much loves, MUSIC.

That was music to my heart, soul, motherly instincts, and musician-brained psyche.

When we told Caleb we wanted to adopt, we had told him possibly more than one child, so he has continuously said he wants an older brother that he can play with and a baby sister... could this be his brother? Could his sister then be coming from Ethiopia in a couple years?

Here's the catch. Three things need to happen in the next couple weeks in order for this adoption process to begin.

1. We have to decide if we really want to adopt this little boy. It is an interesting situation. If we adopt from Ethiopia, we will most likely wait for "the call" where they've chosen a child for us, that fits our parameters, and we most likely would not say "no" to, unless the child had a severe medical problem we did not think we could handle in the location we lived. But in this case, we will be, in a sense, choosing him. It is up to us whether we want to consider this child, and we make the ultimate decision to adopt/not adopt based on the medical and social reports we have on the child. It makes me feel like his life is in our hands, which is a scary thought - although, if he becomes our child, his life will be in our hands for sure! We have a lot of prayerful considerations to make right now. This is hard!

2. There is no definitive that we will even be allowed to adopt in the Philippines. They have a couple guidelines for adoptive parents that we miss by a nail. Some countries are very strict about their rules and regulations - if that is the case, then we don't even have a chance to adopt this little boy.  :(
We have a short profile that was sent to someone in the Philippines and we are waiting to hear back from them. Oh yes, the word "wait" was definitely used once more in this blog! It's a hard word to avoid unfortunately. 

3. If all of this was a go, we need to decide whether or not to do a transfer of funds from our Ethiopia stuff, therefore losing our spot on the waiting list for Ethiopia and losing a small amount of money- or, we can do a concurrent adoption, meaning we start the whole process over with paperwork and fees, and it means we stay on the Ethiopia waiting list and would adopt from there in a couple years. This sounds like the preferred, however money will be an issue to come up with so soon, but I have faith that God will provide if needed. And Lots more owls will need to be made!!!

So long story short - could you keep us in your prayers? There are a bazillion things that need prayer in this world right now, but I really would appreciate it. Also, te prayer is not just for our decision, but for this little boy who needs to be in a home. He needs a family. Please pray that he may have that blessing sooner than later. 

Thank you. 
Have a great weekend friends! 

In Christ-
Mara




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Love & attachment

As I hug and kiss my son goodnight (for at least the third time, 2 hours past his bedtime!) I can't help but think about my other children. How I long to hold them in my arms, kiss them goodnight, show them how much they are loved, let them know that I will always be their mother. Yesterday Jon and I attended our first education meeting. This was put on by our local agency conducting our homestudy. The focus of this meeting was to talk about what to expect once our children are home. We learned a lot about "triggers" for our children - when life could be more difficult, we also learned more about attachment issues, and we learned/discussed what it will be like for our children to live in a "white privileged" family & neighborhood. Since this education, my mind has been swarming with many different thoughts. Many I'd like to try to convey into my writing, although this may take a few blogs. Tonight, as I work on getting my son to go to bed - and Stay ...

decisions to be made

Last week I was taken a little aback by the news that it could be 3.5 years until we would be bringing our children home. I knew this would be a process, a long process, and maybe I was kidding myself thinking that somehow our process would be shorter. We still do have the potential to have a shorter process since our parameters are not extremely narrow, but we will still be no where near what my head was hoping for. In the recent months it had crossed my mind that I could see us adopting more than once, but what a process that would be! If this is a 3-5 year process, to start all over again seemed like so much. But now our minds are racing with a new hope... Because of the letter they sent us, we learned that simultaneous adoption is an option. The thought had never even occurred to me to look into this option, but I'm becoming quite excited about the prospect. With simultaneous adoption, we would be part of two different adoption programs within our agency - Ethiopia & ...

Second day in Manila

Family picture from yesterday at the park. Caleb has a flying butterfly. Our second day in Manila was fantastic! We got out of the city and saw a ton of the countryside, multiple areas outside of the city, and a beautiful "lake" that houses a volcano.  We've been starting our mornings with this view. Starting out on our journey today we saw some gigantic billboards. These two were selling Jollibee and the other was selling TUNA... tuna!?!? Our first trip to Jollbee! This is the Philippines favorite fast food restaurant, it is similar to our McDonald's. Their primary food though is chicken, much like KFC. Where do pineapples come from!?! Did you say a tree?? Then you, like myself and Jon, are wrong!!!! These are Pineapple Fields! Pineapples are grown from the ground! When this is ready to pick, the pineapple will be sitting straight up on top of the soil.  Road side stop to see the pineapple fields also allowed us to see t...