We're Expecting!

We are adopting from Ethiopia! I am sure you have lots of questions. So do we! Here are some big questions that we can give some pretty educated guesses about.

Why are you adopting? Are you having fertility issues?

Wow, that was a personal question! Just kidding. We do not have fertility problems that we know of. In fact, a Dr once told Bet that she is VERY fertile when we were battling against hormonal headaches. That scared us!

Both of us feel strongly that God has placed adoption in our hearts. He truly has called us to adopt. We are overjoyed to grow a family and feel that God has told us to do so through adoption. (A fun note: Erik and Bet both felt this calling separately before they even started dating!)

Why are you starting now?

Bet's headaches made us feel like it would be a big stretch and not best for the child if we were parents. They were consuming and debilitating most of the time. When we went to CA in March, Bet had a miraculous healing. She is about 70% better. She still gets headaches, but we are prepared to deal with that. She used to function daily at a pain level of 6 or more out of 10. These days she is consistently at a 3. We feel that God has clearly given us the green light to start the process.

Why Ethiopia?

International adoption can be expensive. Some countries cost $50,000 or more! We wanted to find a more reasonably priced country considering our calling to live on support. Ethiopia will be about $15,000 to $21,000. Compare that to a friend who recently adopted from the US and spent about $18,000. Ethiopia seems reasonable. We feel that God has told us not to take a loan out for these expenses. We know that He will provide for what He has asked us to do.

Aaaaand... the kids are way too cute for words! Ethiopia has 5 million orphans and just as God loved us enough to bring us into His family when we were abandoned, we want to grow our family in this way.

What is the process?

Well this is what we understand as of now:
First, we apply to an organization who has a program for adopting from Ethiopia. We have decided on Children's Hope International. They are a Christian agency with a strong presence in Ethiopia. Applications are processed in about 2 weeks.

Then we start a home study. This will be the process where they find out if we are fit to be parents of adopted children from Ethiopia. They will come to our house, interview us, get our fingerprints, check our finances for stability, ask the police for a background check, and officially write a letter of recommendation that carries enough weight that it makes the government approve us as well. This process takes two to four months.

Next we will take that home study along with some official papers like our marriage and birth certificates, etc. and send what is called a dossier to the government in Ethiopia. This is a big stack of official paperwork for them to receive and decide if we can adopt from their country. That takes anywhere from three to six months to process.

Once we are officially allowed to adopt, we are put in "line" to wait for a referral. A referral is what they call the match between you and a child. We will have certain criteria that the child we would like needs to fit into and once it is our turn in the process, we get the referral. This takes an unknown amount of time, but can take months.

Finally, once you have a referral, you get pictures of your child and start to plan travel to Ethiopia! Both of us will fly there. From the time you get your referral to the time you can bring your child home is 8 weeks. This is because the paperwork on the Ethiopia side is making it so that your child is actually adopted in the government's eyes before you get there! You don't have to spend months in the country going to court dates. We will only spend about a week in Ethiopia and then take our child home. Once back to the US, we must also legalize the adoption here and get all the immigration paperwork to make sure our child can come to the US.

So for those of you who were doing the math, we will most likely have a child by next summer! Really, the process could be anywhere from 9 to 18 months. Let's plan on a Christmas with kids by Dec of 2009. Wow! Can you believe it?!

You said you can have certain criteria for your child. What is yours?

We would like to adopt a toddler or younger. Honestly, we'd love an infant. We are still praying about exact age, but under two is most likely and even under 1 is possible.
We are not specifying gender. After all, can pregnant moms?!
We would like a healthy child. This is hard for us to say, but we do not feel called to a child who has been determined to be a special needs child. We know that there might be risks in this process, but we also know that God is in control.
Other criteria might come up later, but for now, that is all we know.

How can we help?

We need all the prayer we can get. Check back with this blog for current prayer requests and updates. We think that the baby is already alive, in the womb or in the world. How wild is that to think about?! Pray for his/her safety and protection.

We are going to try lots of creative fundraising ideas. One is that this blog has links for advertisements. This can be annoying, but we get paid for getting clicks on the ads. Try 'em out.

If you would like to give to us directly, there are two ways. First, you can give us non-tax deductible gifts. We will get 100% of those. Email us if you need our address. If you would like to give a tax-deductible gift, you can send it to iTeams (click here). We will receive 85% of these gifts because iTeams takes 15% for administrative fees.

Finally, we will need baby stuff. The tricky part is that we have a big age range for the baby. Let us know if you are interested in giving us a hand-me-down. We are all about sharing!