I don't remember how old I was the first time I went to Mexico to help in an orphanage, but I was young and went for several years after that first visit. Our team would show up and let all of the workers take a break for the week. I don't know where the workers went for their much-needed rest, but while they were away, we cooked meals, washed clothes and hung them out to dry, folded clothes and put them away, cleaned bathrooms and dorm rooms, built school buildings, painted, and many other things. But my favorite...loving on the orphans, especially the babies. We would play with them, sing with them, learn words in each other's languages, feed them, bathe the babies, brush their teeth, read stories, and put them to bed. The last part always got to me. While I loved to snuggle with the little two year-olds, putting them to bed was always such a bittersweet moment. Why did all of those little bitty babies have to go to bed without their parents?
All of those years spent loving on orphans really did something in my heart. I used to always wonder if I would end up in a foreign country running an orphanage. (Of course, I do have a whole life ahead of me...:)) But I knew that no matter what, I was called to care for the orphans.
Jay and I have talked about adopting for a long time now. He has known that it's been something very important to me, but he didn't know that it was something he could do. I honestly felt like maybe it was just a silly dream that I would never see fulfilled. But a couple of years ago, when Olivia was a little baby, Jay and I attended a Steven Curtis Chapman concert with some Dalhart friends. I told Jay on the way to the concert that he might as well be prepared for the adoption bug to be stirred up in me again. (For those of you who don't know, Steven Curtis Chapman has adopted 3 girls from China and promotes adoption during his concerts.) After we got home that evening, Jay told me that adoption was something that he really thought he could take part in. The next day (haha...just kidding...kind of) we started looking into adopting from China, which is where I had always envisioned adopting from. What a discouraging way to begin! We hardly qualified for any of the requirements. But we kept trying, only to bump into closed door after closed door. We began to think that we just weren't cut out for adopting. In fact, we pretty much said that we were going to move on.
This past October or November, I came across a blog that I used to read and had lost the link to. I couldn't believe that I actually found that blog again! The blogger is a mother of 10 kids, 4 biological and 6 adopted. She had a picture of her youngest little girl and when I saw it, my heart jumped. I immediately thought, "That is my daughter." Of course, that particular little girl isn't my daughter, but I wanted to know where she was adopted from. When I read that she was born in Ethiopia, I immediately started looking into the program.
We knew that our friends, Tory and Kedra, were adopting, but I guess that I just never connected that they were adopting from Ethiopia. Once we realized the wealth of knowledge we would glean from them :), Jay called up Tory and picked his brain. After Jay hung up the phone, he looked at me and said, "I'm really excited." After years of feeling like I had to hold the excitement in, I am pretty sure I got teary-eyed. It was just so good to see that we were on the same page. And that's just the way Jay and I work. We know that something is right when we are in complete agreement.
We decided to use the agency that Tory and Kedra were using. Jay saw that we needed 5 referrals with our application, so he had 5 friends write a letter for us. One guy sent the letter to the agency instead of to us. Jay called the agency to let them know that they didn't know who we were, but that they would be getting a letter for our application. Of course, this wasn't a problem, but now we see it as God's way of assuring us. After we applied, I looked at the website and saw that they were no longer taking applications. What? I was worried that we were just applying only to be put on hold. Jay called the agency and was told that we had started working with them before they stopped taking applications. So, in other words, because that one friend sent his reference letter to the agency, we were in. We had our home study 2 weeks ago and just received it to be reviewed today. We are almost finished putting our dossier together and had hoped to be done by this weekend. Of course, things happen and it may not be done until next week. But we are moving right along. Once we get all of our dossier finished and sent off, we will just be waiting to be matched with a little girl 0-12 months old from Ethiopia.
Here is a link to a blog of a family adopting from Ethiopia with our agency. I don't know the family, but it's a taste of what we are doing, just a few steps ahead. We have been told to expect the process to take 12 months or more. She could be growing and forming in her mother's belly right now. My prayer is that she is loved and protected and that God would bring her to us in his perfect timing.
And her name is Hadassah. Yes, we have held onto that name since wondering if Isaac might be a girl. When we named Olivia and didn't use the name Hadassah, I was kind of disappointed. I knew at the time that I was finished having kids and that the name God had laid on my heart was never used. But Olivia is an Olivia through and through. Oh my. She is perfectly named. How we love that girl. I believe that if we would have named her Hadassah, that adoption would not have been such a loud cry in my heart. And you know what? Hadassah of the Bible (Esther's Hebrew name) was an orphan. God makes me smile.
So here we are, on our journey to meet Hadassah. Please be in prayer and go on the journey with us. We know that there will be ups and downs along the way. Having you all there behind us makes us know that all things are possible.
Addis Ababa Time
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