This story starts so long ago. I was just a kid in fact, in a small hick town that was not so open to diversity and the black families could be counted on one hand. My hopes and dreams always involved being a mama but by the time I was a teenager, I knew that I wanted to adopt from Africa and have a transracial family. People ask me why and I'm not really sure. Maybe it was the one family we knew growing up who had adopted from Africa and their daughter was just beautiful in my eyes. I don't know why but I've always known.
My dreams to adopt from Africa were so strong that when I met my husband it was included in the list of things that my future husband had to agree to. I want to be a stay at home mom, I want a lot of kids, I want to adopt from Africa. I think that about summed up my list. Nothing major!
When Joel and I finally married, I remember walking the streets of Cooperstown on our honeymoon and talking with him about dreams of going to Africa together. Joel had been there once on a mission trip and we talked of going together and seeing the orphanage he helped build. Joel didn't know a thing about adoption (and for that matter, I don't think he knew a thing about how stubborn his wife was at that time). I remember stepping over cracks in the sidewalk and saying to him "I will go to Africa with you, but I won't come home without a child". He smiled and nodded at me (and back then, I didn't know a thing about the smile and nod!).
We got pregnant a little over a year after we got married. I continued to talk with Joel about adoption but it didn't seem practical while I was pregnant. I feel like God used this time to open Joel up to adoption a little more. We went to church one weekend completely unprepared for Adoption Sunday. We listened to some amazing testimonies of families who had adopted internationally. I'm pretty sure I cried. Joel would read a book and the entire plot line would be about an adoptive child's journey through life. It was one thing after another and I kept telling Joel that God was preparing him. Joel would laugh and roll his eyes at me.
We got pregnant with our second child almost immediately after the first was born and that pregnancy was horrible for me. I told Joel I wasn't sure I could get pregnant again. I was so sick all of the time and my body physically hurt so bad and then the delivery was horrendous. We wanted more kids but I wasn't sure that I could go through any of that again. After Remington was born, we began looking into adopting from Liberia. I researched everything and I was excited to start the process. It was expensive though and Joel wanted to be smart about adopting. He said that we needed to have the money first, before we could start the process. And then we found out that we were pregnant with number three, just months after having number two.
After having Cooper, the doctors told us no more babies. We were very sad but also felt like it was just further confirmation that adoption was going to be the next step. We had put Liberia on hold during the pregnancy but started researching again a few months after Cooper was born. And then they shut down the Liberia program. For the next couple of years we looked into every different adoption program that was offered internationally and none of them seemed like a good fit. Either we had too many biological kids for the program, we were too young for the program, I wasn't healthy enough for the program because I am diabetic or the children were much older than what would fit with our family. The doors kept slamming in our face. Then a few years ago we started looking very seriously into the adoption program in Ethiopia. We went to a support group to meet other transracial families, we had our agency picked out and the homestudy agency. Just before submitting our application I asked a question about the medical procedures and we were given the terrible news that Ethiopia does not allow Type 1 diabetics to adopt. I was crushed! There were no other programs in Africa that were open to us.
A year ago we finally decided to do foster to adopt. We had always been open to adopting domestically but it needed to be under specific circumstances and otherwise we would pursue Africa. We have been doing foster care for a full year, have had thirteen children in our home and none of the placements have ended in adoption. We had a difficult placement about two months ago and I went to Joel one night on the verge of tears and I asked him "Why do I still have the desire to adopt from Africa so strongly in my heart?" I told him how I had prayed fervently and asked God to take that desire from me when it seemed like there was no way I could adopt internationally. I said that my desire had not even lessened, it seemed to only grow stronger with time. Joel told me that we never knew what could happen.
Two weeks after that conversation we went to our monthly foster/adopt support dinner and there were a few new families in attendance. We decided to go around the room and introduce ourselves and give some family info. The woman sitting next to me introduced herself, said she was adopting from Haiti but it was a long process and while they waited, they were adopting from the Congo. My heart skipped a beat but I didn't even know where the Congo was at. I couldn't wait to get home that night. We got the kids in bed and I jumped on the computer to start researching the Congo. It is the heart of Africa!!
I started yelling out facts to Joel. I was trying so hard not to get my hopes up, but it looked like we fit the country requirements. The Congo has a two biological kid rule but what I was reading said that many of the judges in country waive that rule. I asked Joel if I could contact some agencies and find out more. And then I had to deal with the logistics of where we were at in life. We had a placement of three siblings at that time. We could not pursue an international adoption and keep that placement. Within a week of finding out about the Congo program, we also found out that we could not keep our placement because one of the children was turning six and we did not have a separate room for her to move into. They found a home for the kids one week later.
Exactly one month after first hearing the word Congo, Joel gave me the go ahead to move forward with the Congo adoption. We had previously been in contact with the director of an orphanage in Liberia before they closed their program and through a strange set of events, we found out that the director had been raised in Congo and moved her program over there. We contacted her and she agreed to help us do a private adoption in Congo. Here is kind of a quick run down of what will happen:
We need to have a homestudy done here in the states. We have submitted all paperwork and had the home interview and are now just waiting on the actual paperwork to be written up. This will take about a month.
Next we will submit our I-600A to immigration in the US to get permission to bring our children home from the Congo. This process takes about 2-3 months for approval. We cannot submit until we have a homestudy to submit with it.
Then, we submit the homestudy report & I-600A with our Dossier paperwork to the orphanage in Congo. We are almost done with collecting our Dossier paperwork. They will then go to court on our behalf and submit for adoption. This process takes 1-3 months in the Congo.
As soon as the children are officially adopted by us in Congo, we can travel to get them. The stay is 7-10 days and only one of us has to go. We are both hoping to go.
We bring our children home and re-adopt them in the US. We are hoping to travel before the end of the year.
Many people have asked about foster care and whether we will still do that. At this point, yes. We have beds open and we do a lot of short term care when the state has trouble finding a bed for little ones. We plan to use the beds we have, while we have them. Once we bring our kids home from Congo we plan to take a very long break from foster care while we adjust to our new family. If we have a long term placement at the time of travel, then we will most likely keep that placement as the state allows us to have a total of six kids in the house while doing foster care.
We are adopting two children from Congo and they will be 2 years and younger. We have asked for one girl, since we only have boys. Siblings are not that common from what we have been told so we are just asking for two children, related or not.
I feel like this is all so surreal right now as we have wanted to adopt from Africa for so long. I had sort of given up hope that it would happen at all. I am so excited to bring our children home but for now, we pray and wait.
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