It all started about 4 years ago. Steve and I traveled to Orlando to attend an adoption seminar with an adoption agency. We had been considering adoption for some time unable to have children of our own for no known apparent reason. We just accepted the fact that God's will for us at this time did not include a biological child, so we decided on adoption. This agency's program sounded great so we took the information home and slept on it.
It was about this time that our next step in the plan was to go in with Steve's brother Joe, his wife Trish and another friend, Lisa on some investment property. They were townhouses in a vero beach community similar to Disney's Celebration off of Highway 60 just a few miles west of the mall. The market was great, the initial investment (deposit) was minimum and the end results were to help us pay off some debt and have enough for the adoption. The whole plan sounded great!!! Then guess what....The builder took 6 months longer than they were suppose to to get started and the plan fell apart as did the market. The stress level within our family intensified greatly!! It was not a pretty situation. I would ask God on my knees in one of the oupstairs bedrooms to help us with the sales and nothing would happen. I did not understand. Why would God let something happen like this to our family re: stress levels, financial stress and not able to continue with the adoption, etc.?
FYI: It wasn't until 2 years later would I understand. It is all in God's timing. He has a master plan for us which is better than any plan we could come up with for ourselves. We just have to be patient and wait. Had we sold the the townhouses when we did we probably would have turned around and put the money down on maybe a $600-700 thousand dollar investment property, the market would have crashed and can you imagine what trouble we would have been in? ALSO, The adoption agency we had put the deposit down with at that time was under investigation for withholding several thousands of dollars of families monies and dangling children in front of them only to tell them that sorry they were not available. It's all in God's timing. He has a reason for everything we just have to trust him.
Now fast forward 2 years - August of 2006 we sold the townhomes after a year and a half! We had been paying for both mortgages plus our home! It was a VERY stressful time and it was finally all over. Thank the Lord! Now we can move on with the adoption.
I only took me 4 months to complete all the paperwork required for our "package" which is called a dossier which includes: local background check, FBI background check and fingerprinting, background checks from Florida Department of Children and Families, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Immigration Background Checks and Fingerprinting, Medical Letters, Psychological Evaluations, Reference Letters, and much more. I got it to our adoption agency about the 1st week of January 2007.
After the agency received the dossier then it gets translated from English to Spanish which typically takes about 4 to 6 weeks. This process took about 6 weeks - We received word that our translation was completed in mid February 2007. (Exact date to be entered here).
The next step is for the whole file to go to Colombia and you become registered with the country and approved to adopt from the country. This process was suppose to take another 4-6 weeks and it tool about 4 months. It wasn't until June 2007 (exact date to be entered here) that we received our letter from Colombia that we were registered and can now be placed "in line" for a referral. Our request was for a sibling pair of 2 children - one boy and one girl both under the age of 7 years old. We were also told that typically once you have your registration number that it should only take about 6 months for your referral (we expected a referral by December of 2007).
During this 6 months of waiting time there were several "opportunities" that were placed in front of us: (1) There was an infant that was ready to come home from the hospital, I had spoken to the attorney that was responsible for the infant's wellfare...the mother was ready to give up the child for adoption but, the father who had never been in the unborn child's life suddenly stuck his head in the picture and there could be no promise that there would not be a custody suit - we declined and informed the attorney if the father decides to "sign off" on the child to let us know...we never heard from him (2) My cousin's wife, Paula, had a family member pregnant with twin boys that were possibly going to be put up for adoption...we found out in January the girl lost them (3) We were offered a sibling set of 3 girls...we prayed and asked God if these were the children he had for us and if not to "Ax" the referral....the very next day the girls were unavailable to us as we were getting the process ammended to accept 3 children instead of 2 another family had taken them (4) There was a sibling pair of 2 girls and the same thing...we prayed and asked God if these were the ones and the very next day they were no longer available as they were removed from the private system and put into the public system and they were adopted out. The country never notified the agency that they were no longer available. February 2008 rolls around and we still do not have a referral! And there is that still small voice....be patient....in God's timing.
About this time all this was going on Lincoln Bruester had a song out which the key words that he sang became my "motto" they were "Strength will rise as you wait upon the Lord". The words were very appropriate for what was happening in our lives at the time. It would occasionally be played on the Z (thats Z88.3, .5, .7 and I think 97.9 or so for those of you who don't know it...it is a christian radio station). It had been playing occasionally and all of a sudden I noticed that they were playing it like crazy. I did not understand this as it was not a new song? I guess it was a way that God was telling us that the time is near.
I was involved with the Kidsave program (that's a whole other story) which we were trying to get started in Melbourne/Brevard County/Florida as there was not a program yet in Florida. We were dilligently working on trying to bring about 6 or 8 older children in hopes of getting them adopted. There were 5 key people at the time trying to organize the whold thing: There was Lori, Patty, Myself, Juan and another beautiful lady that for some reason at this moment her name escapes me - I am so sorry. Anyhoooooo...Steve and I are still waiting for a referral so we decide that we will host a sibling pair. They were a brother and sister. In speaking with our adoption agency they discovered that we had been matched with a sibling pair of our original request! We were so excited! On April 3, 2008 I was having birthday lunch with my sister and my mother at Makoto's (a Japanese steakhouse) when I received the call. I immediately called Steve then while on the phone with Steve's mother, Arlene, I told them all together. Wow!
We later learned that it would be a while before we could travel as the children had to undergo "training" to educate them on adoption, what it is etc. This process would take 6 weeks. We understood and agreed to wait.
As we waited the social worker asked if it would be OK for the children to call and talk to us. We said of course and emailed them our phone numbers and appropriate times to call them.
Then we waited........
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2 comments:
Thanks for sharing the dynamics that brought your family together. It's amazing how many similarities our family shared along the way but I attribute most of that topsy-turvy emotional ride since we were represented by the same agency and seemed to get the same runaround.
It's so cool that the Lincoln Brewster song came to you also. I can remember that same song spoke to me as well, and it was the one song I sang over and over that month before our referral came -- it soothed my senses and let me know God was in charge, and the dream was very near.
So glad your story has a happy ending! God is faithful, that's for sure! Some day I'll sit down and blog of our story, but God seems to still be scripting ours in amazing ways. We truly have so much to be thankful for, don't we?
We can so relate to God's timing is the perfect timing! We are finding that out now more than ever - with Sarah's adoption it only took 18 months from start to finish. With our 2nd adoption, we have been waiting already for 2 years, with at least another year to go! I know that God has a plan for our family, but sometimes it's hard to realize that God's timing may not be your timing!!!!
We really like the updates! Your family is beautiful and we can't wait to meet the kids in person. Maybe we'll get a chance next summer - if we don't go to China, we will be planning a Disney trip, so we'll see.
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