How and Why the Journey Began

We are often asked why we want to adopt. It's hard to explain, but before Steve and I even met, we both had thought of adoption. Our "plan" was to have a couple of biological children, and then adopt. Why? I don't know, except to say that it is something wonderful that God has placed on our hearts. All throughout the scriptures, He tells us to take care of widows and orphans. In James (James 1:27a) it says: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world". We want to give a home full of love and security to a child who doesn't have one. This is why we have started this journey.

Steve and I first went to an informational meeting at HOPE for Children (our adoption agency) in early December of 2006. We walked out of there convinced that this was what our family needed to do. We wanted our children to be close in age, which meant that we needed to get the process started! At the time, Stephanie had just turned 3, and Elizabeth was 1 1/2 - the perfect time to add another child to our family!!!! At the meeting we learned that there was about an 18 month waiting time from when all of the paperwork is submitted to the Chinese adoption agency and when you actually receive your referral (the picture and information about your child). All of this really meant that it would be at least 2 years before we could travel to China, so, you see, it wasn't too early to start planning for daughter #3 (Ha! Ha!)! There was one way that we could travel sooner - that was to find a child on the Waiting Child List....this list has children with various special needs, including (but not limited to) children with cleft lips and palates, heart conditions, missing limbs, hepatitis, etc. Well, first things first, we needed to start with the ENORMOUS amount of paper work (i.e. paper chasing) - a daughter would come. So Steve and I began to track down birth certificates, marriages licenses, scheduled physicals, worked on financial spreadsheets - it was crazy and very time consuming. We seriously began this paper chasing process at the end of January 2007, and were told that a new Waiting Child List could come out anytime. So we waited and worked on paperwork and completed our home study visits. Finally, in April, we had all of our "stuff" together and we had only one piece of the puzzle left before our dossier (final product containing all of our paperwork) could be authenticated and sent to China - we needed to get fingerprinted by USCIS (Immigration). Oh, and by the way - still no List! On April 14, 2006, we received a letter in the mail giving us an appointment time for our fingerprints - 11 am on April 25! We were very excited to finish our puzzle. We made it to the fingerprinting office in downtown Atlanta, and stood in line for our turn. When we made it to the door, the guard put us in another line on the other side of the door. Little did we know that this was the "turn away line"! We were told that even though we had an appointment time in writing, that they had overbooked and we would have to come back another day, or we could go to their main office (20 miles away) and ask to be seen that day. Such drama!! Well, we went to the main office - we had to! Our girls were at a friend's house, and who knew what would happen next time - the same thing, probably! Thank the Lord, that this worked! The main office gave permission to the fingerprinting department to do our fingerprints that day (along with about 7 other couples who did the same thing that we did!). That was just God! So, despite some minor complications, our fingerprinting was completed! The last piece of the paperwork - finished!!!! When our adoption agency received this final approval, they had our paperwork (dossier) authenticated and we were DTC (dossier to China) on June 7, 2007!!!