Monday, December 26, 2011

One Day at a Time

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas.  What a wonderful holiday it is.  This Christmas was a very special one for Jason and I.  This Christmas we have decided to begin the journey of international adoption.  One day soon I hope to share with you how AMAZING God is and how he brought us to this point in our lives.  We are excited to begin this journey and know that it will likely bring many tears of frustration, sadness, and worry but hopefully in the end and throughout the process we will shed tears of happiness.  I welcome you to join us on this journey, during this exciting time in our lives.  Please feel free to comment on my posts but please be kind.  I know that there will be many who may not agree with our beliefs and decisions, but please be nice :)

So where are we in the adoption process, and who are we adopting and why?  Well, here goes:  We feel very strongly that God has called us to adoption.  After several years of knowing that someday we would adopt, and now several months researching the process we have decided to start.  Almost a year ago, during my search for adoption agencies I came across Reeces Rainbow.  They are an organization that promotes the international adoption of children of all ages with special needs.  After a few moths of slight interest in the website on my part, my husband, Jason said "OK, let's look into it" which was a miracle in itself (perhaps a discussion for another post).  Several months later (and another topic to be discussed in the near future) we decided that we would adopt a child with Down syndrome.  We started by communicating with some people from Reeces Rainbow and eventually were led to two children that we are now hoping to adopt.  From there we contacted a local adoption agency and filled out a preliminary application.  A few days later we found out that we qualified for the country we are looking to adopt from and started the formal application.  We just submitted our formal application to our agency before Christmas.  We are waiting to hear back from them now.  I know that this whole process will require a lot of waiting and patience on our part along with filling out mounds of paperwork.  Once we get our date for our home study we can officially commit to the children we hope to bring home.  I cannot wait to be able to make that announcement!

That is it for now.  I will post again soon, there is so much more to explain :)