Why Ethiopia?

                                                


As we began telling people that we felt called to adopt, one of the main questions was "From where?" At first, we did not have an answer. My heart was set on Haiti since I went on a mission trip there in November, but we didn't qualify for Haiti based on our age and how long we have been married.

We were open to wherever God would lead us. We thought about domestic adoption, but realized that the chances of a young family with 3 kids under 3 getting a baby was highly unlikely. We knew we were going to pursue a child under 3 because we wanted to stay in birth order. I  just had this sinking feeling that if I created a profile and was waiting on a birth mother to choose us, it was going to be a long wait and there was no guarantee.

We thought about foster care. We know the need for foster parents is great. But everything I read said not to go into foster care expecting to adopt. I heard of so many stories where foster parents got attached and fully expected to be able to adopt children that were in their care for over a year and last minute, the child was pulled by the birth family. I just don't think that I could handle that emotionally. Plus, with my kids so young, I was afraid of having different children come and go from our home. I thought that could be really confusing for their little minds to grasp. However, it may be something that we consider later in our life if God calls us to it.

So, it basically boiled down to an international adoption. I was a little intimidated about it as it is the most expensive adoption process, but I felt an overall peace about it. We had a list of 15 different countries that our agency works with. Each country has certain requirements including: age, marriage length,  number of biological children, cost, time in country, etc. After looking at all 15, it came down to Ethiopia. Ethiopia has over 4.6 million orphans. It is one of the largest populations of orphans in the world and the highest population of orphans in Africa.

Once we realized that Ethiopia was our country, it was like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders. My homestudy case worker said to always know that things may look different down the road. Sometimes, the number of children that you are pursuing changes or their health state or even the country. I am opened to continually hearing God's voice on this subject as I know he will match us with our child regardless.

For now, it's Ethiopia...a whole 8,568 miles away from our home. Wow...how amazing is that? Never would I have thought that one of my children would be half way around the world.