Our adoption journey started in January or February of 2013. Scott and I (Angela) had been talking about adding a child to our family. Due to the complications that I had when I was pregnant with Grace and the risks that a future pregnancy would pose to both me and baby, we decided that adoption was the best way to add to our family.
In April of 2013, we sent off our application to Small World Agency to adopt a child from Ethiopia. We filled out paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork! We got our home study completed and everything was on track. Then, our first curve ball hit! Due to roadblocks that the Ethiopian government had put in place, our agency was having trouble continuing with adoptions there and they did not know how long it would take to resolve. So, Small World told us about a program that was fairly new. This program was in Lesotho, Africa.
Like many of you, we had never heard of Lesotho and had no idea where it was! It is actually a small country that is landlocked inside South Africa. Scott and I prayed about it and discussed it with family and friends and decided to go ahead and proceed with Lesotho. Because of this, we had to get our home study updated. This was completed in November of 2013. We then began to work on even more paperwork and submitted our dossier to Lesotho and was placed number 5 in line to be matched with a child. At that time, the hope was that we would be matched within 3-6 months and travel 2-3 months after that to bring our child home. During this time, we also travelled to Portland to get our federal fingerprinting and USCIS (U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services) approval. And then we waited, and waited, and waited...
In February, 2014, we ended up moving to Coeur d' Alene Idaho. All the while, still waiting for our match. At this point we were number 4 in line. And, due to moving to a different state, we had to start our home study all over again! This was completed and still no more matches were being made from Lesotho.
Long story short, we moved back to Klamath Falls in December, 2014 due to financial reasons. Still, no more word from Lesotho on when more matches would be made. We remained 4th in line.
In mid January, 2015, we received an email from Small World stating that with the wait times for the Lesotho program being so long, that any families in that program could switch to the China program for a discounted rate. The China program is a well established and streamlined program. So, with more prayer and discussion, we decided to go ahead and make the switch once again.
Going in to this adoption we always said we didn't care where the child was from, we just wanted to provide a family for a child in need.
In the China program, they have what is called a "waiting children" list. This is a list of children that are waiting for homes and usually have some special needs of some kind. So, we started looking at this list of children and looking into their cute faces. Then, one face stood out to both Scott and I. It was a picture of a 4 year old little girl. She had no special needs, just the fact that she was older was the reason she was on this list. We contacted our case worker and was sent her file. In looking over her paperwork and looking at the pictures, we felt even more that this may be our little girl.
In order to proceed with the process, we needed some money that we did not have. We have prayed all week that if this is to be our little girl, that the money would be available to us by the end of the week. And guess what? At about noon today (Friday), we found out we were going to be getting the exact amount of money that was needed! I called our case worker and let her know that since God was faithful in providing, that we would be faithful in our calling to adopt!
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