So?

After being in Ethiopia and seeing how many older children, special needs and sibling groups languish in orphanages waiting to be adopted, the Hero and I knew that our next adoption would only be from an agency's waiting child list.

About seven months ago, we started signing up again for adoption agency's waiting child lists. We didn't even consider starting the process another way. In November, we began applying for a specific sibling group through foster care here in Oklahoma. We were almost done with our paperwork when our social worker let us know that the siblings had been adopted.

In January, we fell in love with a little girl in China who was about two years older than The Angel. The agency advocating for her would not consider placing her in our home because it would be out of birth order. We researched countries, agencies, requirements and scoured waiting child lists from tens of agencies. I received a CD from an agency and fell in love with a fifteen year old boy. His circumstances changed several weeks before we called about him and he was no longer available. I briefly inquired about some of the other children on the CD with the worker and she stated that she would send me an additional DVD with children specific information, including health reports, videos and photographs.

She advised me that this country was known for being long, expensive and completely unpredictable. She stated the process would take us at least two years from start to finish. I don't think that she was trying to scare us off, only giving us the facts, but after about fifteen minutes, I reassured her that adoption was not our first rodeo and I don't scare easily.

I almost forgot about it until a month or so ago a CD arrived in the mail. It had been sent to the wrong address. It was full of videos, health reports, pictures and information. I sat and cried. I waited two days before I showed it to The Hero. He said only one thing "let's do it." We waited three more days before we showed it to The Angel. She was ecstatic. There were several health concerns to consider so we decided to pray about it some more. We stopped talking about it as a family.


Until two weeks ago, The Angel stomped into the room, put her hands on her hips and looked at me "Are we going to adopt __________________ or not?"
I laughed. I told her we were still praying about it. She said she thought we should. She has a way of getting what she wants around here.

So here we are.

I don't mean to torture you, but since it looks like we are going to be doing this for awhile, we thought we would at least make it at bit more interesting. So this week, we are putting up our own poll and inviting you to help us pass the time by learning a little bit more each week about our newest addition(s). From now until next week, you can vote for how many children we are currently in the process for. All you have to do is click your vote to the right and then leave a comment. We'll randomly draw names from the comments next Monday night and the winner will receive a free "Worth the Wait" shirt in either an adult or children's size. We'll do a similar game until we've revealed as much as we can about our new adoption. We appreciate you guys following along this second time around and we can't wait to show them/her/him to you one day.

If you guys can't wait to get your hands on your own Worth the Wait tee, go back to this post and read how to get one of your own. Our LoPa Art team left today and they need some money to buy some more fabulous Ethiopian art to bring back to you all. Also, LoPa launched its blog today and our family was the first partner's family to be highlighted. We were honored.