Our Adoption story

Mark and I have talked about adoption since we got married. We would have a few kids and adopt. We knew our fourth child was our last biological child. While I was pregnant with Alaina, our fourth child, I had a strong feeling that there was a little boy in Africa that was our son. I was at church at the time and I went out to the lobby. I saw Greg and Kathy Smith there and told them about the feeling I was having. They prayed with me.

Over the next year or so, every once in a while I would have that sense that our son was in Africa and I would pray for him. A few years later, Mark did an adoption Front Page show for Adoption Awareness month in Nov. I remember that night, sitting on the couch with tears in my eyes, while he told me about how the show had impacted him and wondered if it was time for us to seriously consider adoption.

After the holidays, I began researching adoption agencies and types of adoptions. After a short seach, it just didn't seem like it was the right time. We continued to learn more about adoption and asked questions from people who had adopted. We investigated foster care adoption, special needs adoption, and foster care. In the spring of 2008, I thought it was time for us to adopt. I begun filling out the home study application and gathering the many, many documents. Then, Mark suggested that perhaps this was the time for our family to move to a bigger house. Four growing active kids in a 3 bedroom ranch was getting a bit crowded. However, I could not pursue adoption and moving at the same time. So, I turned my attention to preparing our house to sell. It's a longer story, but the short story is that God blessed us with a big 4 bedroom house two blocks away from our previous one.

In the meantime, Mark and I decided to team up with some friends to put on an event to promote adoption. It grew into Hope for Forgotten Children. This one day event offered three tracks: Prospective Adoption, Post Adoption and Orphan Care. It was really exciting to be part of planning this event. And we were pleased that the event broke even. This encouraged us to begin planning for the next event the coming year. At our follow up meeting in Nov. after the event was over, our friend told us about how we could do a private adoption in Liberia, West Africa. As she spoke, I wondered in my heart if the door was finally opening for us to adopt. Mark and I talked that night and we both felt like this was a path we should pursue.
I pulled up the application I worked on earlier that spring, updated it and the other paperwork and sent it off to our adoption agency. We planned to be in the Milwaukee area over Thanksgiving. Amazingly, our social worker agreed to meet with us Friday and Saturday to complete our intervere process. Graciously, Mark's mom and stepdad took care of our kids while we were gone.

Since then, there has been more paperwork to fill out and more copies to make. Our social worker came to our house in December to do the home visit. I sent in the form for the I600a and filed for a passport last week.We began our 16 hours of adoption education a couple weeks ago. So, after years of waiting, in a few short months we are on our way.