Why Honduras???

I guess the main answer would be, Why not?   BUT…if you would like more insight into our decision making, continue to read…. :-)

Adoption is something that both Kyle and I have felt called to for a long time, honestly, even before we met each other. We weren’t exactly sure when it would happen in our family building time-line, but the Lord has made it clear to us that He would like for it to be now.

When we started to seriously consider what adoption would look like for our family, we started looking at resources to figure out how to go about this process. What an overwhelming array of information that exists out there! We briefly considered domestic infant adoption and also the foster-adopt public program. Though both of these options may be something we pursue for future children, there was just something in our heart that was telling us to look to another country for our first child.

The next decision was what country we wanted to adopt from and which agency we would use to facilitate the process.  To narrow the country prospects, we could take every country off the list that we didn’t meet demographic/personal qualifications for. For instance, we would love to adopt from Haiti, but one person in the marriage has to be at least 35 (the other can be no less than 27 years old), and you have to be married for at least 10 years with no children (apparently you can get them to bend on the no children aspect, but not on the other two) – so obviously we can’t adopt from there yet. We also wanted to adopt from a country that we felt a calling towards and an affinity for the people and culture – we will want our child to know where they have come from and to live some aspects of the culture in our home.  We researched some agencies and from there we prayed about which country He wanted us to adopt from.

For those of you who know us well, it’s not surprise that we have a love for Latin America – the people, the culture, and the countries. I have been to Honduras three times now and love it more every time I go. We have both talked about wanting a child from a Latin American country, but many of them have closed their borders to international adoption or have very difficult travel requirements; as a result, we weren’t sure if we’d ever be able to bring home a little Latino child to our home.

We looked into American World Adoption Association based on a recommendation from a family in our church. To our joy and surprise they had a pilot program for Honduras!  A pilot program means that it is a program that is still in its beginning stages, but they do have families that are on the waiting-for-their-child list in Honduras and others that are in the process of getting their paperwork submitted to get put on the waiting list. As exciting as it was to find a program to adopt from a country that we have a connection to, it was equally as scary because of the newness of the program. There are a lot of unknowns as far as time frames, stability of the program, etc, but after a lot of prayer we decided it was a risk we were willing to take. While we were still in the decision process, Kyle pointed out to me that adopting from a country that has a new program and that has some extensive travel requirements (two trips – the first that is about 7 days and the second that is 4-6 weeks for at least one parent) is going to require a lot of relying on God. Not that any of this is really in our control, but if we adopted from a country that was more “predictable” in the process and timeframe, we might be able to do it on our own strength rather than rely on God’s strength for the process. After he shared that perspective with me, I felt even more confident that our child was waiting for us in Honduras.

We are not the first parents to pioneer in this program, but we are involved in the baby stages of it. We are optimistic that as the program continues it may become more efficient and well-established which will be better for the children waiting to be adopted and the parents waiting for them as well. We are certainly in this for the long-haul, but on the up-side was have several years to prepare and get excited for our child to come home to us!

Update

            Well, kudos to the people who can keep up blogs everyday (how are they able to do it?)!! It’s been a while since I’ve had time to sit down and write more about our journey to share with you. A LOT has happened since we shared our exciting announcement about our adoption…

1. We met with our homestudy agency coordinator.

            Shortly after our last update, we drove to Findlay, Ohio to meet with her for our orientation. She had a lot of great information for us, but honestly, she left me scared that we’re going to bring home an ill-adjusted, terrible monster. I know that our child will have at least some level of problems associated with receiving less than optimal care for the years before we bring them home, but I have to trust (and I pray) that the Lord is protecting his or her heart from long term damage. I have to trust (and pray) that with a loving and nurturing home with Jesus at the center, we can help to heal any amount of hurt they have experienced. And I have to trust that even if none of this turns our how we hope or expect, the Lord is calling us to this way of building our family and He will be with us through whatever we experience.

2. We’ve continued the paperchase.

            It really is crazy the amount of paperwork that we have to run down for every step of the process. The homestudy requires certain amounts of paperwork and the dossier (our international paperwork) requires other things. Fortunately some of the items are used in both, but for our international paperwork, everything has to be perfect and precise, notarized, certified, apostilled, etc, etc, etc. I’m great at checking off lists, but we seem to be slowly moving through the list – not moving at the pace I would certainly like. I’m learning a lot of patience through this process, and we are both learning the art of having to ask for help. Neither Kyle nor I really like to ask people for help – we are self-sufficient and don’t want to be a burden on anyone – but there are just some things in this process that we can’t do on our own.

            One of our biggest struggles was finding a psychologist who was willing and able to do our psych evaluation and personality analysis. We had found one, but he didn’t seem super-stoked to go through the process and write the VERY detailed report that was required. We had people praying that a psychologist would surface who would be able to do this for us because it is one of the most important components for our dossier. Praise God – our physician knew of someone in our area who was willing to work with us! He even sent us our paperwork packet with the personality test beforehand so that we could use our face-to-face time more efficiently. When we met with him, both Kyle and I were really nervous – who wants to sit there and talk to someone that you know is analyzing you??? Honestly, though, the meeting was great. We’re not crazy (I know, that may be a surprise to some people!! J ) and he even gave us some suggestions for our relationship to be stronger through this process and in the longrun based on some of the themes he saw through our biographies and personality tests. It truly was a blessing in disguise.

3. We’ve set a date for our two home visits with our social worker!!

            This is one of the final steps for having our homestudy documents finished. We have both of the meetings the first week of October and our homestudy should be finalized shortly after that. That means that all we’ll need after that is the remainder of our dossier paperwork to be certified, apostilled, and our immigration paperwork filed (sounds much more cut and dry than it’ll actually be). After that, our dossier will get sent to Honduras for translation!

            Through this process my emotions have really been up and down. I am so excited to bring home our child from a country that I absolutely love, but I get disappointed and discouraged when I think about how long it will take for all of this to take place. I am thankful that we have to go through so much soul-searching, analyzing, reading books, and training because I think in the end it’ll make us much better equipped to parent (regardless of whether the child is biological or adopted), however, I get angry when I think about how many people have children by birth every day that are ill-equipped, crazy, abusive, or indifferent toward their children. Where is all of this education and probing for those people?? Kyle and I will be good parents, and yet every step of the way we have a nagging fear that someone will tell us that we’re not going to be good enough to bring a child home.

            Ultimately, we trust that the Lord knows what is happening through this process. Just as our relationship with Him (and our relationship with each other) goes through ups and downs, we are going to have ups and downs, doubts and fears, joys and celebrations. He has called us to this decision and will not abandon us.