We created this blog to chronicle our journey of adoption from Ethiopia.
We started our journey back in February, 2010. In case you are interested, some of our first posts were "5 reasons we are adopting again." Check out those posts if you are interested in the genesis of this journey.
This has been a discouraging week on the adoption journey. We had something happen that sent us into a bit of a tailspin. It is kind of hard to explain it on a blog so send us a message if you want the details. We'd be happy to share them with you. It was the first time on this journey that I (Jason) have been discouraged about the progress. We also completed an update of our dossier (paperwork for the Ethiopian government). We have now passed the 25 month mark since we started the application to adopt from Ethiopia and have been waiting for over 20 months with all of our paperwork in place to adopt. As this wait drags on and we field questions like: "What is happening with your adoption?" and "When will you get your child?" and "How come this process takes so long?" I have to remind myself that God is writing our adoption story not us.
The question I have to ask myself is, "Who do you believe is choosing your child for you? Is your adoption agency choosing your child for you or the Sovereign God of the Universe?" The answer I came to is "The Sovereign God." I want to be content to wait for the child that God will choose for our family, the child that needs us, and we need them at just the right time. Of course, our hearts are still aching and still feel broken. We want our hearts to be broken but we want our hearts to be broken about the right things and about the things that truly matter.
Here is a prayer based on the words of our pastor, Carey Hughes, at the end of his sermon last Sunday. "Help us to come before our King prostrate. Help us to give Him all that we are; our minds, our hearts, our strength, EVERYTHING. We come before You, God, humble, in desperate, reliant worship wanting to know You as our King and Saviour. Not wanting to be served but to serve You. Help us not to try to manipulate You for our own goals, for our own earthly blessing, or human prosperity. Help us to give You our whole life and to serve You as our True King. Help us to know that You will not be mocked, no matter what the circumstances."
I am writing this post over several days and I continue to struggle with making the head knowledge that God IS sovereign reach my heart. I watched a video from the Spokane Orphan Summit entitled, "God's Provision in Times of Waiting." This was the talk I needed to hear this week. I have posted it for you in case you are on a similar journey that involves waiting on God for His answer in His time.
As we wait we have also been blessed by these two songs by U2. Put together they are very encouraging. We wait on our God (YHWH). "Always pain before a child is born." Then in the song "40" based on Psalm 40, the common refrain is, "how long?" in the midst of the words, "I waited patiently for the LORD, He made my footsteps firm." We want to trust God that He IS truly good and that He knows what is best. We do not have to be afraid to cry out to Him, "how long LORD?!"
My oldest child turns 11 today! I can still remember the feeling of pride, awe and amazement mixed with a little bit of fear and trepidation as I watched her come into the world. It seems like just yesterday.
I'm VERY proud of my darling daughter! Of course I'm proud of her for her many talents: she's smart, athletic, artistic, amazing with hair (you should see what she can do with mine sometime), a great speaker, skilled with small children, and the list could go on. But more than her talents, I'm so proud of her character: truthful, kind, loving, sensitive, discerning.
Of course she's got one or two faults too and we sometimes butt heads but usually it's in the areas where we are so similar that I see my faults coming out in her. Poor thing, she's also the child that I'm hardest on, again, because of our similarities.
You've heard it said before, "There is nothing you could do that could make me love you more or love you less." I'm just so proud of the young lady you are becoming and I can't wait to watch you learn and grow in the coming years.
May God bless you Elenor and may He also make you a blessing to many!
Love,
Dad
As Emmy and I wait much longer than we ever anticipated to bring our child home we have had many thoughts and questions go through our heads. We have been asked hard questions, and we have asked ourselves hard questions.
Why are you still adopting from Ethopia? Why not adopt domestically? Why not adopt from another country? Why is this taking so long? Aren't their children in need of adoption from Ethiopia? Don't kids in the US need homes as well?
How should we be praying? Should we change countries? Should we change adoption agencies? Should we change the profile of what child we are willing to take into our family?
A few things have become clearer for us as we have waited:
1) There are people all over the world who are suffering terribly. They suffer because of no fault of their own. Often they are victims of the greed and power of those in authority. These people cry out to God in a way I know nothing about. In many ways they have a deeper and more profound realization of their reliance on God. I can speak about "the sovereignty of God" but they know it by experience. The amazing thing is that even in the midst of their suffering they praise God. As we wait my heart goes out to those who are waiting for an answer from God about their physical, emotional as well as spiritual needs. I have asked myself, "are there things I can be doing to help alleviate human suffering and give a voice to those who have no voice?" Although there are ways that I can help those who are suffering, their witness of joy in the midst of trials helps me to be more appreciative of what I have and not hold on to things so tightly.
2) We feel as though God called us to adopt from Ethiopia. This wasn't like an audible voice but we prayed for guidance and wisdom, we stepped out in faith when we felt led to do so. As much as any other time in our life, we sensed God opening doors and confirming His blessing on our decision. As things have slowed to a halt in the past 6 months we have had to ask ourselves, "did we misunderstand you God?" The answer that I have received back from God has been the example of two great men in history, Noah and Abram (Abraham). Remember Noah was instructed by God to do something that seemed absolutely absurd. He was mocked and ridiculed by those who watched him build an incredibly big boat for a purpose (a huge flood of water) that at the time defied imagination. He obeyed and it took 40 years of labor to build what God had in mind for him to build. Abram, as you remember, was old, his wife was old and they didn't see how God was going to fulfill His promise. Abram, on several occasions, took matters into his own hands in attempts to "help God out". Perhaps he thought, that the things he did to "help God out," like having a child with Hagar, etc. were what God would have wanted since indeed it was taking so long for God to fulfill His promise. Abram was human just like us and spent many, many long years waiting for God's promise to be fulfilled when humanly speaking time was running out. They weren't getting any younger, that's for sure. We don't want to "help God out." We want to allow God to fulfill His promise, in His way and in His time. The temptation is great to find another way. If, indeed, God is leading us another way, we want to be open to that leading. We need guidance and peace of mind as we wrestle with these hard decisions. I guess that's what it means to wrestle with God in prayer.
3) This whole process of adoption needs to be bathed in prayer. During a time of searching God's heart as to what we should be doing during this wait, and actually not really knowing how to pray, Emmy was struck by a PROFOUND BURDEN to pray for orphaned children. She felt a burden to pray that they would be released to find their family that God intended for them. She prayed for specific children and families that are currently in the process of adoption.
WACAP Update: Our agency sent out their weekly update this week following a site visit to Ethiopia. It was probably the most informative update in a while. The challenges and opportunities were much clearer after being on the ground in Ethiopia, and seeing and talking with people face to face. Restructuring has been going on in many areas of the process and it has been difficult to find orphanages to work with that share the same priorities as our agency. We were pleased to hear that, although the waiting time may be longer, we can be quite confident that our agency has done their best to:
1) Keep children with their birth families and that adoption is the last resort.
2) An ethical process was followed to the best of their ability.
3) A "fee per child" was not paid for our adoption to be completed (a practice bordering on buying children that some agencies practice).
A couple of new orphanage agreements are in the works and we continue to wait on the Lord for the right child for our family at the right time.
Music has an almost universally powerful effect on people. Even if the lyrics were sung with a different intent and meaning in mind, the words can effect people powerfully. That happened for me this week when I heard Michael Buble's song "Haven't Met You Yet". It started hitting me a couple of stanzas in and made me think of my child who most likely is alive somewhere, we just haven't met each other yet. We pray for him or her every night and we pray that God will bring us together in His time.
.... I might have to wait, I’ll never give up I guess it's half timin and the other half's luck Wherever you are, whenever it's right You'll come outta nowhere and into my life And I know that we can be so amazin And baby your love is gonna change me And now I can see every possibility They say all’s fair in love and war
But I won’t need to fight it
We'll get it right and we'll be united
And I know that we can be so amazin
And bein in your life is gonna change me
And now I can see every single possibility
And someday I know it'll all turn out
And I'll work to work it out
Promise you kid I’ll give more than I get
I just haven't met you yet Oh promise you kid to give so much more than I get I said love love love love love love love I just haven't met you yet
Today is Christmas Day in Ethiopia. A majority of people in Ethiopia are Orthodox Christians and they follow a calendar similar to the Orthodox Julian Calendar. You can learn more about the differences in date and time keeping in an earlier post I wrote about New Year's Day. We pray that this is the last "Gena" we will have to spend without our child home with us. I wanted to learn more about Christmas the Ethiopian way. This will spread "the holidays" out by another week, Christmas, New Year's, and then Gena. Sounds fun to me. Here is a piece of what is available online. And here is a short description of how Christmas is celebrated in Ethiopia....
"Christmas is a public holiday in Ethiopia, and on the night of Christmas Eve (Christmas Eve is on January 6, Christmas on January 7), Christian priests carry a procession through town carrying umbrellas with fancy decorations. (Christmas is called Ganna in Ethiopia) Then the procession finally ends at local churches where Christmas mass is held. Then on Christmas morning, the people open presents and then they play outdoor sports (that are native to Africa) to celebrate. Usually the wealthy shares a medium sized feast with the poor and a large feast with their family and friends. Dishes include:
Most people usually put up decorations that symbolize something relating to Christmas, like a male infant to represent the birth of Christ, or a small Christmas tree to represent Christmas decorations (Wikipedia)."
Here is a link to some audio giving a better description of how Ethiopians celebrate this special day. Here is a link with instructions on how to celebrate Christmas the Ethiopian way.
A young man named Joseph had it all set in his mind, he was going to get married, have a family, work hard and live a normal life. Then the girl he was engaged to, named Mary, became pregnant and he knew he wasn't the father. Let's not sugar coat this; Joseph was most likely angry and he had options. At worst, Joseph could have his fiancee killed. At best, he could quietly divorce Mary but in the process leave her, her family and her child open to public shame and humiliation. Mary may never have been able to marry another man and her child would be forever fatherless. If the story were to stop here, this would be a horribly hopeless and depressing story. Many people today find themselves feeling depressed at this time of year for any number of reasons: Broken relationships with a spouse, a sibling, a parent or a child and the thought of spending Christmas separated from a loved one, or maybe this time of year brings back memories of happy times spent with a loved one who has now died. Or it could be that the prospect of having to spend Christmas with family members where the interactions only lead to strife can be daunting and leave someone feeling depressed.
Jesus came into a situation something like the one described above and God's hand was present. An angel came to Joseph and told him to go ahead and take Mary as his wife as planned. The angel said, the child growing in your fiancee was conceived by God. When He is born name him "God-Saves" as a fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah's words in Isaiah 7:14 which tell us to look for a child who will be born of a virgin, and be named "Immanuel" or "God is with us!"
What was a very hopeless and depressing situation turned into a story of hope and salvation for a variety of reasons.
-The effect of Joseph's obedience and the outworking of God's plan to bring hope continue on.
-Because Joseph obeyed God, Jesus had a father on earth, Mary and her whole family were saved from shame and humiliation, Jesus' rightful status as "King of Kings" in the line of King David could be charted through his adopted father Joseph.
-It was God's plan that the promised messiah would be a "son of David" and that this would be played out by adoption. Joseph's paternal ancestry as laid out in the Gospel of Matthew was passed on to Jesus when Joseph adopted him as his son. This was also no accident. It was in God's plan and brings us hope. Romans 8:14-17 tells us that we can be adopted into God's family and not only have the opportunity to call God "our Daddy" but receive full inheritance in His family as sons along with His son Jesus. Imagine that!
-In the midst of our hopeless and depressing situations, God is with us. At times it might not seem as though God is with us but He is. He came to earth as a helpless baby, born into poverty, born to homeless unwed parents, born in the midst of animals, straw and poop. He was not a child of worldly status or wealth with a silver spoon in His mouth.
No matter what type of hopeless or depressing situation you find yourself in during this Christmas season, I encourage you to find hope in the scandalous Christmas story found in the Bible in Matthew chapter 1. God came to earth with the names "God-Saves" and "God With Us." May this same God bring you hope today and throughout the coming year!
Georgia plays LSU in the SEC title game in college football today. Besides cheering for the under"Dog" another good reason to cheer for Georgia is their coach Mark Richt and his wife and the way they value children. Mark Richt’s Adoption Story
