heartofdakota.com

Good morning ladies! This is an off topic question to you adoptive moms. Since it is off topic, Carrie might prefer us to private mail instead. My husband and I have recently started praying about whether or not the Lord is leading us to adopt a child. My husband and I are both 35 and have 2 children, a daughter who is 6, and a son who is 4. We are just in the prayer stage right now, trying to decide the Lord's will on this. Neither one of us have ever really discussed it too much, other than years ago before we had kids. We had talked then that if we couldn't have children of our own, we would try to adopt. Then we had our 2 and haven't really said much about it since. Then, a few months ago we just got on the subject somehow and I was surprised to hear that my husband had been thinking about it. It just seems like such an overwhelming decision. I would like to get some more info about it. I tried looking at some websites, but got really overwhelmed. I was hoping that you would have some good advice, tips, etc. that you may be willing to share with me. How did the Lord lead you in your decision? Thanks so much for any advice that you can give.

Have a blessed day,
Christy

I would love to hear your adoption stories, too.

I can recommend that you look into Bethany Christian Services. We haven't adopted through them, but my husband's parents were foster parents through this agency and it is absolutely wonderful! They are an amazing bunch. They have several types of adoptions and lists of organizations that may help with adoption expenses, as well as information showing what all the costs are, etc.

We have 3 bio grown children. Our third was born with spina bifida, which was overwhelming physically and mentally, so when dd was 3 years old, I hastily made the decision to not have anymore. DH let the decision to me, since I am the primary care giver for the children. I was okay until dd was about 10. She started growing and thriving and I really began feeling like I was losing my baby. (Empty nest syndrome )

To make a long story short, I quickly, through the encouragement of a friend, and support from dh, began the journey of doctors, etc. to try for another bio child. I was 40. Needless to say, through much prayer, AND anxiety and stress, God did not allow it to happen. During that time, I began thinking about adoption. I was really interested in international adoption. So, I happened to go on Bethany Christian Services website. I knew dh would not want to go internationally because of the cost. There is also domestic, infant adoption, which is nationwide, but that is also costly. We just didn't feel we could handle the financial aspects of those types of adoptions. Bethany is also involved with the SWAN (Statewide Adoption Network) program. These are the children in foster care who become free for adoption. They are typically older children, however, there are some younger ones out there. Many of these children have been abused or neglected in some way. Others may have medical issues that the birth parent(s) do not want to or cannot deal with. The legal fees are covered by the state. It is very rare to get a baby through this type of an adoption, unless you start out doing foster care. Then IF the baby eventually becomes free for adoption, the foster family can adopt. Sometimes that can takes years. We went straight adoption.

We looked into it, and began the journey with training, paperwork, and most importantly, much prayer and many tears. God did see fit to give us our dd, now 6yo. We had hoped for at least a 5yo. and God truly blessed us and allowed us to have dd before age 3. I am not exaggerating when I say that dd was just the one God chose for us. Because so many want to adopt young children, there are many couples interested in the same child. Not only were we chosen out of, who knows how many families, at one point I realized this...The very month I began looking into doctoring for the possibility of having another child, was the month our adopted dd was conceived. God is so good!

It's because of adopting that I am having this opportunity to take the HOD journey! Thank you, Carrie.
If anyone wants to message me privately with questions, feel free to do so.

I have a bunch of stuff at my blog look in 2008 Feb and May and June!
http://gardenforsara.blogspot.com/2008_ ... chive.html

We had a definite call to adopt from India and China Being missionaries living on other peoples money paying for an international adoption was out of the questions and crazy. God paid for quiet a lot of it about 40% my parents paid 20% and I think after taxes this year we will have very little left on the debt. I have very strong feelings about Adoption being the responsibly of "the Church" meaning "The body of Christ".
The Suicide rate is abysmal on orphans who aren't adopted and are released at age 16-18.

Bethany's newsletter stated 25% of american couples are infertile so 100 couples out of 400 will find out they are infertile. Many of these will look into adoption as an option but only 2% will adopt that means out of 400 couples only 2 will actually adopt children due to infertility. Children need homes! We used Holt International for both adoptions.
ok I'm done.

We have two internationally adopted children and also researched domestic adoption. It is a very broad topic, so feel free to pm me with specific questions. I spent hours researching, that is for sure. Holt International and Bethany are two very reputable and Christian agencies. However, there are many other options as well.

Mom2Monkeys wrote:I can recommend that you look into Bethany Christian Services. We haven't adopted through them, but my husband's parents were foster parents through this agency and it is absolutely wonderful! They are an amazing bunch. They have several types of adoptions and lists of organizations that may help with adoption expenses, as well as information showing what all the costs are, etc.

I also recommend Bethany Christian Services. We adopted our son domestically through them and it was an amazing experience. I love to share our adoption story, but be warned, this may get a little long

I have 2 younger brothers who are adopted from Korea and DH and I had always talked about adopting since before we were married. We had always planned that we would have a few bio children and then adopt a few. However, God had other plans. We tried for several years to conceive and when that didn't work out, we moved on to adoption. Originally we had planned on adopting internationally, preferably from Korea, because of my brothers. However, Korea has some weird restrictions and due to the state we lived in, we could not adopt from there. So we were praying about what to do. I had always thought that domestic adoption would be neat because we could get to know the birthparents and have background info for our child, but DH was afraid of what would happen if the birthparents changed their minds so we both just agreed to pray about what to do next. One day I was watching one of those adoption shows on TV (it was about a domestic adoption) and DH came home toward the end of it. He watched the end of it with me and then said, "Why can't we do that?" So, we contacted Bethany Christian Services and got an info packet sent to us.

We went to our first info meeting mid July 2004. While we were there, there was a panel of birthparents, adoptive parents, and adoptees that answered various questions. We were amazed at their stories and how clearly you could see God's hand in the way families were brought together. The social worker told us all at the meeting to go ahead and begin praying for the birthparents and child that we would one day parent even though we had no idea at that point who they would be or where our child was at that moment. We began praying and asked our family and friends to pray with us as well. We left that meeting with a gigantic stack of paperwork to fill out for our homestudy and got to work. Our homestudy was completed in Nov. 2004 and we were approved as an adoptive family. Our social worker told us that the average wait time for a child was 12-18 months, but because the birthparents choose the adoptive family it could be shorter or longer. We settled in to wait.

Our 7th anniversary was January 3, 2005. By this time DH and I had been trying to conceive and praying for a child for over 6 years. A couple of days later on January 5th, our social worker called and said that a birthmother had chosen us. She was having a boy due March 23, 2005. She wanted to meet us first and asked if we could meet towards the end of January. We agreed and it seemed that those next few weeks took forever. Finally, the day of the meeting arrived. I was so nervous! What do you say to the woman who is going to give you her child? We got to the church where we were meeting and met the social worker. A few minutes later, Andrea, the birthmother arrived. She walked into the church and it was as if we had known her for years. She brought us all her ultrasound photos and we talked for a couple of hours about all sorts of things. This is the part that completely amazes me to this day. While we were talking to her she told us that she found out that she was pregnant in July 2004 (same time we went to our info meeting and started praying for her). She was scared to death when she found out she was pregnant because she already had 2 children and was getting ready to go back to school. She didn't think she could handle another child at that time. She said that she decided to have an abortion. She had had 2 previous abortions and didn't think it would be a big deal to have another one. She said that on the way to her abortion appointment, she saw a sign that said something about abortion alternatives. She said she still doesn't know what made her do it, but she pulled the car over and talked to someone at that crisis pregnancy center. At that time she decided to place her baby for adoption instead! We actually found out later that she had picked us almost immediately after our homestudy was approved, but because she was so early in her pregnancy, the agency didn't tell us till January in case she changed her mind.

Anyway, on March 8, 2005 we got a phone call at about 4am that she was in the hospital and in labor. We jumped in the car and drove 3 hours to get there. We got to the hospital 15 minutes after Samuel was born. We walked in the room and I went to give Andrea a hug. She just smiled at me, picked Samuel up, handed him to me and said "Here's your son". We spend the rest of that day with her and Samuel in her hospital room and just had an amazing time of getting to know her and the birthfather. We were able to take Samuel home the next afternoon. We send pictures and letters to Samuel's birthparents through the adoption agency a couple of times a year. We are open to having them contact us and even visits, but they both said they felt that would be to hard. We hope that someday in the future they will be open to meeting Samuel, especially since he has a 2 older brothers.

Overall, our adoption experience was amazing and totally worth it. We would love to do it again, but are not sure when we will have the finances. For Samuel's adoption, we were able to take advantage of the adoption tax credit. We were able to get an interest only loan, and then pay the balance with the adoption tax credit, however, I think that credit is being phased out so that will not help us for the next one.

If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them!

We adopted four children. I also have to bio children as well. I pmed you my adoption story that I was asked to write after we adopted them. Feel free to ask anything you want. I am happy to tell you more about our experience.

After going through infertility after our first born, we processed through DSS. We prayed so much about what the Lord wanted us to do.
My husband and I were always wanting to do missions work. One day while I was praying I felt the Lord impress on my heart that He was going to bring the mission field to me. We adopted 2 children from Romania. They were 1 and 6 at that time. Are now 11 1/2 and 16 1/2. Biological brother and sister. God performed MANY miracles to bring this adoption into fuition, and affirm that this was His plan for them and for us.
We are blessed beyond words!
God has a strong call on their lives!

PS: We conceived 6 months after adoptiong. God is so good!

Blessings,
Linda

Loving how HOD is bringing us closer to each other
and to the Lord.
Currently in Preparing, anxiously awaiting CTC this fall.

Christy,
Wow, this is exciting! It's fun, too, for me to think back about making our initial decision for adoption. I remember going to the library and checking out a big stack of adoption books. You're right, it is a big decision. But you will know - God will lead you with with certainty. I remember after reading a bunch of daunting stuff , still wanting to do it - AND MAN AM I GLAD I DID It has been so amazingly wonderful to see what God has done bringing our family together.

http://www.adoptivefamilies.com

is a good resource. A couple of books our agency recommends are:

Raising Adopted Children by Lois Ruskai Melina

Dear Birthmother, Thank you for our baby. by Kathleen Silber & Phylis Speedlin

We've been so blessed with three domestic newborn adoptions thus far. Please feel free to pm me for more info if you decide to go that route. I know there are so many different options within adoption. They are all good! Just this year I have become aware of embryo adoption - there are 400-500,000 frozen embryos sitting in clinics in our country just waiting for someone to come along and give them a chance for life! (Ok, now I'm done too! )

Praying for clarity and peace for you in your decision making process-
Victoria

Hi! We are right in the middle of our adoption process of two siblings ages 0-4 from Ethiopia. We hope to have them home within six months from now, but we may have to wait longer than that. I would love to share our story with you as well if you are interested. God definitely performed some miracles here to get us to this point. We are using All God's Children International adoption agency and we know many people who have also adopted with this agency and have had very good experiences. I know the amount of information is definitely overwhelming. God's blessings as you continue to pray about His will. I'm excited that you are considering adoption! Our adoption blog is http://www.tomandtif-seven.blogspot.com. In the sidebar, you will see many other adoption blogs of others who are using the same agency.

We have 7 children. The oldest 2 and youngest 2 are biological, and the 3 right in the middle are adopted. We have a daughter from Bulgaria and 2 sons (bio brothers) from Guatemala. We chose the international route for several reasons, and I am happy to go into more of our story with you if you are interested. You can PM me. Adoption has been both a tremendous challenge and a tremendous blessing and opportunity for growth. Praying the Lord will guide you and your husband as you seek His will.

In Christ,

Wow! I didn't realize that there were so many HOD adoptive families out there. Thank you soooooo much ladies for taking your precious time to share your adoption stories with me! You are all so sweet! I really appreciate it! We will continue to pray God's will in this situation to whether or not this is something that He wants us to do in the future.

I hope that you all have a blessed day!
Christy