A Fork in the Road

I am sorry I haven't posted much new information about adoption. To be honest, we found out some negative news last week Thursday and we were waiting until we knew more to post anything. So, here it goes.

Last Thursday night we got a phone call from our social worker. She told us that the government in Zambia was shutting adoption down. Bethany didn't know a lot yet, but things didn't look good for us in Zambia. Thursday was a rough night. We felt very frustrated that God would shut this door for us after we felt His call to adopt from Zambia so clearly. Because we didn't know anything for sure it was hard to know what to think all weekend.

Tuesday I met with our social worker to talk about what options we had at this point. She said that they hadn't heard from Zambia and for now, no news was bad news for us. It did not seem that Zambia was going to open its doors anytime soon. So we discussed our options, which mainly came down to changing the country we were going to adopt from (probably Ethiopia or South Korea), pursuing a domestic adoption, or stopping the process altogether to try to get pregnant.

As we talked, prayed and discussed, we did not feel led to drop the idea of adoption. We still feel very passionately about giving a desperate child a loving, Christian home. It also seemed that it would not work to get pregnant in the middle of a longer adoption process because most countries do not allow that. So, we were down to deciding which country to adopt from instead of Zambia. In both countries (South Korea and Ethiopia) there are kids who need homes, but our hearts are still in Africa so at this time we are pursuing an Ethiopian adoption.

We received our papers from immigration on Monday so most of our stuff is ready to be sent to Africa. Because we changed the country we are adopting from, there are a few more papers we need to get together and then hopefully we will send our paperwork to Ethiopia in the next couple of weeks.

God is good and His timing is perfect. We can already see His hand in all of this. The Ethiopia program just opened up for Bethany a few months ago, so if we would not have pursued Zambia at first our paperwork would not be ready to be sent to Ethiopia this early. Also, in Ethiopia we can still get an infant and we only have to stay for one week! We are thinking that maybe sometime next fall we will be able to go to Africa and get our baby.

Thanks for your prayers and support through this emotional journey. God is good and we continue to experience His faithfulness every step of the way. That's all for now- feel free to post questions or shoot us an email.