The Backstory
In the Fall of 2015 Quinn and I both felt the Lord putting a 4th child on our hearts. We have felt the pull toward adoption since we were first married and knew that the Lord would let us know when the time was right for that. So we prayed that He would either let us get pregnant quickly or we would start the adoption process and know that was the route He wanted us to go. We got pregnant that week, so we felt like that was it.
Then Trisomy 21 happened. And we lost our sweet 4th child, Joanna, at 18 weeks (links to those blog posts, if you haven't read them and want to). During the five short weeks we "knew" her, God gave us so much grace in preparing us to do whatever was necessary to take care of her special needs. So one of the things that Quinn and I both felt sure of was that Joanna's little life opened our eyes to see special needs in a new light; something we didn’t need to fear, but could embrace with God’s help.
So, in February of 2017, a year after we buried our little Jo, we stepped out into the land of special needs adoption. Research and prayer led us to an agency called Nightlight Christian Adoptions and their India program. Why India and not some other place? Simply put, it’s just the way God brought things together. The logistics of that country, the needs of that country, the special love God gave us for South Asians, it just seemed like the only option when confronted with a decision. The movie 'Lion' certainly tipped the scale too. If you haven't seen it, we highly recommend watching it!
We planned from the beginning to adopt a 2-4 year old with moderate special needs. We were thinking it would probably be a girl, but were open to the Lord's leading in all of that. We finished our home study in August 2017, but were significantly delayed in the next step and didn't get approval to register in India to be matched until February 2018. In March 2018, we were finally approved by the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) in India and were open to be matched with a child.
The News
The first child our agency sent us was a boy from the immediate placement list. I knew that Quinn would have pre-matched with him that first day if I had been on board, but I knew how much Selah wanted a sister. I did some research on the most current numbers of boys vs. girls adoption in India. Both within India and internationally most people want to adopt girls (I found numbers of around 75%). Girls and children with physical deformities (both boys and girls) are usually the ones being abandoned. So the wait list for healthy girls in India is pretty long. Sometimes close to a year. Internationally, where we have to adopt special needs, most people also want to adopt girls. So we saw a need to adopt special needs boys. And we wanted to adopt because of the need, not to give our daughter a sister.
So we "pre-matched" with him to reserve his file on March 27th, 2018 and waited to get more updated information . Over the course of the next month, we did get a little bit more information and some updated photos of him and were able to determine with the help of our doctor and international adoption clinic that he has a genetic condition that we have learned a lot about and will share more about when he is officially ours. But all of it left us thinking that God had sent this sweet boy our way for a reason. We are already in awe of how much he has accomplished and overcome in his 4 years and are so excited to get to be his family. We officially matched with him on April 26th, 2018! We can't share his given name yet (which will be his middle name), but we will be naming him Moses. All of our kids (except Joanna) have 5 letter Bible names, so we wanted to stick with that. But Moses in the Bible was also adopted and raised in a culture different from his birth family, which we felt like was appropriate for our Moses.
The next part of the process was supposed to be relatively short, but there was significant turnover in staff at the adoption authority in India in June and it created delays for almost all adopting families. A piece of paper called the "No Objection Certificate" that was supposed to take 10 days for them to issue took 4 months (123 days) for us. We had been told that we might be bringing him home before his 4th birthday at the end of the summer or at least for Christmas, however we are finding ourselves in a longer wait than expected.
We were finally registered for court on December 10th, 2018 and our first court date at his district court is January 9th, 2019. From what I can tell from other cases (we have been in contact with a family who brought their daughter home from Moses' orphanage last Christmas), we will have at least 3 court dates over the course of probably a month and a half, if everything goes smoothly. If the judge is gone or our power of attorney is sick or doesn't have everything ready or the court floods (which it did last year), it could take longer. So we would love prayer for that part!
Our process has not been smooth and almost every step has has some additional delay. We are at almost 2 years since beginning the process and almost 1 year since matching with Moses. We are trusting in the Lord's timing in all of it. Having a child that we already feel connected to stuck on the other side of the world without a family makes every day with no progress or no news feel torturous. We hope that court will go smoothly and that we will be bringing him home as soon as March or April. But the truth we are clinging to is that God has the best timing and we are trusting that. So even if it takes longer than we would like (which it already has), it will be good because He is in control.
We haven't gone totally public with the announcement yet because we knew it would be long and unpredictable, sort of like telling people we were trying to get pregnant. But it's close enough now that we are pretty sure we are within the length of a pregnancy, folks! Hence the adoption announcement with the date of a vague "2019" ;)
So there it is! Our big Christmas/New Year's news that has actually been 2 years in the making!
Happy holidays. Hope you have had a joyful and Spirit-filled season!
In the Fall of 2015 Quinn and I both felt the Lord putting a 4th child on our hearts. We have felt the pull toward adoption since we were first married and knew that the Lord would let us know when the time was right for that. So we prayed that He would either let us get pregnant quickly or we would start the adoption process and know that was the route He wanted us to go. We got pregnant that week, so we felt like that was it.
Then Trisomy 21 happened. And we lost our sweet 4th child, Joanna, at 18 weeks (links to those blog posts, if you haven't read them and want to). During the five short weeks we "knew" her, God gave us so much grace in preparing us to do whatever was necessary to take care of her special needs. So one of the things that Quinn and I both felt sure of was that Joanna's little life opened our eyes to see special needs in a new light; something we didn’t need to fear, but could embrace with God’s help.
So, in February of 2017, a year after we buried our little Jo, we stepped out into the land of special needs adoption. Research and prayer led us to an agency called Nightlight Christian Adoptions and their India program. Why India and not some other place? Simply put, it’s just the way God brought things together. The logistics of that country, the needs of that country, the special love God gave us for South Asians, it just seemed like the only option when confronted with a decision. The movie 'Lion' certainly tipped the scale too. If you haven't seen it, we highly recommend watching it!
We planned from the beginning to adopt a 2-4 year old with moderate special needs. We were thinking it would probably be a girl, but were open to the Lord's leading in all of that. We finished our home study in August 2017, but were significantly delayed in the next step and didn't get approval to register in India to be matched until February 2018. In March 2018, we were finally approved by the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) in India and were open to be matched with a child.
The News
The first child our agency sent us was a boy from the immediate placement list. I knew that Quinn would have pre-matched with him that first day if I had been on board, but I knew how much Selah wanted a sister. I did some research on the most current numbers of boys vs. girls adoption in India. Both within India and internationally most people want to adopt girls (I found numbers of around 75%). Girls and children with physical deformities (both boys and girls) are usually the ones being abandoned. So the wait list for healthy girls in India is pretty long. Sometimes close to a year. Internationally, where we have to adopt special needs, most people also want to adopt girls. So we saw a need to adopt special needs boys. And we wanted to adopt because of the need, not to give our daughter a sister.
So we "pre-matched" with him to reserve his file on March 27th, 2018 and waited to get more updated information . Over the course of the next month, we did get a little bit more information and some updated photos of him and were able to determine with the help of our doctor and international adoption clinic that he has a genetic condition that we have learned a lot about and will share more about when he is officially ours. But all of it left us thinking that God had sent this sweet boy our way for a reason. We are already in awe of how much he has accomplished and overcome in his 4 years and are so excited to get to be his family. We officially matched with him on April 26th, 2018! We can't share his given name yet (which will be his middle name), but we will be naming him Moses. All of our kids (except Joanna) have 5 letter Bible names, so we wanted to stick with that. But Moses in the Bible was also adopted and raised in a culture different from his birth family, which we felt like was appropriate for our Moses.
The next part of the process was supposed to be relatively short, but there was significant turnover in staff at the adoption authority in India in June and it created delays for almost all adopting families. A piece of paper called the "No Objection Certificate" that was supposed to take 10 days for them to issue took 4 months (123 days) for us. We had been told that we might be bringing him home before his 4th birthday at the end of the summer or at least for Christmas, however we are finding ourselves in a longer wait than expected.
We were finally registered for court on December 10th, 2018 and our first court date at his district court is January 9th, 2019. From what I can tell from other cases (we have been in contact with a family who brought their daughter home from Moses' orphanage last Christmas), we will have at least 3 court dates over the course of probably a month and a half, if everything goes smoothly. If the judge is gone or our power of attorney is sick or doesn't have everything ready or the court floods (which it did last year), it could take longer. So we would love prayer for that part!
Our process has not been smooth and almost every step has has some additional delay. We are at almost 2 years since beginning the process and almost 1 year since matching with Moses. We are trusting in the Lord's timing in all of it. Having a child that we already feel connected to stuck on the other side of the world without a family makes every day with no progress or no news feel torturous. We hope that court will go smoothly and that we will be bringing him home as soon as March or April. But the truth we are clinging to is that God has the best timing and we are trusting that. So even if it takes longer than we would like (which it already has), it will be good because He is in control.
We haven't gone totally public with the announcement yet because we knew it would be long and unpredictable, sort of like telling people we were trying to get pregnant. But it's close enough now that we are pretty sure we are within the length of a pregnancy, folks! Hence the adoption announcement with the date of a vague "2019" ;)
So there it is! Our big Christmas/New Year's news that has actually been 2 years in the making!
Happy holidays. Hope you have had a joyful and Spirit-filled season!
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