Oh my gosh, ready for another crazy twist to our adoption story??? We are switching from Ethiopia to China! When all this news came out in late December about a possible Ethiopia closure, we were sad, disappointed and a little scared, but we still felt like God was telling us to just stay. We felt this way all the way through February 10th, when we had our homestudy update meeting with our social worker. Meaning we never even had so much as a conversation about leaving Ethiopia, we were dead set and really had a peace about. We knew we would have to wait another 3-4 years to have our daughter home, but for the most part we had resigned ourselves to that fact. We definitely weren't happy about it, it meant we'd have a high-schooler and Ashten would be 8 and already really busy with her own stuff. She wouldn't be as close in age to our biological children as we had originally planned. But we really didn't feel called to do anything about it.
However, that afternoon (February 10th) we had received another email from our agency, just telling us that they weren't sure if/when Ethiopia would close, but they wanted us to have all the facts they did. In weeks past, when we had received Ethiopia update emails, they never really phased us, we were just glad to know that it was still open and glad to be receiving the updates, no matter if they had new news, or good news or whatever. The email we got on the afternoon of February 10th, though, was a little different. When I look back on it now, I believe it was God beginning to stir our hearts to consider a different country than Ethiopia, at the time all I could explain it as would be a definite unrest and uneasiness about Ethiopia.
We had our meeting that evening with our social worker and talked to her about some of our concerns and worries, both about staying with Ethiopia and switching to a different country. When she left, she told us that if we were planning on switching countries, we needed to let her know within a week or so (talk about pressure!!) because if we were not going to switch, we had some paperwork expiring in March that she had to get our home study done in time for.
It was a very stressful week of praying, processing and talking. We started off the week with a fear of switching countries. We had our visions of what our family would look like, and that included a beautiful dark-skinned Ethiopian girl. We have a lot of money invested in an Ethiopian adoption, some of which would transfer over to a different country, but some fees which we would have to repay and different travel fees, which are a lot more for China. We looked at the prospect of redoing our dossier and all the paperwork and government fees that went along with that, which, to be honest, is not appealing in the least. But, slowly as the week went on, God gave us a peace and an excitement. He gave us an assurance that while we love Ethiopia, a switch to a different country does not lessen that. He gave us both a heart for a Chinese daughter, when neither of us could even picture that before. He gave us a peace about the extra money we will have to pay, and we have already experienced His provision in this adoption process and we have no reason to doubt He knows of the extra fees and is willing and able to provide. Our hearts were excited to think about a 12-18 month process till our daughter is home instead of a 3-4 year process.
So, by the end of the week, our conversations turned from why would we leave Ethiopia to why would we stay with Ethiopia? It was a very monumental shift, and it was something only God could do. I will tell you that I had the hardest time getting over that our daughter won't be black. And I know that sounds really dumb, but every time I thought about "K", I pictured her as a little black girl, it was my vision for what our family would be like. But now I am super excited about a little Chinese girl, and on the plus side, her hair and skin care will be much easier! (Bonus: her name still may start with a "K"!)
On February 17th, we submitted our application for China and on February 19th we were approved!! Now we start the grueling process of more training, more paperwork, more fees, more waiting, more fundraising, more applying for grants, but there is a new excitement about it (as exciting as all that can be). Chris isn't quite ready to get excited about the 12-18 month time frame (based on the slow down we saw in Ethiopia), but when I spoke with our case worker, she said that time frame hasn't changed in 10 years and I am super duper excited about that! That means we may have our daughter home next summer!
We sometimes wonder why we both felt so sure about Ethiopia when we first started the adoption process over 2 years ago when now we feel so sure about China. We have a few theories, though we may never know all of God's reasoning. I am reminded of 1 Corinthians 2:9: But as it is written: "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him." Our theories are:
- We might not have qualified two years ago for China as there are some pretty strict income and health requirements.
- We weren't even aware of waiting children - children that sit and wait for their forever family because of age or any number of silly medical reasons, most of which are minor/correctable.
- We weren't open to even considering a special needs child. Special needs can be anything from a minor birthmark to more major medical conditions such as cerebral palsy and everything in between. God has been working on us in this area since shortly after we got on the waitlist for Ethiopia, reminding us that He is able even when we are not, and stretching us beyond our comfort zone to trust Him in the unknown and love a child we might not have otherwise considered.
I'm sure you are wondering where this leaves us right now? Thankfully our homestudy is already done, so our social worker only has to do a conversion to a Hague homestudy (China is a Hague country and Ethiopia is not), but we don't have anything more to do for that. We have a little more online training to do to add to what we've already done, I assume Hague-required training that we didn't have to do with Ethiopia. We will have to do a whole new dossier, nothing is the same since one is for a Hague country and one is not. We will have to apply to immigration all over again, which includes new fees. We have six months to complete our dossier (although our case worker said she would be shocked if it took us that long since our homestudy is already done). After we turn in our dossier, the average time till referral for a girl is 0-9 months. After that, China has 4-6 months to issue a travel date, but most people say it is taking the full 6 months. We only have to take one trip to China (instead of the two trips we were planning on having to take to Ethiopia), but we will be there for 12-14 days. Since there are more fees associated with China, we are going to have to buckle down, save and fundraise like crazy again, but we are fully trusting God to provide again just like He has in the past. We have a few fun ideas for fundraisers this time around, so hopefully people feel called to support us but also enjoy it!
We would really covet your prayers as we journey towards bringing our daughter home from China. We are excited and anxious about what God has in store for us in the next year!
