Wise Choice--Follow Up

Hi all,

Thanks to those of you who have shared your thoughts and experiences with me about this situation. It's interesting to know just how common this sort of situation is in international adoption. I want to respond to some comments, and also share "the rest of the story" with you all (I left some stuff out last night).

COMMENTS:

Anonymous said...
I honestly believe that it is VERY inmporant to these kids later on in life to have a sibling that looks like them..to have one that really truly DOES look like them and is biologically related will mean even more to them later on in life.... if you adopted Wise and someone adopted the other 2 brothers then they would each have someone...just food for thought!!

Anonymous. I'm with you on this one. We originally planned to adopt two children from Ghana, in large part because we also feel like it's important for a child of African descent to have another sibling in the family that is of the same descent (if possible). The program we went through was poorly functioning and we had no confidence that we would ever get Bright home, so once we got his referral we felt that we couldn't add our support to this other program by sending fees for another referral. The long term plan was/is to add another sibling of African descent through the family. Even with the poorly functioning program, had we known that Bright had a 4 year old sibling available for adoption we would of course accepted him and tried to adopt them both at the same time. We didn't know until our adoption was final and our relationship with the agency was destroyed.

InternationalMommy said...
Hi Anita~I am an adoptive mom from AOH, and we had already finalized the adoption of our almost 2 year old daughter when we found out she had an aunt in the orphanage. A couple days later we found out they were half sisters!! We had no idea how we would handle 4 kids, and we had NONE of the money, but we decided to go for it and God has provided everything!!

Charity, thank you for sharing your experience! It sounds very similar to what we're going through and it's good to hear your testimony of God's faithfullness to provide everything you needed to bring both girls into your family!

Bingaling said...
Anita,This is such a hard choice! You and I have talked about Bright's brothers in the past and I know that you have a heart to help them in any way that you can. Its hard to know what to do...Do you adopt Wise and start looking for a family for the older two boys? Do you keep the three of them together and find a family for all of them together? Do you try to find a way to sponsor them somehow?

Chanda, thanks for weighing in on this, even if you only brought more questions to the table! LOL! ;-) One thing I do know is that my focus will be on finding an adoptive family for all three of the boys (whether one of them is in our family and the other two are in another family, or whether all three of them go to one family). If we looked into it and found that the older two didn't want to be adopted, or the family thought they could provide for the older two, we would see about sponsoring them. I know that the family would like Wise (the youngest) to be placed for adoption because I saw the father try to relinquish Wise on the same day I met him. =-(

10:19 AM
Anonymous said...
Here's our family's take on our situation. We have two children who were adopted from Guatemala. A year after DD came home, we felt our family was complete. We received a phone call that her first mom had delivered another baby and we were asked if we were interested in adopting him. ....Your family does not know for sure that the children would be adopted by another family and that makes it very difficult to make the choices you have in front of you. ...My DH had a kidney transplant almost 10 years ago and is going strong, we will continue to pray for your DH's health.

Thanks Ronda. First, it's great to know your hubby is doing so well after the transplant! We love hearing things like that around here! LOL! You're right (about Bright's brothers). They aren't in an orphanage. They aren't in an adoption program. They are living hand to mouth with no education, not enough food, and not enough love. I don't know for sure if we're supposed to adopt Wise, but I do feel confident that if I don't help them find a family, they will grow up with little hope of a bright future in Ghana (if they live to adulthood).

THE REST OF THE STORY...

The part I didn't share last night--because I didn't want to bias people's view on the situation--is that there are things happening that would make our adoption of Wise particularly easy for an international adoption.

First--My friend in Ghana (who runs a small orphanage) is willing to help us do an independant adoption for Wise at very low cost to us.

Second--The CIS has announced that people who have I-171h approval can now renew their approval FOR FREE!!!! Our approval runs out in November. Most of you know that the fees are going up at the end of July, so this would be a savings of almost $1000 on CIS fees alone.

Third--You know how people say "God wil provide if it's supposed to happen" and then tell testimonies of unexpected money just showing up in the mailbox? Guess what was delivered to us today? Yup. A completely unexpected check (dividend from insurance). Hmm...

Fourth--A friend of mine who lives here in Oklahoma is currently praying about whether her family could adopt Bright's oldest two brothers. This would mean that all four boys would live within an hour from each other. Our two families already have a "link" because our son Samren and her daughter Naomi were orphanage mates in Vietnam and adopted on the same day!

All told, the adoption would cost us $5000-$6000 (for everything--even travel). Unheard of in these days of high adoption costs.

I'll keep everybody posted on the latest developments!
Anita