Adopting Again -- the beginning

Our journey to Daniel began in late October 2007 when Dillon International, the agency we used to adopt our daughter, Cosette, contacted us with a new list of “waiting” children. Although we regularly spoke of adopting again, we were not financially prepared for an expedited adoption, nor had we ever planned to adopt an older child. God had a different plan. I prayed as I opened the file Dillon sent. As the file opened, Daniel’s face jumped off the page and into my heart. I don’t know any other way to put it. It was an immediate thing. I hesitated as I called John to ask him to look at the list. I did not tell him about Daniel at first. I wanted to get his real response, not filtered by my hopes. John had a similar experience. We both knew Daniel was meant to be our son. So many questions remained. The biggest one was financial, where would the money come from? I have read enough about adopting an older child to know there are many obstacles and difficulties we could face. With a healthy portion of fear I prayed, asking God to please answer these three questions:

1) Where was the money coming from?

2)Would Daniels minor medical issue lead to long-term health problems, or did he have a clean bill of health?

3)Would Daniel be able to bond with us?

The next three days God amazed us! On day one God miraculously provided three quarters of the money we needed for this adoption from a completely unexpected source. On the second day I spoke with a therapist who reviewed Daniels file, including information about his relationship with his foster parents and she assured me, as well as she could, that Daniel seems to have a good attachment with his foster family. Day three included a “clean bill of health” from the international adoption clinic.

Honestly, I did not expect God to answer those questions, and certainly not so quickly. So began our journey to Daniel.

In the months that followed we completed “paperchase” as most adoptive families fondly call the paperwork phase. Out completed paperwork was logged into the Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) on April 23, and our official wait began. We expect to get our Letter of Intent (LOI) from CCAA any day now, and then we wait again for Travel Approval (TA). As we progress I plan to update this blog. Check back as often as you like.