Not yet....

I'm sorry for the lack of posts recently. My heart has just not been in the blogging mood. Part of me wants to spend every waking minute talking about our adoption, reading about other people's experiences, thinking about our precious baby that is so far from us. The other part of me wants to pretend that I'm not waiting for a phone call. I have to be honest, the waiting part of adoption has been the biggest struggle for me so far. Up until this point I've had some element of control over things. I've been so organized, paperwork was done as quickly as I could manage, meetings were scheduled, we were getting things done. Now we are doing nothing. There is no paperwork, phone calls or meetings that will speed this process up...it is completely out of my control. At times that is so frustrating and depressing for me. It could be tomorrow , or next week but realistically it could also be months of waiting. But other times the idea that I'm not in control is very comforting. It's not in my power, but it is in God's hands. And what more could I possibly want then to have the all knowing, all powerful Father in control? I know this, but I have found this to be a huge struggle and also a push for me to be more trusting and dependent on God. I didn't realize until now how important it is to me to be in control of my circumstances, and I am really learning to give that up and let God take over.

World Orphan Day

     Tomorrow, November 14, is International Orphan's Day, a day set aside to remember and pray for the worlds orphans.  The United Nations report  "UNICEF State of the World's Children" produced in 2005 reports that there are between 143 - 210 million orphans in the world today.  Many criticize these numbers as being too high because they include children in under developed countries who have lost one parent and are cared for by the other parent on a part time basis.  However many orphan advocacy groups (Stars Foundation) subscribe to the 143 000 000 number because the UN report does not include many Islamic countries who refused to give information. (Iraq for example has over 200 000 orphans that are not included in the report.)  The UN stats show there are between 40 to 50 million orphans whose parents are both deceased. (18 million are from sub Saharan countries as a result of Aids/Hiv.) The remaining children, ages 0-16, have either been removed from their home because of lack of care or abuse, or they have been abandoned by their parents, due to economics, the health of the parents, or the inability of the parents to raise them.  Even more tragic is the fact that some children leave their home because they are sold and trafficked by their own parents.  
     Ideally if a child is left orphaned, relatives will step in to care for the child.  When this is not a possibility, there are basically three other places where these children end up.  Orphans in most western countries live in the foster care system, where individual care and attention can be given to a child by loving people. However multiple disruptive placements can still damage a child.  There are over 500 000 kids in the US in foster care, 130 000 available for adoption.  Communist and many former communist countries still use state run orphanages and many developing countries have orphanages run by charitable organizations, such as churches or the Red Cross.  In an orphanage there is often a high child to caregiver ratio, which doesn't make it easy or even possible for caregivers to give individual attention or love to a child.  Children often are neglected for long periods of time, and many babies give up crying as it goes unanswered anyways.  Rates of violence in an institution are six times higher than in foster care and sexual abuse is four times higher.  Two reports to come out of Russia and the Ukraine in 1998 show that 10-15% of orphans who aged out of the system at 16 years of age commit suicide before they turn 18.  Almost 60% of girls resort to prostitution for a time, many permanently, while 70% of boys commit a crime within three years.  Children that do not live in an orphanage or with foster parents are left on the streets.  The UN estimates 150 million children are living on the streets but admit there is no way of knowing how many are orphans.  Children on the street are subject to the weather, abuse, sexual exploitation, mal-nurishment and neglect.
     Perhaps some of you have never heard these statistics before and are shocked by them.  Others have heard them before and its so easy to forget in our busy lives.  Let's not forget though, our Christian duty to care for the most vulnerable people in the world.  Let me leave you with one last statistic.  Last week the UN predicted the seven billionth person was born. Despite the fact that there are seven billion people on this planet, only two hundred and fifty thousand children will be adopted this year, 0.17% of the world's orphans!

Posted by Derek and Valerie

Matthew 25

Matthew 25:34-40

Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

 35For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 

36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' 

37Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 

38And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 

39And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?' 

40And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers,[a] you did it to me.'

A Response to Comments on Birth Parents

A couple of months ago a reader of our blog posted the following comments.
“Praying for your little one as well as the child's mother/father/grandparents, etc. Your gain is someone else's forever loss. Adoption is the only trauma, where we expect the victim to be thankful. As much as I think what you are doing is noble, please never forget that there is another very very sad side to all of this. Your happiest day...someone else's saddest day.”  The comments were posted by an anonymous reader. I apologize for not responding sooner and hope the reader is still following our story.  Val and I would like to thank them for keeping our child and birth family in their prayers, and for their insight.  The reader is absolutely correct.  Being orphaned is a trauma greater than most of us will experience, for everyone involved.  Birth parents and their families suffer a great loss when either a child is removed from them, or given up, because they cannot provide care.  The child is still loved and the sorrow and guilt felt would be very hard to live with.  I don’t want to sound sanctimonious when I say this, I just want to reassure our reader that Val and I have been praying for the birth family since we started this process.  We can’t imagine being in a situation of not having the health, a home, or even enough food required to raise your child and being forced to give up your child.  Monday, November 14 is International Orphan Day. Please keep all the world’s orphans, as well as their families, in your prayers.

Posted by Derek

The Strange Philanthropist

One of the most frequently asked questions we get about our adoption is “how much is this going to cost?”  Most people ask out of curiosity, with obviously no harm meant.  Val and I have however been cautioned by other adoptive parents to not tell people the cost, just to avoid gossip about “how much they bought their baby for.”  I will tell you though, international adoptions are quite costly.  Parents are responsible to pay for the Pride course and home study (social workers can charge fifty dollars per hour for driving to your house!) legal retainer fees, immigration fees and all travel costs.  No money is ever given to the birthparents.  Val has worked hard to find savings at home and I have tried to work as much part time work as possible to prevent us from having to borrow to much.  It has been a financial burden but one well worth bearing.
Today a very generous friend has helped lighten our load though.  It all came about in a strange way.  We were in Myrtle beach, South Carolina with a huge group of family and friends.  A close friend of my parents approached us and told us he would like to donate some money towards our adoption costs, but he had some conditions.  He wanted to see my dad, who is a real man’s man, sit down and get a pedicure, for a full twenty minutes, nails coloured and all, with out knowing the conditions attached to it.  We racked our brains, trying to think of who would do it and how to get him to agree to it without telling him why.  Then it came to us, our sister in law Becky has never shied away from doing anything and Dad would probably just go along with it, just because it is just “Becky being Becky”.  She agreed and did a wonderful job.  She just went to work, without asking him.  Dad squirmed a little and looked very sheepish as a crowd started to gather around him, pointing and clicking pictures.  Our friend sat in the chair next to him, with a look of pure bliss on his face.  When Dad’s nails got painted purple and pink our friend snapped some more pictures, promising to throw them all on Facebook!  We are very grateful for our strange philanthropist friend and all our friends and family who are supporting our adoption.

Posted by Derek

A Shot in the Arm

Today, Val and I went to the travel clinic to get our shots.  Its hard to believe that at this time last year we had just started talking about adoption.  We had talked about it, Val being more serious about it than myself, but neither of us knew very much about it.  So many questions arise in that initial stage. Are we capable of raising more children? Can we afford the process right now? Domestic or international? What if our adopted child has special needs?  How difficult will it be raising a multi racial family?  It would take a couple more months of major prayer and a tonne of research before we would commit to doing this.  
The year has flown by, and the shots today reminded me of how fast this process up to date has been and how soon we might be traveling! (maybe November or December)  A year might sound long to some of you, but many international adoptions take three years, depending on the country.
The list of vaccinations and oral medication we had to take today was quite extensive.  Yellow fever, Typhoid, Tetanus, Malaria, Cholera, and Hepatitis A and B.  I already had the Hep shots years ago because of my occupation, so I had three needles whereas Val  had 4.  My shoulder is killing me right now, apparently from the yellow fever shot, so I imagine Val, having an extra needle and being quite petit, must be pretty sore!


Posted by Derek

It's official!!!

It’s been a month, and I have lots to say today!
When I wrote last, we were on our way to the approval meeting in Toronto, at our agency. On the day of the appointment, we dropped our oldest 3 children off at the bus stop and our youngest child at a good friend’s house.
[Many of our close friends have been incredibly supportive and helpful in this whole process, watching our kids, writing reference letter after reference letter....we are so thankful for our friends!!! It is so important to have a strong support system while you are adopting, during the process and after!]
So we were on our way.  It was our first day alone in weeks, so it was a bit of a date for us I guess, and it was great to have the time to talk on the way to Toronto.
We arrived at the consulate’s office at 10, just as it was opening.  We met with the consulate, who signed and sealed our documents and we were out of there in about 20 minutes.  Thinking we would have to wait a long time, we had not scheduled our adoption meeting until after lunch.  So, while we waited, we went to a local Afghan restaurant and ate some delicious kabobs for lunch.  Toronto is a fabulous place to try all sorts of different foods, and we’ve tried to eat at a different ethnic restaurant whenever we go.
After our meal we headed to our agency.  We handed in our papers and documents, signed some more papers and documents and wrote out a cheque!  And our adoption became OFFICIAL!!
One exciting thing that we talked about at the meeting, was the appointment of a sort of liaison in Guyana.  This is a woman that has just been hired by our agency since we last spoke to them.  She will be in Guyana, working on our behalf to find a suitable match for our family.  She will be doing the work that we were expecting to have to do on our first trip.  Her job will be to identify a child that matches our government criteria (namely born after July 2010), making sure that child is adoptable, and getting a medical done for them before we even hear about it.
Basically it is saving us a trip!  We don’t have to travel to each individual orphanage anymore looking for a baby, we will just get a referral like most other countries do.  This is a huge relief on many levels.  We are excited that we are not required to go “pick” a child as this task seemed impossible!   Also, we are thrilled that we may not have to go to Guyana 3 times.  We love the idea of going to see the country where our child was born, but it will be so hard to leave our other children behind every time.  One less trip is also much more affordable, (although we are paying extra to have a liaison in place it’s still less then paying for 2 more flights!).
So now, our papers are on their way to Guyana.  Actually by now they are probably sitting on the desk of our liaison!

And we wait.  This time though, we are waiting for a phone call saying that a baby has been found!!!!

This call could come anytime.  More then likely it won’t be next week, and realistically it could take months.  But, it could be as soon as NOVEMBER!!!!
Now, this first trip will be a shorter one.  Maybe as long as 10 days or as short as just a week.  We will go to Guyana, meet our baby :) and register the adoption with the courts in Guyana.  Then, when our intentions are made known we fly back to Canada without our baby, and wait until the court reconvenes, which usually takes about 2 months.  At that time, we may travel again, this time for a longer trip of 3 or 4 weeks.  At that time we will be able to finalize the adoption and take our baby to Trinidad for a visa so we can take him or her home with us.

So for now, we have some more work to do!  We have an appointment booked at our local travel clinic for the first week of October to go get travel vaccinations.  The list is long: Tuberculosis, Typhoid,  Yellow Fever, Rabies, Hepatitis A and B, Cholera, Dengue Fever, anti malaria drugs.....we are going to be protected against everything you could think of!!  Most of these drugs are between $40 and $200, and we are very fortunate that Derek’s drug plan covers all of them!!!  What a relief!  Many of them need to be given 2 or 3 times over the course of 4-6 weeks, so that is why we are getting them right away.  We’ve also started looking at hotels, flights and other things like that, just to get a feel for what is in the country.  Pretty exciting stuff happening here!!  We are so thankful that everything is going so smoothly so far.  It’s been about a year since we first brought up the word adoption in our home, and only 9 months since our home study began and here we are getting vaccinations already!
God is so good :)

Approval!

As some of you know already we finally got our letter of approval from the government of Ontario!!!
Another step done.
So now on Thursday we head to Toronto.  First, we meet with the consulate of Guyana in Toronto.  We have a document that we have to sign in his or her presence.  Doesn't that sound important?  I think it sounds almost intimidating!  I'm not sure why we have to sign it in the presence of an official, but after we have done that we are allowed to send our documents to Guyana.

It's almost like an approval to send our approval so that we may be approved once more. Whew.


Next, we are heading to our agency for our official approval meeting.  There we will hand in our document, our 2 character references, and our marriage licence, passports will get notarized again.  This time our agency has volunteered to do that for free, which is wonderful considering how expensive it really is to get it done by a lawyer!

Oh yes, we also have to give what is called a retainer fee, which is basically a lump sum of money we give our agency in trust, for costs (paperwork, people working on our behalf in Guyana, lawyers fees, court fees, other fees, more paperworks, etc. etc. etc).

And then.....(drumroll please....) we are officially EXPECTING!!!!  (In adoption terms of course).

After this meeting our paperwork and profile will be sent to Guyana to the Red Cross Home there.  We could hear from them anytime after our paperwork gets approved by the government of Guyana.  We are thinking months, but it may be less or more depending on the availability of children.

Another Step in the Process

This week we got a letter in the mail from our adoption agency. We are about 2 or 3 weeks away from getting an approval letter from the government of Ontario!  So before we get that we have a few things to do:


We have to get 3 more reference letters (because the 6 references we handed in at the beginning of the process isn't enough :) 


We have to send in our marriage certificate and passports for the 3rd time to get notarized again!  


We have to go to the Guyanese consulate office in Toronto and sign a document in the presence of the consulate.  


Once we have this done, and we receive our letter of approval then we meet with our agency for an approval session, where more papers will be signed and of course some fees will be paid :)  


And then.......we wait for the okay from our agency to GO TO GUYANA!!!   


That could take months, or weeks.  It's up to the discretion of our agency.  They will call the Red Cross in Guyana to determine if there is a chance there may be children available now, or if we should wait a few months....so I guess time will tell.  But things are moving along again!  If you'd like to pray for us, please pray for this baby that we haven't met yet.  Most likely he or she is born already or just about to be born. It is a bit un-nerving knowing that your child is out there and you cannot protect them from anything for the first year of their life!!

Citizenship part one !!!

Well it has been a while since I've posted anything. Sorry about that, there had really been nothing notable happening here on the adoption front to tell you about. Also, there was a few weeks we were without Internet. But now we are back online, and there are a few new things happening! 
A while back (I think March) we applied for citizenship for our child or children (we applied for two children thinking we might get two girls). When you apply for citizenship you have to do it in two parts. First you have to prove you are Canadian. You do this by getting all your important documents notarized by a notary public, then sending them off with a payment.  Normally it takes 27 weeks to get Part 1 approved.  So we were thinking that we would hear from the government sometime at the end of August or even September.  Well, last week we got our Part 1 approval in the mail!!!  Very exciting for us to get it so quickly!  It is one less thing we have to wait for.  
Now we are waiting for our letter of approval from the government of Ontario saying we are "fit to be parents".  That piece of paper we are thinking will come in about 8 weeks, so by the end of August maybe a bit sooner.  And after that, we can officially start looking.  That doesn't mean we will be travelling any time soon though.  Most likely we will be making lots of phone calls with our agency, trying to figure out the best time for us to go to Guyana, waiting until we know there may be children available to be adopted.  
But, it's nice to have another step in the process complete :)  
I am going to add this letter to my ever growing file folder, which is, believe it or not, neatly organized.  If you know me at all, being organized has not always been a strong trait of mine!!  But I think that being a naturally disorganized person has actually been a good thing for me in the long run.  I tend to get a bit anxious about my weakness (worried I may lose something or misplace an important document) and that leads me to over-compensate. So I actually end up being super organized, in a forced, obsessive kind of way.  My file folder is probably the most organized thing I've ever put together.  There are triple photocopies of every document and everything is labeled with a label maker which makes it look neat and tidy :)  It makes me feel less chaotic about everything when I see everything on my end is in order! 

Recommended for Approval!

We are done our homestudy! We finished our last interview a couple of weeks ago and felt it hadn't gone that well. I had just finished working a 24 hour shift and was a little tired and grumpy. I felt like I was arguing a lot, and Val was worried that I had put our homestudy in jeopardy. Turns out we worried for nothing. Our practitioner has finished her report (its almost 20 pages!)and we got the chance to read it this week. Val and I are very relieved to get this hurdle past us.

My mom gave Val some luggage for her birthday last week.(very thought full!) It's funny because we've been dwelling on the homestudy for so long we haven't even thought about travelling a whole lot. Even though we might not go to Guyana for a while yet, it's slowly starting to feel like more of a reality.

Update on our situation

A few weeks ago we posted that we needed extra prayer because of a situation concerning our adoption. At the time, our agency contacted us and wanted to know if we would be willing to take two children. A woman approached the Red Cross in Guyana giving her intent to put her two little girls up for adoption, as long as they weren't split up. This was a very unique request considering we hadn't finished our homestudy, we hadn't officially signed on with the agency or paid our retainer fee. In addition to this, Guyana does not operate on a referral system. Although we weren't considering taking two children at the time, we readily accepted. The reason why we didn't post this on line was because it was very tentative and up in the air, but we needed your prayers and we thank you for doing so without knowing the reasons behind it! We didn't hear from our agency for several weeks, but in those weeks we applied for citizenship for a second child just in case. We found out yesterday however, that this adoption of the two girls is not going to go through. The mother has decided to keep her girls and raise them herself. While this has obviously been disappointing for us, it's good to hear that the family is staying together. We had been praying for the mother from the beginning, and we're glad she is in a place that she feels that she can take care of her children.

First Big Step!

Hi Friends :)

I am happy to say that our home study sessions that we started in January are almost done !!!!!!

We've had several meetings with our practitioner, and I think that maybe, perhaps, possibly, last Wednesday was our last meeting.

(See how sure I am of this? lol!)

In case you don't know, the home study is something that is required by the government in order for you to adopt, internationally or locally. They are done by Family And Children's Services when you are adopting through FACS, or in our case by a private adoption practitioner if you are adopting internationally or privately.

I have to say, the home study process has been very overwhelming. Hundreds of questions about your life, your childhood, your marriage, your faith, discipline, finances, lifestyle, and anything else you could possibly think of was covered in the home study. There is also a short 'interview' with your children and without you. It's a bit unnerving having someone you don't know come into your home, so you can spill your entire life details out for them while they write it all down on a notepad!

The next step is WAITING again.

(Shocker!)

Our practitioner will review our session notes and write a report on us either recommending us or not recommending us for adoption. And then once we are recommended

(see how I've disregarded the second option?)

she sends the report to the government to get an official letter of approval from them, which will go in our file and will come with us to Guyana! This is about a 3-6 month wait.......sigh.

Sweet moment :)

I haven't really had much to say lately.....things are at a stand still I guess. Just lots of waiting.

A really sweet thing happened to me the other day though. I had the kids with me at the grocery store and while I was grabbing my items the cashier was entertaining them.

(As an aside note, we really haven't sat down with our kids and said 'for sure, we are adopting, and this is how and when....', so we really have no idea how they feel about the situation. We have been slowly introducing the idea of adoption to them though, so that it is a normal idea.)

So, to get back to my story the kids were in the cart at the store, and they were talking to the cashier who was a nice middle aged woman. The woman said to them,

"My, your mom has her hands full with you guys doesn't she?!"

and Ryan said to her

"YEAH. But not full enough because we are getting another one! But not through the tummy, through adoption."

then Jack chimes in:

"Yeah and she's not gonna be white, she's gonna be BLACK, but that's okay"

!

Ha! I guess my kids have a general idea of what is going on after all!!

What is sweet about it all is how proud they were. They were talking about it as if it was the best thing that was ever going to happen to them. They were proud to say they were going to be big brothers again! I almost got a little teary eyed listening to the conversation. The poor cashier didn't know what to say. She just giggled nervously as I paid. Funny!

Pray!

Hi Friends!

There has been some new developments in our adoption journey!! Because of the nature of the situation we are in, we can't really elaborate at all, other than to ask you all to PLEASE PRAY for us! I promise that when we can, we will fill you in on what is going on here, but for now what we really need is lots and lots of prayer.

Over the last few weeks, and in particular the last few days Derek and I have seen God leading us in dramatic ways. It is amazing how when you ask, He answers.....and not always in the way you expect. In fact, sometimes He answers in a way that is better than you could ever imagine!!!

Telling our other children

When we first came to the realization that adoption was the way we would be going, we didn't really tell our children. Our oldest is 6 and our youngest is 2, we thought a wait of 2 or more years would be a long time for little munchkins to understand. But we did slowly start to introduce the idea to them. At supper we always have devotions and prayer with our kids and so one day we suggested that we pray for the orphans in the world. Kaylie, who is 4 said "what's an orphan?". So we explained how there are many children in the world who have no mom's and dad's and that they are called orphans. "That's horrible!" she cried. "They should come and live here, we have lots of room for orphans"

Well, that was easy :)

Everyday we talk a bit more about that idea. One day Derek said to them "What if we did take one of those orphans to live here with us?" Ryan said, " That would be great!" Derek said "Well, what if the one we took home had different color skin then you....maybe a bit darker? Maybe even black?"

(Awkward Silence)

Ryan : "Well that is no big deal, when they move here they won't be in the sun as much, so their tan will go away and they will be more pink"

(oh boy....)

Jack: "Ummmmm. That wouldn't be good. It would be really wierd."

Yikes. I guess we have a bit of work to do. Actually, since then Jack has gotten used to that idea.

They have no time frame in their minds except for "one day, when our baby comes home...." and for now, that is good enough.

Why International?

Several people have asked us why we have chosen to adopt internationally, when there are so many children in the foster care system here in Canada. That is a fair and valid question. Val and I believe every child deserves to have a mother and father that will love them unconditionally and forever, and our prayers are with those parents who decide to adopt domestically. There are basically three ways you can adopt a child if you live in Ontario. First, through Family and Children Services, (FACS). Secondly, through a liscenced private domestic agency, and third, international. The first option, through FACS, was appealing because it is free. The problem we had was the wait time was extremely long. Just to get a homestudy done was a year and a half wait, and then several months to complete it and get approved. Adopted children, when they are young, some times have problems attaching to their new families, and feeling like they belong. We felt a large age gap in-between our youngest child and our new child would only complicate things, since our first four kids were all born within four years. Also, FACS often operates as a foster to adopt program, wherein a child would be placed in your home as a foster child while the adoption was finalized. If the adoption falls through, (a birth parent has a change of heart), and the child is returned, my family would be devastated. The risk of putting that stress on my children is one I can not take. The second option, private domestic also came with a considerably long wait time. The cost was very similar to some of the international agencies. There is a huge push amongst private agencies nowadays to have open adoptions, where birth parents still have contact with your child. This could be as little contact as writing letters back and forth or as much as seeing each other on the weekends. While experts claim these arrangements are the best for the child, I could not handle such an arrangement, for several reasons.(selfishness being one of them). These are some of the reasons why domestic adoption, which is a beautiful thing and God bless those that choose that route, just wasn't suitable for us.

Citizenship

When you adopt a baby/child from another country, you have to apply for Canadian Citizenship for that child. (For the most part anyway, some countries want you to get immigration first, but that is a whole other thing). Guyana requires you to get citizenship. It's a 2 step process. Step 1, we have to prove that we are Canadian citizens eligible to apply for citizenship on behalf of our child. So that seems easy enough right? Just show the Canadian government a copy of my Canadian passport issued by them after I already proved I was a Canadian citizen. HA! Not quite. First I had to fill out PART 1 Form, photocopy mine and Derek's birth certificates, driver's licence, passports, and marriage licence. (PS not the old marriage licence the new one issued by the government a few years ago and you have to apply for that one too which takes about a month or two to come in....thanks for the heads up about that Sue...having that ready was a real bonus!) So then, with my photocopies and original documents in hand I went to the lawyers office (lol, 4 kids in tow because I was anxious to send it out yesterday and they could only meet with me at lunch!) to get each copy notarized by a notary public, with a seal and letter with each one. Then all the documents go in the envelope along with a receipt that you paid already online or at a bank. (You didn't think this was going to be free did you?!?) Whew. Anyway, the whole Part one is now done. And that is really about all I got done yesterday. But now my citizenship Part 1 is on it's way to Nova Scotia!!! Only 27 weeks and I will get them back.....

Guyana!!!

So, after much prayer and lots of discussion and research, we've narrowed our list of countries down to ONE :)

Guyana (pronounced gy-AN-ə), previously known as British Guiana, is on the northern coast of South America. Guyana has been a former colony of the British, Dutch, French and for 200 years the Spanish. Guyana is one of the few Caribbean countries which are not islands and

the population of Guyana is approximately 770,000. About 90% of people living there live on the coast(approximately 10% of the total land area of Guyana). The rest of the country is thick jungle, with little or no roads going into the interior.

The population of Guyana is made up of groups with ethnic backgrounds from India, Africa, Europe, China, with Aboriginal. These groups of diverse nationality backgrounds have a common language, English and Creole.

Some of the biggest problems the Guyanese people are facing are poor health care (with many people dying from AIDS, malaria, and because of bad drinking water...intestinal problems), also poverty is a huge issue.

The reason why we chose Guyana is pretty simple. We had narrowed down our choices to a few countries. Due to the fact that we already have 4 children, a lot of the countries wouldn't look twice at us. We were seriously considering Ethiopia as an option, but in the last few weeks the program for Ethiopia closed. We were also approved to go to South Africa, but the wait list is quite high and they prefer young childless couples. So, the choice left was Guyana and we are very excited about it!! We are happy that God laid out a clear choice for us because we were very uncertain which direction to take!

So, now we wait again. We haven't officially signed any papers, but we have to wait until the homestudy is done to make the next real move. Until then, we will be filing for citizenship or immigration, doing more research, making connections.

Adoption Course Weekend!!

This weekend Derek and I have the second half of our adoption PRIDE course (It stands for something....Parent Resource...It escapes me right now). Anyway, it's a required course for the government of Ontario. You have to have taken this course in order to pass the homestudy. So we are taking it in Toronto this weekend. I am so excited!! When we went to the first half a couple weekends ago I was very skeptical. I was prepared to have to sit through a boring course and get a certificate at the end. But it was a great course. I think a lot of that had to do with our presenters. They are so knowledgeable and they were answering many of our questions. It was very practical.

We learned a lot about how to care for infants who spend their first year in an orphanage. If a child has not had physical touch, or affection during the first year of their life it actually affects how they form attachments to people later on. They need to be shown how to attach themselves to people in a healthy way. It's a huge deal and I will go more into detail after this weekend. But definitely there is a lot of things you have to consider when taking a child from an orphanage and putting them into a home with a family. It's not easy.

Anyway, more about that later....I think I will have lots to talk about on Monday so stay tuned :)

8 Years Ago Today.......

8 Years ago today:

• I was a nervous bride getting ready to marry my best friend
• It was the coldest day of the year (-23!) but I wore sandals because I thought they were cute
• I had to leave my home, my family and my job to live in a new place, which has now become my home
• The words "diaper change" were not part of my every day vocabulary
• I had 200 of my family and friends together in one place at one time!
• I began the most memorable, fulfilling, incredible 8 years of my life so far

Happy Anniversary Derek! I love you more and more everyday!!!

Adopted For Life

A friend sent me a link today for this and I had to share it.

This book, Adopted for Life, by Russell Moore is AMAZING. It was the turning point in our decision to adopt. Every person who is thinking about adoption, has family or friends who are thinking about adoption, or really just if you are part of a church family, or community should READ THIS BOOK. Really, if you are reading my blog I guess that puts you into the "friend or family who is planning to adopt" catagory. So you need this book. It's free, and it's an audio download so you can listen to it while you work.

But it's only available for February. So, get going ;)

http://christianaudio.com/free/

Some Basic Info

I just wanted to give you a little overview of what we will be working towards in the next couple years. Yes, years. This is not going to be a quick and easy thing. Actually the more I read about it, the more I suspect that this is going to take a lonnnnnnng time.

But, that's okay. We are ready for a wait, (although ask me again in a year and a half and I might not be so optimistic).

So here's the quick version:

• Decided to adopt internationally
• Researched agencies to see what options were out there (still doing that!!)
• Contacted an adoption practitioner in October and were told to call back in January
• Met with an agency in November just to get some info
• Met with 2 couples to talk with them about their adoption experiences....learned a lot from that!
• Booked a Homestudy in January and had our first meeting the 2nd week of Jan.
• Had police checks done, fingerprinting done, wrote autobiographies about our lives, answered a hundred questions on questionnaires, wrote financial reports, had medicals done, etc. etc. etc. all part of the initial homestudy meeting.
• Enrolled in PRIDE course (government required course for adoption) and finishing course next weekend.

next step....finish homestudy.

So it's just the beginning, but there is a lot to be done. I have a feeling that we are doing a lot of hurrying up, so we can wait. But that is the way it seems to work!

And it begins......

Many of you already know this, but for those of you who don't:

About the end of September, Derek and I started seriously considering and praying about the idea of adopting a child (baby/toddler) from another country. We have been thinking and praying about it ever since that day and now we are started on our homestudy, taking courses and getting things done!! We are so excited to go through this process and I hope that this blog will be a good way to keep a record of it all. I hope also that this will be a good way for our family and friends to be updated, kept in the loop about the whole journey.

Right now we are in turmoil trying to decide on a country to adopt from. It's a really difficult thing to do. There are so many factors involved and actually where we thought there would be an abundance of options out there for us, there really isn't. We have it kind of, sort of narrowed down....but not really close to making any concrete decisions. Funny because we are really hoping to make a real decision on this issue....by next week. Hmmm.