Ghana, so you say...

Yes, Ghana! It's quite the God story - as all of this is really. After we knew that we had to find our son, is was mere days before we knew that he was from Ghana. I started doing research. Little did we know that to adopt you have to fit into this pretty, little box that each country has determined to be best suited for a child. Well... many of these boxes, US included, had stipulations such as: the adoptive parents had to be 30 years old, (which we clearly have a couple good years before we hit 30) your child at home must be 2 years old before you start the process (Adalee's only 7 months), and you had to be married for at least 5 years. (Well, we're at 4 years). So clearly we were not "suited" by many countries to bring home another child - but we had a friend who recently adopted from Liberia and she didn't fit into this typical box either, so I gave her a call.

It turns out that most of Africa is happy to adopt a child to you if you promise to love the child (well, not quite so easy - but their box is MUCH bigger than most). I contacted her agency, in January, and seriously that week the president had just shut down international adoption to make it safer for their children to be adopted, which is understandable, but we weren't willing to wait the 3-5 years before it reopened. This agency had told us that they had orphanages in the Congo (but advised us against adopting from there because of their current political situation - very dangerous) and then their other in Ghana. (however, they suggested us NOT to use them because Ghana adoption was fairly new and they were having difficulties getting children into their adoptive home and didn't want us to become frustrated) So I then went to the great resource - GOOGLE!

When I googled GHANA ADOPTION one main site came up and it had me enter our information and then they sent that info to all the agencies that were working with Ghana adoption. The next day I received about 15 emails from different agencies with about 30 attachments! VERY OVERWHELMING!! I started sifting through them to learn that I had NO idea what they were talking about. And then the ONE came. It was a simple email from an agency - very personal, but short. It said, "Brandi and Jesse, I am so glad that you are interested in Ghana adoption. I know it can be very overwhelming, but don't let that scare you. I have one attachment, an overview, for you to look at. Please call me after you look at it with any questions. And her phone number began with a 918!! Could it be, that all the way in Orange County, CA, I found an agency from my hometown of Tulsa, OK?! It was true my friends, and not only is this agency great - but the woman, our placement agent who helps us find our son - is a BELIEVER!! And, she has not only walked in our shoes - they brought home a son a year or so ago, but they are currently walking in our shoes - they are getting ready to bring home a little girl from there. God is SO good and we know that our little man is in Accra, Ghana waiting for his mommy and daddy with his new sister to come and get him. "Hold on baby boy. Mommy, Daddy, and little Ads are coming for you! We love you." We don't know his name yet, but we do know that he will be between the ages of 0-4 years. So, please pray for our little guy and that God uses our placement agency to match us up with him SOON!

Until the next blog... xoxo, B