Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Why we decided to adopt


We were married in 2001 and begin trying for children about a year after that. No success in that department but plenty of fun trying: ) In December of 2004 I saw a program on Oprah, of all places, about the plight of the babies in China. As soon as Shane came home I talked to him about the program. We put it in our minds that when the time came that adopting from China may be the path for us.
Jump forward to June 2005..... Shane and I talked and we knew that it was TIME!!! After a considerable amount of prayer, the Lord made it abunduntly clear that this was the path that he has chosen for us. We were overjoyed. We started the process with Holt International in July 2005 and our official application was approved in August. Step one down.
The process for us was going to be a little slower because Chinese law requires parents to be 30 or older to adopt and I was not going to turn 30 until March. Everything proceeded fantastically. We got our entire dossier done by beginning of Feb. (For those of you who don't know your dossier is all the paperwork, and there is alot, that you've been working for the past several months. It gives the Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs a detailed insight into the adoptive parents.)
On February 10th, 2006 our dossier was sent to China and officially logged in to the Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs on March 14th! That was a fantastic day. I was "paper pregnant"!! Now all we have to do is wait and wait and wait and wait a little more until we get her referral. That is where we are now!!

We find it amazing that as soon as Shane and I new that our path for children was through adoption we have a had such a peace about everything. The need to have "biological" children is no longer there for either one of us. We knew we wanted to adopt before we got married so the Lord just showed us the way. Who knew that the baby girl that was being prepared for us was going to be born in China from another women's womb? How amazing is that!!! God is Great. We feel so blessed that we were picked to be parents to this baby girl!

1 comment:

Patrick Cook said...

Congratulations on your beautiful baby
girl!!! We returned from China-Guizhou Province last Nov. with our Hannah. It will be the most amazing journey you will ever experience!! Our prayers will be with you as you prepare to travel. We have a blog on our trip at patrickcook.blogspot.com. Good luck!
Deann Cook