And so we begin...again...

Hello! I am creating this blog after reading so many other adoption blogs that have uplifted my spirits and answered my questions! I am also hoping to use this as a spot where family and friends can keep up with where we are in the adoption process! Let me start with a bit about us!

We are Blu and Darbi, and we have 2 biological children, Caedmon (2 years) and Cambree (8 months). We previously served on the mission field in Zambia and lived in a mud hut out in the bush! In Zambia, we loved to visit the House of Moses orphanage. It was there that God first placed the thoughts of adoption on our hearts.

After Caedmon and Cambree were born, we knew that God wanted us to step forward in faith. Of course, this seems strange to many people for several reasons! First of all, our children are young. Secondly, Blu is in seminary full-time, which is pretty expensive. He also works 2 part-time jobs so that I can stay home with our kids. The timing for an international adoption seems a little off! BUT GOD SAYS..."For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," (Isaiah 55:8) This is my adoption verse!!

We knew that we would adopt an African baby, since our hearts have always been drawn to Africa! At this point, we are unsure as to whether or not we want a boy or a girl, but we think we are leaning towards a boy!! We would like to keep the age under 2 if at all possible!

We began the process by choosing a country (somewhere in Africa of course!), an agency, submitting our dossier (a great big pile of paperwork such as physicals, financial info, birth certificates, employment letters, etc.), and completing our homestudy. (This is where a complete stranger came into our house and interviewed us! It was terrifying/exciting!) However, our agency informed us last week that they do not place infants from Liberia, but only those children four years old and above. Well, by this point we felt pretty certain that God wanted us to adopt from war-torn Liberia, and we knew that we wanted an infant.

I was almost in tears as I felt that our adoption was already falling apart before it had begun! It didn't help that our agency made me feel like I had no idea what I was doing and that whoever had done our homestudy was clueless! I called our social worker, who calmed me down, and I quickly began researching a new agency. I stumbled across Acres of Hope a few months ago, and we were tempted to switch to them even then since they were a CHRISTIAN agency, but we decided to stick with what we had started with. This time, however, I knew that God was leading us back to this agency.

I called the agency this morning and actually got Patty, the "boss"! She talked to me for almost 30 minutes and this complete peace just swept over me. I knew that regardless of the fee increase that I can't even begin to imagine how we will ever pay, this was the agency for us! So today it was quickly back to the notary to re-notarize the same documents that we had already sent to our old agency!

We are waiting on a couple of documents but should have our entire dossier submitted to Acres of Hope by the end of this week!

I've heard that adoption is a huge learning process. Well, so far I have learned that God is in control of this adoption, not me!