Britt and Keith let us in on their journey to Ethiopia to adopt their son and daughter. They opened their hearts to us, their blog entries, and the door to their nursery. Britt and Keith always wanted to adopt. Ultimately, it was their faith that brought us to the decision to start the process, and to adopt from Ethiopia. A long and frustrating process for many, including Britt and Keith, they say it also changed them in good ways and helped prepare them to be parents. Through the process, they learned patience, a necessity for any parent. Now that their son and daughter are home with them, it becomes hard for them to remember how long and grueling the process was. Several families in their church had adopted children, both domestically and internationally, though none from Ethiopia. When they started the adoption process, they ran into several people in their area with little ones from Ethiopia. Hoping it would provide their kids with a great network of friends with the same experiences and questions about their background, the couple decided to adopt from there. “Practically speaking, the list of countries we were able to work with was pretty slim, due to our age and the minimum age requirements of most countries,” Britt explained. “Ethiopia was also one of the faster, more reasonable programs, and the number of orphans in the country is unbelievable – 4 million. There was more to it, too, though. Despite the practical upsides to the program, we resisted at first. We didn’t know anything about biracial families, we had never been to Africa, we didn’t know anyone who had adopted from there. But we were drawn to Ethiopia. We prayed about our decision and were given an overwhelming sense of peace, so we moved forward, trusting that God would clear the path for us to complete our adoption. And he did.” Britt and Keith were given an overview of the adoption process by our agency, and they had read from other adoptive parents on online forums. But as things change quickly with international adoption, they found that much of the information they had up front wasn’t applicable later on in the process.
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2.27.2010 This week started out as a major let-down for us. We received our FBI fingerprints (one of many sets of fingerprints we've had done for the adoption) back in the mail -- rejected. After two months of waiting. Which meant that we would have to wait at least another two months to even send all our paperwork to Ethiopia, and I found out that the wait times after paperwork was received in Ethiopia had increased by a few months! So we were looking at extending our adoption time-line several months. I was less than thrilled. I had a pity party. I moped and cried. “The frustration for us mainly came from our impatience and our desire to control everything – to want to know exactly what was happening and when. When we were in a good place of trusting that God was in control, the process became much less frustrating.” 12.10.2010 After one year in the adoption process, thirty-nine notarizations, authentications, and certifications, four homestudy meetings, five trips into Atlanta (for said authentications), six months of "officially" waiting, five parenting and
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