After Riza came into our home, Todd sensed that God was calling our family to adoption. When we were early in our relationship (i.e., before marriage), I had told Todd that I wanted to adopt some day and he wasn't very interested. It wasn't a deal-breaker, so we settled into life together.
And now, as I was still trying to adjust from life with three kids instead of two, Todd told me we needed to add another daughter. He said that God said (almost audibly), "I've created a (nine-year) gap in your family. You need to fill the gap."
And so our adoption journey began.
And honestly, we knew nothing about adoption. We didn't know whether we wanted domestic or international. We didn't know about agencies. We knew nothing about home studies, USCIS, or I-797s.
We found a wonderful resource in Loving Shepherd Ministries. They gave us lots of helpful and specific information. We quickly settled on an adoption agency, but we were having difficulty deciding on a country. We finally chose Kazakhstan, although honestly, I wasn't too comfortable with the travel requirements. It seemed like a logical choice because we had family there serving as missionaries. We reasoned that they could help us with travel, culture, and even language issues. We kept dragging our feet but we finally called our agency to tell them that we had settled on on country, the social worker told us that Kazakhstan had just that day announced that they were not allowing any more international adoptions. I cried because I was so confused. We started looking at countries again. This time Colombia stood out...we kept wondering how we could have missed it. It was a perfect match for our family. (Oh and by the way, the news report that Kazakhstan closing to adoption was not true).
We submitted our paperwork (overnighted it because the day after we submitted the paperwork the new Hague requirements went into effect) and began our journey to Yuly.
We brought Yuly home in October 2009. She was 7 years old. I chronicled our whole journey to Yuly at www.domitahope.blogspot.com She has been an amazing addition to our family. We have enjoyed watching her blossom and grow into a beautiful young woman.
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