Chad just found this typed up somewhere. I guess I had written it up sometime last summer before bringing Christopher home but never got around to posting it on our blog. Maybe this was for something else? In any case, I'm so glad he found it! It's not polished, but it's our story from my perspective while we were in the whirlwind of completing our adoption. What's beautiful about the body of Christ is that we are all members of one body and though we have different gifts and are called to serve in different ways, every way is important. Even in the world of adoption, there are so many routes you can take (and even different routes for each adoption...who knows if God will call us to adopt from the US or a country other than Russia next?). This is the story of how God led us to Christopher, our precious son:
A lot of people have been asking so I thought I'd write our story down of how God has led us to adopt. I think it started way back when I was in high school and was a "buddy" to 5 special needs girls who had been adopted from Russia. I had so much fun helping them with their homework, taking them to the park and just getting to know their family. I have stayed in touch with them throughout the years. I also spent 1 year in Estonia doing mission work where I learned even more about the Russian culture and developed many friendships there. It was also during that time that I was able to visit the beautiful city of St. Petersburg, Russia.
The idea of Chad and I actually adopting ourselves came to mind when we only had 2 children. We began to do research, interview other adoptive families and kind of kept the thought on the back-burner. When we had 3 children we began the adoption process of a 2 year old little boy from Kazakhstan but we weren't able to complete the adoption due to Chad's work schedule and we weren't happy with the agency we were working with. We learned a lot through that experience and continued researching adoption agencies in the meantime. We discovered European Adoption Consultants through an internet search and after speaking with them and hearing how great their Russian program sounded we decided that if we ever were to adopt in the future, we'd go with them. Every month or so they'd call us and ask if we were ready to begin the process...we'd keep telling them we were still saving up the money to get started. When we moved to a new city, Chad was Anna and Libby's soccer coach. There was a cheerful little boy on the girls' team named William who was exceptionally talented in sports....scoring most of the goals during each game.
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| The team |
I was speaking with his parents one day about how well he played and they told me that they had adopted him from Russia when he was 6 months old and how wonderful the whole experience was. When I asked what agency they went with they told me EAC! They were very impressed with their professionalism and how much they helped them through the process. At this point I was pregnant with Emma but I was also pregnant with the desire to adopt from Russia! In church one Sunday morning in the mom's nursing room I was speaking with one of the elder's wives and somehow the topic of adoption came up. She told me that just a year and a half ago she and her husband adopted a little boy and a little girl from Russia at the same time!
I was so excited to meet another Christian in the church who had adopted from Russia! I decided to call and update EAC with our new address since we had moved to a new city. When I called, the sweetest lady answered....we spoke on the phone for 2 hours! She told me how many young babies and toddlers there were available for adoption and that if you were open to a little boy you would get a referral immediately because there are many more boys available for adoption than girls. We decided to not make any decisions but to attend the seminar which was coming to our city in 2 weeks. After that conversation I was really encouraged and Chad and I decided that we'd wait until the following Summer to begin the adoption process since Emma was 6 weeks old. Well, providentially, a friend sent me a link online to the database of all the beautiful Russian children available for adoption and when I saw them it was all over for me...any bit of restraint and waiting until the following year went out the window...I didn't want one of those precious children to wait another year to have a family....we had room for another child NOW! Emma was still sleeping a lot and one thing led to the next and by the time our family attended the EAC seminar we were already finished with our homestudy and were well on our way to having all the documents needed for our dossier. The seminar was encouraging to us and then that following week we drove to our state capital to have all of our documents apostilled. We then drove straight to FedEx and sent in our dossier to be translated into Russian and then sent to Russia.
We then drove to a nearby park to take a walk with our girls. Then the phone rang and it was the referral department. The lady speaking told us they had found a child for our family! It was an 11 month old boy and to look in our inbox because they had sent us 3 pictures. My heart was pounding...could this possibly be our son??? She told me a little bit about him and that his medical chart was also emailed to us. She said we had 3 days to decide if we wanted to proceed and adopt him. Wow, I will never forget that day. After getting off of the phone Chad and I anxiously were trying to access our email from our phones to view the pictures.
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| One of the first pictures we ever saw of Christopher |
Wow, he looked so big and healthy...not what we expected at all. He was beautiful and I saw a lot of similarities with our other girls...surprising. We then found out that he was born on March 1st (this was the exact day the baby we lost through a miscarriage was supposed to be born) and that he lived near St. Petersburg Russia....where I had visited 11 years prior! The next 2 months were spent doing more paperwork and waiting for dates to travel to meet him.
We first met him on April 21st, 2010 and it was a very special day! Then we had a second meeting with him 2 days later on the 23rd.
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| Precious first moments! |
We signed all necessary papers so that he would be "on hold" for us and we then had to return to the United States to await a court date. We returned to St. Petersburg, Russia and court was June 15th, 2010. The judge questioned us for 2 hours, there was testimony from the orphanage director, the social worker and a prosecutor....after all of the evidence was presented everyone in the room was in favor of the adoption and the judge legally made us his parents!!!
Now we are counting down the days until we can go on our 3rd and final trip to take him out of the orphanage and bring him home. The reason is there is a 10 day waiting period after court to give biological relatives one last chance to adopt him. We plan to return home with our little boy on July 9th, 2010 to meet his sisters and to come HOME...something he might not have known if we didn't decide to proceed with the adoption process. Extra notes: Emma has come with us each time to Russia. She is still breastfeeding and is a happy, healthy baby! We are so thankful for our 4 beautiful daughters and for this miracle of adoption. Christopher isn't our "adopted son" he is simply our son and we can't wait to experience many firsts with him just like our other children. Praise the Lord for His infinite grace and perfect provision.
***Hope you enjoyed this post. Again, I wrote it before our third trip. To read more of our adoption story and this beautiful work of God, look to the left on the sidebar entitled "Our Adoption Journey."
