What had we gotten ourselves into?

My heart overflowed with joy for the remainder of our vacation up North. I printed out a few pictures we’d taken of my future son and daughter and carried them around with me wherever I went. While in Indiana for our last few days, I met with several friends at my favorite coffee shop. I can’t even describe how wonderful it felt each time I shared those pictures of my future children. Nothing could stop me from bringing them home.

Other families we met in Austin told us the process normally took about ten months at the most. Many took even less time! We started our home study process a few weeks earlier, so I assumed we might already be ahead.

Mike handed me the package from our new adoption agency as soon as David and I arrived home after our trip. Inside that package, I found applications, instructions, timelines, and lists of every necessary document, also noting which ones to notarize and which ones to apostille, or properly authenticate, by the states they came from.

Then I read even more instructions on how to apostille our documents, plus I found tips from other people who adopted from Colombia in the past. Tips on what to do and not do during the process, how to speed up parts of the paper chase, and tips on travel and residing in Colombia (most families stayed between four to six weeks in the country with the child while waiting for the paperwork to pass through all the courts). The packet also included a few success stories. As I read them, I imagined our own success story included in someone else’s adoption packet someday.

We composed our letter to the Colombian government stating our petition to adopt Juan David and Viviana. I speak fluent enough Spanish to teach bilingual education and to travel and communicate with ease, but I did not trust my Spanish to write such a formal letter. I asked some friends to translate it for us, and then they asked a Colombian friend to make sure it looked and sounded okay.

Once the kids returned to their country for a specified amount of time, we sent the letter to Colombia via DHL. Wow. How quickly we found out that a huge portion of expenses in an international adoption goes toward postage and airmail.

An e-mail response from Colombia came fairly quickly, asking for more information concerning family history issues that led us to counseling in the earlier years of our marriage. However, the actual counselor we saw had since moved and left no address or contact information with anyone. After sending a few e-mails back and forth with this first contact in Colombia, and making an appointment with a new counselor, we gained permission to proceed with the adoption process as long as we addressed the issue in detail in the required psychological evaluation later.

Now officially in the process, we immediately faced problems. My summer vacation quickly came to a close, making all my “free time" disappear. This impeded the speed of how much paperwork we accomplished each day, and it made doing so much more stressful than when I still had summer hours to work on it at home.

We started our application with the new adoption agency first, which required half of the agency fees up front: $2,225. This depleted our adoption savings thus far, since our previous adoption plan gave us more time to save. The rest of this adoption meant a complete walk of faith, one step at a time. We knew many organizations offered financial aid for adoptions, so we immediately started applying for as much help as possible. We went by word of mouth recommendations, and we researched online for as many organizations as we could find.

Completing a dossier for an international adoption is a tedious, time-consuming process that will challenge even your sanity at times. Piles of papers occupied our desk, each requiring a similar yet distinct list of forms. Documents accumulated for the agency’s checklist, mostly originals which cost a small fortune to acquire. Other stacks of forms needed to be copied and notarized. Different financial aid applications requested even more paperwork. Our home study still lacked a few documents, plus we needed to make copies of everything for our own files.

 I often wondered what in the world we’d gotten ourselves into. Yet one glance at those beautiful faces in the pictures now hanging all over the place gave me a new burst of inspiration every time. 

Chosen

How in the world do you go home to sit and wait after such an experience? God turned our lives upside-down in less than ten days. Wow. We prayed constantly, daily putting those children back in His hands. We knew our God had a definite plan for their adoption. For some reason He let our paths cross at this precise time in our adoption journey.

Thankfully, David and I already planned a trip up North less than a week later to visit several family members and friends, so packing and making final arrangements preoccupied me. We wouldn’t hear from anyone for several weeks, anyway, so I thanked God for the distraction.

Our trip included several stops, starting with my parents’ home. Then we planned to meet up with my brother and sister-in-law who lived a few hours away to stay with them for a few days. After that, the four of us would travel a few more hours to visit Mike’s parents. David and I made arrangements to stay there so we could attend a Quinceañera for a previous ESL student I’d worked with as a kindergartener. (A Quinceañera is a special fifteenth birthday celebration significant for females in the Mexican culture.) I taught many of the girl’s siblings and cousins, too, so her family held a special place in my heart. The invitation honored me.

Plenty of activity kept me occupied while we waited. Sadly, Mike’s work schedule did not allow him to join us. I wanted to take advantage of this trip to love on David like crazy in case God did plan to add these two children to our family.

We settled at my parents’ house and enjoyed a relaxing time playing games and making crafts. (My mom’s house resembles a craft-making haven. She’s incredibly gifted with her hands, and her unfinished basement allows her to store all kinds of supplies. It’s one of my favorite things to do whenever we visit.) While there, I worked on crafting a special gift to take to the Quinceañera.

 I did rather well with the “waiting,” so the e-mail from the summer events’ coordinator surprised me when it arrived after only a few short days rather than the weeks I expected.

“We talked extensively with the kids’ host family, and we agree your family seems the best match for these children. You are free to pursue their adoption if you still want to.”

If we still wanted to? Of course, we did! I felt like jumping up and down with excitement! Instead, I called Mike to share our wonderful news.

“Mike, they chose us as the best fit for the kids! We can start the process to adopt them! They really are our children!”

Even though we hadn’t even started the adoption process, this e-mail confirmed in our hearts God chose these children for us. Our child did not await us in El Salvador. Our children resided in Austin, Texas at that moment and would soon return to Colombia to wait for us.

The coordinator also asked us to come back again that weekend to spend more time with the kids and meet the social worker who came with them. She wanted to get to know us and observe our interactions with both children, something we later realized she should have done the previous two weekends.

Sadly, we couldn’t make it work since we already traveled to another state. She gave me the social worker’s phone number and asked me to tell her about our ambitions to adopt a child and what drew us to these kids. Since we’d never met, the conversation felt pretty awkward.

“Without meeting you and watching you interact with the kids, there’s really no need for us to talk. But don’t worry. Colombia’s decision to approve your adoption isn’t based on what I say about you, anyway. It just helps get you off on the right start.”

Soon a whirlwind of internet activity, e-mails, and phone calls with the coordinator dominated my time at my parents’ home as she tried to guide us through our next steps. First, we needed to find an agency. She gave me a list of about five different agencies in the U.S. that worked directly with the summer hosting organization so the adopting parents still ended up with the same child they started with. (Most adoption processes direct you through the entire process before they match you with a specific child).

Since none of the agencies were in Texas, we chose the agency the coordinator used previously for her own adoption. She successfully adopted her daughter through them, so we hoped for the same outcome in our case.  I contacted the agency right away, and they immediately mailed the application packet to our home.

We also needed to completely back out of the El Salvador program. Our contact person understood, seeing how God clearly led us to these two Colombian children.

“Your social worker will just need to change her interview questions to make your home study reflect a Colombian adoption rather than an El Salvador one. Since you’ve already paid the entire fee and met once already, it will save you a lot of time and money to stay with the same social worker.”

 That made perfect sense, so I called the social worker and left a message explaining our new situation. I said I would call her again when I returned from vacation so we could set up our next visit as soon as possible.

However, before jumping completely into the process, we needed to write a new letter of intent to the Colombian government (a petition to specifically adopt Juan David and Viviana). It required exact wording in several places, an explanation of our own desire and intent, and extensive information about ourselves and our family history, plus someone needed to write it in Spanish. We could not send it until after the kids returned to the orphanage in Colombia for a specified amount of time. Our process could officially begin once we received a reply.

This gave us a few weeks to get everything ready to prevent any delays once we gained permission to begin the process. We knew those were our children. We prepared ourselves for whatever it took to adopt them and bring them home.

Could those be my children?

 

Could those be my children?

A simple summer awaited us,
A few months of peace and rest,
A chance to finish up paperwork
for the child with whom we’d be blessed.

Yet such peace wouldn't surround me,
Neither to continue our process nor to stop.
I felt no sense of direction,
I begged for an answer to drop.

Within minutes of uttering my teary prayer,
I found two little faces on my computer screen.
A sibling pair from Colombia,
A little girl and a male preteen.

My heart immediately drew my attention
to the question now on my mind.
Could those be my children?
Was this the answer I sought to find?

We began to pray for them daily.
They soon became a part of us.
We made arrangements to meet them,
surprised at how easy it was.

Everything went so smoothly
from planning to actually meeting face to face.
God granted us favor in the eyes of so many.
We knew we stood in our appointed place.

We fell in love with the children
and can already envision them as our own.
Obstacles still stand around us,
yet in my heart such hope has grown.

For the moment I'm at peace
as I wait for an answer from above.
I pray for strength in whatever outcome,
as I stare at their faces, completely in love.

If these are not my children
I know somehow they are part of the plan.
He brought them down my path for a reason
So on that hope I continue to stand.

 

Pictures coming to life

The coordinator of the event contacted me throughout the week to find out our thoughts and intentions now after meeting the kids. She said we needed to write up a letter of intent if we seriously wanted the opportunity to pursue their adoption. A letter as such only put us in line for them to call us if their host family did not choose to seek an adoption. We spent the next few days working together on our letter, and we corresponded via e-mail with the kids’ host parents to arrange details for the following weekend.

 We didn’t want to seem pushy, selfish, or overbearing with our desire to know these kids while they, too, wanted to cherish every moment with them as they pondered over their own decision. It felt a little awkward at times, but they made us feel comfortable and appreciated.

“Hey, we feel like the more people who love them, the better chances they have to gain a family.” They obviously shared one goal.

We returned the following weekend, this time covered in prayer by everyone we knew. No secrets this time. We knew the clear wisdom and guidance we desired could only be found through prayer. We suspected God's plan to entirely change our direction and lead us onto a new path, thus turning our lives completely upside-down.

First we met up with the kids and their host “dad” in the home they stayed in that summer. They eagerly showed us their summer beds, some of their toys, and the clothes given to them for their stay. They quickly changed into their swimming attire before we all headed out to play in a nearby park with water fountains.
 

The two kids splashed around in the water with David for a long while, playing in the fountains and enjoying being wet. Later, we all stood over a little bridge and quietly observed the fish and turtles in the water below. The turtles captivated Juan David’s attention. I didn’t know it, but Mike snapped a picture of me standing there with David, Juan David, and Viviana—a picture I cherished for many months as the first picture of me and my three children.

We all grew more comfortable together throughout the day. Later, after everyone dried off, we embraced the opportunity to show the kids some pictures we’d brought of our life in Dallas, including David’s soccer pictures.

“Someday I want to play on a team like that.” I tucked Juan David’s comment away in my heart, silently vowing to make sure that happened if we could adopt them. I so loved this child already.

After spending an hour together over lunch, talking and observing the kids’ personalities, we headed to the bowling alley to join the other Colombian children. I loved teaching Juan David how to bowl, and Mike snapped several pictures. (None of those kids ever bowled before, and they didn’t have a clue what to do.) We only took a few pictures that day, but we did capture several precious moments, including a snapshot of David sitting at a table with both Juan David and Viviana. A picture always meant to be.
 

The time passed way too quickly that day before we said goodbye. One more weekend remained until the kids returned to Colombia, but I already knew we couldn’t make it back. We already planned to travel to my parents’ house in another state. We returned home, fell on our knees, and prayed, mainly for wisdom for their host family to know who should pursue their adoption. Apparently, other families also expressed interest in this sibling pair.

I hadn’t guarded my heart a bit. Those pictures on my refrigerator came to life, and I fell completely in love.

As soon as we got home, we called our social worker to put the El Salvador adoption on hold until further notice.

First meeting

We introduced ourselves to one of the people in charge, and we expressed our desire to specifically meet Viviana and Juan David.

“That’s so great you came all this way to meet these kids! You should try to get to know several of the kids because there’s always a chance their hosting family will decide to adopt them.” Her advice made sense. 

Mike and I glanced quickly at each other and shook our heads.

“You know, we only feel a tug on our hearts for these specific siblings, Juan David and Viviana.” They already claimed our hearts. We agreed we didn’t feel pulled toward any of the other children.

The coordinator then introduced us to the couple hosting Juan David and Viviana for the summer, and we sat and talked with them for a while. They told us what they knew so far about the kids and their history.

“They have an older half-brother, Julian, but apparently he’s not adoptable. He just wants his siblings to be adopted together. They all live in the same orphanage, but in different homes.” They talked more about the kids’ personalities and preferences while we all sat watching them play in the water.

David didn’t want to play in the water alone, so Mike and I got in with him for a little bit. He took his soccer ball to toss back and forth, and before we knew it, we’d inched our way close to Viviana and tossed the ball to her. What a surreal moment to realize the little girl from the picture on my refrigerator stood right in front of me, tossing a soccer ball back and forth with David in the water. When I later printed out the picture I’d snapped of the two of them, I couldn’t help but wonder if it represented our first picture of David and his little sister.

Juan David swam in the deeper part of the lake with the majority of the older kids. We interacted very little with him while in the water, but we stole a chance to talk with him by the picnic table at dinner time while he devoured hot dog after hot dog. He and I talked about his school, his class, his birthday, and his love of Math and soccer. An outgoing child, he enjoyed every minute playing in the water with other kids close to his age, eager to meet so many new people.

Pretty quickly after eating, all the kids jumped back into the water. I knew I wanted to come back the following week to get to know these kids even more, but I hadn’t said anything to Mike yet, nor had he said anything to me.

Before we even found a chance to talk about it, the man hosting the children asked if we’d like to come back the following weekend to spend some more focused time alone with those two.

“You know, we’d love that!” We both quickly agreed.

“Okay, then why don’t we meet up for lunch next Saturday before the bowling event? Maybe we can arrange a picnic or something to give you a chance to talk with the kids.” He said he’d stay in touch via e-mail sometime during the week to work out the details.

“Okay, God, could this get any easier or work out any better? Thank you!” The pieces almost naturally connected to make this work.

Although the couple considered the thought of adopting them, they could see these kids would fit well into our family—Juan David, with his soccer and Math in common with David (at the time, Mike even coached David’s soccer team, too), and only a few months separated David and Viviana in age. She showed a definite need for extra attention in school, so my occupation as a bilingual teacher a grade level above her could only serve as a huge benefit to her.

Another family also sparked up a conversation with us later in the day. “So, you guys came all the way from Dallas for this?”

“You know, those little pictures just kept tugging on our hearts ever since we saw them.  We came down just to see.”

Only a year earlier, they, too, visited an activity for the same reason. Now they sat across from us with their recently adopted son. Wow. Would we follow in their footsteps?

The day soon came to a close, and we headed back to our friends’ house to gather our things and say goodbye. They rejoiced with us over our invitation to return the following weekend, graciously extending the offer to stay with them again. God showed us His provisions from the start. Now I needed to patiently wait yet another whole week before I could see those precious children again.

Love at first sight

Now, we’d only ever visited Austin once, we weren’t familiar with the area, and we didn’t know anyone who lived there. We didn’t have any wiggle room financially since we’d already poured out a few thousand dollars to start our home study for our El Salvador adoption process. I didn't exactly budget for a random weekend trip to Austin.

But I did remember receiving an e-mail about a week or so earlier from a dear friend who recently moved to Round Rock, inviting any friends to come visit when they travel through the area. She raved about the prime location of their home right outside of Austin! I call that divine timing.

 “Thank you, God!” I quickly replied to her message, explained the situation, and asked if we could visit them one of the weekends with activities scheduled for the Colombian kids to meet visiting families. My friend was so excited for us that she said we could come two weeks later for the kids’ second weekend event.

God awed me with His guidance and provision. We’d get to meet the kids and also spend quality time with our friends who moved away. He opened wide the door and said, “Go. Those children are waiting for you.”

For two weeks, I longed to meet those two kids. We prayed for them every day. However, we continued with our El Salvador adoption process until God made it clear we needed to stop. We met with our social worker a week later, survived our first interview and scheduled our second visit about three weeks later. We did mention our upcoming opportunity to meet two Colombian kids the following week, so we let her know in our first visit that our plans might change.

I nearly went crazy that last week as I waited to meet those two precious children who captured our hearts. However, we kept pretty quiet about it. We wanted to see for ourselves where God might take this without involving anyone else’s thoughts or opinions. Our friends in Round Rock used to attend a small group meeting with us, so we couldn’t help but spill our news when we told the other group members who we planned to stay with for the weekend.

We had no idea what outcome the visit might bring, but we knew we at least needed to go see. We simply had to meet this brother and sister from Colombia. We’d already seen too many connections to even try to ignore them. Our friends from our small group agreed and literally bathed us in prayer over the next week. We didn’t know what to expect, but at least it might confirm whether or not we needed to stay in the El Salvador program.

We left home on Saturday morning, June 19th, to head to Round Rock. On the way down, Mike and I used the time to talk about what might come next if we still felt the same after meeting these kids.

“So, what if things go well this weekend and we want to spend more time with the kids?” I looked toward Mike to read his facial expression when he heard my question.

“Then I guess we’ll just come back next weekend, too.” Mike’s reply actually surprised me, while at the same time confirming God’s tug on both of our hearts.

What a weekend we had ahead of us. There’s nothing better than celebrating a great reunion with friends. After enjoying an amazing dinner together, we stayed up late playing games, talking and laughing for hours. We’d traveled to Mexico with them two times in the last five years, so a lot of memories came back!

The following afternoon, July 20^th, we all headed to the lake together for an activity with the Colombian kids. The hosting program arranged a special day for the kids to celebrate Colombia’s Independence Day by letting them swim, play, and enjoy a big picnic.

I’ll never forget the moment I finally laid eyes on that little girl. I spotted her immediately in the shallow area of the water. My heart skipped a beat, and I instantly fell in love. She had no idea of the connection between us before I even said hello. 

El Salvador? Colombia? One? Two?

 

?????

As I finished my morning time of prayer, I went inside. David still slept soundly in his bed, so I sat down at the computer in the spare bedroom to check my e-mail. I browsed through several new messages, and one in particular caught my eye regarding the chance to meet an older child from Colombia who needed a family.

 I remembered inquiring recently about an organization that brings older orphans from Colombia for a summer hosting program, so I opened the e-mail to find out more about the actual kids coming. Their ages normally ranged from nine to fourteen years old, and they would stay in the United States for five weeks in order to experience life with a family. The program welcomes visiting families to come meet the children, hoping one will consider becoming a forever family to each child. The kids stayed with families in cities all over the States, but fourteen of them would soon reside in Austin, Texas, only a few hours away from us. This e-mail included photos of all fourteen of them.

To be honest, the ages of the kids didn’t speak to me since we already set our hearts on a girl close in age to our son. I glanced through the pictures, anyway, looking specifically for a five or six-year-old girl. By the time my eyes reached the bottom of the page, a picture of a six-year-old little girl, Viviana, stared back at me, almost locking my eyes with hers.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. “Is this your answer, God? Could she be the child waiting for us?”

I read her short biography and description, and I soon found out she came with a sibling, her ten-year- old brother, Juan David. They wanted nothing more than to be adopted together, of course.

Mike and I never discussed adopting siblings, nor had we even considered a boy, especially one older than David. But something kept tugging at my heart, so I glanced at his biography, too. Wow. He and David shared many things in common, including a birthday month and a passion to play soccer. He also loved and excelled in Math, the area where David already showed obvious talent, even at the age of six.

“Could this be, God? Two of them?” My mind raced with possibilities.

I mentioned the idea to David later that day while he played in his bedroom. “What if we adopted a boy and a girl together?”

He wasn’t against the idea until I mentioned Juan David’s age. “No. No. No. I want to stay the oldest. I don’t want a brother older than me. No. Not gonna happen.”

But, as the day went on, I couldn’t get those two siblings off my mind. David and I talked off and on throughout the day about it. I mentioned things he already had in common with Juan David. We discussed the adventure of playing soccer in the yard with his big brother every day after school. I could stay inside to play with dolls and do hair with Viviana, while Juan David showed David all the cool soccer moves they do in Colombia.

The more I talked it up, the more his heart softened to the idea. In fact, he even jokingly asked me a few days later if we could adopt Juan David and not Viviana. God continued to work on him.

After I shared my thoughts with Mike, his openness surprised me. “Wherever God leads, we’ll go.”

I printed out those two little pictures and put them on the refrigerator. We prayed for both of them every day after that.

 By the end of the week, David and I went on a little date together to our favorite restaurant. While we ate, he looked up at me and said, “Mommy, do you love them?”

I looked into his little six-year-old eyes and said, “Yes, Sweetheart, I do. I pray for them every day, and I can truly say I already love them.”

With more maturity than I even knew that little boy possessed, he looked back into my eyes and said, “Then we better go down to meet them before someone else does.”