Adoption Update

It was the first week of December of 2008 that we announced the commencement of the adoption of our daughter. We have learned sooooooooo much in these 3+ months! My American brain wrongfully assumed that the adoption process is thus: 1. decide to adopt 2. pick your kid out 3. do all the paper work 4. get your kid 5. live happily ever after. Aside from number one my nice little steps schematic plan has been blown to smithereens. I do hope to arrive at number five but it is turning out that there are many more steps than I could have ever dreamed of. If I had to give a guesstimate I would say there are like 5,823 steps. That might be an exaggeration but it feels like an incredible number of tiny little steps to arrive at the completion of this adoption.

We are making progress. Really, we have not hit any immense obstacles. It is going ok.

Right now we are facing an adjustment in our mentality. Boiling it down this is the natural Bolivian adoption process: 1. decide to adopt 2. do all the paper work 3. present your request to the Bolivian government (stipulating gender, age and health condition of the child you would like to adopt) 4. Bolivian government matches (assigns) adoptive parents with eligible child 5. live happily ever after.

As a missionary learning to cope with culture shock one must recite this mantra often, "It's not wrong, it is just different." As we are looking at this adoption we are evaluating the adaptation to this Bolivian process. We are asking ourselves many questions. While we know that there is nothing innately wrong with this different process we are asking ourselves what is right for us.

Our lawyer told me that if we follow the Bolivian process, in the most ideal case, we would be done with everything in under three months. We all know that we do not live in an ideal world so it probably would take longer. Now, if we hold out for this idea of us being the ones to select the child it will mean looking for loop holes and trying to beat the system; in other words even more time than the first scenario. She is willing to work with us either way.

We could pick up the phone and call her this instance to tell her that we want to finish up the paper work and submit our request to the Bolivian government. All the while still hoping for a special circumstance to arise (baby left on our door step, new child coming into the orphanage who is perfect, etc.) while we await our assignment. The two don't cancel each other out.

The bottom line is that we are adopting a Bolivian child. How it will happen is still a mystery. There are so many kids that need homes. In the end we are trusting that God be the one to put us together with our child. Who am I to say that He cannot work through the Bolivian process? Who am I to refuse Him that option?

If you have any insight or observations I would love to hear them. I am so excited and very passionate about this new addition to the family. It will be interesting to see who arrives first: the new Smith or the new Washington. (smile)