FAQ's

I have been getting some emails lately. Which I love!! A lot of them have some similar questions and thoughts so I wanted to answer some things here in case anyone else is wondering.

We did not complete a private adoption from Taiwan.

-Our agency for Harrison's adoption was All God's Children International. After seeing Slum Dog Millionaire at the beginning of this year, we felt a confidence in proceeding with the adoption process again. We decided to pray over it for a month. The month ended on Easter. Over that month, the Lord made it clear that we were to pursue adopting from Ethiopia (or so we thought the part that was clear was Ethiopia..that was just a means to get us to the right place!) When we first decided to adopt about 3 years ago we were very selective in "what" we wanted...the Lord taught us our lesson. We weren't adopting to "get" what we wanted but to love WHO He planned for us to love. Ethiopia needed us and Africa has the highest concentration of orphans. We have been called to build our family through adoption. We did not choose adoption because it was a narrowing of our capabilities but rather a narrowing of the Lords direction on our families path.

back to Ethiopia...

We only found handful of agencies that would accept applicants under the age of 25...I was not 25 until August. One of them was All God's Children and we LOVED that they ran their very own WELL maintained baby home. We also had connections through some local bloggers and friends of friends and such who had good things to say about AGCI. We turned in our pre-app and a week later got an email (this email was sent to all of the agencies new and inquiring families...we fell somewhere in between). The email was seeking any families that might be interested in this little guy born on 12/11 in Taiwan at 28ish weeks. They had a pilot program and this was the 2nd little one to come through the program. For different reasons, the other pilot families did not pursue the adoption of this little one that we now know and love as Harrison. I just happened to be home and had the laptop up for some musical support in my efforts to clean out our office (which ironically, is where my baby boy is sleeping this very minute) and just happened to be able to call Brandon to get the go ahead and he just happened to say ok and we just happened to respond before anyone else and get Harrison's file emailed to us. We just happened to NEVER look back after that day!

That is how we ended up in Taiwan and that is how Harrison just happens to be our son!! The Lord has a mysterious way about him...and WE'LL surely take it!!

-I don't think I have put much about Harrison being a preemie on the blog. I don't walk around telling people about it too much either. I didn't/don't want anyone to make assumptions about what he is capable of. People do enough of that when they hear "international adoption" All we have to do is adjust the early childhood developmental "standards" by about 3 months (to get his adjusted development...he will develop according to his due date not birth date..) and Harrison is right on target or doing more than what it says.

**There was no guarantee that this would be the case, we just came to the conclusion that we had room in our hearts and lives no matter what the effects of his prematurity may be.**


I think that covers the few questions I have gotten more than once. I am open to more...so let me know if there is any other burning questions that you might have!

Also, Gwen did a great post on Adoption titled Adoption 101...check it out HERE!