Why adoption?
Because Christ first
adopted us.
"For
he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in
his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus
Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his
glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves."
Ephesians 1:4-6
And what better way to
follow Christ’s example than to adopt and bring a child into our family to
love, care for, and teach of Christ’s love of them.
And, Christ commands
it.
"Religion
that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after
orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being
polluted by the world." James 1:27
*We do NOT believe adoption is the only way to follow Christ's command to care for orphans, it is just the way our family feels called.
Why Ethiopia?
Short
version: We feel called by
Christ to that country and are already in love with it.
Long
version: When we began to think
about adoption we seriously thought and prayed about every option we could
think of here our the main ones we reseached. Ethiopia was the first place we
considered, mostly thanks to Ashley’s family’s story (Anna’s friend from
college). But we kind of resisted and wanted to make a decision, especially of
this magnitude, with our minds and hearts completely ready. So, we researched
and prayed and really thought we were headed towards domestic adoption
(adopting from the US) but something just didn’t feel right for us, there
wasn’t a peace about it at all. Knowing we were completely able to have
children of our own, it felt like adopting domestically was taking a baby away
from a family that really couldn’t have their own children. We also really felt
led to adopt a child that needs to be
adopted and would most likely not hear about Christ
without an adoptive family to share His love with them. So, that led us to look into
foster care and while that might be something we are open to someday, we truly
didn’t feel like it was a good decision with our young children at home. We
didn’t feel like it would be safe emotionally (or possibly physically) for them
to get attached to siblings and then they leave-and my Mommabear side would
really struggle when children go back to be with families that (in
my opinion) might possibly not be ready to truly take care of their children. I’d want
to adopt all of them. So, then we looked into adoption from Haiti-because our
church has had connections with Haiti, we thought that should be an obvious
choice. But, adoptions from Haiti aren’t going very well due to the government
there and the amount of time getting to bringing our child home after referral
is extremely long. So, we were back to Ethiopia. It always stayed on our hearts
and through all the other studying, I read more about Ethiopia and blogs about
Ethiopian adoptions than anything else, my heart falling a little more in love
with the country and its people. So, all
the sudden, adopting from Ethiopia was the only thing that made sense for our
family. We fully support all other types of adoption and orphan care, they just
weren’t right for our family at this time.
A few stats on Ethiopia
and it’s orphans
There are
over 5 million orphans in Ethiopia alone
Last year
1,724 of these children were adopted to the US. That's only .0003 percent.
1 in 10
children there die before their 1st birthday
1 in 6
children die before their 5th birthday
Half the
children in Ethiopia will never attend school
60% of
children in Ethiopia are stunted because of malnutrition
1/3 of the
population survive on less than $1 a day
More on our agency
search and important things we looked for to come.
