What can we expect the second time around?

As we began to process what adoption #2 looked like, we wanted to have open hands on where God would send us. Now that we’ve experienced it, we’d say Thailand would be the 'easy' choice. But we didn’t want to fly into something because it was comfortable for us. We wanted God to confirm.

 So just like with adoption #1, we wanted to go where a child desperately needs a chance to hear the Gospel. An unreached for the Gospel place. We definitely wanted to stay with our adoption agency because our experience was positive so much because of them. So, we inquired about each unreached country they did international adoptions with. Sure enough, as each country has it’s own requirements of prospective parents, everything about us lined up perfectly with Thailand’s specifications. Our agency representative confirmed our best choice is Thailand. God confirmed. Thailand it is!

And as we’d long to help our children see their home country as a mission field one day, how appropriate to give them unity with each other to pursue that. We’ll be able to steward our attention best to Thailand for sharing the culture, food and ideas for them to learn.

Similarities
As so many of you have walked this road with us already, we’d expect there to be similarities this time around. For starters, we plan to blog throughout our process to remind ourselves and to show you God at work, prayers answered, and the challenges and joys of adoption. We would expect to be matched sometime in early 2019, but know timelines in international adoption change daily. We would expect this entire process to be in the three year timeframe, Lord willing bringing a new child into our home at the two year mark, and finalizing a year later. We’ll still expect the overall adoption to cost around $30,000.

Differences
What’s new or different? With a child already in our home, the next child has to be two years younger than Dominick - Thailand requirement. We didn’t have an age specification for the last adoption. As we’ve started the process, it’s been fascinating to see the differences with our agency program, although I’d suspect most agencies are doing these updates with more and more government requirements. Initial fees have gone up significantly, which is tough since you cannot begin fundraising until your home study is approved. Many more education requirements this time around, on top of what we have already done, and it has already kept us up pretty late to finish them within the required timeframes. These are the main differences we’ve seen so far, although I’m sure we’ll see more as we continue in the process.

Boy or Girl?
What about gender? As we’ve processed what would be best for Dominick, which has been so much of our focus this time around, we feel like he’d do best if he was a big brother to a little sister! So, we’ve put a girl as our preference. But, before we get too set on this plan, we are qualified for either gender and if God somehow makes it so clear we are to adopt a certain little boy, we want to follow God’s leading in that. So we are open, but have a preference for a girl in our application.

Our Greatest Need
The last thing we can expect? We can’t do this alone. We need you. To encourage us, pray for us, support us, be there for us. We didn’t bring Dominick home by ourselves. He has hundreds and hundreds of people who helped write his story that led him to us. Just because we’ve done this before does not mean that ‘we got this.’ That couldn’t be farther from the truth! And we want YOU to be a part of this with us. We realize many are willing but not able. This is how God may use you!