The next steps in the Process

You say YES to adoption and it seems like it should be easy from there. We hear that there are so many orphans in the world so then you should just take one home and start loving them as the sweet gift from God they are. I know that day will come but there is a process to this amazing journey and it must be followed. First, we were so fortunate because in April our church began an adoption class that helped us with some of the research that is necessary to begin and gave us many amazing resources to help along the way. After completing three preliminary applications for different agencies, we felt America World was the agency for our family. (The same one we had gone to a conference for over 3 years before!) Then we began the process of deciding domestic or international. We felt very strongly called to international adoption because of visiting the orphanages in Guatemala. Next, the decision for where and this was the part that I thought would be easy but turned out to be a longer part of the process. We have such a heart for Central and South America and the country that we always go to on mission trips, Guatemala, is currently closed for adoptions. It was at this point that we talked to our agency, listened to information about all the countries available that were a fit for our family and truly prayed and asked the Lord to show us where He had our child.