How we began the Adoption Process......

God placed adoption  in my heart a very long time ago. But he started the big time stirring about 8 years ago. You know that feeling that you can not ignore!! I remember seeing families with Asian children and my heart would melt. I have always been drawn to this beautiful culture and I just knew in my heart that one day we would adopt. I was the one that started to talk about adoption and believe me I talked about it ALOT through out the years. As my heart was seriously swelling with the desire to adopt, It got to the point of when I would even see an asian child I would get tears that would swell up in my eyes. Looking back now that was sooo God working in my heart. So now I really started praying for my husband. Yep he was not totally for this idea. He was not totally against it either. I knew that if this was the plan for our family that God had to complete this in his heart as well and we had to be totally on the same page.   So I prayed and waited for a couple of years. And one day he came to me and said I think it is time we look into adoption more. I was soo excited and so were the other two kids. They knew my desire, and they shared it with me too!  At last we were both on the same page,  so we started seeking families in our area that had experience with adoption and could give advice on agencies etc.. Turns out there were only two agencies in our area. We visited both of them and we knew with out a doubt which one we were comfortable with. This happened to be the one that our friends told us to go through too. We picked Holt International. (http://www.holtinternation.org/ ), next we met with one of the social workers. She was amazing and very caring. Asked many questions. We filled out the application and were accepted with Holt. Next step was choosing a country. This is where it gets interesting. Korea was our first pick. Well Korea program was closed, so we picked China. Well this was right at the time that the China program was gradually getting longer and longer. Instead of marking off a month on the calendar, we seemed to be adding more time, more waiting.  We were in that program for one full year until finally we had no peace at all about this. We went to talk to the social working again and with out a doubt since now the Korea program open and was moving smoothly we switched to the Korea program. Yippy!! I always say that God needed us to take a little one year detour so that we would have our little Gracie in our arms just as He had planned all along!!!!  About 5 months later we got our referral of our baby girl and when she was 8 months old we got the call that we all wait for..she was coming home to her forever family!!!

I would wait a million years for my sweet little baby girl!!! Just look at her sweetness!!

**MY Next Question I will be answering is
"Bonding and what worked for us"