Reaching with Commitment…to bring relief and hope to those left behind.
Reaching with Courage…across borders and boundaries to display the strength ofGod’s mercy around the world.
Not only are they an adoption agency, they have established orphanages around the world for those children…left…behind. The account of their history is best discovered in a book written by their co-founder Jan Beazley, titled The Strength of Mercy. Get it, read it. Be inspired by God The Almighty.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta once remarked, “God doesn't require us to succeed; he only requires that you try.” AGCI seems to take an approach similar in substance; these folks understand if your goals are lofty you better be good yourself. So they wasted no time in sending out their Adoption Information packet to our home. It was thorough, and very well done. Oh, and the DVD included, well, we watched the “Journey to Janelyn” piece a dozen times that first week. It’s a sit-right-down-in-front-of-the-screen-and-soak-it-all-in-from-start-to-finish short about a family of four becoming a family of five.
- Why Choose AGCI?
- Financing Your Adoption
- Selecting a Country
- How to Apply
- Where do I Begin?
- Choosing Your Child?
The first formal step in our adoption process was filling out an application; and to do so with AGCI, you must select a country. And that’s were we sat in mid-September of 2006, considering the countries of Kazakhstan, Guatemala, China, Vietnam, and Nepal. Not only had we not talked about this, I’m not so sure either of us had even thought about it. How do you choose?
Each country had a summary sheet of the available children, requirements, timeframes, the basic steps of the process, and estimated costs. Well, the information within those sheets whittles the list. Nepal has rules that families with two children of the opposite sex cannot adopt from them. Julia and Ben settled that one. Kazakhstan has some pretty tough travel terms, with the shortest option being a four-week stay in-country. Reality settled that one.
Guatemala, Vietnam, or China. How do you choose?
Vietnam grabbed my attention for very intimate reasons. 12 years ago my Aunt Mary set Rose and me up on a blind date. It’s a beautiful story, and we have a beautiful marriage (if you are inclined to check with Rose on that point, you are obligated to let me know if she states something different.). On September 27th every year we call my father’s sister and thank her. The twist is she is married to my Uncle Chi, who is Vietnamese; so our decision on a country had a personal dimension to it. Was this a path paved by God to do the impossible – pay a debt of gratitude to my aunt for changing our lives forever?
After a little investigation we realized that Vietnam had just opened their doors back up to adoption in 2005, after three years of being closed. AGCI had little experience with Vietnam, and because our personalities needed a path well-traveled, the uncertainness was great enough that we moved to a decision between Guatemala and China. How do you choose?
I can’t recall where our hearts where at the time, but there is no question were our heads were: Rose was leaning to Guatemala; me, to China. We were closer to a decision, but not really.
Remember Kazakhstan’s travel requirement? Well, China wasn’t a month, but it was two weeks, a stretch simply too long for Rose to be away from the kids. So if China was the choice, she couldn’t travel. Guatemala on the other hand, had only a four day in-country requirement.
Rose’s thoughts were very sound, and powerful. How could I ask her not to be present for the Day of Days, when we met our child for the first time? I couldn’t. But maybe God could.
To this point we hadn’t prayed intensely about the choice of country. So we did what any loving couple does – pray for the other person. Neither of us was bashful with our intentions: Rose was praying for me to go with Guatemala; I was praying for her to choose China. Either way, it was time to figure out where God was sending us.
God bless those folks whom, it seems, He talks directly to, offering “are you sitting down my child, because here it is” type answers to those vexing situations in life. We were in one of those positions, but we weren’t one of those peoples. Who knows, maybe we weren’t good listeners.
In an effort to listen I found myself in our Church chapel at 2am in the morning one Saturday. My sister-in-law Betty had something come up in her schedule and she needed a substitute for Adoration. “This is it,” I thought, “Just me and the Lord!”
A few minutes after settling into the pew I got decidedly unsettled, moved to the aisle, and proceeded to lay prostrate on the floor. I was going to pray with great earnest. In front of me were the three AGCI sheets of paper – the country summaries for Guatemala, China, and Vietnam. Vietnam hadn’t formally made it back into play, but I figured let’s not leave anything to chance.
It was so quiet in that wee hour, the kind of quiet you now only read about in long-ago stories, those taking place out in the wilderness, under the great big stars.
And it remained quiet.
Prayer didn’t move me off China; I remained on the other side of the globe. It was so hard to shake the country’s Communism, and its government-sanctioned abortions. Over here, our nation’s hands are bloodied over 3,700 times per day, with one abortion out of every four pregnancies. In China, with their population many times the U.S., it is even worse (greater?), estimated at 23,000 per day. If a fellow human makes it through, they ought to be cared for.
It also became clear that a child growing up in China would not grow up as a Christian. Please don’t attach extra-ordinary meaning to this. It’s not meant as commentary on salvation; only God saves, and only God knows how it plays out. Rather, it is a personal acknowledgement that the Christian life is beautiful when lived faithfully. I’ve seen this mostly through the observation of others, and have even experienced it in pockets of my own daily living. If a fellow human makes it through, this life ought to be shared with them.
The minutes ticked silently by and then it was time to leave. While I did not hear God’s voice that early morning, the thoughts on China gave me encouragement to speak with Rose.
“So did He tell you?” my dear eagerly and sincerely asked.
Rose shared she would have accepted my discernment outright if God had told me outright. I’m a thinker, and this made me think – about the obvious opening. Guatemala couldn’t be weighing on her heart.
She readily agreed on the “why China” perspectives. The challenge for both of us would be “how China.” I struggle with not doing work on a vacation day, and now I’m going to be effectively out of touch for two weeks? Rose won’t be present on Gotcha Day? Our child won’t be with his mother until coming home? How will our child react to the only person he or she knows “leaving” to go to work?
The list of questions were not endless, but they did continue (How would I handle everything in China by myself?). While trying to address them individually blockers would invariably come up. It became necessary to see the proverbial bigger picture. This was about bringing lives together in order to have a life together; that purpose trumped any moment or day or week.
The missed time together would be difficult, yet that pain too shall pass. Plus, it turns out – duh – that we wouldn’t be setting precedence by having one parent travel. It happens regularly, due to schedule, situation or money. Heck, and let’s not forget the families where the father is unable to be present at the birth of his child.
Both of us needed the proper time to process and pray, and it was readily taken. This decision was near the front of many that couldn’t be forced. If not certainty, we owed definite support to each other and our family, which would include a new child. The calendar flipped over into October and our path was picked with excitement: China.
Our application had been sitting with everything but the “Adoptive Child Desired” section filled out. We completed it on October 4th:
Child Desired: M or F
Age: Infant, under 18 months
Country: China
Open to Handicaps? Undecided
Correctable: Yes
The application was sent, and a contract immediately was returned for our review.
37-plus years ago I was born on October 11th. In 2000, Rose and I discovered she was pregnant with Julia on October 11th. In 2002, Rose told me she was pregnant with Ben on October 11th. In 2006, we executed our adoption contract with AGCI on October 11th.
No comments:
Post a Comment