Our Story

Saski Adoption Saga ~ part 1

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step...

This well known quote is so true about the process of adoption -- whether you are adopting domestically or internationally, infant or older child, one child or a sibling group.  Life-changing choices are made one by one, paperwork is completed page by page, dollars are raised & saved a few at a time...and yet at the end of all these steps, you find yourselves on a completely new thousand mile journey of parenting children that were not born into your family but are, without a doubt, your children.

Our first steps on this crazy adventure began in earnest in May of 2009.  Both Matt and I had felt in our hearts that we may be called to adoption "someday" and our hearts felt a tug every time we heard someone's adoption story.  At that point, our 2 girls were 7 and 4 and while we adored them and our life was full, we had the clear feeling that our family wasn't complete.  Annika was born in 2004 and by spring of 2009, it appeared that God was not choosing to grow our family through another pregnancy at that time.  In May of 2009, an adoption conference was hosted at our church and Matt and I took advantage of that opportunity to learn more.  We heard from adoption agency representatives, adoptive parents, and adopted children and we came away more convinced than ever that we were called to adoption and that we should begin the process for our family.  More than anything, we came away with a profound realization that adoption is close to God's heart and that He went to unbelievable lengths to adopt us into His family.  At that point, God began to show us a bit of His heart for orphans and has been drawing us farther into His love for orphans ever since.

When you make the commitment to adoption, you are faced with countless decisions that feel very wide open and overwhelming.  Each decision you make brings more decisions...should we adopt domestically or internationally?  Now that we feel we're called to international adoption, what country should we adopt from?  Do we wait for the billboard from God or do we move forward on gut feelings?  Is it OK to make the choice based on practical criteria or is that working from a limited human perspective?  For example, can we take into account that some countries require a visit of several weeks or months in order to adopt a child from their country?  If we have to take that kind of trip, how would we handle the kids we already have and a sales job where you don't get paid if you don't make sales?  Speaking of which, how on earth are we going to afford a process that costs anywhere from $25,000 to $75,000?  Should we try to adopt an infant or an older child or sibling set?  How much weight do we give to others' experiences and opinions...whether positive or negative?  And all of these questions were filtered through our belief in God's sovereignty and the fact that we believe strongly that He has had specific children planned for our family from the beginning and that we wanted to make sure that we didn't run ahead of His Spirit's guiding.

After a mind-boggling amount of research into countries, agencies, types of adoption, potential adoption funding, and a healthy dose of prayer, we felt like we should start the process of adopting from Ethiopia.  I'd always had the feeling that I'd love to have an African baby and I began to get excited that that would actually become a reality.  We had chosen the agency of America World Adoption and were accepted into their Ethiopia program.  While we were on a family vacation to California in July of 2009, I remember getting our first emails with the beginnings of the mountain of paperwork that we had ahead of us.  It was an exciting time and felt great to finally be taking concrete steps towards this lifelong dream.  As we got home from vacation, we prepared for our first home visit for our Home Study in early August. 

More on the twists and turns that awaited us in pt. 2 of this saga...