Tag: Adoption Page 17 of 23

Box 70027

On April 18, 2011

In all my eight years living in Tanzania, I have never once checked the mail.

We use HOPAC’s mailing address: P.O. Box 70027, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The box is way downtown and is checked by a staff member once a week or so, and all the mail brought to school.

I have written that address on countless applications, letters, and forms. But I had never actually seen the mailbox.

Until yesterday.

Last week, after hounding the social worker with my phone calls and texts, she finally told me that she had mailed our approval letter. I didn’t totally believe her, but was still optimistic. When we returned from the Morogoro orphanage trip on Wednesday, I rushed to the staff room to check our cubby holes. Magazines. No letter.

Richard is the guy who checks Box 70027 these days. On Friday, I hounded him. “Will you pleeeeease check the mail today?” I begged. Spring break was starting; we were leaving the country to visit Kenya, and I didn’t want to wait another week and a half to know if our letter had come. “I’ll try,” he told me.

At 6:00 that evening, we were at school for an event and Richard drove up. “I didn’t make it,” he told me. “Traffic was too bad.” And how could I blame him when he got back so late?

But I was determined. “Is there any way I could get the mailbox key and check it myself?” So we went into the office and he helped me hunt for the spare key. Eureka.

I would have driven down the very next day, but I knew it would take me four hours round trip. So I decided I could wait one more day, because we were going to the airport for our trip to Kenya, and could stop at the post office on the way.

So we did. And I found Box 70027 for the first time. Sifted through the crammed mailbox and found the glorious sight of a slim brown envelope with my name on it.

It was there! Oh happy day!

We’ve been approved! It’s there, in writing…finally, after all these months.

However, there was a big surprise. Throughout this whole past year, our social worker has insisted that we could not choose the child. We could give specifications, and even choose the orphanage, but we could not choose the child. We were totally fine with that. In fact, we preferred it.

So you can imagine our surprise when we found that the letter stated that we were to have a girl, around 2 years old, from Forever Angels Orphanage in Mwanza. But we are to choose.

We will make the decision this week, based on pictures and prayer alone. We’ll then be about a month away from bringing her home. Praise God with us, and then pray!

Orphans and Former Orphans

By Amy Medina

On April 15, 2011

In Adoption

Service Emphasis Week (SEW) has got to be one of the very best things about HOPAC. This year secondary students spread out all over Tanzania on 17 different teams…to build water filters, run kids’ camps, teach English, serve disabled people, teach computer classes…and the list goes on.

Gil led the team that went to Agape Children’s Village in Morogoro, a city about 3 hours from here. So the kids and I joined him, and we took 12 HOPAC students to serve the 28 kids there for 5 days.

Love these trips. The students step up. In leadership. In love. In service. The kids shower their adoration on these teenagers who are willing to give of themselves to them. It’s beautiful to watch.

Visiting orphanages is not a new thing for me. But visiting them with my two children, who were once orphans, was quite a profound experience. In each child’s face, I saw the faces of my children. Neither of my children came from this orphanage, but if they had not been adopted, they would have grown up much the same way.

I often imagined Grace there, as a resident, not a visitor. Her head shaved, instead of full of braids and beads. Eating ugali with her hands instead of a spoon. Her eyes with a yellow tinge from malnutrition or too many bouts of malaria. Speaking only Swahili. Helping to wash her clothes by hand, making her little bed in the morning, and putting away her meager possessions.

Would she still be as full of life? As confident as she is now? As gregarious? Would she love to laugh as much as she does in our family? How different would she be without a mama, her Daddy, her brother? How would her mind be different without the plethora of experiences she has had…if her whole life revolved around three buildings and a nearby school?

She would be such a different person that I don’t know if I would recognize her. Yet that person could have been, if not for the sovereign hand of God in her life. And millions of children in Tanzania are living that life. The differences are stark.

And yet….what would I be like, had I not been adopted into His family?

Babies, Con’t

By Amy Medina

On March 11, 2011

In Other

Good news on all fronts.

Stella: She is at 30 weeks. She is somewhat anemic but otherwise healthy. Her doctor still has not admitted her to the hospital, but he is optimistic she will make it to full-term. She lost the other babies somewhere around 32 weeks. Please keep praying.

The Medinas: I finally connected with Mama A this week, after two other attempts to see her.

Happiness #1: She has received Mama S’s homestudy report. I saw it with my own two eyes, which was exciting since I still wasn’t entirely sure it even existed. It looked extremely thorough. Should be, since it took six months to write.

Happiness #2: Mama A didn’t say anything about needing an International Report. Hoping it stays that way.

Happiness #3: She was in a good mood.

Happiness #4: We should just be waiting for final approval now. That approval letter will also give us the name of a child–our little girl. At the advice of our lawyer, we have not requested a particular child, but only a gender and age. However, Mama A did ask me about our preference for orphanages.

Could be two weeks; could be two months…two years. But she’s coming!

If You Could

By Amy Medina

On February 7, 2011

In Other

If you could choose the gender of your next child, would you?

What about if you could space the births of your children in exactly the way you choose? Or if you could pick out your child’s temperment? Even their looks?

Would you?

I suppose that with genetic engineering, some of that is already happening. And how do we respond? That’s God’s category! we say. Don’t mess with God! And we admit God knows what He is doing, right? Because if we could make our families the way we wanted, we would probably screw it up. Right? Of course right.

But what if the choice was there, and if you didn’t choose, a government worker who doesn’t know you did the choosing for you? Chose your child’s gender, birthday, looks, temperment, etc? Would you choose then, because you would say to yourself, Well, if someone has to choose, then it had better be me.

What would you do?

Trust me. It feels really, really weird.

In Grace’s case, we didn’t have an specifications. We told our lawyer, “Any child under a year.” She is the one who matched us up with Grace. In Josiah’s case, we asked for a boy. Social welfare gave us the name of an orphanage. They told us, “Go pick.” There were five baby boys under a year. And yes, it was weird.

And now we are here again. Social welfare this time has told us, “Pick the orphanage; we’ll pick the child.” But we all know that it’s quite possible we can “suggest” a particular child, and that’s who we’ll get.

How do you pick a child out of 2 million who need a family? How do you take one and leave the rest? How do you choose knowing that you will profoundly change the child’s life, and your life, forever? It feels like playing God. We’re not supposed to pick our children. Children are God’s gifts; we get who He gives us and we love those we get. Yet since we can pick, shouldn’t we? Since we have a choice, then of course we’re going to think about gender and how we want to space our children’s ages. So that narrows it down….what then?

I will go to the district office on Thursday. I will tell her which orphanage we want; and most likely I will tell her a Name. Maybe two or three, and let them choose.

Weirdness. Pray for us. With both of our kids, we saw God’s hand of Sovereignty in placing them in our family. Will you pray that He does it again? Because of course, we believe that no matter who does the “choosing,” ultimately it is God who decides.

Babies on the Brain

By Amy Medina

On February 5, 2011

In Other

I’ve been thinking a lot about babies recently.

Maybe it’s because tomorrow I am helping to host a baby shower for three, that’s right, three HOPAC ladies who are having babies in the next few months. The kindergarten teacher, the wife of the science teacher, and the wife of the history teacher. Two are giving birth in country.

Maybe it’s because I spent an hour yesterday looking at these beautiful babies. Forever Angels just might be “our” orphanage this time around.

Maybe it’s because my worker, Esta, is pregnant and due in April.

Maybe it’s because Stella is always on my mind.

That’s a heck-of-a-lot of babies.

So this here post is a dual update: partly about Stella, and partly about what’s next for us. Here you go:

Stella:

Stella had an appointment yesterday. The doctor said she is doing great. He said she will be admitted no later than March 10th. They will do an ultrasound to find out the size of the baby at that point. If the baby is big enough, then at that time they will take the baby by C-section. Or she will stay at the hospital until the baby is big enough, and then do the C-section. The doctor said that after losing 4 babies in labor, they will not let her go into labor this time. So that means she has five weeks to go! Pray with me!

And us:

Assuming that Mama S’s report really was sent yesterday (and we’ve learned never to really assume anything), then the next step is that we wait for approval from the District Commissioner. A few things would have to happen to make this problem-free:

1. They receive the report, which really was sent, and does not get lost in the mail or someone’s office.

2. They accept the report as it is written and do not require Mama S to add anything else.

3. They don’t require us to do an International Report. (We had to do this for Grace and Josiah, but were assured that we don’t have to this time. However, they could change their minds).

4. They decide that they will approve us for a third child.

As friends have rejoiced with us, the inevitable question is always, “So when will you get the baby?” Well, hypothetically, it could happen as soon as a couple of months. But as you can see, a number of scenarios could lengthen that process.

Next week, I will go to the district social welfare office. Instead of nagging Mama S, now I get to nag Mama A. We will tell her which orphanage we are requesting, and remind her that we have requested a girl between one and two years old. And I will weekly talk to her about the “progress” of our approval letter….until we get it. That letter, Lord willing, will not only grant us approval to foster a child, but will give us the name of the particular child they have chosen for us. We will have a name, a face, and then wait for the paperwork to be done on that child. The paperwork gets sent back to the district office, and they issue a final-final-final letter which will let us take her home.

It always starts and ends with a letter, remember?

I love adoption. But I must admit that sometimes I am envious of all these other ladies who actually have a due date. 🙂