change of plans

Monday evening, I texted the woman who's coordinating some aspects of our adoption to tell her the good news that we got our USCIS approval and to ask what we needed to do next. Within minutes she had called me back to let me know that she had received some news from the caseworker in Ug@nda. Our boy's mother and aunt had been located. His mother is not able to care for him, but his aunt is. Assuming all goes well, he will be reunited with his family in the next week or so. He is not 'our boy' after all.

While there is some sadness in this - as we've spent 2 months staring at his sweet face and being exciting about bringing him into our family - we are mostly so, so happy. While we love adoption, we love families being kept intact even more. We are so glad to have been able to provide a way for his family to be reunited. You see, doing this kind of investigation for children in orphanages costs money. Most of these homes are struggling just to be sure the children have enough to eat and don't have the extra resources to conduct searches for the children's families. Because we were hoping to adopt this little boy, we covered the cost of the investigation - and his family was found! Because God directed us to this place and this child, he will have only spent 3 months without his family - instead of 6 months or 12 months or however long it might have taken them to find him. We're also incredibly grateful to be working with an organization that is committed to doing adoptions the right way - only placing children for international adoption who are truly orphans and who cannot be part of a family in their home country.

We are now prayerfully considering what God would have us do. None of our girl's relatives have yet been located, so we are still planning to move forward with her case. However, we are still pretty committed to bringing 2 children into our family, so we are back to looking at photos and asking the Lord to show us what He wants our family to look like. We would appreciate your prayers as we walk through this. Thank you!

approved!

Just one month after having our fingerprints taken, the USCIS approved us to bring home 2 children from Uganda. One more piece of paper to check off the list :)