Daddy made the announcement that he was ready to adopt. His heart was telling him that maybe it WAS possible to love someone you don’t even know. Jason, Tyanna and I researched frantically, for HOURS, even days, on the internet.
After 5 days, we had almost all given up. Why is it that in the year 2009, we can't find anything on the web? We were trying to find answers to simple questions: What countries are allowing adoptions? How do you adopt? What agency would we use? How much does it cost to do something like this? Etc. The interesting thing is, we never found a well organized website with information. None of the websites we visited seemed right for us.
But, towards the end of the week, God miraculously brought someone into our life that told us about an agency in Alabama... we don't even know where Alabama is. As soon as we clicked on the website, we knew that we knew, that this was divinely orchestrated.
We immediately chose Lifeline Children's Services. We hoped and prayed they would choose to work with us.
Somehow, I got it in my head that we should be matched with our daughter and in her country by Christmas 2009... six months from the time we decided to adopt. I was very optimistic.
We still hadn't determined where we would adopt from: America, Romania, Russia, Guatemala, Uzbekastan, or China? Would we do the adoption through the Washington State foster care system or through an adoption agency? We were e-mailing everyone we knew, that either adopted or knew of someone who adopted. Which agency would we use? What was their experience?
Within the week, Lifeline had accepted us into their program. It was Tyanna’s 15th birthday, May 1, 2009.
