My Name is ANNADEL

My name is Annadel and I had a plan to adopt 2 children under age 5 with no special needs or health problems. 

This is our adoption story.

It was January 2010 and my husband and I had been married a year when we started talking about having kids together.  This is the second marriage for both of us; we have 3 kids each, ranging from 14 to 23. I was over 40 had had my tubes tied 15 years prior, so giving birth to a child was not really an option but it did cross my mind for like 26 seconds.  As we talked and looked at different options I thought Ethiopia or Haiti would be places we would be interested in adopting from. I had a coworker who did some charity work at an orphanage in Haiti and saw the need there.  This was in January 2010 so right at the time of the Haiti earthquake and adoptions had come to a complete halt there, so we decided on Ethiopia as our country. I have always been drawn to the beauty of the Ethiopian people and felt like this was right for us. 

We began the long process of paperwork, taking full days off of work to do the paper chase. We had our list of necessary documents and would mark them off as we went.  Each time we thought we were done, we needed one more thing or this document was not notarized correctly or we needed a different version of that form.  After about 6 months of going back and forth we were finally done with the paperwork. Then the hard part of waiting began.

Every few weeks I would call the agency to see if they had any children for us. I also began looking on www.rainbowkids.com at the waiting children’s list.  These children are older than 3 and/or have some special need or medical condition or they are a sibling group.  A little over a year after we started our paperwork I was scrolling through the list of these children who wait and saw a beautiful little 3 year old girl looking back at me.  As I read her health condition I was certain I could not handle a child with this particular need. My thought was “I don’t want to watch one of my children die.”  My husband had the same thoughts when I discussed it with him. But I could not get this little girl off my mind so I contacted the agency “just to see”. I got some extra pictures of her and some more information on her condition and realized how uneducated I was.  After doing a bunch of research, I realized her condition was not even scary and that she would live a long healthy life. So I prayed. As I was getting ready for work one morning thinking about this little angel, I just started to cry and knew I would be willing to accept a child with this condition and that was what I was supposed to do, whether it was her or not.  It ended up that she was not to be our child and was adopted into a wonderful loving family along with another little boy from her orphanage who was a really good friend of hers.  I did get to meet her and deliver a care package when I traveled to Ethiopia.  She is a precious little girl with a great family. This little girl started the first change we made to our paperwork.  We now would accept a special needs child but the age stayed the same. “What if an older child had issues and I just could not handle their type of “baggage”?” I would definitely stick to the 2 children under 5.

About 3 months later, in June of 2011, I decided to call the agency again and check on our status. Our agency representative said she was just about to call us because they had a healthy little girl that was going to go on the waiting children’s list and wondered if we would be interested. She was a little older than our limit of 5 as she was 5 going on 6. We said yes and she sent the referral. She did warn us that she looked angry in some of the pictures. Angry is an understatement. She looked like she would kill us in our sleep.  Luckily they had sent some of her smiling too.  We decided to accept referral and thus started our 2^nd update to change the age parameter which we changed to 8. 

Even though this referral was a relief, the waiting continued as we waited for a court date which finally came for October 26^th 2011. After several flight delays, plane changes, spending my birthday in London, (which was kind of cool since we had a 9 hour layover and took a tour. Just wish I hadn’t been wearing 3 day old clothes), 24 hours in the air, and luggage that was sent back home; we finally made it to Ethiopia to meet our daughter, Andinet.  She was waiting for us and was excited as she saw us pull up.  I recognized her immediately and could not get out of the car fast enough. I just grabbed her and squeezed her tight. It was an amazing day.

The days we spent at the orphanage were so much fun. Not only did we get to love on Andinet, but all of the kids were amazing and so cute. While we were spending time with Andinet another boy named Mikiyas (pronounced Mickey-S), who said he was 12 , hung out with us too. He spoke English pretty well and translated for us. When I asked him why he wasn’t in school he said he was starting the next Monday. Come to find out he had just been moved that week to Andinet’s orphanage from another that had closed.  I spoke with him and asked if he had an agency and he told me that Dinknesh, one of the in -country reps for our agency, was going to help find him a family. He also said “I ask God every night to help me find a family so I know I will get one soon.”  The amazing faith of a child.  As we spent time with Mikiyas, I started to feel like I might want to make this great kid my son. Again, way out of our parameters, and he is diabetic so not only was he way older than planned, he also had medical needs.  As we prayed about this boy we felt like it was the right thing to do so, our minds were made up to add him to our family. We did not say anything to him as we did not want to get his hopes up just in case.  I later found out that there was an in-country rep who was going to be traveling to the US  and had one last goal before she left- and that was to get Mikiyas moved to KVI orphanage before she left and it just happened to be the week we were there that he was moved. He was not in school yet because of the move so we were able to spend the entire week with him. If he had been in school we would not have had the opportunity to spend the time we did with him. God has ways of pushing us in the right direction. 

As we prepared to go home and leave our now 2 children behind to wait for the embassy appointment, my heart ached for them both. Andinet did not understand that we were not going to take her with us that time and was very upset.

Once back home, while we waited for the Embassy appointment, we received and accepted the official referral for Mikiyas.  Before we even sent our referral paperwork for Miki back to the agency, I got an email from the rep saying she needed to talk to me. I called her and she said she had been contemplating whether or not she should even mention it since we had just accepted the referral for Mikiyas, but that there was a little boy that met all of our parameters that did have the medical condition we were open to and wanted to know if we would be interested. I asked if she could just send his pictures without the referral. She said she could but if we saw his picture we would not be able to think clearly. I called my husband and he said we could look but he didn’t think we should accept because we had only wanted to adopt 2 children.  She sent the pictures and she was right, I was in love. 

But, the more we discussed it the more my husband pushed back. I was supposed to take just the weekend to decide but I drug my feet and cried and waited almost a week to call the agency back to tell her we had decided we could not adopt Kare (pronounced Car-A). I cried for almost another week and in talking to my husband, his push back and worry was that his boys would feel pushed aside. I asked him to talk to them about it and see how they would feel about us adopting both Mikiyas and Kare. They were super excited! That was a Sunday and I called the agency on Monday asking for Kare’s referral.  Another round of Paperwork updates to change our parameters to 3 children ages 0-14.

In February 2011, we traveled to Ethiopia to bring our Daughter home and to see the boys.  When we talked to the in-country agency rep she told us how Mikiyas would not believe her at first that we wanted to adopt him and how he then threw his hands in the air and said “thank God” in praise and thanksgiving to Him. When he saw us he was so happy and just hugged us and did not want to let us out of his sight. What a truly emotional day to see Miki again, knowing that he was our son.  He ended up in the hospital to try to regulate his blood sugar and he was scared that we would not want him since he is sick. It just broke my heart that he had those thoughts. We had to keep telling him that he is our son and we will love him always.  It was hard to have to leave my boys again and continue to wait.

We again went back to Ethiopia in July 2012 for Court for the boys. They are officially our son’s in the eyes of the Ethiopian Government but at the time of this writing, we wait for the Embassy appointment to bring our precious boys home. We are hoping that soon we will all be united and we can finally rest from the long exhausting process.

We are grateful that we had some one- on-one time with Andinet. We feel like she needed us to be there just for her. She is very excited to have her brother’s home to join our big family of soon to be 11. Andinet has been so much fun and has made the stress of it all very worthwhile.  She has fit into our lives perfectly. She is weird and goofy like the rest of us and makes us laugh every day. We could not imagine life without her and don’t really remember life without her.  God has blessed us on so many levels with her.

To end our story, I have learned several things from this journey:

1. Nothing in Adoption is the normal and you need to be prepared to wait, and wait, and wait some more.

2. God’s Plans are not always our plans and I am so thankful that I listened to Him this time. I am so very blessed.

3. My heart breaks for the waiting orphan. Many people wait for healthy infants thinking they are “helping” while thousands of children wait for a family due to age, are part of a sibling group, or medical conditions. I would rather not have the children wait. It is heart breaking to have the older children ask you to help find them a family.

4. Older children are great. I met so many that have such fun personalities. They were a blast. I have become a huge advocate for older child adoption.

5. Only 7% of adopted children are black.

6. It makes me feel very uncomfortable when people tell me what a great thing I am doing.  I just feel so much more blessed by these children than I will ever bless them.  My heart is full every night when I hug and kiss my little Andinet and when she says to me as I hug her and play in her super awesome curls, “Mom why do you love me so, so much?”  Yes she knows she is loved and that is such a great feeling.

7. People can be rude and not even realize it.

Please if you are one of these people, remember these things: medical records are private, and the children’s family background and history is for them to share not me. 

If you want to make the comment, “wow you are starting over” here is my answer: “No, I am just continuing on the path God has chosen for me.”

 Another rude question I get a lot, but usually not to my face is “Why don’t you adopt from the US when we have need here?”  I have several answers to this one.  #1) Why don’t you? #2) Although domestic adoption is great, I feel that American Children are no more deserving of a forever family than African Children.  #3) My children were in Ethiopia.

8. This process was harder on some of my bio children than I thought it would be. Give them the extra attention they need too.

My eyes and heart have been opened for the orphan and I still look at the waiting children lists even though our family is complete (for now).  I came across this quote that sums it all up for me:

“Orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names. They are easier to ignore before you see their faces. It is easier to pretend they're not real before you hold them in your arms. But once you do, everything changes.” -David Platt.

If anyone reading this has a heart for adoption or are considering adoption, look at older children or a special needs child. They wait and wait for their Mommies and Daddies, while many Mommies and Daddies sit on waiting lists to adopt healthy infants.  If Adoption is not for you, there are other ways to help bring children home to their forever families. You can Sponsor a child or donate to an adoption.

Other places to check out:

www.projecthopeful.org

http://reecesrainbow.org

http://www.nogreaterjoymom.com

http://www.illienadoptions.org/IllienFoundation.html  I have met several children that could be adopted through Illien. Let me know if you want any information.

My name is Annadel and I am so grateful that I followed God’s plan for me instead of my own. I am truly blessed with amazing children, both biological and adopted. 

**Remember the purpose of this series is to support, uplift, and encourage. Any questions you have are welcome and Annadel will be reading your comments.

** Annadel, I am positively amazed by this whole story, What a beautiful and selfless act of love this is. Your children are SO beautiful and so are you! What an amazing life experience this will be- for ALL of you. Thank you for your willingness to share this, open and honestly. You are changing lives. Not just your own life, or of the lives of those little kids, but in the lives of all those around you. Truly inspiring. Just beautiful.