Referral Story

.....June 17^th started out just like any other day.  I (Sheldon) went to work in the morning, and had a normal morning.    Hilary went out to run some errands, and saw a relatively cheap water bottle that was similar to water bottles we had bought months earlier as part of a “Water for Ethiopia” fundraiser.  She contemplated purchasing just one, but thought, maybe we’d eventually get 2 children so that they could have matching water bottles to ours.  Little did she know.....

At about 12:15 pm, while on lunch, I received a call from Dawn at Adoption Options.  She made a comment about some paperwork that she had just received (honestly I don’t have a clue what she said that day), and that she was looking beautiful pictures on her computer... It was then that I realized what it was that she was saying.  I don’t even remember what I said after that moment, but that I kept saying something over and over again (maybe my co-worker at the time remembersJ).  She told me that she was looking at 2 beautiful girls....  We had been referred 2 girls, and they were siblings, ages 1.5 yrs old, and 3.5 yrs old. 

I don’t actually remember any more of the conversation, but I was completely shell shocked.   I told/asked my boss, whether it was ok for me to leave for the rest of the day, and I think she just said, of course.  I’m not sure I would’ve been much use at work the rest of that day.  I spent about 2 hours trying to get a hold of Hilary, and by the time I finally got a hold of her, I had received 4 emails with the pertinent information about the girls in them.  I told Hilary that she should come on over and pick me up, that I was quitting for the day.  She was a bit clued out as to why I was coming home so early, and it was at that time that she asked whether we had received a referral.  I said yes, Hilary screamed so loud, our dog peed on the floor and ran for the kennel.  Hopefully it all wasn’t too traumatic for him J.  Hilary did not want to receive any more information because we both figured she would get in an accident with that much excitement J.  Between the time I called, and she got to where I work (approximately 15 minutes), I caved and looked at the most beautiful sad faces I’ve ever seen.

Once she showed up, she insisted that we wait until we got home again to see the pictures, and read through the information we had received.  Once home, we sat together on the couch, prayed, started up my computer (keep in mind that Hilary still thinks there’s only one child coming home), and had a look at the pictures of the oldest girl, as well as viewed some of the documentation.  Once we had done a quick review of the older girl’s file, I said “And here is the 2^nd child....”, and we both lost it.  We are both so very thankful that God has provided us with these 2 miracles.  While we understand that these children are not legally ours yet, we are so looking forward to that day when we can legally call these girls our own.

Once our emotions settled down a bit, we decided that we had to show both sets of parents the pictures of our soon to be daughters.  I quickly saved the documents onto a memory stick, and we headed out to Staples to print a copy of the pictures for each set of grandparents.  While we were on our way to Hilary’s parents, we called Hilary’s sister who had just landed out of town for a little vacation, and told her.  We told Hilary’s parents (who just happened to both be home when we got over there), and of course, there were again lots of tears.  Finally, we began the ½ hour drive to my parents to give them the news.  I think they suspected something when we showed up in the driveway.  We gave them the news, and interestingly enough my sister, and her family showed up shortly afterwards, so they could receive the news as well.  Hilary needed to be back home for some responsibilities that she had already committed to, so we headed back to Winnipeg, and spent virtually the entire trip on the phone (that phone bill was huge J).  Over the next few days and weeks, the reality of the situation has started to sink in, and we are just as overjoyed.

The next step after accepting the referral was to wait for the courts to grant us a date.  We had originally hoped we might be able to receive that date before the courts closed at the beginning of August, but unfortunately that was not to be, and so we are currently waiting for a court date.  Hopefully we will receive a date over the next week or two, and we can start making plans to travel to Ethiopia to see our girls.  We expect to travel at or around the end of October, and hope to be able to spend our 10^th wedding anniversary in Ethiopia.

Thank you again to all who have supported us in this adoption process.  We will try and post here as frequently as we can with updates, and stories relating to our adoption, and hopefully sooner rather than later we will post stories of our girls, and how they are adjusting to the Canadian life.

Our Adoption Story

Again, in an attempt to show people that they are not alone, we felt that we should share our life journey right up until this year.

We got married in October 2001, and both looked forward to approximately a year of life with just the two of us, and then hopefully a life filled with children.  Little did we know what kind of journey lay ahead for us.

In 2005, after we had been married for 4 years, and trying to have children for 3 years, we decided to start looking into whether adoption was for us.  We finally decided that we would enter the world of adoption one year later, and signed up with Adoption Options located in Winnipeg in February of 2006.

Looking back, we were unaware of what challenges there were in the adoption world, even though we were warned time and time again.  We entered this stage of our lives with great anticipation as to which child we would ultimately end up adopting.  We were blessed to have a number of close friends offer us encouragement, and support, and our church has been amazing all through the journey.

Also, our families have been a model of support throughout the process.  They have been prayer warriors for us, and have supported each and every decision we have made, and cheered us on when there is good news, as well as comfort us when we have negative news.  We thank each and every one of them, and appreciate them all as family.

As the year continued, we began growing more and more antsy about our position in the adoption world.  When would we see some movement in our file?  Are we meant to even have children after all?  Will we suddenly get pregnant as many people suggested?  This was an incredibly difficult couple of years, and it wore us down to the point that we had to consider other options as well.

It was around this time (Winter 06/07) that we began to start thinking about international adoption, and whether this was another avenue we should consider.  As we considered international adoption, a situation was presented to us in Spring of 2007.  There was a child that was probably going to be placed for adoption.... This case had come up outside of our agency's mandate, so while they knew about it and were supportive of it, it was up to us to get more information, and get some of the preparations out of the way before getting our agency involved.  We became obsessed with getting everything figured out to bring this child to what we felt was his rightful home.  We were in contact with the social worker, we were in contact with the birth mother.  We felt that it was only a matter of time before the child was in our house.  Then, suddenly, the communications dried up.  Every time we tried to contact the birth mother, she was cordial on the phone, but never really giving up any more information, and finally we felt (for our own sanity) that we needed to stop pursuing this.  We told the birth mother, that we wanted what was best for the child, but that unless it was something she wanted to do, we would no longer pursue it until we heard from her again.  We waited a couple of months and we heard nothing, and so we grieved the loss of what we thought was going to be our child.

Shortly after this incident (Fall of 2008), we began talking more with Adoption Options regarding an international adoption.  We went into these discussions with 2 countries in mind, and left with only one, Ethiopia.  Once again, we failed to heed the warnings of everyone involved with how uncertain the adoption process is.  We felt that it had been implied that this adoption could be completed relatively quickly compared to some of the other timelines we had heard.  I don't think we also totally realized just how costly this was all going to be.  At any rate, all our paperwork was completed in time to be sent to Ethiopia on March 10, 2009.  We had requested either 1 or 2 children, basically as young as possible.  We were excited that maybe something would happen soon.  Again, we continued on our journey as if the worst was over, and everything was going to move forward exactly how everyone told us it would.  Sadly, it seems that this was just the beginning of one of the toughest points of our adoption journey.

On Friday, July 17, 2009, our world was rocked.  This was the day that we found out that the agency that was facilitating our international adoption out of Cambridge, Ontario, Imagine Adoption, was filing for bankruptcy.  It was not a fun weekend, but by Monday afternoon, all across the country, many of the Imagine Adoption's 300ish clients were meeting to discuss possible solutions to the bankruptcy.  Hilary went to a meeting with a number of Manitoba families, and came away from that meeting a great deal of optimism.  By July 30th, we had submitted some documents to BDO stating how much money we had spent to date in our adoption, and throughout August, word of potential solutions that would possibly be proposed by BDO Dunwoody (company reviewing the bankruptcy filing) started to surface, and while it was not ideal, it was a chance for us to continue with this dream of bringing children into our home.

Labour Day weekend of 2009, I remember receiving the proposal, and spent most of the weekend mulling over what was being proposed.  When all was said and done, the agency was resurrected, with each family contributing an extra $4,000 to continue moving forward.  As the agency began moving forward, the first referrals were celebrated in late December, 2009.  This was a monumental feet that had been accomplished after only 5 short months earlier, it seemed Ethiopia adoptions were dead in the water.  We spent the next year excited to continue, but still a little unsure whether anything would ever come of our adoption plans.  We have been overjoyed to celebrate other adoptions from what has become a somewhat close Ethiopian Adoption community.  We have also made a number of friends through contact on the forums, emails, and later meeting in person, especially Geoff & Ruth from Ruth's Rambles, and lately to Doug & Jessa from La Belle Vie (whom we hope to meet in Ethiopia).

On June 17, 2011, the call came......

Since this post is already quite long, I will post the details of that fateful day in a new post, probably later tonite :).

Welcome!

Hilary and I would like to welcome each and every one of you here to our blog.  What you will see here will most likely be news and analysis of our adoption journey.  We want to use this as a way of communicating some of our life stories to our friends and family.  We also hope that this will serve as a bit of a journal for our the children we bring home.  Please feel free to leave comments, and ask any questions you might have about the process.

Also, we have had great support from many other adoptive families through blogs, as well as through a forum (message board) that we are a part of.  Our hope is that this site will be informative as well as a support either to people currently on the journey or those considering an adoption, either internationally or domestically.

We hope you enjoy it.