A side note about agencies and international adoption: Not every agency goes to every country for adoptions. I don't know the logistics of how they get approvals or the details of making that happen but that's just the case.
Five years ago (or maybe six) we sat in a Gladney international orientation session to learn about the different countries they worked with. I remember at the time being surprised that they did not go to Korea (as one of my friends is adopted from there) but there was a good choice of countries to consider, each with their own criteria. For instance, we automatically did not qualify for China due to age restrictions. But most of the others we did qualify should we choose those programs.
As the orientation was drawing to a close we knew we would need to discuss more at home about whether this was the route we would take and what country. In passing, the husband had even mentioned that nothing was really standing out to him but that didn't mean we would stop there. There was a time for Q&A at the end and while I normally don't ask questions - usually because I have none - I actually had a thought and raised my hand to ask what became a game-changing question. Was Gladney going to be opening up other countries?
I nearly fell out of my chair when she said they were looking for a family to be their pioneer family to adopt from Honduras.
Let me explain. The country of Honduras was a blip on the South American map until I went off to live in Florida for a year during my college years. Two of my very best friends while there were a brother and sister from Honduras. Fast forward a couple of years, Honduras was becoming a hub for spiritual revival. My parents became very involved in missions and ministry down to Tegucigalpa and other cities visiting once or more a year and still to this day. Though I have never been, Honduras has made an impact on my family and our community of friends.
You can imagine our reaction when the word "Honduras" was spoken into that room. It's like God was waving a huge banner in our face saying "Yes! Yes! Yes!" And that was it. We knew without needing to discuss anything further together that here was our country; here was our agency. It was such a welcome confirmation!
But your boys weren't adopted from Honduras...some of you are probably wondering. No, they weren't. The journey into a new country was not promised to be an easy one since there was no precedence set on all the paperwork and process of working with the in-country lawyers and courts. We actually had our dossier (all the required documents to be sent to the country) completed but we hit a snag when the country came back asking for more docs that we really couldn't provide at the time. Plus, to be honest, procrastination got the best of us. Eventually we knew we weren't going to be able to fulfill the requirements in a timely manner so we put everything on pause. A few months later we switched to Gladney's domestic program and the rest is history.
During our time in the Honduras program, we had been told that we were the prospective pioneer couple for the country but eventually another family joined the program. Not that we felt it was a race or anything but it was cool knowing that of all the families with Gladney we were on a very unknown journey.
Today when Gladney posted congrats to their very first family adopting into Honduras I didn't have mixed emotions whatsoever. In fact I immediately gave God thanks for my boys. While I am beyond excited for this family, it put our own family story into perspective. Assuming this is the same couple that started in the program with us, we would have waited 5-6 years for our adoption. We never would have met Noah and we certainly would never have met Aaron.
At the beginning maybe we thought that God was only calling us to Honduras but in fact, it was our connection with Honduras that led us to choose our agency and therefore leading us to our boys.
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