From China to Rwanda

Instead of leaving you hanging, I thought I'd fill in some more details!  How did we get from me having the desire to care for orphans in China to deciding to adopt from Rwanda (hopefully starting the process in 2011)?  Here's the rest of the story...

Before Josh and I got engaged I asked him if he'd be interested in adopting someday. I told him that if he wasn't, I wasn't sure that I could marry him because it was that important to me. He quickly said he'd definitely be interested. :)

We got married and 3 babies came pretty fast.  Five sweet years of marriage passed and life was going at full speed.  I didn't give much thought to the babies without parents; my mind was running wild with trying to care for the little ones I already had!  Then my friend, Misha, started posting some adoption videos on her blog.  One look and all of the hopes and desires came rushing back.  I could not shake the intense longing to do something to care for these children.  I started searching on-line a bit about international adoption and just felt absolutely sure that this was for us.  I sent for a couple info packets from different agencies.  I talked with Josh about it and he agreed that it would be wonderful, but said that it just wasn't the right time for us.  He suggested that we talk about it again after Christmas.

My heart sunk and I prayed. I asked a couple of friends to pray.  And a week later when I brought it up again, something had changed.  We began looking at the details of adopting from various countries.  I'd always thought we'd adopt from China but we fall too short of China's income requirements.  So, we started looking at Ethiopia and Rwanda.

More on why we chose Rwanda later...