What is a waiting child in adoption language? The simplest answer is that this is a child who is waiting and READY for a family to call his/her own.

When we asked our adoption agency to add us to their “waiting child” emails, we had no idea who we might learn about or the new direction it would take our family.

It wasn’t the first, second, or even third email to come to our inbox. There are far too many children waiting for their forever families. A lot of waiting children are older and we are only approved up to a certain age range. We also have wanted to keep the existing birth order in our family the same. Haiti doesn’t have an official waiting child program, so the children we were finding out about were from other countries. The only reason we would switch to a different country is if we felt there was a specific child that we could be the right family for and meet his/her needs.

I (Jodie) saw I had a new email one day about a waiting child…. The age range was within our approved age range. We were familiar with some of the child’s specific needs. But this waiting child isn’t from Haiti. I felt like I couldn’t just pray for this child and delete the email. So I asked Josh to read the profile and let me know what he thought.

We decided we wanted to know more, and as we prayed we asked God to show us what to do. Do we put our dossier in Haiti on hold to pursue a child from another country?

We entered into a referral period for this special child from COLOMBIA. A referral period is formal process that lasts 2 weeks. There is A LOT to do in those 2 weeks, like setting up a conference with a medical International Adoption Specialist, developing a transition plan, submitting a letter of intent to adopt to the Colombian government, and a home video introducing each family member and a tour of our home (so much cleaning! Almost as much as home study visit!).

Since our dossier is not in Colombia yet, we had to sign a waiver that even if the adoption authority said yes to our letter of intent to adopt there is the possibility that another family could come along with their dossier ready and this child could get home to a forever family sooner.

That part of it all is really difficult to think about. But we told God that we would keep saying yes to this child and if this child is not meant to join our family that God would keep it from happening.

The Colombian government said yes to our letter of intent to adopt this child! So right now we are working as quickly as we can to update our home study, get ready for a home study visit, and get all the necessary paperwork through different levels of certification for the dossier so we can send it all to Colombia.

Please pray for us as we work diligently to get the work done on our end to bring this child home, and we gladly welcome any fundraising ideas to help with the upcoming fees.

We debated on when to tell Gabe and Lily about the gender of the child, but since we had to make a family video, we decided we needed to tell them sooner rather than later.

Next post we’ll share that…