That being said, the update you are
about to receive will be very vague and not as interesting as it would be if I
could include some concrete information! Stay tuned though, as I promise to
reveal our entire journey with you in the months ahead.
Here is a copy of the email we sent
out in June of this year for those of you that need to brush up on how we got
to this point: I went ahead and italicized it so that if you don’t want to read
it again, you can just skip to the regular print below and begin reading. I
sure wouldn’t want to be repetitive and bore any of you!
Hello family and
friends! We hope that this email finds you well.
Deena and I have some
big news to share with you all as well as some even bigger prayer requests to
ask of you.
Our family has
officially begun the international adoption process to adopt one or two
children from the country of Ethiopia. We have made this decision after years
of prayer and consideration and through the faithful choice to obey the
commands of our Heavenly Father.
It wasn’t until
earlier this year that our hearts were united on the decision to adopt. I had
seen a movie that changed my life entirely and really changed my heart for
orphans. So much so that I began praying for God to open doors for our family
to adopt. I asked Deena to pray specifically for God to open doors in areas
where we needed to pursue a task and to close doors where we needed to walk
away. Its amazing how when you surrender your hang ups and doubts and
completely move forward in faith, God truly does open doors and connects you
with those that can help you along the way.
We have a few verses
to share with you that have been instrumental for us in this process:
Matthew 25: 45 NIV
“Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you
did not do for me.”
James 1:27 NIV
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look
after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being
polluted by the world.
James 4:17 NIV If
anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for
them.
This is why we are
adopting, we feel God has specifically asked us to do this in faith and
obedience and we believe that He will orchestrate this process and be our
constant source of direction.
We ask you to join us
in prayer!
Specifically:
Pray for our family as
we navigate the adoption process,
Pray for our children as they learn
and prepare for a huge change in our family dynamic
Pray for clarity when reviewing
documents and meeting with case workers
Pray that we would have discernment
and peace in our decision-making
Pray for funding,
Our family is willing to do whatever
it takes to fund our adoption(s). We have to have a completed home study before
we can apply for grants/loans. Completing our home study is very expensive and
yet it is only a fraction of the overall cost of adoption.
Please pray that God would bless our
family supernaturally with the funds needed to adopt these orphans.
Pray for our future
children,
Pray that God would select exactly
who it is that He wants to join our family
Pray for the health and stability of
the child(ren)
Pray for the orphanages that are
housing the child(ren)
Pray for God’s perfect timing in
meeting our child(ren)
We have left a lot of
the decisions and parameters for our adoption open. We are not narrowing the
field by age, gender, siblings, ect. We understand the impacts that this will
have on our family and we are taking several classes and trainings in order to
further understand the implications. We may receive a child that is older, or
has special needs do to the developmental delays that come with being in a
third world orphanage. This is something we are prayerful about.
We love you all and we
are so blessed to have family and friends that support our family. Thank you in
advance for supporting us as we take this step. Please feel free to ask us
questions; we want to share our journey with you. I will hopefully be creating
a blog to share our journey in more detail so that you can check for updates as
we go.
Please take the time
to watch this short video in order to better understand our hearts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWHJ6-YhSYQ
To our parents
specifically, we say thank you! Thank you for the impact you have had on our
lives and for the support you have given us over the years. We hope we can do
the same for our family and we look forward to providing a home for children
that do not have a forever family!
Love
Brian and Deena
Here is a re-cap of what we have done since this letter was
written:
June: we applied
to our international adoption agency America World Adoption Association and we
started our home study with a local agency in Loveland. (In the world of
international adoptions, you have to have an international agency that will do
the adoption as well as a local agency that can do your home study, if the
international agency does not have an office in your area. This was our case in
Loveland so we had to have two agencies working on our case rather than just
one)
July: started
gathering all necessary documentation for our home study, working with our
agency in Loveland to complete our home study.
August: began the
process of packing and preparing to move to Oregon which caused us to stop our
home study in Loveland and have to find a new agency to conduct a whole new
home study in Oregon.
This is where we started to feel
fatigued by the process and almost overwhelmed to the point of maybe putting
our adoption on hold. You see, we threw everything we had towards our adoption
and we were maxed out financially so the idea that we would loose the resources
we had already spent and have to start all over seemed too daunting to handle.
Through prayer and patience, we
knew God had a reason for moving us to Oregon and we also felt confident that
He called us to adopt and so we should not give up. When I called our family
coordinator with America World (I’ll call it AWAA from now on), to tell her
that we were relocating to Oregon, she asked me what part and I told her Happy
Valley and she said excitedly, “well, the great news is, we have an office just
a few minutes from where you will be living”! I was overjoyed to hear this.
It’s the very best case scenario to have one agency oversee the entire process
and even though we would be starting back at zero, we had so much confidence in
AWAA that we felt this (the move and having to start over) was a blessing in
disguise. Now, AWAA, will conduct our adoption and our home study.
September: we
moved to Oregon, settled in a bit and started working on our documentation
again.
Just last week our family
coordinator called to speak with me about our plans and to touch base with
where we are in the process. From the beginning, we have said that we want to
pursue children from the His Little Feet Choir www.hislittlefeet.org that we hosted
back in June of this year. She wanted to connect with me to let me know that
some of these children are referral ready. Meaning, their paperwork, on the
Ethiopia side, is complete and they are ready to be matched with a family. In
this type of case, the adoption process is “expedited,” because these types of
adoptions, where the children are pre-identified by the family, tend to move
quicker. (This is complicated and I’m trying not to write a book on it, so I’m
giving you the short version! Yes, Dad, this is the short version) Our family
coordinator wanted to know how we felt about an expedited process and wanted to
see if we would be willing to pursue the mentioned children that were referral
ready.
We discussed this at length (Brian
and I) and we called our family coordinator to let her know that we were ready
to pursue these children. I can at least tell you that I say “these children,”
because we are pursuing a sibling set of two. Of course, we didn’t come to this
decision lightly, we prayed, talked, studied and concluded that we will remain
faithful in what we have prayed from the start of this process, which is this,
“we will walk through whatever door’s God opens until He closes them.” We
recognized this as an opened door and so therefore we are walking through it!
October: Can you
believe it’s October?! It sure doesn’t look like October in Oregon, or so I’ve
been told. The sun has been out every day since we moved here. It’s the most
beautiful fall weather I have ever seen. The trees are gorgeous and we are
surrounded by beauty! I love the fall here for sure.
So, now we are in October, we have
met with our caseworker Briana (see more on her below) and we are working
through our home study. We are also beginning to seek funding from outside
sources to assist in the cost of our adoption. We will be spending over $40,000
to bring these children home and we cannot apply for grants until our home
study is completed (and, grants could be hard to come by when we can apply for
them).
Info on Briana: We officially met
with her face to face for the first time today and Brian and I were both blown
away by our time with her. She is wonderful and we feel so blessed to have her
working on our case with us. She throws a picnic every year for all of her
families and people bring their adopted children from all over the world to
connect at this amazing event. She takes her job very seriously and we could
both tell that she loves what she does. We are excited to work with her to say
the least. She also connected us with three local families that have adopted
older boys from Ethiopia within the last 6 months and so we now have contacts
in the area and real resources to utilize. I am so happy about this! I can’t
wait to connect with these families, ask questions and get to know them.
At this point here’s what we need from you:
We need your prayers! Please cover
our family in prayer. Pray for us as we are in the middle of a big transition
in our lives, with this move and being in a new, unfamiliar place. Pray that we
find a church to call home. Pray for us to have courage in this process. Pray
for education and resources for our family as we continue to learn more about
transcultural adoption. Pray for stability for Kellan, Ella and Elias. Pray
that this journey would be joyful and not stressful. Pray for financial
resources for our adoption. Just pray people, PRAY!!!!
We are so blessed to be able to
adopt orphans and give them a family and provide a home for them. I am so
blessed to have Brian as my husband; his heart is truly amazing. We are so thankful
for all of you, our faithful family and friends that pray for us and support us
in our decisions. I just can’t tell you how much it means to us to have your
support. We love you so much!
So, that’s all I can give you for
now; keep in mind, there is a lot more information that I cannot share with you
just yet, so please pray over all that you don’t know as well J I am so excited to
share more with you when I can.
Also, if you would like to support
our family financially, you may do so by downloading this form, http://www.awaa.org/downloads/development/EFP_Contribution_Form.pdf
completing it and sending a check made out to AWAA with our
names, Brian and Deena Pettit and Eternal Families in the memo line. This form
of giving, allows you to contribute funds directly to our adoption costs and
those funds will be tax deductible as you are giving to a non-profit agency.
We will send out letters to raise
financial support in the future as well, but please know, we understand
completely that this is our journey and we signed up for it. We know that not
everyone will feel led to give financially. The only thing we ask is that you
support us with the gift of your prayers! I say that with complete humility and
honesty. The gift of your prayers is so much more than any amount of money you
could ever give!
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