Kids’ Doc in Jos

Today I got two heartfelt reminders about the long road of adoption, particularly international adoptions, and I am thinking about how far we have yet to go. First was a progress update from Matt and Edith Anderson, who have been on that road for nearly two years, trying to adopt four Peruvian siblings whom they first came to know five years ago in Lima.

We were blown away when Monica got in touch with us at the end of January of 2004, and asked us to adopt her and her siblings. At 12, she realized the limbo that [she] and her siblings found themselves in, and she verbalized the natural longing of any child for a real family.

Each of their updates chronicles the ups and downs, complications, dashed hopes and new hopes of the process. Today’s update concludes,

Edith and I really feel at the end of our rope, and we have really struggled with the emotional stress that keeps piling on as time passes. Please pray for the Lord to sustain us, and to glorify Himself with a speedy answer to our requests. We would be eternally grateful if you would dedicate yourselves to join us in prayer for the quick resolution of the abandonment process.

The other reminder today was the latest news from Tim and Marti Hutchison, missionaries in Kenya, about their trying to adopt a child from China, so it’s a 3-country affair. Tim commented earlier,

Last week we filed paperwork at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi to get pre-approval from the Department of Homeland Security to adopt a child internationally. Hopefully they have received the FBI Fingerprinting reports that we submitted two weeks ago. And hopefully they received our notarized Home Study that was to have arrived at their office on Friday of last week. If these are in our file, then it will be another 2-4 weeks before we hear anything from the Embassy.

Our adoption of Luke seems to be completely blocked for the moment. The Plateau State adoption law requires that both parents be Nigerian citizens. We’ve even considered becoming citizens (the US does allow dual citizenship) but that requires a person to be proficient in a non-English Nigerian language, an odd requirement given that English is the official national language. As if that we not enough, we very recently learned that there was a new national law passed that also forbids adoptions to non-Nigerians!

All this could change, especially given the increasing number of children orphaned due to HIV/AIDS. A national news magazine, Newswatch, recently wrote an article about the ministry of some friends Bayo & Mary Beth Oyebade here in Jos who have a ministry to AIDS widows and orphans. Bayo described the national law and has already heard from some lawmakers who did not realize its negativeimpact.

Luke is on his way to sleep now, playing with his pet dragon and listening to Goldberg Variations. He came to us Thanksgiving week six years ago, before he could even roll over. He’s our boy and we’re his parents — we love each other. We want to support those who are trying to get the laws changed, and we pray that somehow we will be able to adopt Luke.

Meanwhile, though, Tim Hutchison triggers another thought for us. While we have no official status with Luke (we’re not even guardians or foster parents), and while we cannot take him out of Nigeria when we have home assignment, we are very grateful for what we have! Luke lives with us freely, and is truly a son to us regardless of the law. No one has come to take him away and, in Nigeria, it’s the de facto arrangement that counts most. (In fact, one of our concerns about persuing adoption is that the proceedings could break the tacit arrangement that exists now.)

None of us knows for sure what will happen to our children, natural, foster, or adopted, ten years from now or tomorrow. We pray for them, pray for ourselves as parents, and try to entrust them to God. Meanwhile, what I need to do more is take advantage of the opportunities of each day in the present, something I haven’t been doing so well.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 21st, 2005 at 10:14 pm and is filed under Mike's jottings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.