Starting our Adoption Process

Nate was asked by a business partner of his companies' to come to Mexico for three months in 2008. At the time, I was a school social worker and had time off in the summer, so we excitingly agreed. We lived in an apartment in Monterrey, had a spanish tutor 3x a week, and I got to volunteer at an orphanage. We were so excited and nervous. We ended up being there for a little over two months. We learned a lot that summer about being on our own as a married couple. It got lonely at times but we enjoyed each others company more than ever before. Working at the orphanage was an amazing experience and like anyone who gets an opportunity like this, I fell in love with a little boy named after Moses. He went by Moe pronounced Mooey. He turned three that summer and I was convinced that he was supposed to be our child. Now I know you can't really just walk in and pick a kid, but I just couldn't imagine leaving without him. Turns out that you have to be married two years before you can adopt from that particular agency.(which we were not) It was founded by several Catholic women. They have a web site in case you would like to see it. http://www.filios.org

After coming home and realizing that we were pretty far from starting an adoption plan, I put it on the back burner. When we started to discuss adoption both of us were convinced that we were going to Mexico to find our child. What could be better, we knew the language (fairly well), we knew and loved the music, food, and traditions. Unfortunately, after much research we found that it is pretty difficult to adopt from Mexico. In fact, we could only find two Hague accredited agencies that do adopt from Mexico and the closest one is in Arizona. The social worker in Arizona told me that the likelihood of adopting a child younger than Owen was not good. Even though I would adopt Moe in a heartbeat If it were possible, we really wanted to keep the birth order. This was really important to Nate so our adoption pursuit came to a large halt. We hadn't considered a backup plan. Mexico was it. Never in a million years would I have thought that we would be adopting a newborn domestically, but with many conversations and research this is where God put us. We learned a big lesson of trusting that God will lead you to the place you need to be if you let him. Our journey is still at the beginning and I am sure we will have more lessons to come. I decided to go over how to start the adoption process in the next blog. This will be from the mouth of a complete adoption amateur, but felt compelled to share the start to our story. Post coming soon...

 

Nate and Jackie

Monterrey Mexico

2008