Anna & Levi’s Family Day

Anna & Levi, summer 2009

Anna & Levi, summer 2011

When we thought about starting the adoption process for the 5th {and 6th!} time, we weren’t particularly sure where we were supposed to adopt from.  We have always felt very strongly that International Adoption was the route that God was calling us to.  Our family size was too big to adopt from Korea again and as much as we love Russia, we didn’t feel God had our children there.  We started thinking about Ethiopia as an option.  The more we researched, we felt like that was where we were supposed to go next.  We started our initial paperwork with the agency we had selected, as well as with our long-time social worker.

Beginning the Adoption Process

We were fairly certain we wanted to adopt two children at once this time.  We have always felt strongly that when adding a child of a different race to our family, that it would be helpful to have a sibling that was also of that same race.  So it seemed we were set to add two children to our family from Ethiopia, or so we thought.

Jacob & Jonah

One night when Bob was at TaeKwonDo with some of the kids, he started talking to a fellow TKD mom who also happens to be a social worker that we had used previously for parts of our Korean adoptions.  They started talking about the fact that we were adopting again and that Ethiopia was our country of choice.  The local agency that she worked for was just in the beginning stages of a new program to adopt from Jamaica.  Bob came home interested in adopting from Jamaica.  Well, I’m the adoption “expert” in our house and I had never heard of adoptions from Jamaica, so I set out to prove him wrong.  Sure enough there are a few agencies that do have Jamaican adoption programs, although it’s a bumpy process.

After much prayer and consideration we decided that Jamaica was really where we were supposed to adopt from.  We were okay with the less than straight-forward process and the fact that it would take about 2 years to complete the adoptions.  We had four children who were eight and under, we were okay with waiting a little bit to add to our family.  In the spring of 2009, we completed our home study, submitted our necessary paperwork to the agency and to INS, all for Jamaica.

The family photo we used for our paperwork

Adoption Surprises

Shortly thereafter, we received a phone call from the director of our agency, Creative Adoptions Inc. , stating that she had two children who fit our age profile who were available for adoption in the country of St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean, and would we be interested?  I was shocked, but of course interested.  Bob was traveling out of town and it would be a little bit of time before I could get ahold of him to ask him what he thought.

So there we were in July of 2009 with our somewhat “unplanned adoption”.  We quickly said yes and got the ball rolling with our country change.  The children were in foster care in St. Vincent and normally have to be in foster care for six months before they are eligible to adopt.  Because Anna and Levi were older {4 and 2}, SVG was willing to make an exception for the timeframe since they had a family waiting for them.  Before we knew it we were traveling as a family to meet Anna & Levi.

Blessed Virgin at St. Mary’s in Kingstown SVG

One of the things that drew us to both Jamaica and to St. Vincent and the Grenadines was the fact that they were flexible about bringing family members along.  It was no problem for us to bring the other children along to meet Anna and Levi.  We felt strongly about including everyone in our journey of adding new family members.  What a joy it was to be able to travel to the Caribbean with all of our children.  It was an awesome experience for all of them to be exposed to a different culture.  Taking a ferry across the ocean in the middle of a thunderstorm {don’t recommend it!}, riding in an open-air taxi {car seats and seat belts, who needs ’em?}, and of course, meeting their new siblings for the first time.

open air taxi on Bequia Island

The first day we met Anna & Levi

Playing on the beach of Bequia Island