Why Clear Across the World?

Choosing where to adopt from was a difficult decision. We relied heavily on God's leading in the journey.

We considered domestic adoption, and quickly realized that would only happen through foster care. An older couple with five children is not the typical choice a birth mother makes for her future baby, and neither one of us felt we were to seek an infant anyway.

I spent hours searching through listings of waiting U.S. children in foster care. I have no calling to be a foster parent, and would not fare well to have a child in our home temporarily. Neither Tim nor I ever felt peace in our hearts as we considered this avenue of adoption. We both felt a strong leading to internationally adopt.

Since God knows exactly where Joy is and we had no idea, we knew He was going to have to guide us in the direction we should go.

Once we knew it was to be international, I began researching countries. It was easy to narrow them down, because we don't qualify for several of them and others would not be a good fit due to certain requirements. Our family is too large to qualify for many country adoption programs. Some countries require a long in-country stay. We ruled them out because I am unwilling to leave my children for a month or longer while I stay in another country, and Tim has a business here to run.

Our list had been narrowed down to Ethiopia or China. We teetered back and forth. There were benefits to both programs. China seemed to be the best fit. We know two families who have adopted through China, one of which has adopted twice. So we have experience from which to draw. Tim has always talked about visiting China, and it's amazing how God is fitting that into our lives as we answer His call. The struggles of Chinese Christians has always been heavy on my heart, and over the years I have followed their stories and prayed for them. It seemed that we had both felt a connection to China long before we ever had an inkling about adoption.

When we made the decision, we both had peace about moving forward in China.