More about our Appointment

Thursday when we had our appointment we were surprised to learn that our facilitator/translator could go in with us. Everything that we had heard/been told in the past was that the State Department for Adoption (SDA) wanted only their translators present with the parents.

We were shown into a small room with a table and a semi-circular couch on one side that we sat on and the SDA's social worker/Physcologist on the other side. Valentin our translator had a chair to right of the couch and their were two desks behind the social worker with computers on them. An additional SDA worker sat at one of the computers.

After asking us some brief questions about why we wanted to adopt and what kind of work we did they opened a binder with maybe 20 sets of siblings in it. We were a little disappointed that with as many kids needing families that none of the options in their book matched what we had requested. We had wanted at least one boy and one girl. There were only three groups of kids with any girls in them. One of those groups had five girls and a brother and our home study only approved us for a maximum of three. All of the groups had at least three siblings in them. We were never shown any smaller families. Mama Teresa was pretty happy with that part of things. Nearly all of the family groups had kids that were 11, 12 even 16 years old. We had requested kids between the ages of 2-8.

Each of the files had a photo of each of the kids. Most of the pictures were 2-4 years old. Some files would have written updates about the kids but most were just the original intake report. The reports would have 1-2 sentences about their medical condition. Another sentence or two about why parental rights had been revoked and not much more information.

After talking about nearly half the family groups we started narrowing the list down to two or three families. In the end we selected the group of three boys that we are going to visit. We had used the full hour and they were ready to have us out and the next family come in. They did call the orphanage director to see if there was any more information. The social worker was very pleasant and smiling but was not going to budge in terms of letting us look at any of their other books.

It is definitely a weird feeling to know that our lives and the lives of our kids will be based on that quick of a meeting and that little information. We were praying while looking but still felt unsettled as we left.