Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Continue in Patience

President Uchtdorf gave a wonderful talk during the last General Conference about patience.

WAITING IS HARD for everyone!

Pres. Uchtdorf: "I learned that patience was far more than simply waiting for something to happen – patience required actively working toward worthwhile goals and not getting discouraged when results didn’t appear instantly or without effort…Patience is not passive resignation, nor is it failing to act because of our fears. Patience means active waiting and enduring. It means staying with something and doing all that we can- working, hoping, and exercising faith; bearing hardship with fortitude, even when the desires of our hearts are delayed. Patience is not simply enduring; it is enduring well!”

When I read the above statement, I immediately knew what Pres. Uchtdorf meant. Last year when my husband and I were approved and waiting to adopt, we felt that once our profile was complete that we had done all that we could or all that was required of us. Of course we wanted to grow our family, but our “passive resignation” was an effort to avoid the pattern of emotions tied to adoption and waiting. Six months later and without any contacts, we realized that we needed to be more prayerful and earnest about the blessing that we wanted. When we consistently sought the Lord’s guidance, then we knew what we should do. There was no question in our minds. Prayer led to greater faith, hope, desire, and answers. We wanted to do all that we could to receive this blessing and when we finally made that effort, the Lord’s blessings began to flow. If we hadn’t made the effort and exercised faith, we could have missed one of the most important opportunities of our lives.

Pres. Uchtdorf: “Every one of us is called to wait in our own way. We wait for answers to prayers. We wait for things which at the time may appear so right and so good to us that we can’t possibly imagine why Heavenly Father would delay the answer.”

I know that the Lord has a plan for all of his children. He loves each of us and remembers all of our heart’s desires. Continue on in faith, knowing that he will provide a way and hope that all that you do will bring you closer to receiving the blessings that you seek.

Pres. Uchtdorf: “If we wait patiently for the Lord, He will incline unto us. He will hear our cries. He will bring us out of a horrible pit and set our feet upon a solid rock. He will put a new song in our mouths, and we will praise our God. Many around us will see it, and they will trust in the Lord.”

Sara Hayman
IN/KY FSA Chair

To read more about Sara and Jared's journey to adopting their son,
go to posts on Sara's blog: Part 1 and Part 2

Friday, June 25, 2010

Chad & Natalie Hoping To Adopt

We have been married for almost 9 years. We have three biological children ages 7, 5 and 3. We just really believe that adoption is a blessing and want to be a part of it. We want to be a support to a birth mother and want to provide a mother and father for a child.

We have been trying to adopt for 4 years. In 2006, a month after we got our profile posted on itsaboutlove.org, I found out I was pregnant. Sooo, that put the adoption process on hold for about a year and half since you have to wait until your child is a year old to resume the adoption process. We had one birth mother select us in Sept. of 2008 before even meeting us or even talking to us, but then she disappeared. We started with Parent Profiles in September of 2009 and have had a contact from a birth mother at least once a month. Some of the contacts never contact us again and some have resulted good discussions.

In December of 2009 we got a call from a birth mother and met her three days later! At our meeting she asked us if we would adopt her baby. We formed a great relationship very quickly. We talked every other day for at least an hour. We had to up the minutes on our phone plan! Her family was not supportive of adoption and we were so happy to be a support to her during such a difficult time. She was not living near family, which was hard on her, but also kind of good for her, so that she didn't constantly get pressure from them. She ended up going into labor in February 2010 at just 19 weeks and lost the baby. It has been difficult for her and for us. Luckily, we have been able to stay friends with her. To learn more about our feelings on adoption here are links to our profiles:
 
 
We haven't had our happy ending yet, but we are hopeful.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Finding vs. Waiting

I remember when my husband and I were new and just beginning the adoption process. We verbally told friends and family, usually in person, that we were adopting. One friend told me that she just received an email from another friend that was adopting. She said the email had a link to their profile and they encouraged her to send the email on to more people.

My internal first response was "Weird." Being rather new still to the adoption world, I hadn't heard about "finding" techniques that help adoptive couples connect with potential birth parents. When Jared and I discussed doing something similar we felt uncomfortable with the idea of advertising ourselves in this way. We were still situating ourselves to the fact that we, for all appearances, were "applying" to be parents like you would a job. I think planning an advertisement campaign was beyond our emotional capacity at the time.

Since then, I have heard and seen more and more successful adoptions that have taken place because the couple was actively searching and finding their child. We have changed our opinion from "weird & uncomfortable" to "good idea & helpful." So I encourage you to prayerfully consider different ideas and options on getting the word out that your family is hoping to adopt.

Here are just a few ideas:

Facebook
Here is an article about how one couple connected with their birth parents by posting their adoption flyer on Facebook.

Jeff & Anna members of our Indiana/Kentucky FSA have an adoption page on Facebook. If anyone else in our chapter has a Facebook adoption page, we would like to hear about it!

IN/KY FSA is now a group on Facebook. Make a request to join our group!

Adoption Pass Along Cards

Here is a link to a company where you can see examples and order adoption pass along cards.

Check out this post from another FSA blog about different ideas on how to pass out your adoption pass along cards.

Read this post about an LDS couple who connected with their birth mother because she received their pass along card.

You could potentially make your own professional looking pass along cards using Photoshop. Would anyone be interested in attending a workshop at our next FSA conference on making your own adoption pass along cards?

We will post more ideas on how to find and connect with birth parents in future posts. If you have ideas and/or success stories on "finding" techniques please email them to us at indianafsa@gmail.com or leave a comment!
-EE

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Sophie & Kelly's Adoption Journey

Our adoption journey began a year ago in Hawaii. When Kelly returned home from Iraq, we quickly (within 2 weeks) got all our paperwork and visits taken care of with LDS Family Services in Hawaii. You see, I have always known (since I was a young girl) that the Lord had a special child or children in mind for me and my future hubby to adopt. I was always okay with not being pregnant, I really wanted to adopt because that's what I felt the Lord wanted for our family.

Well, the years passed and Kelly really wanted to be able to make our babies, so we were able to get pregnant and we had three children. But, my body didn't seem to want to let our babies "bake" long enough--they were all born prematurely. We decided that we were probably done, so on our youngest child's first birthday, Kelly had a vasectomy. However, the night before, I had a dream that a little girl was waiting to join our family but I didn't tell Kelly in time.
For a time, my heart was saddened because I knew a special spirit was meant to join our family. However, Kelly did not have the same feelings about adoption. And so I waited for the Lord to touch his heart. More time passed and Kelly's best friend and his wife adopted a beautiful baby girl through LDSFS in Utah. They had a wonderful experience with adoption and Kelly's heart was softened. After he returned home from a 7 month deployment in Iraq, he told me he was ready to proceed with finding our baby girl. YEAH! I felt a real sense of urgency so we got right to work and got everything in within two weeks.
I thought we would adopt really fast, but we waited and waited and waited..... In that time we worked with LDS Family Services, Parent Profiles, and some other agencies in Utah, but ultimately we were led to Premier Adoption Agency in Nevada in November 2009. Just when I had lost all hope, we got the call from our agency in Nevada that we had only been working with for three months. Our baby was waiting, but she was recovering from being really sick and we were told that she might have some problems in the future because of her birthmom's prenatal drug-use. So, we prayed really hard for confirmation and called her doctors; discussing our options, but we knew from the first time we saw her pictures that she was ours! Everything just fell into place and our feelings were confirmed over and over through the Spirit that we had found Our baby, the One meant for our family.

Sophie is also breastfeeding their new baby girl through Induced Lactation. (See these two articles
here and here for more info). If you want to know more about her experience send an email to indianafsa@gmail.com.