Adoption Update



Why Ethiopia?  It’s probably the most common question we get when telling people about our decision to adopt.  Quick update first: our home study has been approved by the State of Colorado (yay!) and yesterday we went to our first adoptive parents’ class.  Much of the focus of the class was about understanding cultural differences, food differences, social differences, prosperity differences, even hair differences.  We talked about how do we, as white parents, raise an African child?  What questions might that bring?



So, why Ethiopia?  It’s God-led, is the short answer.  Something about Ethiopia has drawn our attention, even from before we knew each other.  Though we’ve never been there, yet, we know it to be a beautiful country with gorgeous people.  It has a unique heritage in God as home to one of the oldest orthodox branches of the Church, yet it sits on the “battle line” between Muslim northern Africa and the Christian and animist south.  It also suffers frequent drought and sits high on the list of the world’s poorest nations.  It is home to 5,000,000 orphans.  All these things intrigue us about Ethiopia, but sometimes it’s as simple as a seed planted by God’s whisper years before.

We do also aspire to adopt from China and South America, but Ethiopia’s requirements are less strict so it seemed a good place to start for our first adoption.