FAQ

Many people ask us the same questions, and others are afraid to ask. So here are some answers to some questions we have been asked:

1. Are you infertile?
No.

2. Why aren't you adopting a child from your own country?
There are 110 million orphans in this world. Luckily, in the USA there are only 100,000. Many of these children in the US are adopted every year. In PA alone, there were 2,000 children available for adoption, and of these 2,000, 1,200 were adopted last year. We looked at the remaining 800 children, but we felt their ages (15, 16, 17) would not fit well with our family. We were happy to find that out of 110 million children, the US only has 100,000 orphans. That is pretty amazing. Since American children were not readily available for adoption, we looked outside our country to where there was a much greater need. It is so heartbreaking to find out that there are so many orphans.

3. Where are you getting the money to adopt internationally? You must have alot of money!
No, unfortunately we do not. If we we did, we would be adopting many more (just call us Brad and Angelina). We are taking on a large loan for the adoption, but we feel this is the best money we ever spent!

4. Why don't you want to have your own biological children?
We just don't have any great need to. We feel a greater need to give an existing child a home and family.

5. Why do you want an older child - someone else's mess?
That's the point! Because the older children are the least wanted and less likely to be adopted. We wanted to make a difference, be it in only one child's life. Are older children more challenging? Absolutely, and some children are more challenging than others (we know all about that!), but then again, you don't know how challenging your biological child will be. It's all just part of this great game of life.

2007 - The Year of the Great Indecision

We made the big decision to have another child, and we agreed that having a biological child was not important for us. Adoption gives us the opportunity to grow our family, and at the same time, provide a child with a family. What a great gift for us!

So, we decided we are going to adopted internationally, but from where? We decided to go ahead and start our home study and go from there. We asked ourselves, which country has the greatest need? Which country makes it "easy" to adopt? We have limited funds, and limited time off, so are options were also ...limited.

We are thinking of the following countries:

• China - has a 3 year wait
• Vietnam - just reopened and they are already saying that they are forcing mothers to give up their children. At the same time, I am reading that there are toddlers that are homeless that are sleeping in parks at night.
• Philippines - unable to find an agency that works in the Philippines
• Russia - very expensive and quite a number of trips
• Kaz - Long trip (about 6 weeks)
• Uzbekistan - new program, one week travel - maybe a possibility

Many of the other programs we looked at were either too new or we were strongly discouraged against due to "shady" practices in those countries. We decided to just wait and see what happens and have faith that it all will fall into place, as it should!

It all started when two people fell in love...

We had great plans for our lives. We were going to travel, make lots of money, retire at 50. None of our plans included children.

There is a saying I've heard, and it fits our lives perfectly:

Man Plans, God Laughs.