The Rest of 2002

April 6, 2002 was one of those epic days. It was a Saturday, the day after my 20th birthday, and I had met up with the rest of my family to attend the wedding of some friends of ours. After the wedding, we all headed back to our hometown and went to my favorite Italian restaurant for dinner. Over meatball and onion breadsticks, I worked up the courage to tell my parents about the SCC concert and that I had been praying that they would adopt since then. In my heart I knew the answer would be a very patronizing, "Well, that's nice. We'll certainly think about it." And I was right. (Other fun fact about that day, earlier, during the wedding reception, I had been introduced to the friend of a friend. I remember that he had longer hair and a goatee that day. Twenty-seven months and four days later we would attend another wedding reception together-ours!)

Skip to summer time. The whole adoption idea had been put on the back burner of our minds and hearts as we prepared for trips and summer jobs. One of my roommates from the previous year was traveling to Cambodia for the summer to visit her aunt and uncle who were missionaries there. During her stay, she would write emails describing her travels, what she saw and experienced. I always got excited when they came because Cambodia was so far away and exotic. In mid-July, one such email would change the course of our lives forever. My roommate's uncle had taken her to an orphanage and she not only shared the heart-wrenching stories of babies and children there, she shared precious pictures of them. I can remember weeping as I read the email in the reception area of the accounting office where I worked. Quickly, I forwarded the email to my mom. I wasn't there when this happened, but the story goes that my parents both read the email together. When they finished reading, with tears streaming down their own faces, my parents decided that although they could not rescue every child, they could help at least one. I have a very special memory from family vacation that year. We all sat on the back porch of our hotel room in Montana, looking up at the millions of stars (the sky really is bigger there) and praying our hearts out for the little girl who would join our family one day.

Mom and Dad attended a meeting at an adoption agency the next week. A lady who had adopted a little girl from China spoke at the meeting and the deal was sealed, so to speak. We started the paperwork to adopt a baby from there. This is where I get fuzzy. If you want to know the details of paperwork and dossiers and home studies, ask my mom. She is a pro. (She even went so far as to call Zell Miller's office everyday for a period of time for their help with the paperwork.) All I know that there is A LOT of paperwork involved in adoption. We all had to get fingerprinted by INS and have family dinners with the social worker who did our home study.

Then, after many long hours of crossing t's and dotting i's, the paperwork was finished and it went to China. After that, we waited and prayed, prayed and waited, waited and prayed.