Nutshell of "How we chose Taiwan"

Our adoption journey began last September when God clearly called us to complete our family by adopting a child who needs a forever family. Through a series of encounters, conversations, answered prayers, and life events--His call became crystal clear---and we could not be more excited to be taking this journey.

We first set our eyes on China after praying, one night at bedtime, that God would show us "what country"? He answered that prayer in less than 12 hours by introducing us to Lily and her sister on the playground--two sisters brought together through adoption just two months before (and she came to their family from China). Later that same day, we checked our mail to find a notice about a "passport fair" that very weekend. Just another little sign that we would need a passport to where we were going.

We found an agency in town to start our adoption process and homestudy---and through our homestudy process we focused in on Taiwan (which is less than 100 miles off the SE coast of China). We learned of a foster care program with healthy boys and girls needing families---and the wait time is anywhere from 3-18 months (depending on whether you adopt a boy or girl). China's wait for a child is 3-4 years.

So now, months later, after many meetings, interviews, classes, seminars and essays--- Geoff, Anna Grace and I await our homestudy being submitted to our adoption agency for review and then to be added to the waitlist. We can't wait to bring Anna Grace's sister home!

At the end of April, I am launching an adoption concert, "Unabandoned Love . . . the Orphan's Road Home" to help raise our family's funds and at the same time raise awareness of the orphan's plight. Eventually, my hope is to take this concert to many churches and use it as a ministry to help raise funds for other families to be able to afford adoption. It is such a shame, because there are over 200 million orphans worldwide--each one needs a loving family. But, the cost of adoption is prohibitive (as it is for our family, in fact), and many people who would make loving parents to these children cannot proceed because of the financial requirement. I hope that my concert may eventually help these families.

In the meantime, over the next weeks, I will pull together the loose ends of the concert and be ready to take it to First United Methodist Church on April 27th!