Praising God For One Less Polish Orphan!
As a Christian adoption agency, we give all the glory to God for each child that we have the honor to see adopted per His plan. This family is truly special to us. When they began the process they were living abroad. Up until that point we had never taken on a case for a family who was not residing in the US.
As a general rule, we didn’t look to serve families living abroad, not necessarily because we thought we couldn’t, but because we knew we didn’t have the experience. As we’ve served our parents with international adoptions for over 15 years, we know that even a “simple adoption” can get complicated. Therefore, we thought that assisting parents who didn’t live stateside would most likely fall into a category that was a “bit more complex” to work with. So, initially, we politely declined to help this family explaining that we didn’t have the necessary experience that they were likely looking for in an adoption professional to guide them through the adoption process.
Of course, this amazing adoption story doesn’t end there. This family found a way to contact the agency’s president directly. They wrote her and told her that they felt called by God to adopt from Poland. They also said that they knew it had to be with Saint Mary’s help because they felt a connection to us and our desire to serve Christian adoptive parents.
They didn’t care that we had never served a family who didn’t currently live in the US. They felt peace because they knew this decision wasn’t theirs, but God’s. Our president, after hearing that, knew she couldn’t say “no”. She felt touched and wanted to allow God to use her, and Saint Mary International Adoptions, for His purposes of bringing a family together through international adoption.
When God said, “follow me”, He didn’t say it was going to be easy. As His servants, we want to do our best to walk with Christ, so we faithfully accepted a few more challenges. We anticipated that accepting these challenges may mean that we’d have to “define” this adoption with a label different than “simple” or “a bit more complex”. And, we found out we were sort of right when the family told us they were moving again. No, they didn’t move back to the US. Not that the physical difference really made a difference, but they moved even further away on a different continent than the one they were previously living on. Anyways, not to dig too deep into paperwork issues, let’s just say that our agency’s president had to spend a few more hours reading adoption laws to make sure that we’re doing everything by the book – as we do with every other adoption we help our families with.
So a different continent, a home study update, and an updated CIS Approval later, and the call came. Our Polish adoption representatives had informed us that the authorities had a child for our family. Though Lina (our president) is typically the one who gets the privilege of calling our families with these news, this time she felt she really deserved to be the one making the happy call. (Of course, its everyone’s favorite thing to do is to be involved on happy calls).
The family accepted the referral of their son!
They pushed onward to meet him during their first trip. Then, like all adoptive parents went back home for a few months in between adoption trips and thought they were separated from their son for decades. But, time for the second trip came and they were back before we knew it. They completed their bonding period, and dressed up nicely for their court hearing as you can see in their adoption video that they shared with us to celebrate their incredible adoption story.
It was a pleasure to serve you Adam and Erin!
