We Finally Get to Tell Him!

The day finally came! The day that we could tell Jean that, contrary to what he thought, we DID want him to become part of our family!

The last couple of summers, it has taken about four months before adoptive families were able to tell their host child that they were adopting them, as they had to wait until they were very far into the official adoption process. Thankfully however, this summer Colombia has decided to allow families to tell their host children as soon as the the process has officially started, with approval of the Letter of Intent. This means that Jean only had to wait one month to find out. Still painful for him (and us!) but much better than waiting four or more months.

In early September we got word that our Letter of Intent had been approved, and that they would inform Jean that we were adopting him just before our next Skype call. We could not wait to finally be able to talk about it with him! I imagined how the call would go and prepared what I would say. We did a test run 30 minutes prior to verify that computer microphones and webcams were all working properly.

At the appointed time, the call came in, but neither Tom or Jean could see the boys and I. They could hear us, but not see us. We could not figure out what the problem was. I called my tech-savvy brother-in-law in Florida and he informed me that Skype had just put out an update, and that if we didn't all have the same version of Skype that might be the problem. Sure enough, my version of Skype was not as up-to-date as Tom's and Colombia's, so I downloaded the update. After installing it, a message popped up saying I needed to reboot my computer. I rebooted and watched the screen turn black, then come back to life with the blue screen. "Wait a minute," I thought, as a message appeared - OH NO!

This was one of those random Windows updates that they don't warn you about, they just do without asking if it is a good time. It was SO stressful and frustrating, the whole time I was worried because it was towards the end of the work day, and I knew that the worker that Jean was with had to leave soon.

Thirty-five minutes later ....

The update finally completed, I was able to be added on to the Skype call and finally we could talk about the adoption! Jean had been told about the adoption just prior to the call, but then he had had to sit through about 45 minutes total of technical difficulty. So our "moment" wasn't quite what we expected it to be!

"So Jean," I said, "I think you know that we wrote a letter saying that we would like you to be part of our family." He smiled. "Does he say yes or no?" Tom asked the interpreter, "Sí, o no?"

Here is the video so you can see for yourself what Jean said:

But there was something else we needed to tell him.

"Jean," I said, "we want you to know that from the very beginning, we knew that we wanted to adopt you, but we weren't allowed to tell you. We knew we wanted you to be part of our family before we even met you in person. We so wanted to be able to tell you before you went home. It made us so sad that you thought we didn't want to adopt you, but we had to follow the rules and wait until we had permission to tell you. We want you to be part of our family forever, and we can't wait until you can come back to us!"

And now he knows!

The Backstory

It happened right after Easter, when we were discussing the possibility of getting a dog. Our cat had died last December and the kids were asking for another pet. I had spent days researching the perfect breed, and asked Tom whether he thought we should buy a puppy from a breeder (so that we could be relatively assured about what traits the dog would have), or whether we should adopt a dog from a shelter. My husband said "If we're going to adopt anything, it should be another child!"

I was surprised, as we are now in our late forties and early fifties and our children, adopted domestically at birth, are older too. We had always wanted more children, but after three more adoption attempts that all fell through, we assumed that God's plan for some reason was for us to have only two children. "Adopt again, now?" I wondered, aloud. We decided to pray about it.

The next day was Divine Mercy Sunday, and we attended a healing service after Mass. As the priest laid hands on me, I asked God to help us discern his will, and to make it clear for us what he would have us do. THE NEXT DAY, while the Gospel account of the Annunciation was being proclaimed at daily Mass, I heard the Lord tell me, a woman who was not expecting to be a mother (again), that he was asking me to be the mother of a very special child. Both the Psalm and the Old Testament readings contained the verse "Here I am Lord, I come to do your will."

Who, me?

That clear sign I had asked for? It was right there. Unmistakable.

I called my husband to tell him, he responded "You don't have to convince me, let's do it!" Only TWO DAYS from idea inspiration to confirmation in prayer. It was definitely from God. If it was from me, I'd still be hemming and hawing about it, researching it to death and stuck in fear, unable to make a decision.

But now what? We didn't feel the desire or call to adopt an infant or toddler. We wondered, could we be called to adopt an older child? This is something that in the past we would never have considered. Everyone knows that those children are too damaged, too hard, too scary.

Except that our God is the God who removes all fear. Who opens hearts and gives grace. Who calls us to care for the orphan and tells us all things are possible with Him.

I called a friend who adopted two orphans from China over the last couple of years. I didn't know which countries were doing international adoption right now, which agencies were good in our area, how to even get started. I asked if she knew anything about how to find older children. She told me that there was such a thing as older orphan hosting, where a child would come live with your family for a month or so during the summer, and you could meet each other to see if a match might be a good for both that child and your family. She suggested that I start researching this option at RainbowKids, an advocacy site for special needs orphans (being older is one type of special need).

I started visiting several of the eighteen different hosting programs and quickly became overwhelmed. I contacted my friend to ask:

I clicked on photolisting after photolisting. The blonde-haired blue-eyed kids from Poland, Latvia and the Ukraine were darling. The Chinese children were precious. And of course there were plenty of kids in the U.S. foster care system as well. Hmm, Colombia has a program? I'd always wanted to improve my Spanish, and had an affinity for Latin America, having vacationed in Mexico and Puerto Rico.

And then it happened.

Jean Carlos

Jean is an outgoing, agreeable, and affectionate 12 year old. He is in the 5th grade and is a good student. 

He currently lives in a foster home in Colombia and is in good health. Jean is helpful, cooperative, and attentive to his foster mom and others in the house. 

Jean Carlos is Catholic and drawn to everything religious. He attends Mass every Saturday evening with his foster family and prays the rosary every night before going to bed. 

Jean would like an adoptive family that loves him, supports him, guides him, spends a lot of time together, and makes him feel like part of the family.

That smile. Those eyes. He shares our faith. And most especially, he looked like he would fit right in with our other brown boys.

I called Tom at work and told him I was sending him links to a few different photolistings from different countries and asked him to take a look. I didn't mention Jean, as I was curious to see if Tom would feel drawn to consider any other children.

He called me back a little later and said "Did you see Jean Carlos from Colombia? I really like him."

They say "When you know, you know." They are usually talking about finding your spouse. In this case it is about finding our child. We know. We have been called and we have been led to our child. We knew before we even called to get more information that he was the one. We knew so clearly that we started our homestudy before we even met him.

That not understanding why, years ago, those other three adoptions all fell through? Maybe, just maybe, it was because God had a different, better idea. One that required us to have space in our family, as it is not usually a good idea to adopt children older than your oldest child. One that necessitated us having some more parenting experience under our belts. One that foreknew that a very special child was going to need a family now, in 2016.

And thank God for that.