2. Looking to adopt abroad?

Our first Sunday in Korea we attended Songtan Central Baptist Church. http://www.songtanbaptist.com/  We noticed on the back of the bulletin they had praises/prayer requests for families in the congregation who were in the process of completing their adoptions. We later found out that they were private adoptions!  This made the idea of private adoption very real.  Especially since the back of the bulletin asked for prayer for the "Chapman family."  Different Chapmans of course, but it made us smile. Since we had no connections in the community or any idea of how to go about private adoption we continued to lean toward using an agency if possible.

In early September I borrowed a Seoul Travel book and was browsing through it with a friend as I prepared for Martha James' visit.  I was telling her about our interest in adoption and right at that moment I flipped to an full page ad in the back that said, "Looking to adopt abroad?"  I wanted to scream, "YESSS!" It was for www.adopt-abroad.com  We discovered that this agency has a social worker in Seoul who could travel to our house to conduct the home study!  It seemed perfect.

That same week another friend asked Patrick and I to come over and review with them the info we had received thus far about adoption while in Korea.  That was a good push for us to do a bit more research.  Here is a great overview site about Korean adoption by the U.S. Department of State http://adoption.state.gov/country_information/country_specific_info.php?country-select=south_korea

 At this point we were still discovering what type of adoption might be possible while living abroad.  We didn't have a preference in what country our child came from.  We thought it would be great if we could identify with our child by having experienced their culture so with that in mind Korean or American adoption would work. However, we also had to keep our strict 1.5-2 year time limit in mind and so a Moroccan adoption seemed best since the website said they had the shortest wait times.  We later learned that Moroccan adoptions were closed last year and the website was incorrect.  This made us question using this agency and we seemed to be back at square one. 

In our research during this time we also discovered that international adoption is expensive typically ranging from 30- 50K.  Of course we are more than willing to make it happen if this is what the Lord calls us to do but we certianly aren't going to make that decision willy-nilly!