After many months of working with our current adoption agency, today I had the difficult assignment of informing them about our decision to withdraw from their program. Here is a portion of my note to the agency director, explaining the reasons behind our decision:
But there is a much bigger reason ... we might never have been aware of this except for our involvement in the Forum. Within the past several months, a number of links have been posted providing abortion information and/or referrals. We are 100% committed to the sanctity of life, and after much prayer and conversation we feel it is a conflict of our personal faith and convictions to work with an agency that does not feel the same way. I know that we don't see eye to eye on this issue, but I share this because I believe you can respect our honesty and desire to be true to our conviction in this area.Our choosing to withdraw was not without a significant financial loss, but after much time, conversation and prayer, Pedro and I felt that this was the right thing to do. Thankfully, in the meantime God has led us to a small Christian adoption agency (also a crisis pregnancy center ministry) in Houston which shares our commitment to the Lord and the value of human life.
This was not an easy decision by any means, especially with how strongly we desire to adopt another child. However, we are trusting that God will be faithful in working out His will for our family - though it may be in ways we might not have anticipated.
We recently had a wonderfully encouraging meeting with one of the staff members there. The agency has worked with missionaries before and understands the unique time restraints we face as we prepare to leave for Chile next summer. While they obviously cannot promise a placement, they are willing to work with us without requiring us to pay agency fees unless a child is placed with us. This is a tremendous blessing and encouragement to us, as we move forward in a slightly different direction - yet continue to ask the Lord for this child He has placed on our hearts and those of our children!
Thank you for your prayers!
3 comments:
Wow! What a tough decision to make! We will pray that things will move quickly with this new agency and that you will have a baby soon! I guess it's all in God's timing. Apparently He was holding off for you guys to realize these differences and make your decision. Praise God for His faithfulness though!
What a tough decision, but God will honor your convictions. Are you just wanting to work in Texas? If not, you should contact the organization we went through Special Link (www.special-link.org) they are a Christian non profit organization that just deals with AA or biracial situations. They don't charge for their services, they just have a network of agencies and attorneys around the country that contact them when they have a situation come up, then they will contact you. (And after Amelia she said the waiting list for boys is always much smaller than for girls :) They might work with an agency in Texas or somewhere close by, I don't know, but I know that we only worked with them for a couple weeks before they told us about Amelia's birthmother and then a couple weeks later Amelia was born. The lady who runs it is a wonderful Christian lady who really helped me after we had gone through the scam and lost a lot of money. Anyway, just a thought, if you wanted to contact them it wouldn't cost you anything to work with them and might give you some more "leads" out there.
Stephanie,
I am so proud of you.
A friend from the forum.
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