The FAQS

 These are a few of the questions that have been asked regularly, so I thought I`d just answer them for more people to read!


The Cost...
Adoption is costly! " My friends, adoption is redemption.Its costly, exhausting, expensive, and outrageous. Buying back lives cost so much. When God set out to redeem us, it killed Him." Derek Loux.
It will cost between $27000-$30000 to bring our child home. There are alot of little fees that add up to one big fee. Fees for notarizing and apostilling and fingerprinting and coming into our home to declare us fit parents (homestudy) and fees for translating and plane tickets and motels and food. Fees for bringing said child to the USA, visa and medical appts. Fees for attorneys, facilitators, translators. Basically, fees for pretty much everything! But it is worth it! After all, it is just money, and in the bigger scheme of things, doesn`t really matter. But yes, it is a large amount of money to raise to make this happen.

How Long...
There is not set time, and there are lots of ups and downs in this process. Basically, we apply to an agency, they accept us, then we apply to the Immigration part of our government (USCIS) to bring a child into the country. Then we send our paperwork to Peru.  All of this takes time to get approval. There is no guarantee, but we have been told 7-12 months. We are, of course, hoping for the shorter of those times, but time will tell!

How Long In Country...
We expect to be there anywhere from 3-5 weeks. We will both go at first, then one of us can come home after about 2 weeks. There again, it just depends on lots of things.

The Child...
We started this process with a certain child on our hearts that we felt God had led us to...there have been some ups and downs in this, and we aren`t sure where God is taking us in all of it.  We are trusting that if it isn`t this particular child, then He will show us our child in His timing. We would be grateful for your prayers in this matter, and for peaceful hearts for both of us as we trust in God.

What Do Our Children Think...
They are excited :) When we showed them a picture of the child, not saying anything beyond that she lives in an orphanage and doesn`t have a mommy and daddy to love her, Ellie immediately wanted to pray for her. So we all had prayer time for her, and at the end of the prayers from the three older ones, Ellie said, "Oh! I have one more thing to pray about..." Without any prompting from us or any indication of adopting her, Ellie prayed that God would bring her to live with us. They continued to pray for her to be brought home to us, before we told them what we are trying to do! We are blown away at their acceptance and faith that God will bring her to us.

Foster Care...
Several people have wondered about this, so I will clear up the question :) We are still planning to do foster care, our long term plan has just changed a little for the moment. We would like to focus more on respite care or shorter term placements. And as for the question of why don`t we just adopt from foster care...well, that has it`s own ups and downs. We realize it would be much cheaper and in some ways easier, but we feel that God has placed Peru on our hearts for a reason, and as long as the doors keep opening for that, we will move forwards.