Thursday, April 3, 2014

baumeister family is EXPANDING......

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We are expecting baby number THREE!   But not quite the way you think…  We are both excited and anxious to announce that we have officially begun the international adoption process to adopt our next child from China.  As most of you may know, we have talked about the possibility of adopting somewhere down the road for a couple years, but recently God has specifically laid on our heart that now is the time.  This letter is not intended to take the place of the many months and years of conversations to come, but help us convey a straightforward, well-organized explanation of our decision.

First, we will walk you through what we have been doing over the past 8 months, and how we have come to the point of submitting our formal application and finishing our home study in hopes of bringing an orphaned child into our family. 

Why are we adopting (Theologically and Morally)?

As Christians we believe that we live in a broken world, caused by sin that we have all been born in to from our heritage as children of Adam & Eve and their disobedience in Genesis. Because of this sin, we are all orphans removed from God’s family. But, and only because of his grace and mercy, we have been made acceptable to God and our sin has been washed clean through Jesus Christ’s death on the cross. Scripture repeatedly talks about our adoption as sons and heirs through Christ. We weren’t born into it, we didn’t earn it, we don’t deserve it, and still it is just given to us for no good reason at all. Laura and I look at this adoption in the same light. Somewhere there is a child with no mother or father, abandoned because they were not perfect or couldn’t be provided for. We want to show a child the love they would never be able to experience unless we offered it freely with no expectations of repayment or perfection from them.

In the book Adopted for Life, by Russell Moore, we see that adoption offers no greater picture of our heavenly Father’s love for us.  It says in Romans 8:15 “the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, 'Abba, Father." This means we are not just made acceptable to God through Christ, but we are truly branded as sons and daughters, complete with an inheritance and brothers and sisters and unconditional love. 

Clearly, we feel that there are two important reasons we want to convey to all of you about why we have decided to adopt. First, we believe in God, and his goodness to us by grace alone. Secondly, after researching the current conditions many children live in at orphanages across the world, we are crazy for not wanting to do something about it for at least one child. We do not believe this means everyone is called to adopt.  We believe that God has specifically called us to adopt at this point in our lives. Here are some good resources to help you understand our heart for this:

-Adopted for Life, book by Russell D. Moore
-Somewhere Between, documentary film on netflix
-Stuck, documentary film on netflix
-Adoption: Pondering the Privileges: Galatians 4:4-7 by Tony Merida at Summit Church, sermon podcast on 7/21/2013

The decision of International
Last July we began to pray specifically about adoption and what God may have in his plans for us. In the past we have given financial assistance to another family who was going through adoption, but God was working on our hearts a little different this time. We initially thought if we were to adopt, we would adopt domestically.  After seeing this process first hand at the Christian Life Home in Raleigh, we thought it was something we could handle and the costs were relatively low.
Typically there are two ways to adopt domestically: one is through the foster system and the other is adopting a domestic infant through an agency. Laura began the process of contacting our local county foster system to find out more information.  After many phone calls we found out that we only qualified to adopt a child from the foster system who is over 6 years old.  If we wanted a younger child we would have to foster the child first.  We were open to this, but they told us we did not qualify to foster because we were considered too mobile of a family (potential of moving due to John’s job).  We felt God had made it pretty clear the foster system was not the route he had for us. 

We were still open to domestic infant and decided to attend an adoption interest meeting in September led by Bethany Christian Services.  It was about a 90min drive, past Orlando.  We arranged childcare for Everett and attended the 3 hour meeting.  There were about 4 couples there.  All of which were infertile trying to adopt their first child.  It made it a slightly awkward when we walked in with our 6 month old in a stroller.  2 of the couples even coming up to us and saying “why are you here.”  These are the exact questions we expect people to ask and are excited to dialogue with people. During a break, one of the social workers talked to us.  Her words were profound and we will never forget them.  While explaining the difference in domestic vs. international adoption she said, “we have waiting families (many infertile) here in the US who are anxiously awaiting the next pregnant mom to walk through our doors, while we have waiting children overseas anxiously awaiting a family that may never come.”  As we left that meeting we both got in the car and felt God was leading us down the international path. 

Over the past 6 months we have met with other adoptive families, one of the pastors at our church and been communicating with our adoption agency.  We submitted our initial application in January, which gave the agency basic information about us to see what countries we qualified for.  The application didn’t cost any money and we were not committed to the process yet.  We got word back that we qualified for Albania, Bulgaria, Colombia, China, Ethiopia, Haiti, Hong Kong, South Africa, South Korea, and Uganda.  One thing they never prepare you for in school is how to chose a country to adopt from. So we began our research.  Many of these countries only offer adoption of older children, which was not something we were willing to consider. We had always felt that Everett should remain the oldest child also called keeping birth order.  This immediately eliminated many of the countries.  Other issues we ran into were that some countries are no longer accepting applications because the wait times have gotten so long, ie. Ethiopia.  Without going into all the details we have decided that China is the best option for our family at this time.   

The unknown details of our child
Bethany’s China program is tailored for children with “minor correctable needs”.  These babies have been abandoned on the street most likely due to their problem. We know that our child will have some kind of medical/physical condition.  Examples could be cleft lip/palate, clubbed foot, missing digits, anemia, epilepsy, scars.  We had to go through extensive paper work highlighting needs that we feel comfortable with.  Of course this was a heartbreaking task knowing that checking the “no” box to a specific condition could mean a child being institutionalized for life.  This being said we have to be responsible for our marriage and current children and will lean on God’s direction during the process. We are working very hard with Bethany to identify needs that both they and us feel we can handle. 
We have asked Bethany to look at very young children.  Our hope is that Nora (now 12 months)and our new child will be 9 months apart when we bring him/her home from China.  It is crazy to think about, but it’s possible that right now a Chinese baby has been abandoned and is in an orphanage waiting for us. This orphan will be our son or daughter. 

Time Frame
Adoption is a very long process.  There is a lot of paperwork and a many government agencies have to approve each step.  This takes time!  We have recently finished our home study and will soon be filing for immigration.  Without going into to much detail we hope to bring  him or her home summer or winter 2015. 

Fears
I think the biggest fear is the unknown. What health problems will he/she have? How will the other children adjust? How will we afford it? How will our friends and family react? The irony of this experience is that these are similar questions that we all ask when we are pregnant.  For some reason we feel we have more control when we carry the child to term ourselves, but in reality we really don’t have much control at all.  The health issues/concerns our Chinese child will have could be the same problems our next biological child could have had.  We must believe that God’s plan is better than ours. 


Pray for us

-Pray for this (potentially) unborn child in his/her mother’s womb, that they would be loved even through early abandonment 
-Pray for our patience through the ups and downs of a long adoption process
-Pray for Everett and Nora’s hearts for their new little brother or sister
-Pray for the funding we will need to raise 
-Pray for immigration process, and our dossier
-Pray that lives would be changed for Christ and God would have the glory


Future blogs:
The process of adopting from china
How much does it really cost?
Why are their more boys than girls?
What is the progress of the Chinese one child law?
Why are children abandoned in China?
And more as we go through the process. 

We look forward to sharing with you throughout the journey.  Please feel free to message us on facebook if you have any questions. 

With Love

John and Laura