glad I listened to him ...

I just read an email that I got today from the Georgia Adoption Agency ... so so so so glad that I listened to Alya's heart as we made the decision to stay with Bundle of Hope. Here's the email:

Dear Prospective Adoptive Family,

Thank you for your interest in adopting through Covenant Care Services. Recently there has been additional publicity (blogs and couple referrals) for Covenant Care’s need for families to adopt African American children. Although this has been effective in helping us recruit families, it has presented some additional challenges for our agency.

We have found that only about 40% of our African American birth mothers are open to considering placing their child in an adoptive family of a different race. Unfortunately this means CCS now has a longer list of families willing to adopt African American babies. In fact, the response has been so great that it has presented complications for our staff. Because of the response, we do not have time to manage all the requests.

In light of this growing number, we are temporarily unable to accept any more out of state families. If you are in process of a home assessment, please go ahead and explore other avenues of adoption. Many of you are likely working with other agencies across the country or you may even be exploring an international adoptive placement for your family and if that is the case, please follow through with those avenues.

If you have completed your Home Assessment process, you can send us a copy and we will update you when we re-open our list and began processing out of state families again.

If you haven’t begun working through the Home Assessment process then I would advise you to make sure of your prospective path of adopting before proceeding any further. If God is truly calling you to adopt a child of a different race, then He has a plan for your family.

Please know that we did not anticipate the overwhelming response we received from so many families across the country who are willing to adopt trans-racially. I am truly sorry that we had to close our list, but again I do hope it is temporary. Meanwhile, please pray that more African American birth mothers would be open to placing their child trans-racially.

Serving in Him,
Iris

We could have screwed ourselves over big time if we would have sent in our grant applications using their agency as the place where our money would go. sigh ... I'm so glad that I didn't try to take control over this and just want to go the cheaper route. I'm so thankful to be married to a man who doesn't dive into things drastically. I know that I can get frustrated with that part of him sometimes, but he just saved us big time. :0)

I still can't send in our grants yet. I emailed Bundle of Hope ... slightly annoyed that they haven't gotten back to me since it's been over a week now. I guess I just need to call them and see what's up with our homestudy and what we need to do next. We really need to send in those grants.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately ... reading old journal entries I've written throughout this long journey to be parents. I'll post more on this soon ... until then, just keep praying that we have wide open doors to walk through throughout the remainder of our adoption journey. :0)